The whole point of a vaccine is to achieve herd immunity. The only way the virus gets “defeated” is through herd immunity, the purpose of a vaccine is simply to accelerate that process.
While we wait for that to happen, medical science will find other treatments of varied effectiveness. In the meantime, every country has to find a way of living with the virus.
As for millions of people dying, there are currently 7.5 billion people living on the planet, and every single one of them - of us - will die. It’s how we live that matters.