what media outlet, or health official or politician or "expert" ever told the public that the vaccine would kept folks from getting the virus?
and if no one EVER said this, why do stupid people think this is implied?
Well, and the flipside of this, is that we're seeing vaccinated people testing positive, when they're not actually sick and not likely to spread it. The vaccine can't keep you from breathing in the virus and then having your body go through its natural response to infection. What it can do, and seems to do quite well, is prevent you from getting sick, prevent you from becoming hospitalized, prevent you from death. I'm speaking in statistical terms here, because of course there are breakthrough infections that have caused serious illness, hospitalization, and death. But the odds of those outcomes are significantly reduced with vaccination.
It highlights the one major problem that I've been pointing out for the past 18 months which is that, on a global scale, nobody has ever even attempted to define what "success" looks like. We somehow went from "flatten the curve" to "eradicate the virus" without any rational thought about what would and should actually be our criteria for success.
My own heuristic for success, is something like, "through vaccination and treatments, reduce the effects of SARS-CoV-2 to nothing worse than the seasonal flu in an average year, in all aspects, including serious illness, hospitalization, and death of individuals, as well as social and economic impact to society."
We're clearly not there yet, not enough people have been vaccinated and/or infected. But one way or the other, we'll get there eventually.
