>It doesn't seem to prevent people from getting sick which is what we were told it would do.

This statement is just incorrect. If you were under the impression that vaccines prevent people from becoming infected, you were mistaken. They prevent hospitalization and death. That has been proven in randomized controlled trials.

The COVID vaccines have a dramatic difference in the number of people who die, the number of people who get sick enough to go to the hospital, the number of people who are sick long term. That's basic statistics, well understood.

The people dropping dead and having heart problems? Those are statistically insignificant. It's a tragedy when someone drops dead 3 days after their COVID vaccine, but it's not statistically much more likely than people dropping dead for other reasons. Acetaminophen kills more people every year by a wide margin, but you don't hear people talking about banning that.

"Herd Immunity"? The virus is out-mutating that. Just ask all the people who have gotten COVID 3 or 4 times. Just ask the countries that tried that as a national strategy.

It's truly disheartening just how politicized the reaction to COVID-19 has been.

Unfortunately, a lot of people have the same confusion, and it's because politically minded people have fostered it. The science and medicine involved aren't so complicated that a layman couldn't grasp it, but unless you seek out the information or rely on expertise and reliable sources, you'd end up where you find yourself.

Ask yourself: is there an empirical way to determine the efficacy of a vaccine? How do vaccines work / what is the mechanism by which they act? Who has this information / where can I find it? Are there populations that are more clinically at risk from infection? What is the mechanism of that? Why do I not know the answer to these questions? Where would I go to find studies and experts in the field?

All of your questions have been asked and have clinical and scientific answers that an unambiguous and with exquisite detail. It's only political if you ignore the science and listen to the pundits and politicians.

We know because we have randomized, double-blind studies and millions upon millions of doses and millions upon millions of infections. We know statistically you're far less likely to end up in the hospital or die from Covid if you're vaccinated, and have millions of examples to prove this out.

That doesn't mean you will never get sick or die from Covid if you're vaccinated, just that you're far less likely to, and as such, the vaccine works. All of these are well understood if you don't bury your head in the sand or fill it with extremist garbage.

Sure, perhaps we've come to expect too much from vaccines, like with the efficacy of things like the polio vaccine which has effectively eradicated the disease. We were all hoping for a silver bullet that can end the pandemic. But that doesn't mean the vaccine doesn't work or that we would be better off without it.

A few things:

1. We were never guaranteed it would prevent transmission, the original trials were against symptomatic disease. Transmission data was gathered in real time as vaccines were given, and it's an imperfect science anyway. Many vaccines don't stop transmission including the inactivated polio vaccine.

2. We will always be a step in behind in vaccine updates because of the regulatory process, we updated vaccines to BA.5 and now XBB.1.5 is dominant. It's going to be this way.

3. It's not an argument, it's a fact it has reduced burden all you have to do is compare hospitalization rates for those vaccines and those not. Unfortunately many people don't understand base rate fallacy.

4. The increased risk of myocarditis has been acknowledged by every major health body. You know what else causes myocarditis, viruses. The flu can cause it. We know COVID-19 causes it.

5. The virus will continue to mutate away from immune responses. Herd immunity is definitely not here in the way many people use the term.