So if we vaccinate, and keep vaccinated, our most vulnerable, complete the vaccination program for the rest and continue with sensible (proven) mitigation and containment practices, what are the downsides of opening our borders and why do those downsides outweigh the upsides? (And please, Soylent Green and other analogies are scaremongering irrelevancies.)
First and foremost, we are in the enviable position to be able to wait and watch how the vaccine takes in other countries, like the UK. If case numbers resume growth exponentially then the vaccine is bogus and was a waste of time. We have to remember when you say this is for profits, who pays for the thousands of hospital beds and intubated patients. Its not "free" care, we are going to pay for that in taxes and medicare levies etc etc. Just so some airlines and businesses catering for international students and tourists can make some cash. The domestic market is pretty much back to normal, mining more or less unaffected (by covid that is). This argument is just selfish, 1% is not an insignificant number, its 1 in 100, list the things you do daily that have a 1 in 100 chance of dieing, I can't think of any. For interest sake, flu mortality rate is about 0.05%, but even this is considered a high figure as a lot of cases are not diagnosed, where as the testing for covid is so high we catch a vast number of cases so have good baseline knowledge of actual average mortality rates, being between 1 and 5% depending on genetics, age distribution, healthcare etc.
Again if someone said to you, that if you chose to catch a flight it had a 1 in 100 chance of crashing, would you use air travel?