I think this is more nuanced. In the beginning, testing was very sparse and unavailable so it's hard to blame anyone for just looking at the obvious infections

I think this is more nuanced. In the beginning, testing was very sparse and unavailable so it's hard to blame anyone for just looking at the obvious infections. It took a while until we even understood that the majority of cases are asymptomatic and very mild. The 1% IFR is trueish across all age groups but not so much when you look at specific age groups. You can clearly see it in current German data: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105512/coronavirus-covid-19-deaths-by-gender-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105512/coronavirus-covi... You might have an asysmptomatic child with a 0.003% IFR and hand them to your grandparents for caretaking, with a quite high chance of putting them into the ICU if infected. So it's not so easy to deal with like a cold. Also, variants might change the distribution and death isn't the only negative outcome of a COVID infection. It's a systemic disease affecting all organs which will put a strain on the health systems for a long time to come, especially if it becomes endemic and people will just keep reinfecting themselves year after year. It's too shortsighted to just dismiss it as a cold just because cases are often very mild.