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now you can be pretty certain of someones political affiliation if they choose not to wear a mask

Arguably it's the other way around. Not wearing a mask (if voluntary) is the normal and natural choice, which should tell you nothing about a person at all. Choosing to wear one even when not required, on the other hand, tells you a lot about that person and their perception of risks/expert status etc.

“Vaccines prevent you getting the worst of the illness”, on other words, a treatment…

I think this offhand and flippant, even if I personally believe what you're saying is true.

The largest issue with COVID was the over saturation of healthcare facilities, that's the only reason the UK locked down at all.

Oversaturated healthcare is a problem for people who have the worst effects of COVID and people who otherwise need beds, since their bed may be taken up by a person with COVID.

Vaccines lowering the spread of the virus may be true, not really going to argue that point, I'm more pointing out that vaccines do not halt the spread and thus a vaccine pass is a poor way of saying it won't spread.

Instead you just prevent the non-vaccinated from participating in society, when in reality we probably need people to remain unvaccinated due to underlying health conditions or to understand health complications that can arise through the vaccine and/or the virus when unmitigated.

I'm not claiming "anti-vax rights", though it might sound like that, it's just not very scientific to have no control population.

I agree, and we've always had an anti-vax minority, in every country. The problem with covid wasn't primarily what you describe though, but that that anti-vax sentiment exploded enough that healthcare everywhere choked more than it should have. Then stronger measures were needed as a response to that. Which is unfortunate in just the manner you describe.

There's always been "unconventional" (diplomatically) ideas, and that's great since some fraction of them do turn out correct. But with the last decade or two of ubiquitous social media use, the fringe ideas that aren't dangerous in 0.1% of people, are very dangerous if they reach 5 or 10%.

This is not a defense of authoritarianism on ideas, but merely describing the practical effects.

Regardless of your position - pro-vax - I love that you point out the political elements to this.

The politics goes deeper: the definitions of the terms 'vaccine' and 'virus' were changed, governments have undertaken the biggest advertising campaign in history effectively bankrolling the media, people who died of unrelated causes but had a positive test were counted as covid deaths which plainly skews statistics, governmental psychological units were given a few rein, large corporations were allowed to remain open but small businesses were not, etc.

These are examples of how this was handled not in a neutral way, but to advance a political agenda. Especially when you consider that most western countries were implementing the same measures in a coordinated way.

> So why do you need to have a vaccine pass to go places? You can still carry the virus and infect people.

Even if they aren't 100% effective, vaccines still reduce both the likelihood that you will become infected and also the likelihood that you will transmit the virus to others.

Not sure why this was downvoted? Studies have shown that vaccination does indeed reduce both susceptibility and transmissibility (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.27.21268278v...).

It's downvoted because HN has a very strong and vibrant anti-vax community.