The COVID-19 vaccines' ability to keep people out of the hospital appears to be dropping slightly

[paleotn]

7. Possibly, but those stats don't show that.

They're comparing apples and oranges. Not to say the efficacy of current vaccines won't decline. They most certainly will, given our current level of vaccinations in the US and globally. We're inadvertently, or maybe purposefully, playing a game of find the sweet spot. That place where current variants feel just the right amount of evolutionary pressure to mutate around existing vaccines as quickly as possible.