They reduce severity of illness, and don't produce sterilizing immunity and eliminate transmission. And that's the problem, if you pick up a nasty mutation but because of vaccine you are able to still function, you are more likely to be out and about spreading it.
And when your limited immunity wanes in a few months this mutinous bastard copy you pushed on the masses may come back to bite you in the ass.
Maybe not though if you got your booster in time and if they designed it to match. Better hope your country went with the gold subscription.
What data are you referencing to claim that the vaccines do not provide some immunity? But importantly, the vaccines do reduce transmission. See the below study along with others.
Admittedly, one weakness of the above study is that it took place before Delta was widespread. There isn't a lot of data yet on how much the vaccines reduce transmission with Delta, but the likelihood is that they still do even if to a lesser degree.
The original clinical trials didn’t measure immunity, and, in fact, the claim from day one has been that the vaccines were designed to reduce serious disease and death.
Reducing transmission isn't good enough! If you have an R naught above one you're still in trouble. It's common knowledge that countries with highest vaccination rates have spikes in cases right now. Israel and Gibraltar for example. Herd immunity for this was always impossible.
Ok well you can't beat Gibraltar at 99%. But you look at other countries. New Zealand is a good one. Their hospitals are getting swamped with kids right now with severe RSV. Why? They've had their immune systems degraded from some of the most severe lockdowns I the planet. And admittedly they aren't in a covid spike but the effective lockdown has created other problems.
I down-voted because that has nothing to do with a "degraded immune systems". Many of the more common respiratory viruses also died out in New Zealand with the quarantine. Kids never got a chance to develop immunity to those particular diseases previously and now it's coming on in a wave as they are reintroduced. It's not that their response is special, in normal circumstances kids would have gotten sick and been hospitalized, that it's happening all at once is.
No, they would have stronger immune systems from repeated exposure without the extreme lockdowns NZ introduced and less hospitalizations.
Respiratory viruses don't die out, they can persist in animal populations indefinitely. Sars Cov2 antibodies detected in 40% of NE deer populations for instance. Not to mention cats and dogs...
I assume you have evidence of the claim that by being regularly sick your immune system is stronger? Sure, it's run into more things it has learned to fight, but just because it knows how to fight a catalogue of things it doesn't mean that it will be better with the next novel pandemic, right?
The risk is more around autoimmune conditions like asthma and allergies. If the immune system doesn't start fighting off a variety of pathogens from an early age then it might go haywire later.
I don't much care for the hygiene hypothesis for allergies. I grew up on an acreage with all sorts of animals. I'm allergic to all of them, so much so that my parents got my allergy shots for several years. I'm most allergic to horses, which we had a trio of. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And if it were true I'd much prefer more allergies to COVID.
Of note in that paper they are suggesting therapeutic strategies that involve controlled exposure of particular items, and how those exposures are fraught with potential dangers as well.
As a counterpoint, Portugal currently has 81.10% fully vaccinated and 86.85% vaccinated once (meaning they'll be vaccinated again in 4 weeks or earlier), and the new infections are going down slowly but continuously for a while now.
My point is not that you're wrong, but that you were cherry picking examples and there can be numerous other reasons for spikes in infections such as relaxed measures and mask mandates, holiday season, schools re-opening, etc. It requires a more careful analysis than yours.
Yes, lock down and social isolation does work to prevent transmission but it also weakens the healthy immune systems and makes the population more fragile going forward.
Better to inoculate the most vulnerable, not the entire population for a fast mutating respiratory virus.
Polio can't really mutate and it makes a lot of sense to inoculate everyone for this.
