Both parts of this strike me as troubling reasoning. If I spread Covid during a period in which the hospitals are at capacity, it isn’t only the unvaccinated who suffer, so your original indifference to the fate of the unvaccinated (or respect for their choice, as you put it) would be inadequate to justify indifference to the fate of everyone else who needs hospital care. That was the point I was making about why hospital utilization matters to my choices—even if I were willing to respect the choices of the unvaxxed in your sense, I couldn’t be indifferent to the collateral damage. And even if most of the people in the hospital aren’t in the hospital because of covid, it does not follow that covid isn’t the reason hospitals are stressed. If you take a system with 5% excess capacity and add 10% demand for a while, that both clearly is the reason you’re over capacity despite being a minority of the demand, and also degrades future capacity by increasing burnout.
All of which makes it sound like I disagree with you completely, and I just wanted to note that, while I’m nitpicking bits I disagree with, that’s only because I think everything else you’re saying is basically right. We do have a duty to balance safety and development, and I’m happy to have my kids do social things in person and eat out myself right now. Still haven’t gotten together unmasked with friends, but the school just went masks-optional, so we’ll see if there’s a bump in absences for a week or so, and if it seems to be under control, I think even that would be okay. So I don’t disapprove of the balance you’re striking or anything.