In the end it seems both "sides" were wrong on this. The vaccines didn't protect people from getting covid, but they also didn't kill them.

> The vaccines didn't protect people from getting covid

What do you mean by this? The vaccines absolutely decreased the likelihood of getting and the severity of Covid.

For certain age groups, against specific variants, with more * than you can shake a stick at.

The fact that the cdc changed the definition of vaccine to one which can apply to injecting raw sewage into people will go down in history as one of the larger mass hysterias.

Whatever information you're getting, know that you're on the end of disinformation, because the mortality reductions were definitely broad-spectrum.

Is that why the US is the only country to mandate covid vaccines for children when there were no deaths in that group?

No, that's because you are right in that politics got involved so people got super confused. Wearing masks indoors in your own home for social signaling or wearing masks outdoors after it was long clear that was silly.

But the US being overly politicized doesn't have any impact on if the vaccine worked or not. Reality doesn't care.

The US does not mandate covid vaccines for children.

you are indeed deeply misinformed, to the point of not getting basic facts right. Please admit it.

https://www.statista.com/chart/25326/obligatory-vaccination-... https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

I meant exactly what I wrote, almost everybody who took the vaccines contracted covid.

Protecting people from COVID involves more than preventing them from contracting the illness. It reduced mortality and hospitalizations. Compare the mortality rate in a country like Brazil to the US and tell me again how the vaccines didn't protect people from COVID.

I seriously don't get this antivax nonsense. People get the flu after a flu vaccine sometimes too. The point is to not have a naive immune system if all other defenses fail.

> I seriously don't get this antivax nonsense.

Maybe you have been conditioned to react with extreme suspicion when somebody even dares to mention the word "vaccine", so you don't even read what people write and start imagining what they "must be meaning"? We live in an age of paranoia and hostility, even after the pandemic.

I'm incredibly happy that the people saying that the vaccines were dangerous were wrong. It's a shame they didn't protect people better, but in the end the pandemic ended just as expected, ie a super-contagious and much less lethal strain infected everybody. This is how the black plague probably ended, reading accounts from the time. Even if they didn't know anything about viruses then.

> It's a shame they didn't protect people better…

And it’s great its protection wasn’t worse!

> …but in the end the pandemic ended just as expected, ie a super-contagious and much less lethal strain infected everybody. This is how the black plague probably ended, reading accounts from the time. Even if they didn't know anything about viruses then.

There was never any question that in the long term general immunity wouldn’t cause the strains to become less virulent, it was always a question of how many people would die or get very sick before we got there. The Black Death killed a third of Europes population so im happy we know more about viruses now than they did then.

That’s dumb. If you can take something that will reduce a potentially deadly disease to some mild symptoms for a few days it’s effectively a cure.

How do you expect to have any fruitful exchange with your behaviour? People will prefer to avoid talking to you.

And without the vaccines they would likely have had worse symptoms as well as potentially had symptomatic covid even more times than they did.

In other words the fact that vaccinated people contracted covid does _not_ mean the vaccines didn’t protect them from the disease.

"Major political parties" know that votes from idiots are as valuable as votes from people they are unable to fool: no-vax conspiracy theorists are one of many despicable constituencies that they want to be nice to, at the cost of alienating a smaller number of better people.