It has been both frustrating and predictable to see the antivaxxers — and, paradoxically, many of the most pro-vaccine people — drag the goalposts to the far side of the field by claiming that any breakthrough infection "proves" the vaccines aren't good enough and/or a failure and/or "they" lied to us and/or horse dewormer.

One year ago, the hope was that we could make covid-19 manageable, or at least reliably survivable, for most higher-risk people. We were hearing jubilant stories about mildly promising results of various trials in Japan, about monoclonal antibodies for $50,000 a pop, about hydroxychloroquine possibly having a statistically significant benefit.

Now we have a $20 vaccine regimen that might knock you out for a day and has a 70-90+% efficacy rate against a dramatically worse variant, and the Western world, driven by social media largely distributed from the United States, is determined to complain about it. Meanwhile, it appears that a single-shoot booster every six months (bummer, but really) could essentially restore your protection to early-2021 efficacy. Better yet, the mRNA platform, now proven, allows easy tweaks to adapt to new variants.

If you doubt the efficacy of these vaccines, even as their protection wanes and the delta variant spreads, compare the infection and vaccination maps on the NYT website. They look like negatives of one another.

All of which is to say: The U.S. should start welcoming back vaccinated Europeans, the focus should be on promoting boosters, and vaccine mandates are going to become a de facto imposition for international travelers — imposed by foreign governments and U.S. travel providers — whether the U.S. government or certain states agree or not.