My point is that we have enough real horrors in this world to be dealing with. It helps no one if we ignore the challenges that face us to invent ones that don't exist.
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To paraphrase lines sung so beautifully by Merrilee Rush:

♪ If Morning's Minion says we've sinned,
Well, it was what I wanted, now ♪

I don't think it's possible to dispute the above-cited conclusion.

However, you've made the argument so broadly that it leapfrogs over the devils lurking in the details.

In turn, to broadly paraphrase, or extrapolate from, your argument, you posit both that contemporary scientific truth and authority is reliable, and that the rigorous and conscientious application of ordinary rationality permits an individual to discern a common-sense moral and practical good.

And you're astonished and dismayed to find that people seem to deliberately turn away from plain good sense, and especially "proven" science, and instead create and obsessively chase farfetched, chimerical, and ultimately destructive fantasies.

Even taking this view at face value, there are reasons this happens beyond intellectual laziness or irresponsibility.

As "The Band" sang, c. 1973

♪ You don't believe what they say on the radio
You don't believe what you see on the video
Living in the shadow of a doubt today
Still waiting for the smoke to clear away ♪

In a culture devoured by Mammon, everything has a price, everything is for sale, the bottom line is the bottom line, and "pragmatism" is trumps. Even Science, in general, can't be trusted. Tragically, beyond individual relationships, trust becomes indistiguishable from complacency.

Frankly, I don't think you've read "study after study" about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. If you claim you have, then the question of your competence to draw valid conclusions would be at issue.

IMO, the more pertinent truth is that you trust your mother-- which in and of itself is certainly meet and commendable. But with all due respect, I get more than a whiff of old-school imperiousness towards nitwits who won't comply with authorities who know better, and just take their damned medicine, instead of irresponsibly Making Excuses or going off half-cocked.

Incidentally-- or maybe not so incidentally-- your offhand reference to 9/11 is what prompted my response. It's not the first time that someone who is all about the merits of rationality, common sense, and ordinary responsibility punctuates a nice speech by coughing up and spitting out nasty little offhand globs of pejorative absurdity in service of a nobler point.

I see this as a "tell".

The "real horrors" are in the eye of the beholder, and the distinctions between "real" and "invented" are not as plainly distinguishable as you suggest.

During Thanksgiving week, 1975, my elderly grandmother received the final injection of her life-- the swine flu vaccine, standing in for pneumonia as "the old people's friend". She died the night before Thanksgiving.

The poor thing, was in a nursing home, and in the grip of a psychotic dementia in which she constantly muttered, "Ai, ai, dear God, ai ai!" during her waking hours. Before this terminal condition set in, she was as habitually cheerful, philosophical, and pleasant a person as could be.

Oh, it might have been a coincidence-- and as it happens, my late Maternal Unit was born to her in 1918, in the thick of the influenza pandemic, and of course both survived.

Even an agnostic freethinker sometimes finds consolation in divine even-handedness: the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.

But that's probably why I've said "no thanks" to flu shots over the years.

Besides, I ain't letting nobody stick a needle in my H1N1!

And here I thought this was a punning reference to the former USSR's iconic aircraft!