Seems to me that those who are concerned about unfairness for one group are simply transferring that unfairness to another group.
Because covid is more transmissible [1], more dangerous, has far longer lasting effects (long-covid), and because vaccines for non-covid viruses are generally more effective to _immunocompromised people_ as we've had longer to deal with them.
Furthermore, flu has been around for generations. We've all probably had some variant of it in our lives, and have some level of immunity. Covid is entirely new. It's far easier to rip through the population and get into the proximity of vulnerable people than flu.
> Any decent person would just keep away from the office if they were ill.
Sure. Except you don't know you're ill. A majority of people will be asymptomatic and spreading it without knowing. This is what is happening in the UK right now.
One of the guys on my team has just got out of hospital, he is in his mid-20s with no underlying conditions. Yet when be caught Covid he ended up in hospital on oxygen, was admitted to ICU, there was talk of him having to be intubated before he started to recover. That doesn't sound like a sniffly nose or a bad case of the runs to me.
I know it's only an anecdote, a single data point, but it means a lot more to me.
Answer: it's not the same disease.
Diabetes can make you much more likely to have issues with infection too. Should it cause you to stay home? How are you going to eat and pay utilities?
https://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-fully-vaccinated-people-...
Look at the data from the UK. The pandemic is far from over there, although hospitalisations are far far lower than previous peaks. There is a non-significant amount of immunocompromised people in the UK (1million+). Maybe the data we are seeing is because the immunocompromised people who take risks all ended up in hospital and died.
Maybe, what you are left with is a huge number of people scared shitless at home, hiding, lonely, scared in a country where everyone is being told everything is fine. My father is in this position, double vaccinated and tested negative for antibodies. Current data shows extremely low efficacy and antibody production in immunocompromised people.
Yes, but the fact that symptoms tend to be much weaker in the vaccinated likely means it's less likely to spread from them. Currently, the problem is that we have those breakthrough cases, plus also the unvaccinated still spreading the disease.
That said, it's true that the new delta variant may mean we need further boosters.