Trying to find some actual data, I googled "covid deaths by month" and I stumbled upon this: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-...

Notably, the "Growth Factor" plot looks qualitatively very similar from April 2020 until now. Before then, the data looks more noisy to me but not necessarily different on average. I believe folk started getting vaccinated in December 2020? Based on that plot, it doesn't look like the vaccine is helping much for the death rate. Maybe that data source is not legitimate, or maybe "growth factor" isn't the right metric to look at?

According to the following graph deaths per 100,000 people are: 18 for unvaccinated 3 for vaccinated. at the peak of the graph between July and October 2021.

Doesn't that tell us that vaccinations help to significantly reduce Covid-deaths?

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-co...

Right, and this is why I have a problem with employer enforced mandates even though I'm vaccinated. The government taking away your right to work and support yourself based on some pretty flimsy data about the public good for something that should be a personal decision. Fact is, the vaccinated really shouldn't be losing much sleep over the unvaccinated other than maybe those dirty people might be taking up an ICU bed when I need one.

Ok fine, you want to enforce this: then just man up and imprison the unvaccinated using force. Don't hide behind employers and make them do your dirty work. Taking away a person's right to work is only 2 degrees separated from making them dependent on the state. It's a fear tactic they're hoping they won't ever have to enforce--not that much different than holding a gun to someone's head.

At the end of the day you're never going to be able make someone do something against their will. People who go against the mainstream will already suffer social consequences. If you have to do something with government resources then beef up the ICU beds .

While you're at it you may as well make it illegal to work if you're a smoker, or obese, or if you've ever had a car accident because those things may lead to eating up an ICU bed for some other person that stands on a higher moral ground.

The current situation in Auckland, New Zealand provides very good evidence of vaccines reducing spread, though I don't think it has been written up in a paper yet.

We've had < 10,000 confirmed COVID cases in Auckland so the vast majority of the 2M population cannot have natural immunity. Behavior restrictions have been relaxed gradually over the last two months, yet the COVID case numbers (which were increasing) have actually leveled out at an R value of around 1. Vaccination is the only thing that could plausibly have reduced that infection rate.

In my state the vaccination rate is above 70% and the hospitalization rate has decoupled from the positive rate. The spike this winter ended in October whereas last winter it didn’t end until January. We’ve been on a downward trend even with shows and restaurants open and people having parties. So I would cite that as evidence the vaccine is protecting our population.

Current vaccines are non-sterilizing and therefore do not effectively stop the spread/transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) but is very effective at preventing the disease the virus causes (COVID-19). Initially the vaccines were able to keep viral loads low enough to meaningfully stop the spread, but the Delta variant resulting in far higher viral loads and removed that advantage compared to the original virus.

Arguing that the infection rates are uncorrelated is one thing, but serious illness and death is what we really need to care about with this virus. And for those metrics, vaccination is highly-correlated to better outcomes.

That’s a common error, reused by antivaxxers. They are indeed because even what we consider relatively high infection levels are just enough to get 15-20% of the population infected per year. This is less than the part of unvaccinated people. That’s why having a very high vaccination rate is critical to kill COVID. Above this threshold you’d see the infection rate affected. Still, vaccinations are good strategies because they still reduce infections, or at least severe forms of it. Without it in many countries would have been totally saturated by Delta.