Rereading your post more carefully this is also pretty much clear. I just found myself condemning people too much at times. How I look at things now is pretty well mentioned in this video:
The video is very funny. And is generally accurate.
A few points, however: As to possible immunity from infection - I've seen studies that indicate not Everyone gets immunity from having covid. Apparently, some people end up with no antibodies or their antibodies wane after a few months. All of this is still under investigation. The thing is the Federal government can't make recommendations with no medical facts.
We DO have data about the efficacy of the vaccines. We don't have enough data about how effective "natural immunity" is. We DO have data about how reliable the tests to determine if one is positive or negative for corona virus is.
When New York State developed a vaccine passport it would have been irresponsible to include "natural immunity" because we don't know. I know people bitch and moan about this all the time, but if we don't pay attention to science and data, it becomes a big mess of gossip.
Do I THINK some people who have been infected may have some protection against corona virus. Yeah, probably. But, I've also seen some studies that indicate some people who were previously infected got re-infected by a variant later (like months or even a year later). And I've seen studies that show a previous infection PLUS vaccination gives a person a great percentage of protection.
Here's the other point that the guy in the video missed: The US may be seen as "one" country by the rest of the world, but in reality it's 50 states all doing their own thing. And some laws, directives and policies can ONLY be done by the Federal government. Which is why dopey donnie's lack of doing anything even back in dec 2019 (and going forward all year) cost many American's their lives.
New York was infected by people traveling from Europe early on. It's THE reason we had all those cases starting around Feb-March 2020.
Gov Cuomo quickly got things under control and our case numbers were dropping by late spring 2020. And when you consider how people in Manhattan are living on top of each other, that's a difficult and amazing accomplishment. Some states have done very well and some other states continue to be hot spots. Many of those hot spots are controlled by republicans.
The reason Demark has been successful in reducing cases, deaths and complications is because they didn't waste time politicizing a public health issue.
Dopey donny made this ALL about politics right from the start. This has exacerbated fighting the virus. It's made it 100 times more difficult. It's why lies about science and health facts continue to float around even to this day. All those lies cost people's lives. Its the lies that cause distrust. I've spent everyday of this pandemic posting links to data/studies to try and fight against these lies.
Sadly, once the lies and distrust are in people's heads, it's difficult to pry it out of them.