Vaccinations are too leaky to "make this virus extinct". Within a few months of vaccination, half or more of people can get mild, but still transmissable, cases of Delta. (Omicron is likely worse; there are already multiple reports of mild cases among those with recent 3rd booster shots.)
Honest epidemiologists have been warning about this risk since 2020, and more forcefully when confirmed by early vax results in 2021. But many people are still on the warpath against the unvaxed, as if that can make a difference.
Well, it can for the unvaxed themselves – winning them a less-severe case.
But every vaxed person is going to be exposed to, and have mild cases of, COVID – via waning immunity & multiplying variants. There is no net increase in protection from harassing the last ~15% (a more honest count of hardcore holdouts) into a vax they don't want. (Most of them have probably had COVID already, or soon will, giving them an immunity just as good as vaccination.)
Forget how leaky they are - COVID can also be carried/transmitted by animals. For anyone who thinks all we have to do to vaccinate everyone - "everyone" includes all the animals humans do or could come in contact with. You going to do that too?
The optimal outcome preserving both health and bodily autonomy is an asymptomatic highly contagious variant. That is essentially a communicable vaccine.
First of all, there are many millions in Germany, who are neither vaccinated nor recovered (if you have medical proof of recovery, like a positive PCR test in the past, you are treated like a vaccinated person for 6 months). So there are millions which can still be hit by full force. As a consequence, get sick, require ICU care. In some parts of Germany, all ICU beds are currently occupied, patients moved to other parts of the country as we speak. That is the critical situation at the moment. Also, all data available shows, that unvaccinated people are spreading the virus faster than vaccinated people. Those two parts in combination create a situation, where the unvaccinated part of the population do mainly contribute to the severity of things. That is, why the majority of the population cares about high vaccination counts.
In the executive summary, which lays out how we should interpret the total body of data collected so far:
"The body of evidence for infection-induced immunity is more limited than that for vaccine-induced immunity in terms of the quality of evidence... There are insufficient data to extend the findings related to infection-induced immunity at this time to persons with very mild or asymptomatic infection or children."
We literally don't have the evidence needed to say with certainty that infection (of all levels of severity) provides "an immunity just as good as vaccination."
The data only suggests that people that are severely affected by COVID may have higher peak antibody titers. It's a huge gamble to play with yourself and the people around you.
>Immunity from prior-infection was worse than vaccination at protecting people from Delta.[1]
Now you are saying :
>We literally don't have the evidence needed to say with certainty that infection (of all levels of severity) provides "an immunity just as good as vaccination."
Meanwhile, all the data coming out of countries with centralized covid tracking suggests natural immunity is as good or better.
Reviewing health data for 2.5 million Israelis, It found:
>SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021
>Conclusions This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.
"There is laboratory evidence that persons previously infected with the original lineage of SARS-CoV-2 have reduced neutralizing antibody titers against certain variants (i.e., Beta, Gamma, and Delta variants)"
This study has a rather strange design that might be miscategorizing people who’d both been infected & vaxed (counting them only as vaxed), & among other things, misses the risk that more unvaxed people might seek medical care, or receive more aggressive treatment, for the same level of symptoms.
It’s also an outlier result, as larger analyses from Israel suggest longer & stronger protection from infection.
What we can say confidently is that both the vax & prior infection provide some future protection, ut both fade against re-infection fairly fast, while remaining helpful against severity.
Also more generally: the CDC has not, in this pandemic, proven very reliable in its reporting, recommendations, or weighing/updating of evidence, & its choice of what to report & emphasize has been highly compromised by shifting political pressures. I think their highlighting of this result, over evidence suggesting otherwise, is suspect - more a reflection of them wanting to boost the vax campaign than an honest assessment of all relevant scientific evidence.
Honest epidemiologists have been warning about this risk since 2020, and more forcefully when confirmed by early vax results in 2021. But many people are still on the warpath against the unvaxed, as if that can make a difference.
Well, it can for the unvaxed themselves – winning them a less-severe case.
But every vaxed person is going to be exposed to, and have mild cases of, COVID – via waning immunity & multiplying variants. There is no net increase in protection from harassing the last ~15% (a more honest count of hardcore holdouts) into a vax they don't want. (Most of them have probably had COVID already, or soon will, giving them an immunity just as good as vaccination.)