Optimizations are mostly needed for very small icons when there's only a limited amount of pixels to use, however, more details can be added at larger sizes (up to 512x512 pixels). Vector icons are NOT the type of one-size-fits-all. They look good within a range of sizes they were designed for. Desktop icons fit into the general/mid-range so they're not really affected by this.

Here's a real-life example of an icon optimized for different sizes (icon comes from trisquel-icon-theme):



And this is a visual representation of what I mean:


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