They’re terrified of the mRNA vaccine. Because they’re incurious about science, they think it’s brand new, like invented just for this virus. Try telling them that the delivery mechanism has been around for awhile and scientists have been working on this vaccine since SARS and all they do is cover their ears and hum louder.

Wouldn’t that make him a monotreme?

Maybe that was Girl Hitler.

No. But also, this is Ontario, well-known for being outside US jurisdiction.

Your friend is an idiot. MRNA vaccines are not new. Scientists have been working on a vaccine since SARS, which is similar to COVID (aka SARS-CoV-2). One of the reasons why medication can take so long to reach the public is that it takes money, which likely come from grants, which take time and have limited amounts to go around. When the pandemic broke out, countries around the world threw money at these labs. Everything else pretty much stopped, so they didn’t have to wait for an understaffed and underfunded FDA to approve it.

Getting the vaccine is much better than slowly suffocating because the virus destroyed your lungs. Herd immunity only works when enough people have been vaccinated and clearly we haven’t reached that yet since people are still getting infected, reinfected and dying.