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Notes -
This is begging the question.
The realistic question would be, for interventions, that at the time of invention, did not have conclusive evidence in either direction regarding making people "drop dead in 20 years", what proportion were found to do so after 20 years had passed?
The answer would be almost none.
"The last ten times I played Russian Roulette I was fine". Beware selection bias. If a prior mass intervention had caused this, you likely wouldn't be here to make that statement.
(Also, "drop dead in 20 years" is an obvious extreme example to illustrate the point. I am far more concerned in practice about e.g. long-term impacts on fertility, as that legitimately can have lags of 15-20 years.)
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The original polio vaccine was kind of like this:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/02/the-virus-and-the-vaccine/377999/
Interesting, I didn't know about this, but to be fair it was before my time.
The polio vaccine hasn't remained the same since inception, for example, in India the live polio vaccine is being phased out for an inert vaccine.
This is because the live vaccine uses an attenuated variant of the virus, which is much less likely to cause harm than the real one, while also having the perk of being infectious in itself.
However, it can cause full blown polio. This was once considered acceptable, but as the number of cases of natural polio dropped, the number of iatrogenic cases became more relevant, and the decision was made to switch to forms without any living virus whatsoever.
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