Your comment combined with mine made me realize... I (and the people I work with) played a big part in this theater.
As a federal contractor, when the federal mandate came down... those employees had to be vaccinated. The employer conveniently pushed this policy to the other 200k+ employees.
It was all a scheme to boost the vaccination rates and push this cart along faster -- the results never mattered.
It facilitated this... 'everything is normal/okay, the unvaccinated are the ones to blame' narrative.
Woefully lacking in attention in so many ways
May I extend a big "Thank you" to you and GP for recognizing and admitting this. You have now contributed to the restoration of trust in society in a great way. At least for me, personally :)
To be clear, you were in the full right to choose whatever treatment you wanted for whatever reason. The blame here is squarely on those who threw the wrong reason (threat of force) into the mix - they should have thought more about unintended consequences of their mandates.
I made my own decision early on that vaccination wasn't significant for me. I had been exposed [and a very mild case] due to forced travel during that window where we knew COVID existed, but acted like it had not yet entered the country.
Natural immunity plus the fact that I live alone, never go out, and have been remote since before the pandemic... it wasn't a high priority for me. I felt reasonably safe and unlikely to spread it should it find me again.
It was all to comply with federal mandates for contractors - my employer decided that this should apply to all [including remote] employees.
It was more than a little inconvenient going out of my way to get vaccinated for arguably little gain. I might even say added risk in my case.
The reporting process alone made me miss several deadlines. Asinine things like not being able to confirm my vaccination status until it sat in my veins for two weeks.