[rory]

> weigh the probability of that against the certainty of you and / or your loved ones getting the virus if you're not vaccinated

Why do you say that's a certainty? I think it's still very uncertain how many people the virus will infect going forward.

[svara]

It is certain. Even if the vaccines always led to sterilizing immunity (they don't) and immunity lasted forever (it doesn't), we're not reaching sufficient fractions of vaccinated people literally anywhere in the world for the virus to go extinct locally - the newest variants are just that contagious.

And even if that was possible in some first world countries, that wouldn't be sufficient, it would simply be re-imported sooner or later. So there's really no way it's going away.

This is now an endemic human virus and, vaccinated or not, you'll be exposed to it many times over the rest of your lifetime. Barring some technological breakthrough in vaccine development and a big shift in people's attitudes towards them, it's with us forever.

You also don't have to take my word for it, this is an uncontroversial view amongst infectious disease epidemiologists.