I can't understand why everyone is okay with vaccinating against polio after seeing its devastating and life altering effects on an unvaccinated adult, still refuse to protect themselves against a disease that killed millions in two years.
* Covid risk is highly age dependent. 1000x so. An unvaccinated kid has less chance of death than their vaccinated 40yo parent. Covid mortality is concentrated in the >50yo population. Please take a look at the very nice charts Singapore ministry of health put together to get a sense of the age-dependent behavior. https://www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19/statistics
* Covid vaccines do not fully stop transmission. Even the highest vaccinated places on Earth still have regular outbreaks in the winter season. At least a couple papers from reputable sources indicate that the vaccine effect on transmission is "negligible" after a few months. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.28.21264260v...
* Vaccine efficacy against infection wanes over time, the medical literature estimates VEaI at 50% after 6 months. Fortunately, VE against severe disease holds much better. High risk populations greatly benefit from vaccinations. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01548-7 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114114 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3949410
* Covid mutates: original, alpha, delta. Every time a new mutation took over, the vaccines have proven less effective. Where is the delta vaccine?
* There is no bottom to how not effective a vaccine can be. UK epi data indicates negative VEaI for delta, and nobody has a definitive clue as to why, though many suspect statistical artifacts. Just to be clear, US and Germany epi data indicate the opposite, the only point here is that the possibility exists. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
To recap:
polio: disease that mostly affects young people, crippling them for life, vaccines are highly effective in granting herd immunity and eradicating the disease.
covid: disease that mostly affects old people, has almost no effect on children, vaccines cannot stop transmission, the disease is widespread and undergoing active mutations.
If you are an adult, especially near or past retirement age, please strongly consider a covid vaccine for your protection. OTOH, it is not that clear that forced covid vaccinations for kids are a longterm net positive.
If polio had been endemic in my area, I would have vaccinated.