I know of people who still won't go to church because of all of the above and are, for all intents and purposes, still deathly afraid to leave their homes. Regardless of what some might say in argument against your point(s), I absolutely do think that part of the public health emergency was the abject panic that ensued following COVID.

I stopped exercising caution earlier on in the pandemic, because in my estimation my relatively good health, age, and literature that was available (D3 being an important predictor of outcomes) meant that I was unlikely to have a poor outcome. I did eventually get COVID in Dec 2021, but aside from a total loss of smell for 12 days and a dry cough it was little more than an annoyance. I isolated, as appropriate, for a week or so (never had a fever) and went about my business. Yet, nearly two months later, I remembered telling someone that I had had COVID, they recoiled and backed away as if I were still infectious. Fear is a strong emotion.

Part of it is that the general public doesn't understand viruses. We can't see them. That's a problem, because it's an unseen enemy with (at the time) unknown outcomes—especially with rapidly changing information. I don't think the media helped either, because they relish in bad news.

My mother was very nearly hospitalized last year, though. Not from COVID but from RSV. I suspect over-sanitization reduced our baseline immunity to your typical run-of-the-mill pathogens, but I'm neither a doctor nor a biologist so that's little more than a guess. I have some friends who are nurses who suggested the theory, and they may be right.