I had the first two vaccines not because I felt I medically needed them, but because I wanted to be able to travel.
Now I'm going to need a booster to be considered fully vaccinated.
And then eventually I'll 'need' a fourth, and a fifth, and so on.
I don't see where this is all going to end.
The vaccines don't work that effectively for that long. They don't stop you catching covid or passing it on, they just stop you getting less severe symptoms. So they're not a 'way out' of the pandemic, as people keep saying, because they're not stopping it from circulating. They are a weapon in a wider arsenal that also needs to be utilised - social distancing, masks, regular testing, contact tracing, isolation, etc. But that wider arsenal hasn't been used or encouraged effectively, and so we're down to vaccines only. And as the evidence shows, they really are not an adequate line of defence, because here we are again on the brink of lockdown.
The problem is, the government messaging since the vaccine was discovered has been that the vaccines are a golden bullet and now we've got the vaccines we don't need to worry about anything else anymore. Hence the massive drop in compliance with face masks - I was on the tube yesterday, and there was a strike, so the tubes were absolutely packed to the rafters (thanks TfL!) and half of the people on there didn't have a face mask on. And people who are vaccinated are told they don't need to take LFTs before they go to places, they're told they don't need to self isolate, etc, even when we know that having the vaccine doesn't do diddly squat to stop you catching or passing on covid. So vaccinated people think they're invincible and can do what they like when they go out, and so we all continue to spread covid like there's no tomorrow. Hence the case numbers we now have.
This messaging of vaccines = invincibility has caused a huge amount of damage in terms of reducing public compliance with other mitigation measures - which has led to the wider spread of covid - and has also led to a huge amount of division in society between those who have chosen to get vaccinated and those who haven't. The absolute vitriol thrown at unvaccinated people by smug bastards who think because they've been vaccinated they've somehow done the whole world a favour is sickening. Unvaccinated people are at no greater risk of giving covid to someone else than a vaccinated person.
I just feel the constant coercion to get vaccinated is an attempt for the government to cover up for all the other stuff they haven't done to protect society. I don't see what good continuing to spend billions on revaccinating everyone every three months is going to do when it doesn't stop covid circulating like wildfire. If we spent some of this money on sorting out the fact we don't have enough hospital beds for our population, we might not be in a position where our healthcare system collapses every single winter, and so is better equipped to cope with what is very clear is going to be an endemic disease for the foreseeable future.