While I agree with parts of your analysis, the claim that the left (or the medical establishment) has counted on vaccines only to defeat/control COVID is false. We also now have fairly effective treatments for controlling it if you contract it. And if Republicans allowed it, we could produce and distribute enough of it, ahead of time, to counter most imaginable surges in the future.

It may be useful to think about the AIDS epidemic. It is only in the last few months that deaths from COVID have exceeded the number killed by HIV. And remember, HIV killed more than 98% of people infected, not the less than 2% for the coronavirus. We still don't have an effective HIV vaccine. But HIV has morphed from an inevitably fatal infection to an extremably controllable (and for many living with it now, almost trivial) condition, not because the virus morphed, but because we developed highly effective treatments.