>>13955296It's not a vaccine debate, it's a policy debate. The vaccines do work, so that's not the question. The question is: do they work WELL ENOUGH OVER TIME and is covid THAT DANGEROUS to justify trampling on human rights to mandate everyone get the vaccine.
What we need vaccines to do is lower deaths and ICU cases to a normal level, i.e., the general number of deaths/ICU cases before covid (mild to moderate covid cases are pointless because the harm of cold symptoms is minimal). For that to happen we need vaccines to 1) lessen symptoms enough and 2) lessen the spread of covid enough to bring deaths/ICU levels back to normal.
Vaccine efficacy wanes precipitously over time, which is why boosters have been the hot topic. So as for 1, over time they seem to be not very helpful; they wane to the point of being, while not back at the level of danger of being unvaccinated, close enough to it to justify a booster.
Regarding 2 it turns out you can still spread covid even if you're vaccinated, making vaccines unhelpful for the other side of moving deaths and ICU numbers down to normal: the numbers game of too many people getting covid so eventually it hits enough people hard that the medical system overflows. This is also a problem since a pro-vaccine argument was getting vaccinated to protect those who can't get the vaccine, but that argument is now void.
Taking all this together, vaccines seem to be a fantastic optional tool in the toolbox if you personally want it. As for doing what we need it to do to lower deaths/ICU cases to normal, it doesn't have the power. Take Gibraltar; 140% vaccinated (everyone vaccinated and 40% boosted), yet they still canceled Christmas.
Thus while making vaccines available is a good idea, mandating them is not because they simply won't get us back to normal numbers over time. Maybe initially, but since efficacy wanes, it'll never happen.
