The problem that is emerging with COVID and influenza vaccination is theoretical, not practical.
Repeated exposures to influenza A proteins via vaccination have to be summed with your natural exposures, and your previous infections (and, probably the genetics of your IR genes) to predict the outcome.
So, population-wide, or even world-wide, assertions about whether the “flu shot” is good for you, bad for you, or has no effect are all going to fail, at some point in time.
The human immune system is designed to react to several billion foreign proteins, and your “library” is constantly being updated by breathing the air, eating food, drinking liquids, and intimate behavior.
Props to vaccine science: Life expectancy is now around 70, not 30. IN GENERAL, vaccines have promoted positive evolution of the GENERAL human immune system’s response to SOME of the pathogens they are designed to eliminate.
But these generalities do not address what is good for a single person, with their own individual exposure history and genetic makeup.
Agree with all you said but I do think the Novavax method solves a big practical problem with the flu vaccines. Namely it cuts down the time it takes to produce the targeted proteins from months to weeks. This means they don’t have to predict half a year in advance which strains are coming to the US based on what they see flaring up in China—a prediction they often miss which leads to vaccines that don’t work well. The Novavax method will give them time to wait and see which strains actually get a foothold here and then target those strains with no guessing. I don’t get the flu shots so it’s neither here or there for me but I thought it was an interesting possible development.