Semantics, Pez. I was being slightly hyperbolic, and only meant that the vaccine was supposed to stop the spread of COVID. Which everyone else in this thread managed to grasp.
Appreciate you backing off from the rhetoric, but health officials also did not promise that vaccines would stop the spread of COVID (which would be the same as saying "stopping it in its tracks").
It was believed that vaccines would slow the spread of COVID and alleviate the rate of death and severe illness which threatened to overburden our healthcare system. That's what health officials said.
Ultimately, they were correct on both fronts. Vaccines did prevent (not completely stop) transmission until later variants emerged, and even during later variants it greatly diminished the rates of death and severe illness.
I think we can all agree that I watched and read far more interviews with the health officials most often criticized by people in this right-leaning football community, and I'm telling you right now that this characterization you have of these health officials is just plain wrong.
You can STILL dislike what was done during COVID. Hindsight being 20/20, there are intelligent discussions to be had about what worked, what didn't, and what we should do if this ever happens again -- and "both sides" should be able to admit a few things they were royally wrong about.
The overall messaging from health officials about the usefulness of vaccines is not one of those things we need to revisit.
Now, if you want to talk about the morality of promoting "two weeks to flatten the curve" when most of the medical/scientific community knew that was pie-in-the-sky BS, that's another story.