That's why there's this huge focus on masks stopping the spread by pre-symptomatic people, which is a highly dubious and never-before tried idea, for which basically no reliable evidence exists (masks pre-COVID being intended to stop you getting sick, not other people), and which is an absolutely pure form of virtue signalling. It's literally a highly visible sign that someone is suffering discomfort for someone else's health, except, that only works if you believe it's actually true.
Look at the Nordics. In Sweden there's no mask requirement because the epidemic is disappearing. In Norway they pointed out that given the tiny number of infected people, even if you assume masks work perfectly, 200,000 people would need to wear a mask constantly to stop one new infection. And this is a virus with an IFR of about 0.1% so you end up needing millions of people to wear masks constantly to stop just a single death, almost certainly of a person very close to the end of their life anyway.
The numbers just don't work, at all, once the epidemic has faded away. And as Sweden and other places shows it can fade away without any mask requirements.
If you don't give the virus a chance to spread, it cannot spread.
The problem is that in the US and elsewhere, people cannot seem to follow the social distancing and hygiene, so you need to find a way to physically distance people with masks and other protections.
To say that masks do not work, is untrue. There is a reason why doctors and others wear masks in their own professions.
By the way, when you say it is disappearing, that doesn't mean let the guard down. Look at what is happening in Vietnam. 100 days clean and they let their guard down and look at what is happening now.
You read the Survivors Groups on FB [0] and the real problem people aren't understanding is that this isn't quick death we need to worry about, it is the long term health effects that will lead to a lifetime of medical issues.
However, the point stands. Sweden has not had particularly bad outcomes, being as it is in the middle of the pack, and with most deaths being in care homes where Sweden has many other severe problems, e.g. many staff who can't speak Swedish. In fact in one care home they ended up in a spot where none of the staff spoke Swedish causing problems for a resident who couldn't communicate with them to get food! So given Sweden's dependency on immigrant labour for care homes it's maybe not a surprise they've had problems protecting those homes. For the general population however, COVID has not been a problem.