Especially since kids are the LEAST affected by the virus and the least likely to spread it. Any restrictions on kids or vaccine mandates on them is beyond child abuse at this point.

Masking (with cloth) does NOTHING to prevent or even slow the spread of an airborne virus. What it does do is provide a nice physiological equivalent to a baby's pacifier. Tricking people into believing they have some control, when they don't.

And why should there be any restrictions for unvaccinated, especially if they have already had the virus? Vaccinated people can get and spread the virus - there is zero scientific basis for treating vaccinated and unvaccinated any differently, especially unvaccinated that have already had COVID - they have better immunity than the "vaccinated". It's all politics; zero science.

What's the most disgusting about all of this is blatantly irrational people like you are burning any societal credibility that will be needed if there ever is an event that is really deserving of this kind of a response. Much like the vast overuse of calling people you don't like an -ist or -phobe; those words loose their meaning and significance and make it harder for people really experiencing that stuff to get attention or help.

And people wonder why trust in our institutions is at an all time low? Seriously?!?

1. You can't use the entire range back to Jan 2021 to calculate current vaccine effectiveness and 2. if you use data from Nov 2021 (Omicron start), the Swiss data presents non-linearity that suggests small sample size/incomplete data.

> Also, see the recent nyc hospitalization data, which includes the entire omicron wave (now fading): https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/covid-19-breakthrough-data. Note, this raw data understates vaccine efficacy as a relatively high proportion of vaccinated individuals are vaccinate with rather than for COVID.

It understates vaccine efficacy or overemphasizes omicron severity. At this point, we have enough data from regions with varying vaccination rates to conclude that it's the latter.

> Not sure why the age bracket point is relevant unless you think the vaccines have different relative efficacy within different age brackets for omicron - that was not the case for prior variants.

I selected age brackets for time ranges during Omicron wave and the spikes suggest small sample sizes. Small sample sizes can't be used to draw any conclusions from re: vaccine effectiveness.

It really is not a disputed claim that 2 shots do not provide much protection over the baseline for Omicron. Hence this post submission with Pfizer launching an Omicron-specific shot...