Polio is also far less widespread than COVID-19
Seriously, check the vaccines that a standard UK person gets: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/nhs-vaccinations-...
All the "6-in-1", "4-in-1", "3-in-1" include anti-tetanus, diphtheria and Polio shots. A 15-year-old UK citizen has had Five doses against those diseases in this standard schedule.
But these diseases are not a problem any more, not widespread? Yeah, vaccination is the reason for that.
For example, one of the highest vaccinated countries in the world, Singapore, is now experiencing a covid spike with cases in the same order as Texas or Florida, the supposed bastions of stubborn resistance to vaccines. Deaths are still way behind, so those vaccines are good for something.
That's quite possible, and we'll know more in a few years. Israel has good stats after a 3rd shot within 6 months of the second ( https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1444675839904210951 ), but we don't know if that will be the end of it.
However the saying is: "you go to war with the army that you have now, not the army that you want to have". We're very fortunate to have fairly effective COVID-19 vaccines within a year of the pandemic starting - in early 2020 we did not expect vaccines so soon. We should use them as well as we can. Dismissing the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for not being 100% effective or everlasting after 1 or 2 shots, when we still give 5 Polio shots, decades later, is lunacy.
The contention of this general thread is whether imposing vaccine mandates at the cost of destroying livelihoods is just. Sorry, the mRNA vaccine performance is too weak to justify such measures. For all we know (epidemiological data from UK, Singapore) there is not much difference in infection rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated people / populations.
The following two statements are consistent:
* Covid mRNA vaccines are effective in preventing severe disease and death, especially in adults.
* Covid mRNA vaccines are NOT that effective in preventing infection, and pretending they are to justify unheard of drastic vaccine mandates is BadJuju.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/singapore
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
> "Either mRNA vaccines are best thing since slice bread, or they are completely useless" How about neither?
The either/or is not the real situation at all, it's the oversimplified straw man that detractors use. There are numerous examples in this discussion.
As for the argument that vaccination against COVID just not effective enough, that doesn't seem very realistic.