@skinnylatte Aaaand Pancake Day. Celebrations are like buses.

@unchartedworlds COVID is still with us, but there is a real distinction between the early pandemic and now. The excess mortality in the first and second waves was very high, but after widespread vaccination and exposure (and the deaths of the most vulnerable) the level of excess mortality is now equivalent to winter influenza peaks. Here's figures for European countries, 2020-2023:
Nørgaard, S.K., Nielsen, J., Schjørring, C.B. et al. Excess mortality in Europe estimated by EuroMOMO during the COVID-19 pandemic and previous influenza seasons. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-67981-1

I wish people and governments took all respiratory illness more seriously, especially because of its long-term effects (I still mask in public when I can and I isolate when ill), but this does help explain why people see a difference between then and now. The level of illness and death is more "normal", even though normalising tens of thousands of deaths of flu - or COVID - a year is terrible.