People who are vaccinated spread less, reducing the total viral load. This is a big deal for people who cannot be vaccinated or who are immune compromised since the odds of exposure and total load are what determine whether they can safely function in society.
Similarly, people who are vaccinated are far, far less likely to require medical care. That reduces the load on the medical system — think about all of the complications we're seeing now because people with non-COVID problems are unable to get attention promptly — and a significant percentage of the money for treating more serious COVID cases will be paid by people other than the patients through some combination of taxes, insurance, and overhead costs (e.g. American ERs aren't allowed to refuse care since Reagan socialized them which means those expenses are added to everyone else's bill).
The Delta variant is so contagious that everyone will eventually be exposed regardless of what we do. There will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect people who cannot be vaccinated or who are immune compromised.
Vaccinated people who get infected are probably contagious for a shorter period. However that only marginally reduces the risk of contagion for any individual interaction. Over an extended period of time everyone will be exposed.
Think of it like a soccer goalie defending against an endless series of penalty kicks. He might block the first few but eventually a ball will get through.
Yes: if you notice I used the word less, that’s why. Anything which reduces load or time cuts into the R factor — we still need masks to get the community levels under control but it seems likely that vaccination will let us hit the point where immune compromised people, those with allergic reactions, etc. can live normally during non-pandemic conditions.
Okay so in this case we aren't talking about negative impact being direct contamination, but rather that there is a hospital resource management problem that exists, and people should be vaccinated to help alleviate that resource management problem.
That's fine and understandable, but it suggests different communication. If the problem is resource management / availability then instead of talking about how many people per capita are infected and rates of infection, talk about the resource usage, and rate of availability. I think I did see one interview with a hospital manager nearly in tears about potentially having to make lethal resource based decisions, but it's far from a daily talking point like the simple case rate is.
