You are looking at this like a trip mine when you need to understand it is a time bomb. Deaths and cases are hard to track because we no longer track Covid at all in any official capacity- this is why all of the charts take a nosedive around this time last year and by itself is something we have never done for any medical affliction in the past that we were not positive was completely eradicated, if that tells you anything. We are not doing anything about this, and it is not going to simply get more innocuous over time because every mutation evolves around any measures we manage to take against it thanks in no small part to all of our unvaccinated "friends". It doesn't matter that we have vaccines when only something like a tenth of the population in the US is vaccinated- and this is not even counting that vaccinations for JN.1, the "current" strain, are expected to be available in the fall when Covid has already mutated beyond that, again, to KP.2 or FLiRT variants... this is why it's not endemic. There need to be predictable seasonal patterns to be classified as endemic and because this thing mutates lightning fast, and every infection kills your immune system that much more, we are in a near perpetual wave of infections and re-infections year round. That sounds like a fucking pandemic to me, still!

Even so, the deficit of vaccinations and frighteningly rapid mutations are easily worked around with better air filtration policies across the board and support for PPE education and distribution- prevention rather than treatment- but our institutional ability to keep up with this is not there, nor is the will. I would even go as far to say that the public don't want to do any of it because it's simply inconvenient. We never have to do "lockdowns" (ugh...) we just need to be fucking smart and have an iota of compassion; a tough sell in this economy, apparently. I don't know about you but all of this really does not spell out anything good in future to me.

The long-term effects will largely not be seen all at once like the mass deaths were but gradually over the course of the next 5 to 10 years when, if we continue the course we are on, enough of the working population will be permanently handicapped and operations start to crumble. It is already happening now, in fact. City infrastructure where I live and in many other parts of the country is falling apart. Have you heard about pilots falling asleep in the air and with such frequency ever before 2020? Buses and trains are late more than ever, operators are sloppy and rude more than I have ever seen in my near-decade of living here. Construction has a massive attendance and capacity problem with everyone succumbing to long Covid and other things you really ought to wear PPE for that we decided we just aren't going to do or support doing anymore. Motor vehicle accidents are up astronomically since 2020. Hospitals globally are experiencing critical staff shortages from illness and burnout both. The domino effect will be unprecedented, and like climate, this is a touchstone crisis of our generation that we are completely and utterly bungling because of attitudes like this. It's not a cold. It's not even really a flu. It's airborne AIDS.