If the we're looking for a vaccine that will turn what could be a life-threatening virus into "a mild encounter", then we already have that...
Anecdote alert.
The day after Labor Day, I came down with a fever. Then I developed a cough and general weakness. This persisted on and off for about 10 days before I began to recover. During that time, I drank lots of water, ate lots of chicken noodle soup, and took much Tylenol. I had a confirmed COVID test the Monday after I became symptomatic.
Last week, a fully vaccinated woman at our church tested positive for COVID. Her symptoms? About the same as mine. Duration of symptoms? About 10 days, about the same as mine. Same age as me, give or take 8 years.
Lest you think my case of COVID is atypical and I just got lucky, the CDC reports a total of 20,860 deaths in my age group since the start of the pandemic. That's with roughly 5,015,543 confirmed cases of COVID in my age group in the US since the beginning of the pandemic, or roughly 0.4%. That means that from the CDC's own data, 99.6% of people in my age group who have contracted COVID have also recovered.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, risk profiles are not the same across the board. Most (and when I say most, I mean 99.5% or more) young, healthy adults will be perfectly fine if they contract COVID. That's not downplaying the disease. It's what the data shows.
We should focus vaccination efforts where they will be most beneficial and will reduce the most severe outcomes. Again, vaccine mandates for employers completely miss the mark. When you look at deaths and severe outcomes from COVID, they are many orders of magnitude higher for the elderly than they are for younger people. Yet the employer vaccine mandate will do NOTHING to encourage those people that are at most risk to get vaccinated.