> How is a large percentage of people getting the beta an indication that we're past beta testing? Because testing is giving it to people and seeing what happe

> How is a large percentage of people getting the beta an indication that we're past beta testing? Because testing is giving it to people and seeing what happens. The more people you give it to, the more rare and unusual reactions you can find. IIRC, drug testing involves giving the drug to progressively larger groups of people, to mitigate the damage if there are serious adverse side effects. > None of the vaccines have FDA approval. While technically they don't have "full approval," they do have "emergency use approval." At this point, full approval is just a bureaucratic exercise, because the widespread emergency use rollout has tested these vaccines far, far better than any typical pharmaceutical testing program. Per Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_clinical_research#Phase_III https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_clinical_research#Ph...), a Phase III trial involves 300–3,000 test patients. About 50% of the US population has been vaccinated, so you can think of that as a test on 150 million people. That's 50,000 times more than in your typical drug trial. At this point, refusing the vaccine because it hasn't been tested enough is like refusing a common drug like ibuprofen for the same reason.