To remember that normal people from our own social circles get infected and usually survive just fine. Rather than pretending that every infection is an overweight, anti-vaxxer, etc. who dies immediately after destroying the local medical facilities. I think both sides of the severity discussion would benefit from keeping the human consequences in mind, whether they are more or less severe than imagined.

Agreed, yet at some point society has to be productive again. Living in constant anxiety will ultimately be more destructive than the disease everyone fears if it has not already.

I actually completely agree. COVID is endemic so now we’re just prolonging the inevitable getting-on-with-it and the only question is how much damage we do pretending otherwise.

> and possible future variants within the realms of cold/flu ?

Delta was already "within the realms of" the flu. Omicron so far appears to have shot past that and is on its way to a cold.