I'm not trying to be controversial but it seems if just get SARS-Cov-2 and survive you're better off than if you didn't get the shots and boosters.
I have. Got the first shot in August 2021, then got covid in December 2021. Got the second shot in January 2022 because my new job forced me to get it in order to stay employed, and then I got covid again in August 2022.
Me, my wife, her parents, my mom, my grandma, and my brother's entire family.
That said, all of us had very mild systems. For my wife and I, it played out like a cold. A minor fever for one day, a cough for two days, and a runny nose for three. Honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that my wife's work gave everyone 10 at-home COVID tests, we probably would have assumed it was a cold and not tested.
My mom and grandma (who live together) both got COVID about 4 weeks after their second booster. My mom is immune compromised and my grandma is 83 and has poorly managed diabetes. COVID should have been a death sentence to both of them. Instead, they just laid in bed for a couple days and were fine.
The vaccines won't necessarily prevent you from getting it, but they'll greatly reduce the symptoms, hospitalizations, and deaths.
Yes, most of them? At least in my area the first peaks of Covid were small, vaccines were available relatively early and most of the people I know were part of the early-vaccinated subpopulation when the big waves hit - so most of people I know got Covid after the vaccination and just a few did before the vaccination. And even less have never gotten it - anecdotally, the people I personally know who "didn't have Covid" are those who didn't test for it when they got sick.
Anecdotally the vaccination status didn't seem to have an impact on the likelihood of catching the disease (e.g. vaccinated kids brought it home from school about just as likely as unvaccinated kids did) but rather on the severity of the disease.
So in my view there is no really a choice of SARS-Cov-2 versus shots+boosters, it's effectively SARS-Cov-2 (likely multiple times as well) versus shots+boosters+SARS-Cov-2.
Rather than use anecdotes and spread misinformation, we can Google (multiple sources!) and find some studies comparing the outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated people.
It has been known for some time that there is slightly weaker long term immunity for 2 shots when compared to getting it without. This gets better 3 shots, and getting 3 shots and having gotten covid is actually the most durable response of all 'options'.
Sure, you say, the flu changes constantly.
I think I've had something like 7 or 8 Tdap shots. The vaccine schedule on that is 3 shots two months apart, another shot a year later, then 2-3 years later, then every ~ten years after that.
Why is "You need more than one shot" such a silver bullet argument?
I'm vaxxed and, to my knowledge, haven't contracted covid.
The HermanCainAward reddit is full of counterexamples of unvaccinated people who got sick more than once and died from the 2nd or 3rd battle.
Despite humans developing durable immunity to coronaviruses for millions of years?
Or are you referring to a predecessor of Homo sapiens
Huh? Where does this come from? Where was the underlying data or mechanism (before the pandemic hit) that getting COVID (unlike most any other virus we've seen) would not result in durable immunity?
The problem with this argument is that it applies equally to a vaccine that targets a single variant of the disease (never mind one that isn't even circulating anymore).