The vaccine is vastly effective to prevent hospital stays and death by a very high margin.

Yes, it is true, it does not prevent spread, as we thought it might. But it prevents the worse outcome of it, which is a big win.

There's a lot of nuance here.

In what population? With what comorbiditities?

What are the other associated risks?

Based on that I've seen, in certain populations the risks of vaccination are close to, or outweigh the risks posed by covid infection.

This is why medical decisions are personal and should be made in consultation with a doctor.

If you're less likely to get COVID if you are vaccinated (which seems to be the case; at least in my city, two-thirds of the case rate is coming from unvaccinated people), then it absolutely does reduce spread. Not "prevent", but that was never a realistic outcome.

Please confirm: this means the people saying the vaccine should be a strictly personal decision were correct?

One judges decisions based on available information. All the then available information indicated that mass vaccination was the best means of reducing transmission, especially because such large portions of the population were unwilling (or unable) to lock down to prevent spread. Even then, it still has been shown to prevent spread, just not as effectively as hoped.

From a public health perspective mass vaccination was definitely the right approach.

Certainly one cannot judge a decision by its outcome, but we can perhaps learn something if the skeptics we were banning from social media ended up being correct.

Whether they were following proper reasoning or not, if they were right it’d be good to take a step back and figure out if anything in the “proper reasoning” system needs adjusted.

That I agree with. A lot of bad assumptions were revealed, but not the ones I think you are alluding to.

- If the market and the government disagree on the value of human lives, the market wins. (Basically the government should just consign more people to die, especially vulnerable populations to avoid drama)

- A nontrivial portion of the population reacts to government intervention with spiteful noncompliance (we need to be using a softer and more coercive hand than 'authority says X is the best plan')

- If we have to fall back on socialized medicine whenever there is a crisis, maybe we should just do it all the time.

- There will be more pandemics, more often, until the forces permitting them change.

As somebody who immunocompromised, this pandemic taught me exactly how little my life is valued by my civilization and government.

There is plenty of data to establish exactly what the vaccine does, and how effective it is (very), so we don't have to guess or infer from weird anecdotes.