alt Hacker NewsVaccines that have a large impact on transmission and infection are there not just for you but for your community.
The covid shots were good against hospitalization and death in older folks, but they were not great at preventing infection or transmission (despite what you may have gleaned from the speakers blaring ads in every public setting for all that time).
You can fall back to the "flooding the hospitals" argument, that works a little better here.
You're misinterpreting data here. You are conflating the fact that the clinical trials didn't measure infection/transmission (which is very hard to do in a clinical trial) with the distinct claim that they didn't reduce transmission in reality.
The vaccines were extremely effective at reducing transmission during the first waves of COVID, where such an intervention was most valuable. And due to viral growth dynamics, even small reductions in transmission yield big net outcomes.
50% - 70% reduction in transmission: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116597
Later waves made the vaccine much less effective at reducing transmission, but still highly effective at reducing hospital utilization which is (despite your snarky aside), extremely valuable. Fatality rates doubled when ERs hit full capacity.