No, people were always saying it but have only accidentally become correct now due to sufficient vaccination and omicron's lower fatality. The risk of death from COVID is now a bit less than the flu.

Note it's still bad, you don't want to catch it. But you don't want to catch the flu either. People who think the flu is nothing are confusing it with a common cold - I got a flu Jan 2020 and couldn't get out of bed for days.

Long COVID says hello.

That exists but it's overrated, the numbers include people who have a cough a month later.

The more important point is we've just been ignoring every other "long X" condition, like multiple sclerosis.