Please be careful about spreading misinformation. Vaccines were not widely available until spring of 2021, after the election. Only select few essential healthcare staff were eligible in 2020, and US deliveries began December 14th, 2020.[1] During the 2020 election season you describe it was actually the opponents of President Trump who were encouraging vaccine skepticism.[2]
Thank you for the correction. the resistance to COVID vaccination coincided with its availability. What was killing Trump supporters was his calling the virus media hype and hosting superspreader events, while he and his wife were among the first vaccinated before he left the White House.
Nice rant, but as per the ruling [1], I believe it is now scientific and popular concensus that the vaccine barely moves the needle on transmission if at all. At that point, any logic behind mandates vaccinations collapses.
[1] “ Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid-19”
According to the CDC, HHS, Johns-Hopkins and every single medical school, hospital and scientific organization in the US, as well as 224M vaccinated US citizens, the COVID vaccines are effective at preventing severe disease, hospitalization, and death.
> My comment was about effectiveness in reducing infection and transmission.
This is not the same as
>>> "Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid-19"
Being vaccinated does not 100% prevent infection and transmission, but it does reduce the likelihood of infection and transmission by about half. The fact is the vaccines are effective in reducing infection and transmission. Your assertion that "the vaccine barely moves the needle on transmission if at all," is gross exaggeration at best and entirely false at worst. The science of immunology and vaccines is sound and well-established. The risk of adverse effects from vaccines is vanishingly small, while the likely benefit of reduced risk of infection, severity of illness, hospitalization and death is huge.
The COVID vaccines are nothing short of a miracle of modern medicine. The only grave problem here is laymen making uninformed medical decisions based solely on political tribalism and failed political ideologies, evangelizing their logically unsound and medically ignorant position, and refusing to cooperate with the interests of public health while needlessly putting themselves and others at significantly increased chances of infection, severe illness and/or death. This is the very definition of anti-social behavior, placing one's ego and whims above the needs of all others, and not caring whether others get sick, suffer and die.
If I told you that vaccinated persons have been found to shed replication-competent covid virions for about as long as unvaccinated persons and that the protection against infection from the vaccines went negative (i.e. vaccinated persons more susceptible than unvaccinated persons) after a few months and that the viral load reduction effect of the vaccines waned along with their protection, would you claim these facts to be misinformation or would you google for the relevant peer-reviewed papers and surprise yourself (especially when you noticed the dates and realized that these facts have long been known...though not to you)?
