“Yet there is no denying that the horrendous carnage seen in hospitals and nursing homes was largely stopped when a significant percentage of the adult population over 50 was vaccinated..”
There IS doubt. The supposed “horrendous carnage” from Covid has been completely corrupted by financial and political incentives throughout the health care community, which conflate deaths WITH Covid with deaths FROM Covid.
Hospitals literally get reimbursed tens of thousands of $$ per case for assigning Covid as the cause of death, and are even given legal assurances and encouragements that when in doubt they SHOULD err on the side of assigning Covid as the cause.
With these morbidity stats so deeply corrupted, there can be no meaningful data regarding the effects of vaccines on same.
You are right about one thing. there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics. The CDC has lost the trust of many health care professionals as it has done summersaults to make the data and the “science” comply with the political narrative of Biden’s commissars. Yet my impressions are formulated by what I directly saw and experienced. There was little doubt in my mind that January thru April 2020 was a horror and once a significant proportion of the population over fifty received the vaccine the situation improved markedly until the delta variant appeared. However even with the appearance of the delta variant those who were vaccinated and contracted it did not usually become seriously ill, go into respiratory failure, require ventilators or die. The vaccine definitely has side effects, may not protect as well against the less virulent omicron, probably should not be used on children , young males or the low risk previously infected but has definitely had an overall beneficial effect IMHO.