As has been often emphasized, the reason that COVID-19 is considered a pandemic of such dangerous degree to require a rapid development of vaccine, is because it overloads hospitals and can deny many others (not just COVID sufferers) access to urgent treatment. Without that factor, the most vulnerable demographic for COVID-19 in terms of mortality rate is e.g. elderly people in care homes who are ordinarily a low priority for innovative medical treatments, and it is hard to imagine a vaccine would have been rushed just for their sake.
It wasn't rushed, the science was ready to go early last year and all they did was accelerate the first trial phases, the Phase 3 trials went quickly because infections were so widespread.
That there are multiple candidate vaccines targeting the spike protein without using the virus directly is strong evidence that the science was ready (using mRNA, viral vector and other technologies).
