Does this study actually conclude that vaccination is better at preventing being infected with variants? It looked to me that the study only proves that specifically the spike protein antibodies from the vaccine bind more generally than spike protein antibodies generated by a natural infection.

However during the course of a natural infection, antibodies would be generated for more targets on the virus than just the spike protein, wouldn’t it? Meanwhile the vaccine exclusively produces spike protein antibodies. This study doesn’t make any statements about how much effect those additional antibodies would have against variants.