The vaccine turns a potentially life-changing or life-threatening illness into a less serious one. But that doesn't mean no symptoms.
If someone's frail already, or elderly,
- Their immune system may not respond as well to the vaccines because their immune system is also elderly. So they may have less protection from getting it in the first place, and their antibodies are fewer.
- It doesn't necessarily take much to tip them over the edge.
So for someone who is elderly with COPD, for example, even a light bout before their antibodies kick in might be enough to kill them.
Without the infection, plenty might have lived for years, though and their lives should be valued.
Because the take-up has been really successful in elderly and vulnerable groups means that, obviously, a large number of those kinds of cases will be among the double-jabbed.
If there are 100 vulnerable people in a room, 90% of them jabbed, if 50% of the unvaccinated died (5 people), and just 5 of the vaccinated people died, then antivaxxers would frame it as 'the same number of people died in each group, so it doesn't make a difference', when in fact being vaccinated clearly saved 40 people's lives.