What has been generally disproved is the concept of herd immunity. Initially this was what scientists and researchers had hoped would occur with vaccinations, and sadly for multiple reasons this did not happen.
Vaccines does significant help in reducing the severity when a person get sick, which reduces the work load on the health care system and allowing the personal to focus their time and skill on people in worse conditions. That is great, but it changes the initial strategy in terms of application and goal.
The etymology of vaccine comes from vacca, which is Latin for cow. Vaccines were originally discovered after finding that milkmaids seemed somehow immune to smallpox, which otherwise not only made people gravely ill but had a mortality rate upwards of 30%. The reason, it was discovered, is that they were regularly exposed to cowpox which sufficiently strengthened their immune systems to provide effective immunity to smallpox. And thus the field was born.
Herd immunity does not make vaccines work better, but is a tertiary effect whereby unvaccinated individuals can receive effective protection simply by living in an area with a high vaccination rate. In extreme cases (such as with smallpox) diseases can even be completely eliminated, but this requires extremely effective vaccines that prevent infection and spread, vaccines that are robust against mutations, and diseases that are unlikely to be able to exist without humans. None of these factors apply to COVID or the vaccines developed for it.
Besides the impact on business (from sick workers, contamination or even fines¹), herd immunity can be leveraged by vaccination. Nobody really want to talk anymore about herd immunity because of how to concept was used during the first wave earlier this year. Herd immunity is not a magic bullet and will not make those who decided not to be vaccinate immune. It is just with a higher threshold, you reduce the probability of infection inside the not immune population. The concept was distorted during the first believing on the self immuninity response to the virus and that the immunity will be a "once for all" scenario. The damage is done in the public view about how the concept is perceived and tossed away. However, the main logic about massive vaccination is mostly about herd immunity (and the hypothesises that the vaccine will have a lifetime/long enough action and no mutation of the virus will change it enough to render the vaccine useless).
So to answer,
> taking the vaccine does little to prevent others for catching the [virus]
Yes, with a high enough threshold, herd immunity will reduce the probability of others in your environment to get the virus. You can see it like a network effect where nodes that could be infected finish by being surrounded by nodes preventing infected nodes to reach high-risk ones modulo the hypotheses stipulated above.²
Besides that they are also social, economic, politic reasons to push to massive vaccination programs. But for me, herd immunity reasons are the why, I tend to be in favour of a nation-scale vaccination program.
¹ For example in the Netherlands if a worker is contaminated at his workplace, the company have to close their offices during two weeks and pay a fine.
Widespread immunity leads to overall lower levels of sickness. Vaccines aren't just to protect the individual being vaccinated, they benefit the larger population.
Herd immunity until now referred to immunisation (ie vaccination). It is not at all clear that allowing people to get infected and recover will achieve the same result.
Also, the main purpose of a vaccine is herd immunity.
If a large enough majority of the population become immune that we achieve herd immunity, that will still protect the minority of people for whom the vaccine didn't work.
The issue with herd immunity are the unknown long term risks. Just imagine this stuff wrecks your immune system a couple of months after infection. Or, that immunity goes away after some months.
There's no guarantee that herd immunity helps. On the other hand, we could be working all hands on deck to arrange our lifestyle AND protect from infection.
Herd immunity is a real phenomenon -- it's the strategic goal behind widespread vaccination, and the reason that vaccination controls disease even if less than 100% of the population takes the vaccine or gets immunity from it.
That said, I think you're right to be skeptical of the "let everyone get it and we'll have natural herd immunity" idea.
The idea is that when you get sick, your body just starts randomly throwing things at the virus to see what works, and eventually it finds something that “works”, even though it might not be the optimal solution. The vaccine gives your immune system a plan for the “most effective” solution, which is expected to act more quickly and cover more variants. This is why they are also recommending people get vaccinated even if they have already recovered from an infection.
The etymological tidbit is but a distraction from the meat of the issue, which is that you are wrong.
Namely, herd immunity absolutely does make vaccines work better, and is the basis of all vaccine policy in the modern world. I'm not even sure how you can state it's a tertiary effect when it is the primary reason vaccine policies exist.
You're simply spreading misinformation. Herd immunity due to vaccination has resulted in the eradication or near eradication of multiple deadly infectious diseases over the last few centuries. And if not for humans, then look only to farm medicine. Ignoring the power of vaccine policies and mandatory vaccination walks humanity back hundreds of years. Eradicating small pox took hundreds of years. We've been combating COVID-19 for close to three years.
Ask yourself: what qualities of a COVID-19 vaccine would satisfy you?
Herd immunity is a thing, but as I heard one scientist describe it: It's not a question of achieving herd immunity or not, it's a question of how. Mass vaccination also leads to herd immunity, it's achieved by creating immunity in individuals through a vaccine instead of by contracting the virus naturally.
Ok, but besides my main point (regarding doing a cost benefit analysis), from your comments I doubt you understand herd immunity, and probably should not be attempting to teach others about it...
If the virus is too infectious you need very high rates of immunization for it to work.
Most of the time those R0 values assume "well mixed populations" (any one person is just as likely to contact any other person) amongst other things, so don't take them too seriously. However, the basic idea that you don't automatically get herd immunity is simple enough. Eg, just what I found quickly on the topic:
>"Whether vaccination of healthcare personnel can lead to a herd effect reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza among patients is still inconclusive. Pooled data from a Cochrane review of 3 cluster randomized controlled trials showed no reduction of laboratory-confirmed influenza (OR 0.86, 95% CI 0.44–1.68; p = 0.66), lower respiratory tract infections, admission to hospital (OR 0.89, 95% CI 0.75–1.06), and deaths from pneumonia (OR 0.82, 95% CI 0.45–1.49) in patients when healthcare personnel were vaccinated [35]. However, given that mathematical models suggest a herd effect [36], more rigorous studies need to be conducted."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3171704/
I would say that vaccines work to prepare the immune system to fight a specific threat, but that doesn't mean the virus or the disease disappears. It just mean that the infection's impact is mitigated on the individual and, with time, on the population.
Each vaccine protect the person that takes them from the illness, sometimes making it not dangerous, sometimes blocking it completely. They are effective for you even if only you take it.
Herd immunity is only a nice side effect when you have enough vaccinated people and the vaccine is good enough to stop the spread.
Preventing infection is very important in reducing spread of the disease to others. Vaccines in the end work best when we reach herd immunity, and that occurs by preventing most infection, and thus the possibility of mutation.
Vaccines does significant help in reducing the severity when a person get sick, which reduces the work load on the health care system and allowing the personal to focus their time and skill on people in worse conditions. That is great, but it changes the initial strategy in terms of application and goal.
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