My mom was hospitalized with covid pneumonia as recently as May of this year. And an anti-vaxxer buddy of mine who was in his early 50s with two high school aged kids died from it in late 2021. I mention these not to elicit sympathy, but to highlight that I'm well aware of the damage it has wrought. That said, I'm actually more upbeat about the future than you (haha, big surprise, right?). There are two main reasons I think that covid will fade into the background as time goes on.

First, our best recent comparator is the Spanish flu. We think of it as the 1918 flu, but it was actually killing people from 1917 to 1923 (maybe it was 1922...anyway it was a hell of a long time). Eventually it just disappeared. We've seen this movie before. It's an ugly movie to be sure, but eventually the credits roll. Hopefully it won't be six years, but maybe???

The other reason is that the closest scientific comparator we have are the other coronavirus pandemics that have occurred in recorded history. There are at least 2 of the common cold viruses that started as high-death-rate pandemics. The viruses never went away, but either mutated or we just got inured to them or some combination thereof. Again, horror fades to background noise.

That's pretty fucking cold comfort for the families of the dead or the people suffering with long term or even permanent lung injuries. In fact it's no kind of comfort. It's just a reminder that no matter how shitty things are, they always get better. This will too.

The CDC squandered the best opportunity any has ever had to show how effective government can be when the situation is dire. Their leadership should all be ashamed. Not once in the entire pandemic did I hear an official statement from CDC that said, "This is what we currently believe, but the situation is evolving and we will update you all AND OUR RECOMMENDED POLICIES as facts on the ground change. Bear with us, because we're in the dark and doing our best with limited information." What a shit show. And they'll never be trusted again as long as there is living memory of 2020.