It's a stretch to call it almost useless. It is certainly effective in reducing the number of intensive care admissions and deaths. The problem is mutations keep popping up before we can obtain herd immunity. The vaccines needs to be continuously updated.

I wish I could find the article I was reading a few days ago. It said something like: zero antibodies found in vaccinated until 2nd jab, then the effectiveness of the 2nd jab seems to struggle to bring it up to 50%.

I would call that nearly useless. If they are ignoring these poor statistics and just rolling back to pre-covid rules I'd say its worse than nearly useless.

50% is much, much better than 0%. Also there is a reason some vaccines need to be administered as 2 doses. It is irrelevant to mention the antibodies after the first dose.