I can see people being a bit concerned, as at the end of the day, companies care more about the shareholders, and at the start it was basically a battle to be first. Now I think it matters a bit less because it's not like only one company has a vaccine in use, they have multiple so they at least all get a piece of the pie. But if one company had decided to patent it or something then it would be problematic as it shuts out all the other companies. It seems everyone is playing ball in this respect though.
I'd like to think that these companies DO care about their reputation enough that they really made sure it's 99.999% safe before releasing it and pretty sure they did. All eyes are on them to make sure the vaccine is safe, and actually works so screwing it up and it being linked to negligence would probably be practically the end if the company.
Overall I'm not really that worried myself. Originally I wanted to wait as long as I can juuuuust in case they later on discover that there's some kind of long term effect that takes long to surface, but at this point I feel that risk is near zero. Once it becomes available for my age group, I'll be going for it. I have an aunt with terminal cancer that I'd like to visit, and also have a friend who has a dad with medical issues, that I'd like to hang out with, but I only want to do it once I'm vaccinated. I'll also feel better about visiting my parents. My dad is somewhat high risk as well.
If you want to be extremely cynical, and think that the pharma companies are acting out of a purely monetary motivation: 1) the companies are not making a lot on the vaccines compared to their other products; 2) the companies make a lot of money on their other products; and 3) they stand to make a lot of money on products under clinical development. Points 2 and 3 rely on maintaining a good reputation with healthcare practitioners. The clinical trials are run by physicians - good luck getting them to sign up to help run a trial if you flush your reputation down the drain. Good luck getting physicians to prescribe your product for their patients that need it when they no longer trust the integrity of your company and the data supporting the approved drugs. I'm sure shareholders would be thrilled with that sort of outcome.
Regarding the patent stuff - that has almost nothing to do with any of this. And almost certainly, the companies are holding patents on numerous vaccines they're developing. Patenting doesn't prevent cross-licensing.
Regarding safety: it's all about risk/benefit profiles, not absolute risk. If there was no virus running around, the vaccine would be all risk and no benefit. The trials each enrolled tens of thousands of people with placebo controls. Nothing really stood out as abnormal for a vaccine, nor crazy compared to other approved vaccines. I'd get the vaccine ASAP.
Quite the arrogant strawman there, showing a lack of nuance and that you follow authority more than science itself. You might prefer a satisfycing response. I demand near-perfection from an industry whose job is to save as many possible and has plenty of money to throw around for failsafes.
One can support having people the vaccine yet be concerned these singularities because the most vulernable or have a surprise predisposition are precisely the ones most likely to have a complication.
I do follow the science, which supports my position. I'm not applying some logical fallacy of appealing to authority - I actually know what I'm talking about, since I work in this area and have a degree that helps me understand the underlying science. The industry has an excellent track record on vaccines, the trials have supported that, and I'm sure the real-world evidence that continues to be gathered further supports that position.
You do know what the fact check is? The layman cannot do the fact check precisely because of privacy.
It is not hysteria to expect the experts and pros to be prepared to deal with unexpected reactions.
By definition, lay people cannot fact check this because they won't understand. That's why we have experts doing the data analysis and whatnot. And getting independent experts to fact check does not require opening up every patient's medical records for the public to imbibe over some stupidly insane ideas.
The reason science works is because it prevents people from wandering away with concocted BS. They that works is by checking others via peer review. Take away the enforced transpency and that's when humans default to more normal behaviors. In this, the need to make the heavy sales.
The transparency of science comes from the repeatability. In this case, double-blinded clinical trials, sponsored by pharma companies, were run out of independent centers who gathered data. That data was then analyzed by the companies and
reanalyzed independently by the FDA. And we continue to gather data on their work by monitoring outcomes in the real world. And if you're concerned about the sales stuff: commercial has nothing to do with the data analysis, clinical trial monitoring, or regulatory filings.
At the end of the day, an adverse event that is occuring at no higher than the typical background level is pretty much no concern and almost impossible to link the vaccine (especially when it didn't show up in the trials). People trying to do their analysis by random news article are doing nothing but throwing fuel onto the fires of speculation, allowing rumors to fester before experts can reasonably be expected to adjudicate. The blind speculation reduces transparency by increasing the amount of noise in the public discourse.