Forgive me, but I took your statement below to be a reference to my belief in God:

"Your view that reality is knowable only to some omniscient ethereal being preclude rational debate."

I hope you can understand why someone might reasonably construe your statement the way I did.

To be clear, I didn't raise the issue of whether the virus originated in a lab vs a wet market to obfuscate or to deflect the debate; I was merely pointing out that what we believe to be unassailable facts today may turn out to be otherwise tomorrow. This has proven especially true during this pandemic, where the science seems to evolve on an almost bi-weekly basis. To assert that any claim is "patently false" In this rapidly shifting landscape would seem to require an omniscience that no human being has.

I would love to discuss that goals and limits of vaccines, but you dismissed the points I made in my original post by stating that "[e]very single one of your claims is patently false." You never addressed my individual claims or explained why they are false. As I mentioned earlier, I love reasoned debate and would have appreciated it if you could explain why each of my claims is false. To recap, the claims I made in my original post are as follows:

1. It appears we have a vaccine that (a) doesn’t prevent breakthrough cases and (b) doesn’t prevent a vaccinated person from getting sick.

2.No vaccine is 100% effective, but I have to ask how many people received the smallpox or polio vaccines and continued to infect others and get sick? I think the answer is an infinitesimal amount. Otherwise, we would not have eradicated smallpox or polio.

3. The goal of a vaccine is to prevent infection and symptoms and eliminate spread to others.

4. Hospitalizations and deaths are nowhere near as high as they were last spring and summer when the original strain appeared.

5. The natural course of all viruses is to become less lethal with each variant.

Can you please explain why each of the claims above is patently false? Otherwise, I have no reason to believe they are.

Thank you.