47% after 6 months vs. infection in the first study that popped up for me. I do wonder in some of these studies how they control for the vaccinated probably being more likely to distance and mask in many places.
The article I read on this today noted that the observed lack of effectiveness may be due to the vaccinated
RELAXING caution, and going to places where they'd get greater exposure as a result.
If the infection rate is cut in half and the serious illness rate is cut to a tenth, does that push it into just another thing like the flu?
If we cut the death rate by a factor of 10, then it comes in at the upper end of how many the flu kill each year. So, a naive estimate would suggest that might be okay.
However, that leaves out the issue of "long covid", which is suffered by nearly a third of those who get it. That would make covid rather more costly than the flu - people down for months instead of a week or so.
Also, you know how one of the prime symptoms of covid is loss of sense of smell? That's troubling. Current studies suggest that while the virus itself doesn't infect the brain, the widespread inflammatory processes it kicks off in the body do also take place in the brain - which seems to lead to long-term or permanent chemical and physical impacts on the brain, and possible loss of function - loss of memory, depression, fatigue, and the like.
So, the level that we find 'acceptable" may be lower than that of the flu.