They do reduce it, by a lot, enough to avoid overwhelming hospitals -- which are borderline right now in many countries and being filled up by anti-vaxxers. Those freedom loving people are taking up valuable beds, putting the lives of people at risk that have other medical issues.

Essentially, all of these anti-vax arguments boil down to: "You cannot definitively, absolutely, completely prove that the vaccines are 100.00% effective AND 100.00% safe for everyone always. I mean sure, you're not technically forcing me to take it, but your suggestion that I do my duty to society is too authoritarian. I would prefer to think of myself as a universe onto myself and take the personal chance of death comparable to climbing Mount Everest or driving F1 cars. Because freedom! Or something..."

Also: "Grandma can take her chances with getting COVID from me on the odd occasion that I visit her in the cheapest hospice I could find to offload her onto."

I don't think there is any proof of that - look at VT, or in fact most of the New England states - among the highest percent of vaccinated people anywhere in the US and yet for many of those states, the cases are at a much, much higher level than at any time during the pandemic.

Look at Florida, decent % of people are vaxxed, but nearly as many (as a %) as in most new england states and yet the spread of cases is much more muted on a population adjusted basis. These data anomalies need better explanation from non-political scientists - one is not an anti-vaxxer for pointing these inconsistencies out.

I agree vaccine seems to be keeping people alive and that is a good thing, and despite your snide remarks, it is actually possible to be in favor of people getting the vaccine (I am tripled vaxxed myself) and yet still valid to question the official (and always changing) narrative we are being fed that this is only a pandemic of the unvaccinated - the facts don't back that up.

Vaccines didn't prevent the spread of smallpox either, until they finally did.

We're not smallpoxing Covid out of existence without a much better vaccine.

> We're not smallpoxing Covid out of existence without a much better vaccine.

Are you sure? At this point we can vaccinate almost everyone, and we wouldn't have to reduce the R factor by all that much.

It might not be a feature of the vaccine, but a feature of the combination immune system + virus which doesnt allow us to smallpox Covid out of existence.