Carrier scepticism and carrier advocacy talk past each other. Against a peer with mature reconnaissance-strike networks, the flat-top's survivability inside the first island chain is genuinely doubtful. Everywhere else on earth, nothing matches its ability to move a self-contained air force to a crisis.
A theatre-specific answer
The honest position is uncomfortable for both camps: carriers remain decisive instruments in most of the world and wasting assets in one particular sea. Force design should say so explicitly.