This thread was obviously sewn with an acceptance of the stance that you argue things from the political party you side with. I think it's unfortunate, because no-one can claim the high ground if they start "on one side" and then throw mud and pick apart little individual things. Politics will be what they are, and most are on the mindset that you have to win. But we need a serious side of pragmatism if we ever want a glimmer of hope that we might, as humans, win against a pandemic and the changes it will impose upon our lives regardless of our political beliefs.
What does wearing a mask do? If you're infected, it decreases the spread of the virus to the air immediately surrounding you. We've very recently learned that with variants such as Delta, even the vaccinated can have a lot of virus in the moisture of your nasal passages, and that means that even if you never really get sick, there's a possibility that the virus can get spread to the air immediately surrounding you. Masks decrease this.
Are you completely safe once you're vaccinated? No. While information particularly about the newest strains are always evolving, the vaccine greatly reduces incidence of hospitalization and death. It likely decreases infection, and it may shorten the time that you might asymptomatically (or pre-symptomatically) spread the virus due to the viral load in nasal passages.
Should you be meeting indoors with groups of 10 or more? Hanging out in bars and restaurants? Probably not. Of course it's hard on small businesses if people stop going out and spending money in the same ways. But some of us would like the pandemic to end. That means different things to different people, but to minimize the spread of mutations, it seems like we should be looking to choose safer options for how we live our lives until those charts have gone down for a while and then move sideways at a very low place on the graph. A combination of vaccination happening too little and too late in densely populated areas has been a great cultivation for mutations, and now we have versions of the virus with better skill sets to spread. So what should you do instead? How about going back to ordering food for pickup and hanging out outdoors and maintaining distance between the people you're around!
Is the vaccine worse than the disease? Yes and no. For some people, they can be infected with little or no symptoms, while for some people, the vaccine knocks you on your ass for a day or two, and it's really miserable. I don't think we've had any (morally questionable) studies to determine if it's the same people. I imagine if the vaccine sucked, the disease likely sucked worse! But I don't have science on my side, for good reason. And yes, taking the vaccine is making something 100% happen vs the maybe 10.8% (so far, confirmed cases only) chance of catching COVID-19 in the U.S. (Which means up to 90% are still excellent vessels to help spread and mutate the virus, unless you've already got one of the vaccines helping you build up your body's natural anti-body defense system.) And yet, it's one of the best tools we have to reduce hospitalization, death, and infection spread. If you can, talk to the chemists who developed the vaccine, and find out their motivations for making a vaccine! For sure, they are paid to do a job, but they are also excited to be a part of helping humans fight viruses. They don't care if it helps a political cause (or at least, it's not remotely their primary motivator), and they would really prefer neither side use it as a political tool. For individuals, the choice to vaccinate or not should be pretty simple. It might save your life, and it might save others' lives, and in reducing the overall spread and mutation, it should also help us get back to "normal" freedom and autonomy and gatherings and not having to wear masks so much. Shut out all the other noise.
Have politicians and agencies contributed to this being a shit-show? Does that make any difference to the virus? The virus thanks all of you.