The speed at which the approvals came combined with the hyper-politicized environment in which the approvals occurred where the vaccine was going to be our salvation and the way out of shutting down the economy. I believe the FDA was under enough political pressure to approve the vaccines that there is no way they would have withheld approval.

I don't know. But it's certainly a possibility. They certainly have less to lose if it turns out it has severe side-effects than the people taking it.

Beyond that I thought it was weird that a bunch of coworkers the same age as I mentioned feeling so unwell after the second injection they couldn't work for a couple days. That didn't seem like a very good deal either, given my personal risk profile.

Well, this is a smart way to deal with it. You're not going "VACCINE BAD" or "VACCINE GOOD", you're weighing risks vs. benefits. But I don't see that being very common. I see "safe and effective" vs. "poison vax/clot shot".

I mean the FDA and the medical industry in general abhors haste and is not well-practiced at making quick decisions. That industry is like playing Chess, whereas the vaccine development and approval process was like playing Speed Chess. The skill-sets are different, and a Chess player may not be very good at playing Speed Chess if he's never done it before.

But in this case, making decisions based on less evidence rather than the decisions themselves taking less time, right?