To be fair, we were never overrun with COVID patients, even pre-vaccine. Since the beginning, we've only had a single day with a case count of over 300, and that occurred last week. Our numbers this summer were pretty well in line with what they were last summer when we had no vaccines. I really think in our case, it's more our small and relatively spread out population, and widespread compliance with public health recommendations, in addition to very high rates of vaccination. I'm certainly not a vaccine skeptic, and I think widespread vaccination definitely played a positive role, but we were doing relatively well even before the vaccines rolled out and our numbers are going right back up, just like everywhere else. They just don't look all that dire because our numbers have never looked bad by comparison to other states.
I definitely think the vaccines work, especially against older variants. I was on orders with the VTARNG from November through June doing contact tracing with the state health department and you could see the impact of vaccination in the caseload as they were rolled out by age group. Cases among seniors started dropping like a rock and much of the caseload shifted to younger people, particularly high school and college students. I talked to a 95 y/o man who had severe respiratory issues pre-covid and was a breakthrough case, but he basically had the sniffles. Without vaccination, I'm sure he'd have been dead. I think that the current rise in cases even here where almost 70% of the population is fully vaccinated speaks to the fact that Delta is the real deal compared to older variants.