My argument is that the person who made the division into two groups did so using the wrong line, and even then blamed one group for the damage while absolving the other. This two group divide was poorly defined and should not have been made in the first place.
"With words like 'wholly' and 'false', you are making straw man arguments."
Not at all. 'False' is a perfectly acceptable way to identify a factually incorrect statement. If the person making the argument supports their argument with facts as well as non-subjectively, unambiguously defined definition of the groups, then one could address the individual points. As it stands, they made a blanket statement which is not supported by facts but rather by opinion. Perhaps they could rephrase it to be accurate or add facts to support their claim.
"It is factually accurate and completely reasonable to say that some people are net contributors to public health, while others have the opposite effect."
But it is not factually accurate based on the division made by the original person. Nor was that the claim (net contributors to public health). Nor have I seen facts to support the claim that one group is a net positive and the other is a net negative. If both groups are capable of catching and spreading the virus, then there is no net positive in that context - merely one group is less of a net negative - to what degree would again require better definition of the groups.
At that time, you called it a half-truth. You wrote "You can still spread it if vaccinated", dividing the population into the vaccinated and the rest. You were not arguing then that this particular line is poorly defined, and you have not done so since, even though you have frequently made that claim.
>...and even then blamed one group for the damage while absolving the other. [my emphasis.]
This is straw-manning again: Dhosek did not go that far. This is not as pedantic as it might seem, as any claim that this was implied would depend on the commonsense notions of net benefit that you are trying to argue against.
> Not at all. 'False' is a perfectly acceptable way to identify a factually incorrect statement.
But that is not what you were doing when you introduced 'false' into the discussion.
> But it is not factually accurate based on the division made by the original person.
Suddenly you seem to know exactly what Dhosek meant! Your argument seems to be "I don't know what you mean, but you are wrong."
>If both groups are capable of catching and spreading the virus, then there is no net positive in that context.
This is the crux of your argument, and its downfall. Unless you can show that vaccination, contact tracing, social distancing and mask-wearing have no causal and beneficial effects over the 'null hypothesis' of doing nothing, then it does not follow that they have no net benefit to society, except (or even) if practiced to the maximum and with vaccination providing complete protection. That's what 'net' means in this context (and others)! You would have to put an unjustifiably high weight on any deviation from the ideal situation in order to turn it negative.
I don't even think "covid burden" was the topic, depending on how you define that it could mean the demographics most at risk hospitalization (as overwhelming hospitals seems to have been the concern, and justification for lockdowns). It was only defined as people acting as reservoirs and vectors. This is essentially the entire population given that experts believe catching covid is inevitable, and that the virus can persist after exposure, including in the gut. So the only distinction I can see being made in this context of inevitable infection, reservoirs, and vectors, is vaccine status. Which is not a great dividing line. Basically, my whole point is that in the context of reservoirs and vectors, there's not a reasonable basis for a division into two groups.
As for the argument that everyone will get it eventually: For one thing, the pace matters, the recent shortage of ICU beds is a negative public-health outcome, and the statistics clearly show the benefit of vaccination in this regard (few health issues have better statistical evidence.) This alone shows that there is a reasonable basis for so dividing the population.
Beyond that, it is consistent with every factual claim you have made to say that the population lies on a broad spectrum of how thoroughly they are contributing to ameliorating the impact of this epidemic on the population as a whole. Your own argument is predicated on this spectrum being divisible into two populations. My point is that, wherever you make that divide, one group is helping more than the other.
With regard to your specific questions here:
1) Putting aside the abstruse issue around the axiom of choice (which is not relevant here) one can always create two groups, and in my expanded reply, I made a relevant, non-pedantic case for that.
2) There are more symmetries than dichotomous ones.
Also:
> while wholly ignoring the risks posed by the "good" group.
With words like 'wholly' and 'false', you are making straw man arguments. It is factually accurate and completely reasonable to say that some people are net contributors to public health, while others have the opposite effect.