It isn't just about variants & surges. One of the major problems with COVID is that baseline levels of the virus are high for the majority of the year. That excludes many people, especially those at higher risk, from participating in society as most indoor spaces are unsafe.
It's infuriating to see minimizers keep saying that people don't need to worry because we aren't seeing a surge as large as Omicron. Without layers of public health protections a much lower (but still high) level of community spread can make many indoor spaces unsafe.
Of course this is all just deceit on the part of minimizers. Their real stance is that they don't care if people get reinfected over and over, and they don't care if the most vulnerable are excluded from society.
But minimizers can't say straight out that the real policy they support is unmitigated mass infection, so they keep repeating falsely reassuring statements like "don't worry about variants" or we "have the tools," so they can create the illusion of pretending to care.
@luckytran I mean, they are saying that now, just straight out "sucks for you but don't expect us to be minority inconvenienced or even give a shit" and it isn't being called out by bystanders as the appalling atavistic stance that it is so, welp