[_djo_]

It's a different type of virus. We have never, ever, successfully achieved the level of immunity against a rapidly mutating airborne virus as we have with SARS-CoV-2. Our greatest successes, Polio and Smallpox, were both extremely stable and without animal reservoirs, making vaccination much more straightforward.

You're demanding perfection and insisting that anything that falls short is worthless. That makes no sense.

[egg1]

I'm not saying the vaccines are worthless, I'm saying there is a trend of public figures gaslighting and making excuses for their ineffectiveness against Omicron, by redefining commonly accepted notions of what a vaccine is intended to do and pretending our goal all along was to merely prevent severe disease. The goal, as we've seen with past mass vaccination campaigns that worked, should be to stop the spread. Period. We need new vaccines, not fourth or fifth shots of the same thing.

[_djo_]

The first and primary public focus was always to prevent severe illness and death and alleviate the load on hospitals. Messaging on that has been fairly consistent.

Some countries pursued an eradication goal early on and some public health officials publicly spoke about their hope to achieve that, but while that was possible with the wild type it no longer is with the variants and animal reservoirs. It was a reasonable, rational strategy at the time, later undermined by the nature of new mutations.

You’re attempting to redefine the baseline of what’s considered acceptable for a vaccine, beyond what has ever been the case. In fact the vaccine most people would be aware of and have come into contact with, the flu vaccine, only partially protects against severe illness.

We have only been able to eradicate two viruses in human history through vaccination. In all other cases it’s a tool used to prevent worse outcomes and control the disease’s severity and spread.

Nonetheless, new vaccines that better target variants like Delta and Omicron, and hopefully any new ones that may emerge, are already in active development and trials. So we will see improvements in our ability to protect people against COVID-19.