If you believe good public health policy requires that there be restrictions on gatherings even where everyone is fully vaccinated, then what do you see as the path back to full normality? Or is this just how humanity has to live forever now?
I think the "return to normality" is when the number of new cases reported each day drops to almost nothing and deaths are uncommon. Currently, in the U.S. we're about 70 thousand new cases a day, which is about where we were at the height of the second wave in mid-summer. Deaths are around 750 a day.
I think we'll get to normality eventually, but it may take longer than anyone has patience for, and that will only push it out further as people give up on social distancing and masking.
Time will tell if that's actually enough by itself to get the reproduction number less than 1. If everyone who wants a vaccination has one and yet we still have tens of thousands of new cases per day and hundreds of deaths and no downward trend, then I think continuing with masks and social distancing is going to be necessary.
I'm hoping that as the vaccination numbers go up, we'll eventually start seeing new cases drop off a cliff as the virus runs out of people to infect. (Though I suspect that we'll have problems for awhile with groups of people who hang out together and for whatever reason don't get vaccinated.)
I didn't pick +80% arbitrarily, that's where Israel has been for a bit (age +16 vaxed or recovered) and the stats are impressive. I expect the same in US unless a new more transmissible strain in the face of vaccinations emerges.
The problem for everyone else is that the vaccines aren't 100% effective. Also, we're not vaccinating children yet, and there may be some people who can't get the vaccine for medical reasons.
Another consideration is that if the virus is allowed to continue to spread, there's a real chance that it may mutate into a form that isn't stopped by the vaccine, and then we're right back where we started.
From a public health point of view, I don't see things getting back to ordinary people (and not just the foolhardy) having lunch with coworkers around the same table without masks on unless there isn't any significant amount of community spread going on.
Why does it matter how much of the US is vaccinated? For any given gathering, doesn't it only matter whether the people at that gathering are? Suppose 20,000 people, each from different households, all met at Madison Square Garden, and that they're all vaccinated. Why would that be more dangerous if nobody else in the world was vaccinated vs. if everybody else in the world was?
Look if both households are low risk and everyone has been vaccinated go ahead and meet under one roof without any masks and hug - that's fine under current recommendations. It's even looser than that, like if you unvaccinated low risk children visiting vaccinated grandparents ad so on.
Right now across US being fully vaccinated is only 80% effective against infection. When you have 20k vaxed folks meet when the virus is endemic in the pop, some of those vaxed folks will be infected and some will catch it there.
When more folks are vaxed there will be less of the virus circulating and then that calculation then changes. It's all about how prevalent the virus is in the community to begin with assuming no strains appear that dramatically reduce the effectiveness of the vax.
We've never taken such an attitude for any other endemic respiratory pathogen in existence, and for good reason. It's completely absurd and ignores not only the important health benefits of regular social contact, including direct physical contact, as well as the literal benefits of exchanging pathogens with others.
You and the other commenters arguing your "side" also seem to completely ignore the phenomenom of natural immunity, which I think very obviously has been fallaciously denied by "experts" precisely because they want to convince everyone in the world to get this vaccine. They're already talking about yearly booster shots because most people's mental models are from Flu which has a much greater space of possible genetic configurations, whereas SARS-2 is relatively constrained in how it can evolve and thus should not need a yearly booster if this weren't just about making absurd amounts of money (which it is).
In any case, you should know that there are people like me - very much in the minority - who refuse to submit to such absurdities and will keep fighting. We will continue to be literally as well as metaphorically discriminated against until your "side" stops brainwashing people into a completely disproportionate response to an endemic respiratory virus.
You can stay inside with a mask on while vaccinated all you want. Be my guest. But please stop advocating for and/or supporting mandates and restrictions on the rest of us who have not caught your specific strain of agoraphobia, germaphobia, OCD and misanthropy.
Sure we will get natural immunity, the difference between other diseases respiratory or otherwise is its effectiveness in killing people combined with its transmission. It is in the Goldilocks zone for deadliness and transmission , highly deadly diseases like Nipha or Ebola are easier to keep from being an pandemic precisely because they are so deadly. They still require a strong and immediate response to keep it in control and local.
The annual flu shot is not just for you, it is also to prevent you transmitting what is probably harmless to you but deadly to immuno-compromised like the elderly, they don't have ability to get natural immunity. Pneumonia is significant cause of death amongst senior citizens.
If 600,000 people dying U.S alone in the last year, does not convince you to stay masked and safe and follow some simple instructions for few more months until everyone is vaccinated even if you don't believe in them personally, nothing is going to.
It is more dangerous because people who are vaccinated will take more risks and do less social distancing etc which in turn will harm others.
There is no definitive answer whether vaccine will reduce transmission. Those 20,000 people will definitely meet un-vaccinated people in next 10-12 days, and then may pass the disease to them.
Many people cannot get the vaccine, because it is not open yet to them, or have other conditions. So it is selfish for vaccinated people to behave as though the rest of the population does not exist.
There is also the worry that longer the disease lingers anywhere in the world, there can be mutations which are immune to current vaccines, such an mutation could be disastrous as people will loose trust in the vaccine and a second vaccine even when available will have lesser adoption than now . It could become a vicious cycle where there is third mutation, and this then becomes like the flu shots ( but lot more deadlier)
