The people who are most aware of the risks versus benefits of vaccination, medical personal, have a very high vaccination rate: about 82% of hospital staff.

Could vaccines be not only not as neccesary as we are told they are, but actually harmful for us?

Everything you put in your body, without exception, has some risk -- including water and even oxygen, without which you will die. Any medically active substance, from antibiotics to pain killers to vaccines, are no different. Life comes with no guarantees. All we can do is manage the risks by trying to keep the risk as low as possible and the benefits as high as possible.

The other truth is that the more people are vaccinated, the smaller the chances of being exposed to the disease in the first place, so the benefits are lower. But the more people stop getting vaccinated, the larger the chances of the disease coming back with a vengeance.

Here's an analogy. People pay taxes to fund the police to prevent crime before it occurs (vaccination). So if there's not much crime around (very little disease), people don't want to pay that cost (run the risk of side-effects from vaccines). And fair enough: those taxes would be better off in your wallet than in the city's coffers, right? But if everyone defunds the police (stops being vaccinated), then crime will increase and we'll all be worse off.

So there's a balance needed: fund the police enough, not too much, not too little. And what counts as "enough" can vary according to the conditions: how much crime there is, how effective are the cops, are they fat and lazy (Chief Wiggum) or keen and efficient (Dirty Harry), how serious are the crimes (kids smoking weed, or terrorists blowing up buildings?) etc. The better the cops are at preventing crime, the less you need them; the worse they are, the more you need them.

Same with vaccines: some side-effects are inescapable, no matter how careful we are to make them as safe as possible. Sad but true. But if too many people opt-out of vaccination, then the disease will come back, and then even vaccinated people are at risk because no vaccine is 100% effective.

Its all about the balance.

And remember: doctors and nurses do actually care about keeping you safe, and pharmaceutic companies are driven to make profit, not to save lives. So trust, but verify, and don't believe everything you read, either pro or con.