It wasn’t just about preventing transmission - the vaccines dramatically reduced the rate of hospital admissions, which in theory should have allowed the health systems of the world to keep up with fewer infection control restrictions (like lockdowns, masking and social distancing).
I agree that forcing vaccines on people was, at the very least, ethically questionable. OTOH, there was a tremendous amount of misinformation and fear-mongering that would have had an outsized negative effect on the public health response, were vaccines not mandated.
Most "misinformation" was pro-vaccine -- that vaccinated people either could not get sick or could not transmit covid or that natural immunity was inferior to vaccines or altogether irrelevant.
"A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus, the virus does not infect them, the virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else, it cannot use a vaccinated person as a host to go get more people." -- Rachel Maddow
"When you get vaccinated, you not only protect your own health and that of the family but also you contribute to the community health ... in other words, you become a dead end to the virus." -- Fauci
"If you have had COVID-19 before, please still get vaccinated" -- Rochelle Walensky
I agree that forcing vaccines on people was, at the very least, ethically questionable. OTOH, there was a tremendous amount of misinformation and fear-mongering that would have had an outsized negative effect on the public health response, were vaccines not mandated.
There’s plenty of blame to go around.