It’s not endemic yet because it continues to mutate, and while vaccinations reduce how many people die, they do not equate to immunity, meaning infection rates continue to be unstable. It won’t hit endemic until the numbers are predictable, and that hasn’t happened yet.
Vaccinations also do not provide much in terms of protection from long covid. I would argue while the acute phase of covid may be working towards becoming endemic, the post-Covid condition is not. 11% of covid infections become long covid (that’s vaccinated and not combined) and 25% of those never go away. On top of this, risk of long covid increases every time someone contracts covid,as does the risk of it being permanent. So with no mitigations in place, we are pushing towards a mass disabling event that none of the health centres, governments, etc. are talking about.
Yep, this. In a couple places on the image at least. Thank you for connecting the lines and dots.
To answer your question, the loss meme started almost immediately after the original comic was released. It ebbs and flows in popularity, but seems to be something the internet can’t let go of. Lemmy has a particular fetish for it.