This kind of skepticism goes both ways: you could get COVID next week and discover that you have a latent comorbidity that otherwise would never have affected you.
From a public health perspective, universal (or near-universal) vaccination is an unequivocal good. Given the sum of what we know about both COVID and any side effects of vaccination, this remains the case.
This is an abuse of language: "universal vaccination"
Is it a vaccine, or a therapy? Why does the supposed efficacy of the vaccines ability to prevent spread of covid wane so quickly? At best the vax is novel therapy that temporarily boosts immune system to fight the current strain. But whatever the side effects of this mechanism, they can accumulate with each successive round of boosters. Is it safe to keep taking these shots every 6 to 12 months? Who knows... but if they have to be repeatedly taken, they clearly do not effectively stop the spread of covid which the evidence shows.
I'll take my chances as having good enough genetics and lifestyle, and being young enough, in aggregate to tip the scales well past the point where getting covid and whatever natural immunity that it provides is just fine.
>latent comorbidity
Yea and I can get hit by a bus tomorrow. The main comorbidities that dominate the stats as present in over 80% of deaths are obesity and age. I have neither. We have to be realistic here.
Look at Haiti vs New Zealand regarding vax rates vs death rates. It is not unequivocally good.
These questions presuppose a false dichotomy: vaccines can be therapeutic, prophylactic, or both. Simultaneously, they can be either sterilizing or attenuating with respect to the immunity they provide.
The COVID vaccines are prophylactic and therapeutic. So far, they seem to be mostly attenuating with respect to their immunity, not unlike flu vaccines (in two regards: both weak cross-strain protection and much milder illness when infected with the targeted strain). Additionally, there's decent empirical evidence that "breakthrough" cases are generally less contagious.
"Being realistic here" means getting a free, readily available vaccine that reduces the risk of serious illness or death. Separately, it means doing your civic duty to reduce load on our medical institutions and lessen the latent risk to those around you (who may have comorbidities that you are not privy to and are not entitled to be privy to).
More to the point, these "but it's non-sterilizing" complaints NEVER came up about other vaccines before COVID was made a political point by one political party
From a public health perspective, universal (or near-universal) vaccination is an unequivocal good. Given the sum of what we know about both COVID and any side effects of vaccination, this remains the case.