It is sort of a numbers game. Let's turn to actual data instead of conjecture. Massachusetts has the best disclosure I've seen across the states on cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities by age in that state. All the data that follow are for MA only, and for the two week period ending December 10, 2020.
For that time, 82% of the cases came from people under 60 years of age. Yet, the under 60 crowd accounted for only 25% of the hospitalizations in that two week period and, imagine this, 6% of all fatalities.
Let's look further at the 80+ crowd. In this two-week period in MA, they accounted for 1,783 cases, which is about 0.59% of all people 80+ in MA. On an annualized basis, that implies that people over 80 in MA have a 1.55% chance of being designated as being a COVID19 "case."
However, 338 people who were 80+ died with (but not necessarily from) COVID19. If we assume the 338 who died are in the 1,783 case count, the case fatality rate was 18.96% for the 80+ people.
This means, in order for the vaccine to be effective, it has to NOT cause complications for more than 0.59% of the 80+ lot in any two week period (1.55% annualized), and of those who get complications it can't kill more than 18.96% of them.
And we don't know how this vax will perform on them, because we (apparently) didn't do wide-spread testing on the cluster that is most at-risk. Brilliant.
Meanwhile, the firms tested this vaccine on 'younger' people, and the govt is pushing this group to get all vaxxed up. But why? In MA, for this two week period, 33 people died of the COVID or 0.078% of the two-week case count, or 0.000619% of that age cohort's population in MA (0.02% annualized). Per the CDC, that the aggregate fatality rate for all people (old and young) of influenza.
So, in conclusion, using MA as a proxy for the US, the media and society and govt are pushing a vaccine that's been tested on the people who need it least, but we don't know if the 'cure' will be worse than the virus itself for those most at risk - who you'd hope the govt wants to protect.
It's the perfect way to end 2020.
PS, the 33 fatalities in MA in the two weeks ending Dec 10, 2020 were under 60 years of age. That age bracket also took up 63 hospital beds, which is 18% of all hospitalizations in MA in that period.
Excellent reply!
Like I said we will know very soon. The vaccine isnt manadorty for nursing home residents but I would say many are now fed up with quarantines and will risk the vaccine if it means they can released. For many of them their days are short no matter what and they would prefer to live them versus being locked down.