Vaccines definitely have a positive effect. However, at this point most of it has been already accounted for by vaccinating the elderly populations at risk. Most Western world has elderly vaccination rates over 90-95%, including supposedly anti-vax regions, e.g. Florida [1]. The marginal effect of vaccinating young healthy populations with marginal covid risk is likely to be marginal. Realistically speaking, there aren't that many effective levers the authorities can wield. My hope is that the pattern we've seen in US southern states and BG/RO, i.e. steep short delta waves, will replicate elsewhere.
To keep things in perspective, covid mortality in Germany was 1.2/k since the beginning of the pandemic, compared to 10/k annual death rate from all causes. Hopefully the vaccines will help keeping this number even lower. Further confounding the issue, the death certificate cause of death for infectious diseases often times masks other systemic issues, for instance people with cancer are more susceptible to die of influenza or pneumonia [2]. What I suspect is happening is that covid replaced influenza and pneumonia as the Grim Reaper of choice. Remember that flu "paused" last year [3].
[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine-trac...
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33107375
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/10/08/flu-season-...