You stated that the current form of measurement was not very good. I pointed out that we care about transmission and mutation for long term eradication of the disease - hence the measurement that is used. It's obviously not negligible or the entire professional world would not use it as a measuring stick for vaccine effectiveness.
If we report the vaccine is 99.5% effective at preventing serious illness, people will not listen to ANYTHING about being cautious and wearing a mask after they are vaccinated. I predict a nasty wave of COVID this fall/winter including in relatively highly vaccinated areas due to just this attitude already.
Uhm, the CDC literally told vaccinated people they don't need masks indoors or outdoors. [1] At that point it's kind of silly to say quoting 99.5% does or will a detrimental impact.
> I predict a nasty wave of COVID this fall/winter including in relatively highly vaccinated areas due to just this attitude already.
No; if it happens, it certainly wouldn't be due to this; at best ('best' for your argument), it would be due to their overriding guidance re: not wearing masks, which I mentioned above. However, I predict if this happens, it'll be due to changing circumstances like worse variants breaking through the vaccine (which the CDC admits they do not have sufficient data on [2]), not due to their current advice being bad due for current variants.
[1] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210513/cdc-vaccinated-you-...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vac...
And I'm not saying they should stop measuring anything either. They should measure whatever they feel like. All I'm saying is most people's #1 concern (including that of those in healthcare) is "will I/others get severely ill", and IMHO that means that's the information that needs to be conveyed as accurately as possible to the public first and foremost. Especially when there seems to be such a highly likely possibility that many people who merely "have" the virus will feel no effects. Of course nothing is a guarantee and it's even possible the vaccines will turn out even worse than the disease in a few years. Nobody claimed otherwise.