Unfortunately, by doing that, you were one of the people who decided to give the disease the time and space to develop into new strains, which could then re-infect both people who already suffered the disease and got vaccinated against it.

Herd immunity, had it been successfully achieved by vaccinating a large enough portion of the population, fast enough, would have eradicated the disease entirely.

In a way, you contributed to the fact that even your vaccinated co-workers still got infected by a strain that could also still do a lot of damage.

But somehow you can’t see why someone may not trust the vaccines on a personal level?

Of course I can. Given enough bias, paranoia, and pre-conceived notions, I am perfectly capable of picturing how you arrived at your current views. But a path to believing what you believe (that long COVID is caused by the vaccine, or that the symptoms of your co-workers were caused by the vaccine rather than suffering the disease) can only be utterly deranged.

Different people suffer widely varying symptoms during an actual infection. That all you experienced was a cold, does not mean that your co-workers more severe symptoms were caused by the vaccine rather than the disease. For fucks sake, even when unvaccinated the effects ranged between literally nothing and straight up actual death. And once vaccines were available, data showed that people who had been immunized suffered significantly less severe symptoms, and were a lot less likely to catch and spread the virus in the first place.

This benefit went down as new strains appeared, but there was still a significant improvement in symptoms compared to suffering the disease unvaccinated.

Had you been vaccinated, your symptoms during an infection might have been actually nothing. Had your coworkers not been vaccinated, their more severe symptoms could have led to death.

By comparing your symptoms to those of your co-workers, you’re drawing invalid conclusions based on a false equivalences. You assume their symptoms were more severe due to the vaccine, but you literally cannot know that. That kind of logic only works using statistically significant sample-sizes, and when you do so, your assumptions instantly fall apart.

Your anecdotal experience is utterly worthless in this line of thinking.

You accept the experiences of your co-workers as an influence on your decision-making, but when told you’re wrong by literal hundreds online, with links, logic and arguments, you plug your ears. That makes no sense.

Since you put such weight on using the experiences of others as evidence, here is mine: I was vaccinated thrice with no complications, and then suffered COVID twice, again with no complications. Before the vaccines were available, an average infection could take around two weeks to beat. Both times, it was over in less than four days for me.

Both of my sicknesses occurred during holiday family get-togethers, which led to my entire family suffering COVID over the holidays. Two years in a row. Everyone was vaccinated at least twice, no-one suffered complications from the vaccine. No-one suffered from the infection for more than a week.

Finally, the immunity gained from suffering the disease is literally identical to the one your body develops in response to the disease. The biological mechanisms engaged in your body are exactly the same. That you think the vaccine might come with more risk than the disease, shows you’ve made no real effort to look into how immunology actually works.

Your immunity is no stronger than that which has been gained by the vaccinated, and you can still be re-infected for the very same reasons vaccinated people can.

And your second infection is likely to be milder than the first, for the same reason that those who are vaccinated, and suffer an infection anyway, benefit from milder symptoms than if they hadn’t been.

incorrectly consider anecdotal experience superior to statistically significant data

I’d point out that by recounting your personal experience and bringing up your coworkers, you essentially admit to this being one of your errors in logic.

You act as if your personal experience is “the average” when in reality you are an edge case who was able to suffer an infection unvaccinated, with mild symptoms. That’s rare.

Others, like your coworkers, may have needed the vaccination just to survive, because without it they would have suffered symptoms severe enough to kill them.

You can’t know. And the statistics, which you can’t determine based on personal experience, say that’s exactly how it works. That the vaccines saved millions.