First off masks are 0% effective at stopping an airborne virus. Period.

Secondly, onto the vaccines. Nobody is asking for 100% efficacy, we are asking for 99% efficacy, which is what every other vaccine has. Every other vaccine has over 99% efficacy but the covid shot has at best 95% efficacy for 3 months. There is a huge difference between these two numbers.

A 99% efficacy rate means that only 1% of vaccinated individuals will contract the disease, compared to 5% with a 95% efficacy rate. This reduction in risk translates to fewer cases of illness, hospitalizations, and potentially even deaths. A higher efficacy rate like 99% provides more convincing evidence of a vaccine’s ability to prevent disease. This increased confidence can lead to better public acceptance, adherence to vaccination recommendations, and ultimately, improved population-level protection. A 99% efficacy rate might be more relevant to real-world settings, where vaccines are often used in diverse populations with varying levels of exposure to the disease. In such scenarios, a higher efficacy rate can provide a greater margin of safety and protection. Although asymptomatic transmission is possible even with high-efficacy vaccines, a 99% efficacy rate reduces the likelihood of asymptomatic transmission more effectively than a 95% efficacy rate. This is because a higher efficacy rate indicates a stronger immune response, which could reduce the amount of virus shed by vaccinated individuals. 99% efficacy rate could contribute more significantly to herd immunity, as it would require fewer individuals to be vaccinated to achieve a critical threshold of protection for the community as a whole.

It’s essential to note that the differences between 95% and 99% efficacy rates might seem small, but they can have significant implications in practice. Just think of the difference, with a 99% efficacy rate in a room of 100 vaccinated people, there is only one person who can contract the disease but nobody to spread it to or get it from. Now with a 95% efficacy rate there are 5 people in that room of 100 and now there are people to get the disease from and spread it to. Since most people interact with around 150 people in their daily lives, a 99% or greater efficacy rate is needed for herd immunity. Anything less than 99% and you will not get herd immunity and now you are breeding variants that will escape the vaccine.

So instead of arguing a strawman argument that nobody believes, that vaccines need to be 100% effective to work on populations to give herd immunity, try the real argument--that vaccines need to have 99% or greater efficacy to work on populations to give herd immunity and that the 95% efficacy for 3 months is insufficient protection to give herd immunity in the population. You claim that if a vaccine is 75% effective that it leads to herd immunity, a vaccine that has 75% efficacy will never lead to herd immunity. That would mean that 25% of the vaccinated people can still get and spread the virus, how could that ever achieve herd immunity with the vaccine? You are just letting the virus blow through the population causing herd immunity through infection not the vaccine but it would still do that with no vaccine, so it doesn't help.

tl:dr version: nobody was asking for 100% efficacy, we were asking for 99% efficacy and for good medical reasons.