I doubt people are going to respond that didn't receive it, after being publicly attacked and shamed for 2 years. Now everyone wants to just act like that mass psychosis never happened.
In the former case, having a firm policy to get vaccination rates over the critical threshold to halt spread has a reasonable justification: we literally can’t do that without you.
A lot was missing from the original trials as well. No study of impact on transmission, no routine testing to detect asymptomatic cases.
Most vaccines are neutralizing meaning that it primes your immune system so well that you couldn't possibly get sick. It seems that these new vaccines, for whatever reason, doesn't elicit the same benefits that we're used to seeing from traditional vaccines.
If memory serves, the subsequent data suggested that we could have reached herd immunity with something like 90% vaccination rates against the original strain. Delta and especially Omicron put paid to that, however, and closed any chance of most people being able to avoid infection.
Researchers did eventually do that, after the vaccines had all been approved and people forced to take them. They found there's no difference in viral load between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. So reducing symptoms is now the consensus position on what they do, but that could easily have been known from the start.
When the efficacy of the vaccines was so high for preventing serious cases, it would have been a medical ethics problem to delay getting them out to the public while trying to get better data on spread.
When that kind of data did come out later, it showed strong effects — unfortunately, as noted this was against Alpha and Delta was already chipping away at efficacy:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02054-z
> Two studies1,2 from Israel, posted as preprints on 16 July, find that two doses of the vaccine made by pharmaceutical company Pfizer, based in New York City, and biotechnology company BioNTech, based in Mainz, Germany, are 81% effective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections. And vaccinated people who do get infected are up to 78% less likely to spread the virus to household members than are unvaccinated people. Overall, this adds up to very high protection against transmission, say researchers.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2116597
> Before the emergence of the B.1.617.2 (delta) variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), vaccination reduced transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from vaccinated persons who became infected, potentially by reducing viral loads. Although vaccination still lowers the risk of infection, similar viral loads in vaccinated and unvaccinated persons who are infected with the delta variant call into question the degree to which vaccination prevents transmission.
Not on infectiousness or spread, that's the whole point we're making here.
"When the efficacy of the vaccines was so high for preventing serious cases"
They claimed based on trial data 95% efficacy against infection, not just serious cases. That wasn't accurate.
"it would have been a medical ethics problem to delay getting them out to the public while trying to get better data on spread"
They had many months. Regardless even if this wasn't the case, it's easy: make them available and then don't impose any requirements or passporting until such data is available. They didn't do this.
You appear to classify literally any criticism of any process or happening to do with vaccines as "antivax talking points" even though they're precise and specific to this event. Do you realize that for vaccines to be safe and effective, you need a whole lot of people who are willing to be "antivax" in the regulators, pharma companies, doctors surgeries and more? The only reason anyone believes in vaccine safety at all is the assumption of lots of people who will yell stop at the slightest hint of problems. It's clear that this assumption is wrong and the people most afraid of being classed as "anti-vaxxers" are the very people meant to be watching out for safety problems.
The thing is, they’re not precise or specific. You keep repeating vague claims which are contradicted by the scientific evidence. If you’re not anti-vax you should ask whether you’re getting these points from people who are, or whether your belief about how science works is shared by actual scientists. For example, it is a complete falsehood that ‘you need a whole lot of people who are willing to be "antivax" in the regulators, pharma companies, doctors surgeries and more’ — critical review is a core part of the scientific process, nowhere more true than for new drugs and vaccines, but that’s not antivax — that’s scientists doing their jobs. The problem with antivax thinking isn’t that it’s skeptical but that it’s based on unwillingness to follow or accept the scientific process.