Canada

You're assuming the booster is giving you the same (or anywhere even close) to the vascular damage caused by catching the virus. As far as the studies I've read, the vascular impact from catching COVID is dozens of times worse than a booster.

You say "Maybe it didn't affect me as intensely as if I had not been vaccinated, who knows" The doctors know, that's why boosters are being offered to everyone for free in Canada.

This is one of the reasons why Canada, which has a much higher vaccination and now booster rate than the US is doing better than the US with it's abysmally low booster rate. Canada is losing about 50 people per week right now, the US is still at around 2000 (40 times higher, despite only having a little over 8 times the population)

What the world does or doesn't do is completely irrelevant to your personal choices. If they all jumped off a bridge to their death, would you do it too? I've continued masking in crowded public areas, boosted regularly (last Monday was my most recent dose), kept my kids masked at school, boosted them regularly too, none of us have had COVID at all. Make your own choices.

I did all the right things [...]

I still caught CV19 twice.

One can do all the right things and still win the bad lottery. It's about reducing risk on the whole so all our chances are reduced.

The numbers are still in favour of getting vaccinated. Complications from the vaccine are as close to zero as any medical procedure could be. The complications from raw-dogging COVID are far greater, regardless of your cohort. Turning a life-threatening infection into an inconvenience is what the vaccines do. If your concern is minimizing total risk, getting a COVID booster each year with your flu vaccine is the way to go.

Gonna be honest from the perspective of a current critical care nurse, as long as you didn't end up proned face down in the hospital with a ventilator stuck down you and paralyzed on Nimbex and losing a lobe of your lung then you got out lucky.

I have a damn near knee jerk reaction to talking about covid in which I tell people that "still got it" that as long as they didn't need serious medical intervention then they should be fucking thankful for not having to endure whatever the fuck fever dream of Hell existed in the first two years of covid in most hospitals in the US. Shit was and still is fucked beyond fucked.

edit: this is also not at all meant to downplay/ be mean everyone that got covid and luckily avoided a vent, many that contracted "mild" covid suffer from long covid with no end in sight.

It was never claimed to stop you getting it. Same as many vaccines it doesn't give sterilising immunity.

But it's completely possible it stopped you dying or going to hospital.

The vaccine causes almost no damage but COVID 100% causes massive damage if you aren't vaccinated.

I still caught CV19 twice. Maybe it didn't affect me as intensely as if I had not been vaccinated, who knows, but it fucked me up badly each time.

there being a few 2000 year old roman bridges doesn't mean they were good at building bridges that last a long time, they built LOTS of bridges and a couple out of tens and tens of thousands survived

survivorship bias

I remember when vaccines rolled out. I would have to sit down and go over it. But there was a time where I stopped having to process bodies for the morgue at my job and that was a nice change. We still saw lots of sick people, they just didn't die nonstop. So vaccine all thr way.