Everyone is going to get COVID. Having a zero COVID strategy is pointless, because we already know it will not succeed, and scientists have been saying since the beginning of the pandemic that COVID would become endemic. In other words, the vast majority of people are going to catch COVID whether they are vaccinated or not.
I personally know someone who is refusing to even visit family over the holidays, because they have a small child, and their family members are "anti-vaxxers". This is just anecdotal data, but I'm sure some of you reading this know people who are taking similar "precautions". If you look at the data, however, this makes no sense. You do not need to live in fear of COVID. You and your children are going to catch COVID, and that applies even if you and everyone you know have the vaccine. We need to learn to live with that fact. Your children literally have a higher risk of drowning, dying in a car accident, or getting shot. That's not my opinion. That's simply objectively true, and I'm basing this on data from from NCHS and NEJM.
Furthermore, vaccines are largely ineffective at preventing the disease and at preventing transmission. They are of course, better than nothing, but let me quote a CDC study: "469 COVID-19 cases were identified among Massachusetts residents who had traveled to the town during July 3–17; 346 (74%) occurred in fully vaccinated persons".
In other words, the majority of people who are contracting COVID have had the vaccine. You can't blame anti-vaxxers for the spread of COVID, because even if everyone were to get vaxxed, the disease is already endemic.
Let me quote another source, from a John Hopkins article "vaccinated people infected with the delta variant can carry detectable viral loads similar to those of people who are unvaccinated".
sources:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm?s_cid=mm7031e2_w
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/new-data-on-covid-19-transmission-by-vaccinated-individuals
I personally know someone who is refusing to even visit family over the holidays, because they have a small child, and their family members are "anti-vaxxers". This is just anecdotal data, but I'm sure some of you reading this know people who are taking similar "precautions". If you look at the data, however, this makes no sense. You do not need to live in fear of COVID. You and your children are going to catch COVID, and that applies even if you and everyone you know have the vaccine. We need to learn to live with that fact. Your children literally have a higher risk of drowning, dying in a car accident, or getting shot. That's not my opinion. That's simply objectively true, and I'm basing this on data from from NCHS and NEJM.
Furthermore, vaccines are largely ineffective at preventing the disease and at preventing transmission. They are of course, better than nothing, but let me quote a CDC study: "469 COVID-19 cases were identified among Massachusetts residents who had traveled to the town during July 3–17; 346 (74%) occurred in fully vaccinated persons".
In other words, the majority of people who are contracting COVID have had the vaccine. You can't blame anti-vaxxers for the spread of COVID, because even if everyone were to get vaxxed, the disease is already endemic.
Let me quote another source, from a John Hopkins article "vaccinated people infected with the delta variant can carry detectable viral loads similar to those of people who are unvaccinated".
sources:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm?s_cid=mm7031e2_w
https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/new-data-on-covid-19-transmission-by-vaccinated-individuals