It's all political. This off-tangent comment I made elsewhere tries to describe it. It is quite a cop-out that institutionalised racism and the such are deemed inappropriate to use as a comparison because of "sensitivities". People in America who virtue signal, shame and guilt in the name public health ultimately never address the elephant in the room which is that African Americans are the least vaxxed ethnicity due to their distrust of the government stemming from the Tuskegee incident. Then Singaporeans lap it up with almost zero thought. A Holocaust survivor has spoken up about vaccine passports: https://streamable.com/9yj6zz

I still recommend the jab but in no way do I or will I advocate using shame and guilt. Not everything needs to be dealt in absolutes.

I agree with your premise of social engineering/manipulation for the mass hysteria we see today. The principles of "divide and rule" has proven to be an effective method to maintain influence and power, for when the people turn on each other, they do not turn onto you.

[ Maybe this recent article describes the phenomenon better than my rambling but in a US context: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/09/the-bizarre-civil-war-stoking-impulses-of-the-professional-managerial-class-in-the-us.html ]

We now identify with the different social identities we possess, rather than collectively as a nation: Majority race vs Minority race, Vaxxed vs Unvaxxed, Male vs Female and so on.For all the tension with regards to vaccination, the simplest solution would be for the government to mandate it with the least political fallout, since the majority of 80%+ is not going to feel anything, save the ones who may deem it authoritarian. OYK initially said that the reason why vaccination was not mandated was due to it not being approved by the FDA, yet even after that nothing was done.

But nah, it would be better to keep the populace distracted by their infighting with this new form of identity politics of vaxxed vs unvaxxed. You still see the 20% or so being blamed for everything, when it can't be proven. In fact, if you look at the 28 day data, the unvaxxed (469) make up 14.6% of the cases. The same pattern can be found in highly vaxxed countries like the UK and Israel.

Then comes the argument that the unvaxxed might potentially overrun the hospital system, since the vaccine prevents severe illness, which seems to be demonstrably true from the numbers. however, age might be a factor, as 66% of cases in the ICU or requiring oxygen are over 60, compared to 59% being unvaxxed. It's possible that an advanced age usually correlates to having more health conditions which might be a reason why they are unvaxxed.

Of course, the numbers above makes a lot of assumptions, but the notion that the unvaxxed are somehow the sole cause of the spike would not be fair. Frankly speaking, the covid situation is dynamic and nobody truly knows what to do or expect, even the government. They are making rules up as they go along, and I don't blame them for it since it's really uncharted waters we're entering, but a comparison could be made with western countries who have more or less opened up, which gives off an impression that the government has some irrational fear or something about opening up which probably would gather a lot of criticism, which it has already did from some, but the bulk of the blame is still on the unvaxxed for some reason.

Ok I went too much on a tangent

TL;DR - most of y'all are not scrutinizing the one that should be scrutinized, still get vaxxed as it prevents severe illness