The many states and countries that had record outbreaks, the fact they were exceedingly well-vaccinated notwithstanding. (Vermont, Israel, etc. etc. this is pretty trivial to verify).

It just does not prevent transmission. We know what it looks like as far as transmission goes for vaccines that work (smallpox, oral polio, etc.) This is not it. Just isn't.

The further issue with a lot of this is that it was presented as having been validated as preventing spread from the beginning, which now Pfizer has stated did not transpire. It was pretty evident by early summer that it was not in fact doing that. It's a big piece of the narrative for forcing/mandating the vaccine and it's gone. Anyone questioning it immediately were lumped into the far right regardless of their reasons. It was bad medically and bad politically.

The reality is it was needed to help comfort and calm the populous, it provided some efficacy, but ultimately should have been a personal decision. There's 0 chance we won't see lawsuits for the foreseeable future and honestly i'm still on the side of personal choice.

You're right too, the vaccine never was on the level of "real" vaccines and we knew that, hence why they changed the legal definition to make it fit.

24% decrease in transmission, decreasing by 6% every 5 weeks after that.[0] So, not nothing, but it doesn't come close to stopping transmission.

Personally, I'm vaccinated. That's based on my own risk calculation. But forcing people to put a medication into their body that they don't trust, for such a meager benefit (and do it several times a year), doesn't seem right to me. Even if you disagree with their logic, it's their body. The benefit of the vaccines to other citizens is too little to impose this burden.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02328-0

Thanks for the citation. I didn't realise it was so low, however I would point out the effect can still be large and exponential:

If I have covid and no vaccine and meet 100 people,I infect 50. Those 50 go on to infect another 1000 because that's what people do in cities, before running out of steam. 1%, aka 10 people die. Plus all the cost of dealing with the rest of those hospitalised and the long covid and the injuries etc.

If I have covid and the vaccine and meet 100 people I infect 38 (24% less). only 760 people get infected as a knock on. So now only 7.6 people die.

2.4 deaths seems like a lot of deaths to just accept because otherwise someone might lose a job...

Both scenarios result in total human collapse; which we have not seen. So perhaps your math is wrong.

Why would 10 people per 1000 dying lead to "total human collapse"

While the point is correct, I don't think this reasoning is sound.

If exponential growth keeps going until you run out of people to infect, then you get to everyone in both scenarios.

What actually changes the total number of infections, is that when enough people are non-infectious by either vaccination or prior infection, the remainder no longer get exposed.

The other society scale effect is that the slower infection rate (even in the absence of the primary benefit of the various vaccines) means the integrated utilisation of finite healthcare resources is spread out over time, so the instantaneous usage is lower, and as many places were at or above capacity during the pandemic that would also save lives.