Every one of these is a great question.
The vaccine helps protect against the spread quite a bit, but its true strength is in helping people’s immune systems fight off an infection. The UK was hit with the Delta variant a few weeks before we were and the percentage of people vaccinated is a bit higher but you can see in their new cases that they are not seeing more people get sick. They are on the decline and we can expect that too in the US.
Above are new cases while below are deaths. Comparing the charts is where you see how much these vaccines boost immune response. In March of 2020 there was no vaccine and the deaths were very high. In January 2021 there was another wave of infection and the deaths among the partially vaccinated public were proportional. In the recent wave of infections relatively few people died. The vaccines help a lot.
SARS-CoV-2 won’t ever go away. It is here to stay. Everyone will get it, maybe even more than once. If you’ve been vaccinated or had a bad case then it will likely be like catching a cold. If you haven’t been vaccinated then it likely will be miserable but you’ll probably not die as it does have a 99.9% survival rate even without the vaccine. I’m not one to shame and I strongly oppose mandates. You are an adult and can decide for yourself if you want to give your immune system a head’s up, and you can see the statistical benefits of doing that, but if you’re hoping it will blow over or miss you then I don’t think that will happen.
As you can see with the statistics in the UK it is not true that the more people get vaccinated, the more cases they have. The chance the vaccine is the mutation is zero and that is the problem. The vaccine has the original S-Spike while the variants have slightly different S-Spikes which can confuse your immune system. You are still far better off having had the vaccine then not, but variants can get a little further before being recognized by your immune system.