[WillSlim95]

Yeah poor analogy here, you can choose to not go to Southern Africa, you cannot will for COVID to not infect you. Why should we not be eager for vaccines when they are available for such a highly infectious disease.

Flip the scenario, during the second wave in India, we were one of the few families in our neighborhood who were lucky that no family members caught COVID. All the local hospitals were filled, a large number of people we know survived but there were people who died around 4-5% of the people we knew who were infected and 40% who came very close to dying. The Delta variant arrived when a significant part of the elderly population had been vaccinated. You should recheck the your stats about the elderly, the second wave was brutal to under 40 folks as a good number of above 40 people had been vaccinated by the time the second wave hit.

Sure COVID might have a low fatality rate of 2-3% but 2-3% of a very huge population getting infected by a rapidly infectious disease is still a humungous number.

[helloworld11]

I have no idea where you got your 2-3% fatality rate for COVID from but it's way off the mark. That is the CFR in certain high risk circumstances but the known IFR of the virus after nearly 2 years of study and data collation has been fairly reasonably established by multiple health agencies. Not surprised by the numbers you use though... CDC Best estimates as of March 2021, For all but the very oldest population segments it's well below 1% across all age groups that are not very elderly. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

Or if you prefer Germany, where the most recently estimated fatality rate even for those 50 - 79 doesn't exceed 1%. It's much lower for those below this age range. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...

Many other sources back up these findings across multiple countries.