Yeah, they've just stripped away the ability to know what's going on outside of wastewater monitoring, anecdotes from social media, or checking hospital capacity. If they aren't stacking bodies in refrigerated trucks we aren't hearing about it.

My impression is that over the past year it hasn't been as devestating as before, less deaths and vaccines and immunity from previous exposures are helping, but it's still causing hospitals to max capacity when covid is peaking, and it's still several times more of a problem than the flu, with much greater risk of long term health impacts, and the waves aren't seasonal.

The wastewater for my city shows a wave starting every three months, and it seems to match covid outbreaks in the long term care home my friend ended up. Less hospitalizations and death, which is great, but it's still a huge problem, especially if repeat infections accumulate damage and increase risk of... everything, like a lot of data is showing. And the amount of variants out there, still being detected, and with crazy mutations, is troubling.