I have relatives that are scared to take the vaccine because it was developed within a year and may have side effects. Also, they do not understand why we have a vaccine for covid19 but cant find a vaccine for HIV in forty years. How do you respond? I have next to no knowledge of medicine or biology.
This isn't completely unreasonable; it
was a rushed vaccine, to a greater degree than we have perhaps ever seen, and there will probably be side effects for some individuals, though if there were considerable risks they should have been identified by this point. You may find this article helpful:
Covid-19 vaccines are safe. But let’s be clear about what ‘safe’ means That said, the danger of the vaccine, though non-zero, pales in comparison to the danger posed by the virus itself. The vaccine won't kill you. COVID-19 has been known to do that.
HIV is complicated by the fact that it is a very vigorous retrovirus; unlike COVID-19, it replicates itself VERY fast and is prone to copying "errors", meaning that a single sufferer may have multiple "strains" of the virus churning away in their body at any one time, and there are more than fifty major variants in the world now. It is also very good at evading the natural immune response system in a way that COVID-19 is not, in part because it attacks the white blood cells directly. A much harder nut to crack.
