Stretching the facts.

I read an article stating that unvaccinated people are having their rights silenced because the odds of serious infection are low and herd immunity is impossible because vaccinated people can still spread the virus. If those are the only reasons for perceiving that their rights are being trampled... I think the case is rather flimsy. 

The biggest problem here is actually that these arguments are what I will call "subjectively accurate". They aren't technically wrong, so they are difficult to make a case against if someone has already accepted these premises. But, as with all things subjective, they are also "subjectively wrong". And I would argue that the subjectively wrong is more closely aligned with the objective reality.

To start with, the mortality rate of COVID is in the single digits. This may SEEM like a low number. And again, subjectively it is. But, when it comes to mortality rates... it is actually STAGGERINGLY high. 

There are two ways I can frame this, I think, to make that point. The first is that most of us know more than 100 people. A mortality rate of 2% means that left unchecked, virtually everyone will come to know multiple people killed by COVID and many more hospitalized. 

In our lifetimes we have not known such a pervasive virus. It is literally the singularly most tangible life threatening illness most people alive have faced the prospect of contracting. Calling such a threat "low" or playing it down really does show how bad humans are at internalizing statistical data. 

The second way to look at it is this; most of us get sick multiple times a year. If such a mortality rate were actually something we should consider low. The average person would be dead by the time they reached their 20s. 

Most "low risk" illnesses bear mortality rates SIGNIFICANTLY lower than 1%. Like 0.01% and lower. This virus is orders of magnitudes more lethal than most infections we humans face. Don't believe me? Here are the stats on influenza from the CDC. 15 people per 100k die. That is odds of 1 in about 6500. Compared to 1 in 50 for COVID. And influenza is considered dangerous enough that we develop vaccines for it. And most countries cover the cost of inoculating citizens and many lines of work REQUIRE vaccination.

COVID is roughly 130x more lethal than influenza and much better at spreading. So, I do challenge the notion that risk of infection or even of serious illness or death are low. 

As for vaccinated people being able to spread the virus? Well yeah. Where the first is a byproduct of humans being unable to internalize numerical data very efficiently, this is more a matter of people having expectations that were never going to be met. This is true of every vaccine ever made. And the problem is that there is a fundamental misconception of what immunity is.

The simplest argument here is; the argument is invalid for the simple fact that the same is true of all vaccines, but we have achieved herd immunity with other diseases. The ability for vaccinated people to continue to spread an illness does not mean that herd immunity cannot work.

A vaccine need only slow the spread of the virus sufficiently to permanently bring the r0 value under 1. Period. Any other interpretation/expectation is misleading and/or exploitative.

The simple fact is that the approved COVID-19 vaccines lower your risk of contracting the virus, lower the severity of symptoms and lower the length of the infections. All 3 of these things also lead to reductions in the r0 value.

Lowering the risk of contracting the virus is a direct reduction in r0 values. Reducing symptoms in a respiratory virus means less coughing and sneezing which are the arguably the quickest way to spread the virus. So, reducing symptoms indirectly cuts the r0 value. And reducing the duration of infection (EVEN IF ACTUAL INFECTIVITY DURING INFECTION REMAINS UNCHANGED) means you will risk infecting a smaller number of people which ALSO means a reduction in r0 values.

For those who question that last argument, including the bit in all caps. It is very simple. Let's take a population with one infected person in it. And lets say that this infected person infects one new person every day. The average infection length is 2 days and the vaccine cuts that period in half, but does not reduce their ability to spread the virus while infected. And for the sake of making my calculations simpler, incubation period is two days during which the infected are not contagious. If the 1 person in the population is vaccinated then after 2 days, the r0 value will be 1. If not, it will be 2. 

In summary, while 2% may seem like a low number. This is just the mortality rate and that is actually a rather high number for this sort of thing. Especially considering how transmissible the virus is. And, it is not uncommon in many areas to require vaccination against influenza which is MUCH less lethal and much less transmissible. 

Furthermore, herd immunity is possible with vaccines which are not 100% effective. The only thing really challenging our ability to achieve herd immunity is the large number of people holding out against vaccination.

And this means that people choosing not to get vaccinated are indirectly causing the death and hospitalizations of many others.

So, while this may just be my personal opinion on the matter. I for one think that the measures taken thus far have not gone far enough. Especially in how we've treated the unvaccinated. In fact, I think in many jurisdictions we have politicized the vaccination efforts in such a way that it has promoted this line of thinking that there is something unethical about the measures taken thus far. And the measures taken thus far I would categorize as the bare minimum. As a great many court cases have shown already... there is nothing unconstitutional about taken measures to protect the lives of citizens so long as those measures are enacted thoughtfully.