The COVID-19 vaccines are a remarkable medical innovation that may very well have saved tens of thousands of lives this past year. But let’s be clear: They are not doing what we were told they would do.

When the vaccines were first made available in early 2021, the public was led to believe that inoculation would prevent infection and transmission. President Joe Biden argued last summer that “you’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” Dr. Anthony Fauci similarly declared on a Zoom call with TikTokers that if they got vaccinated, they wouldn’t have to worry about catching COVID-19. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow claimed in March that COVID-19 “cannot use a vaccinated person as a host to get more people” and that the “virus does not infect them.”