Unfortunately most of the world isn’t even taking it seriously anymore. People treat it like it’s a mild flu or common cold.

The virus is still producing waves of infection consistent with the pandemic phase of spread rather than the endemic phase and has not moved into a seasonal pattern like the flu or colds. It’s just not publicised in the media. Scientific studies show that Omicron was just as lethal as the original Wuhan strain and the current Omicron subvariants are similar - the virus has not actually gotten less severe as hoped (and in the case of Delta, it actually got more severe; thankfully that lineage did not give rise to the variants we now face).

The only difference between 2020 and now is that we have vaccines, but people need to keep up to date with the boosters. The efficacy of vaccines to prevent severe illness and hospitalisation wanes quickly, with a recent study showing it can be as low as 50% after four months.

We also know that the risk of long COVID is cumulative - i.e. it goes up with each infection and the increase in likelihood depends on whether you’re up-to-date with the vaccine (having the most recent booster roughly halves the increase in risk from an infection). A recent study estimated that 400 million people now suffer from long COVID at an annual cost of $1 trillion to the global economy. This will only continue to get worse if people continue to catch COVID every year or two.