It seems to me people collectively decided to stop caring about COVID even though most of the risks that were present two years ago still exist. I would therefore ask the inverse: why stop protecting yourself before the danger is over?
For what it's worth, it's not exactly the same COVID. I'm no scientist, but as I understand, the majority of COVID viruses are less dangerous than the 2020 batch. Millions of people died that year. If that were still the case, we'd be seeing a lot more death.
That's correct; the omicron variant that became dominant a bit over two years ago was more contagious and less deadly than those that preceded it. Current variants are similar to omicron in those respects.