What saddens me the most is that when I got my first jab (european country) I was given a leaflet clearly stating that a) the vaccine works by giving your immune system a workout to get it better prepared to fight the infection, b) the vaccine is not a silver bullet in stopping you from contracting and spreading the disease, c) even with the vaccine we need to continue respecting basic health and safety precautions like wearing masks and social distancing.
The message was clear: the vaccine significantly mitigated the impact of the pandemic, such as the need for lockouts, but the problem doesn't go away.
Consequently, where I am we're seeing vaccination rates close to 80% and pretty much everything went to normal. The infection rates are increasing slightly right now, but it's a far cry from the shitshow that we've endured around the spring of 2020.
This is really concerning be because it seems the world already forgot that this first batch of vaccines were nothing more than an emergency stopgap solution to buy the world some time until it figures out how to put a stop to it. Even though we're no longer seeing emergency response teams piling up dead bodies in makeshift tents, the root problem is still there, completely unaddressed.