> If not enough people get vaccinated, transmission won’t be stopped.
The comment above yours literally just explained that the vaccine does not stop transmission of the virus! You're repeating catchphrases from 12 months ago when the government was insisting the vaccine stopped the spread of the virus; when they knew perfectly well that wasn't true!
Mutation doesn't happen with transmission. It happens with replication of the virus, which happens continually as long as there is a host.
The mutation rate is dependent on the size of the global population of virus carriers, so one country's policies with respect to covid are highly unlikely to have a significant impact on it.
And like I said, not vaccinating low risk groups could lead to herd immunity through natural infection faster.
Overall, there is very weak justification for a policy as heavy handed as forced vaccination (via instititonalized discrimination against the unvaccinated).
Transmission rates affect host rates. Why is this so difficult to understand? People on HN should be versed in enough math to work out that reduced transmission rates = fewer hosts = fewer chances for mutation.
> And like I said, not vaccinating low risk groups could lead to herd immunity through natural infection faster.
That isn't true at all. Mutations will pick up as long as (a) there is pressure to mutate (which vaccines do cause) and (b) there are enough chances to mutate (transmission + how long the virus stays active in your body).
> Overall, there is very weak justification for a policy as heavy handed as forced vaccination (via instititonalized discrimination against the unvaccinated).
It is very strong justification, just that some people use very strange reasoning to convince themselves otherwise.
The vaccine does not stop 70% of transmission. To date sufficiently large RCTs have not shown that the so-called vaccine reduces transmission by even 1%.
Mutation rate also doesn't have anything to do with transmission. At all.
If the virus has a fertile easily infectable unvaccinated population to continuously mutate in, herd immunity is unlikely to be achieved.