This is true in countries with high vaccination rates, but is misleading due to the base rate fallacy and simpson's paradox. One or both of which need to be accounted for in order to begin to see that vaccines remain HIGHLY effective at preventing death.
A large population study from Indiana involved over half a million people that compared vaccinated (≥1 dose) with prior infection and no vaccination. Vaccinated had 36% lower all cause mortality, 24% lower ED visits and 37% lower hospitalizations
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2022.307112 (2022-12-14)
"There were significantly fewer COVID-19 deaths in the top 10 states by vaccination uptake (73% coverage) at 75 deaths/100 000 compared with the bottom 10 (52% coverage) at 146 per 100 000 (P < .001)."
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2798990 (2022-11-18)
Based on US county level case surveillance and vaccine administration data, "A 10% improvement in vaccination coverage was associated with an 8% (95% confidence interval 8% to 9%) reduction in mortality rates and a 7% (6% to 8%) reduction in incidence.
https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj-2021-069317 (2022-04-27)
"People aged 5 and older vaccinated with an updated (bivalent) booster had 18.6X lower risk of dying from COVID-19 in October, 2022" (latest month for which data is available).
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status (as of 2023-01-24)
Unvaccinated people in the United States are about 11 times more likely to die with COVID-19 than those fully vaccinated + 2 boosters.
(As of 2022-09-03 https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination#united-states)
"Between August 29, 2022 and September 25, 2022, unvaccinated cases were 3 times more likely to be hospitalized and 5 times more likely to die from their illness, compared to cases with a completed primary vaccine series."
https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/cases-following-vaccination.html
In table 8, Alberta provides the count and rate of COVID-19 deaths by vaccination status, banded by age. In every age category, unvaccinated die at many times higher rates than vaccinated people.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220321220704/https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm#vaccine-outcomes (2022-03-21)
Updated 2022-06-26, now in table 8:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220626170559/https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm#vaccine-outcomes
Unvaccinated people in Switzerland are over 5 times more likely to die with COVID-19 than those fully vaccinated and boosted.
(As of 2022-11-06 https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination#switzerland)
COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at preventing death.
Base Rate Fallacy https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination#why-we-need-to-compare-the-rates-of-death-between-vaccinated-and-unvaccinated