The vaccines appear to be providing very good protection against hospitalization and death. This was the original goal -- to keep people from getting super sick and dying. Then the focus shifted to preventing infection entirely. However once it became clear that the vaccines didn't provide sterilizing immunity, a lot of places remained focused on cases.
If you plot cases versus deaths in countries like the US and UK, it's clear that the vaccines are doing what we needed them to do most and as more and more people have some level of immunity (either through vaccines or prior infection) the virus is looking less and less menacing.
It's true that COVID continues to strain hospital systems, primarily because of unvaccinated patients and vaccinated patients who are high-risk to begin with (due to age, immunocompromisation and comorbidities), but getting out of the "overwhelmed hospitals" situation is going to be really, really difficult. Resource and staffing shortages didn't just begin when COVID started. According to Becker's Hospital Review, "For most level 1 trauma centers and tertiary care facilities, operating intensive care units at 80 percent to 90 percent capacity is standard — even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit."[1]
Between the large populations of vaccinated individuals and those with natural immunity, it's getting harder and harder to justify maintaining restrictions indefinitely on the basis that SARS-CoV-2 naive individuals in certain populations (namely the elderly, overweight/obese and diabetic) and high-risk vaccinated individuals are filling ICUs that were already routinely at 80-90% capacity before the pandemic.
At some point, learning to live with the virus also involves accepting that we can't shut all of society down when ICUs fill up.
[1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/patient-flow/2-healthc...
