Nobody has a crystal ball, so no matter who is right in hindsight, it's all just a slightly informed flip of the coin, with a caveat. The caveat being, every medicine has long term problems and every medicine has a low percentage of reactions(I forget how many people die just from aspirin every year). The odds are, at this point with millions having taken vaccines over the last year, that it's probably about the same as anything else and you just hope you're not one of the super unlucky ones. It becomes the same low-risk assessment as with driving your car everyday, or riding a bike.
Risk assessment not so different from Covid, except with Covid you know a little something about yourself, what kind of health you're in, how old you are, and how much protection you use to limit your dosage of infection should you be exposed. It's a bit of a catch 22, because if you're in the republican anti-vax camp, then you're also completely blind to all the risk factors and flaunt your lack of concern, so the whole, "I'm anti-vax out of concern for my health" becomes total bullshit and it's really just the most ignorant form of tribalism.