The 1976 Swine Flu Debacle

Just to be clear GBS is still a side effect of the flu shot given to approximately half of Americans every year currently.

That said you are 100% right on this:

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neither the private nor public sector should mandate getting the shot.

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cdc

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it has consistently been in the range of 1-2 additional GBS cases per million flu vaccine doses administered.

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Studies suggest that it is more likely that a person will get GBS after getting the flu than after vaccination. It is important to keep in mind that severe illness and death are associated with flu, and getting vaccinated is the best way to prevent flu infection and its complications.

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Translation: You're playing Russian Roulette either way.

Jeebus. Glad I stopped getting the flu shot a few years ago when I realized it was giving me flu-like symptoms for a week after the shot each year (meaning I was trading a 50% chance of going through the symptoms for a 100% chance).

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thus mandating of said vaccines is insanity.

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That's the thing. Even if the yearly flu shot has some side effects, just let people know what those side effects are and let them make up their own mind. No one should be forced to take any drug against their will or face being canceled, fired, not allowed to fly on an airplane, etc.

The militant vaxxers have accused us “anti-vaxxers" every pejorative they could think of including being unpatriotic and afraid of a simple needle. We've even been called criminals. In fact, all of us "anti-vaxxers" are saying is that we would rather wait until this gene therapy drug (notice I didn't say vaccine) has gone through the same rigorous analysis and testing that all drugs are required to go through so that we can learn the side effects and make a properly informed decision.

The 2009 Swine Flu immunization debacle

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The 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic left a troubling legacy in Europe: More than 1300 people who received a vaccine to prevent the flu developed narcolepsy, an incurable, debilitating condition that causes overpowering daytime sleepiness, sometimes accompanied by a sudden muscle weakness in response to strong emotions such as laughter or anger. The manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), has acknowledged the link, and some patients and their families have already been awarded compensation. But how the vaccine might have triggered the condition has been unclear.

In a paper in Science Translational Medicine (STM) this week, researchers offer a possible explanation. They show that the vaccine, called Pandemrix, triggers antibodies that can also bind to a receptor in brain cells that help regulate sleepiness. The work strongly suggests that Pandemrix, which was given to more than 30 million Europeans, triggered an autoimmune reaction that led to narcolepsy in some people who are genetically at risk.

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Narcolepsy, a mysterious malady that affects roughly one in 3000 people in Europe, most often appears in childhood or adolescence. Patients lose certain brain cells in the hypothalamus, leading to a deficiency of hypocretin, a molecule that helps regulate the sleep-wake cycle. Researchers suspect an autoimmune reaction is to blame because many people who develop narcolepsy—and just about everyone with the vaccine-associated form—have a specific variant in a gene in the HLA family, which helps the body distinguish its own proteins from those made by microbial invaders.

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Now we have a coronavirus vaccine that causes our own cells to make invader proteins... and we shouldn't be worried about incurable side affects. OK.
Keep in mind autoimmune disorders, even debilitating ones like narcolepsy, largely go undiagnosed since doctors aren't familiar with them nor is there any real treatment.