A concise description of how the game is played written by an honest epidemiologist:

"At the moment, it just seems to me to be primarily an issue of loyalty vs. independent thought. The people on the govt’s side give me the reason that ‘most epidemiologists and doctors think the vax is safe, so I trust them’. The odds are heavily loaded on the side of ‘the vax is safe’. If you are a doctor and express any doubts…. then your papers are forced retracted, other academics and ‘do gooders’ complain to your academic bosses about your ‘misinformation’ and your livelihood gets threatened. You get hit pieces written about you in the media. You get threatened by fact-checkers. You get dragged into protracted legal proceedings. Others in the community see this and go ‘naaaah’ I’m going along with the narrative. The hand-waving reasons get jumped on and a scientific paper on the vax side gets dragged out in favour of the vax is safe side, and that is the end of the argument. As the science writer Gary Taubes pointed out many years ago, epidemiology has its limits and often epidemiological evidence is conflicting. The real question is what is the best evidence saying? https://science.org/doi/10.1126/science.7618077