So people that want to defend these actions then always now change the goalposts - okay it didn't stop the spread or stop people from getting it at all, but helped spread out the spread - flatten the curve, and reduce the impact on hospitals. But again that also seems completely false. Here [1] are the data on cases in the US. By August 2021 the wide majority of Americans had taken one of the shots. The biggest surge, by an overwhelmingly large margin, would come on January 2022 where we went from a former peak of ~250k to a new peak of more than 900k daily cases.
So now you again have to shift the goalposts to okay it didn't stop the spread, it didn't flatten the curve, but it reduced the rate of severe cases, and I can again provide data demonstrating that the information on that is, at the minimum, biased. In particular it is indeed true that if you look at the overall outcomes of people admitted to hospital by vaccination status, that unvaccinated individuals often had worse outcomes. But there's a rather huge bias - people inclined to vaccinate for COVID are also the type more predisposed to seek healthcare earlier, whereas those disinclined to vaccinate tend to be less inclined to seek healthcare unless it's critical. This bias (one amongst many) was repeatedly listed in the 'limits of this study' in studies, but people just kind of ignored it, even though it's huge.