If the vaccines are so fantastic at preventing hospitalizations and deaths, and they've been taken up by the vast majority of the elderly who are most at risk, then why are we still trying to slow the spread of an endemic respiratory virus?
For example long term respiratory system damage. People with long COVID have had diabetes diagnoses at a high rate. This hasn’t had the side effects of a typical respiratory virus.
Or elderly people under guardianship of antivax - like my grandma being cared for by my aunt (though I doubt my grandma would have received the vaccine even if she was fully capable of making decisions, from past comments).
There’s also the fact that every cell producing the virus has the chance of making a mutation that will ravage the global poor who cannot receive vaccines because production is limited and the rich are hoarding them.
I am sympathetic to your viewpoint though. If I had a magic wand and could ensure the immunocompromised and others wouldn’t be harmed I’m OK with letting the willingly non vaccinated reap their own consequences.
Every single American adult has had the opportunity to get the vaccine. Any who don't have made a personal decision and there should be no reason to continue mandated masks or lockdowns for any group (vaccinated or unvaccinated).
Children are not contracting the virus in meaningful numbers, and in even fewer numbers are having serious side effects.
The biggest pushers of mask mandates for the vaccinated are other vaccinated individuals. No unvaccinated individual I have encountered has pushed for everyone else to mask up at their behest.
19% of new US COVID cases the week of July 29 were in children [0]. Deaths and hospitalizations in children are extremely rare but medium-term side effects, including cognitive effects, appear to be relatively common [1]. It's unclear how long those effects will last and whether they'll be permanent, but the societal impact of a double-digit percentage of children experiencing noticeable long-term cognitive declines would be absolutely devastating.
[0] https://services.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-cov...
[1] https://www.hackensackmeridianhealth.org/HealthU/2021/05/19/...
The delta variant has changed that and Louisiana had 3,000 child cases in just 4 days. The child death rate from COVID is higher than the child death rate from the flu AND many many more kids will be exposed to COVID than will be exposed to influenza.
some people cannot get vaccinated
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/01/health/us-coronavirus-sunday/...
Obviously triage is more complicated than that, and acuity is always going to be the dominant factor. But if you have limited resources and have to make hard choices about who gets treatment, I don't see why vaccination status shouldn't be considered.
Triage has lots of ethical questions, this doesn’t seem to be among the most controversial to me. There are patients haranguing doctors for daring to tell them they are dying of COVID. We are exhausting our medical system to care for the uncaring.