I'm afraid that this is one of the expected outcomes of lowering and even outright eliminating preventative measures, such as mask mandates and social distancing, and placing all the chips on the current generation of Covid vaccines being sufficiently effective in lowering covid-related deaths.<p>If the virus is allowed to run rampant throughout the population then the odds that an unfortunate mutation happens is far higher, as it's proportional to the number of infected hosts, and there is also an evolutionary pressure in favour of strains that aren't effectively countered by the host's immune system and spread more efficiently. Consequently, it's only a matter of time before, just like the Delta variant showed, the wrong kind of strain is developed.