They were lifted because voters were angry and made that anger known to politicians, who responded in a political manner rather than a medical manner.

Exactly what I expected to hear.

Let's acknowledge that at least some of the stuff we're seeing is being driven by politics to the detriment of actual science. Some of that might even include (gasp) information about vaccines.

The fact that politicians act primarily based on political input is hardly a novel idea, and is not in itself evidence that scientists act in that manner when publishing scientific results. You're going to need actual data to back that later bit up, because at present you are just casting aspersions based on conjecture.

2020 vaccines were made for 2020 variants. Summer 2021 brought new variants that are more contagious than the 2020 variants. Its not hard.

So... then it was a surprise?

variations in the virus are predictable, but which ones really catch on and how are hard to predict.

I don't know how phizer/moderna/etc balance needs to develop different drugs against all possible variants but I expect that once a strong variant emerges they are well incentivized (financially and culturally) to scale up development against it.

The real surprise is how slowly our social and political institutions respond, not our pharma institutions.