Many vaccines were developed, the less effective ones aren't really a matter of "reputation" but something more like luck. Many things were tried, some worked better than others. There was no guarantee that never-before-approved mRNA-type vaccines were going to work, be safe enough to use, and work better than other vaccines, but it did turn out that way. That was not a result of a priori superiority or reputation, but an experimental technique happening to work out well.
Did it though?
Imagine each wave of new Covid variant leaving a percentage of the population a little less strong, with a little more brain fog... that's a way more frightening gradual descent than the inconvenience of a periodic total lockdown.
I don't think perfection is possible, but I also don't think that living with regular exposure is going to work out very well for us. The biggest thing I fear is that we end up with a weakened and lower IQ population while countries like China that do their best to limit exposure will stay stronger overall because they are willing to work with a periodic lockdown. Lockdown supply chain problems can be solved a lot more easily than widespread heart, lung, and brain damage.
The reality seems to be much more like long term disease side effects are relatively common, extremely difficult to diagnose, and just starting to be understood.
For example there have been recent publications indicating the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV, often called "mono") is a cause or potentiator of multiple sclerosis.
We also have "chronic fatigue syndrome" and "fibromyalgia" which are essentially just clusters of symptoms with no known definitive cause which are quite possibly "Long-<disease X>" among others.
You're also neglecting the long term psychological and other effects of lockdowns.
It is not clear that the benefits of forced lockdowns or forced vaccinations beat the alternatives or that such things are justifiable in a free society... and if you want to live in a dystopian society that matches your morality I suggest you move to one.
As for me the cost/benefit of lockdowns has become clear to me and I'll vote with my feet if faced with another one.
The vaccines don't work well enough to extinct the virus, and the virus is too contagious and has too long an incubation time to make lockdowns work (and new variants seem to be evolving to become more contagious which defeats the effectiveness of masking.
You can offer people vaccines to slow spread and reduce individual risk which means health systems will be less strained when peaks come around, but forcing vaccines won't and hasn't worked. You don't live in a police state where your opinions get to be forced on everyone, and even in very controlled societies (i.e. China) they're still having the same troubles.
China is dealing with the same thing the west dealt with before, but just delayed because of their increased control.
It's time to stop pretending perfection is possible and accepting the risk of covid is unavoidable and doing what is reasonable to limit it without resorting to forcing measures on people when the long term effects of those measures tend towards zero. (delay instead of prevention).
People have developed a kind of religious zeal about this though so actually changing hearts and minds to "do the best we can respecting choices" from "it's possible to eradicate this".