I would agree that it is not irrelevant. My language there may have been too strong.

I was probably thinking that the other factors (personal protection, hospital capacity, and the political question of mandates) seem so much more significant to me. There's lots of lesser factors (side effects, the immuno-compromised, social cohesion, etc).

I guess I kind of looked at variants as a wash, given they are so much out of our control and there are many unknowns. It's in the realm of possibility that the current vaccines could leave us more susceptible to future variants (a la original antigenetic sin). Hard to make a decision on less significant unknowns.