Short of 100% killing this virus, which is possible to do if we all made a concerted effort to do so - we’ve done it before, the finish line to me means being able to live without mask mandates, and life returning as close to “normal” as possible.
I don’t get the rest of your post. Does the vaccine completely and absolutely stop the spread? No, but then no vaccine does that. If the vaccine rates are high enough, we can effectively starve the virus at least here in the US of targets. And that’s the point. So many people have irrationally fought against the vaccine, that we have seen additional waves and variants of the initial virus. That’s my primary concern at this point, that this drags out long enough that we encounter a variant that the vaccines are less effective against and/or is significantly deadlier.
and you’re right that on one level we don’t know what, if any long term effects might come from the vaccines. We also have no reason to suspect there will be. These vaccines went through rigorous testing, both in the lab and in control groups before ever being approved for public use. We know that they would have included tests regarding long term side effects as well, after all, it does no good to have a cure that’s worse than the disease. you could easily say the same for every new drug or medical treatment that gets introduced.
