The vaccine(s) that are out there either: 1) prevent you from getting the virus or 2) reduce the severity when you do get it. Either way, your "incubator" status is reduced. Not eliminated, but reduced. The idea that these things "in no way prevent" is very much mistaken. They absolutely do prevent. But not entirely. So, the question becomes whether we fight the war, knowing that we can't win a decisive victory, or just give up.
There has already been one major pharma company that scraped their vaccine because it didn't approach the efficacy of other vaccines. So, there is good testing in place to determine whether these things are effective, and in particular populations where they may not be as effective.
One very interesting aspect of the new type of mRNA vaccines is that adapting to viral mutants may be as simple as plugging a few new letters into a string of code on a computer, since it's a synthetic reagent. While we hope that there will be lasting immunity, as many on here have pointed out, we don't know what's going to happen in the long term. We may need to reimmunize on some schedule, the longer the better.
Ultimately, most medicine is focused on treating symptoms rather than disease. We can't cure cancer, we can't cure Alzheimers, and we can't even cure the common cold. But man, I know this seems like it's never going to end, but a vaccine is a step toward normalcy. I'm not one to drink the Kool Aid - I didn't think we'd have vaccine until later this year, if ever (never gladder to be mistaken) - but I want to believe.
