I think this offhand and flippant, even if I personally believe what you're saying is true.

The largest issue with COVID was the over saturation of healthcare facilities, that's the only reason the UK locked down at all.

Oversaturated healthcare is a problem for people who have the worst effects of COVID and people who otherwise need beds, since their bed may be taken up by a person with COVID.

Vaccines lowering the spread of the virus may be true, not really going to argue that point, I'm more pointing out that vaccines do not halt the spread and thus a vaccine pass is a poor way of saying it won't spread.

Instead you just prevent the non-vaccinated from participating in society, when in reality we probably need people to remain unvaccinated due to underlying health conditions or to understand health complications that can arise through the vaccine and/or the virus when unmitigated.

I'm not claiming "anti-vax rights", though it might sound like that, it's just not very scientific to have no control population.

I agree, and we've always had an anti-vax minority, in every country. The problem with covid wasn't primarily what you describe though, but that that anti-vax sentiment exploded enough that healthcare everywhere choked more than it should have. Then stronger measures were needed as a response to that. Which is unfortunate in just the manner you describe.

There's always been "unconventional" (diplomatically) ideas, and that's great since some fraction of them do turn out correct. But with the last decade or two of ubiquitous social media use, the fringe ideas that aren't dangerous in 0.1% of people, are very dangerous if they reach 5 or 10%.

This is not a defense of authoritarianism on ideas, but merely describing the practical effects.