> Has the virus mutated to a less deadly strain? (It is my understanding this is a common trait of "pandemical" virial diseases.)<p>It has not (necessarily), and it is not.
There is no evolutionary pressure on a virus becoming milder over time, it can go both ways.
What you see in action is the vaccines working, they were conceived to reduce the risk of death, and they did so successfully, hence you see lower deaths. Unfortunately, death is neither the only, nor maybe the most serious outcome of COVID.<p>We do seem to be in a situation where the acute phase of the disease is somewhat less hefty for many people, but even with the last BA.5 waves we have seen quite many hospitalizations, so the risk is definitely not low for everyone.
While this is for the acute phase, the long term effects of the disease, so called LongCovid, can be absolutely devastating and we have not yet seen the real long term effects (e.g. a HIV infection also only becomes serious after ~7 years). But so far we know the disease can seriously affect cardiovascular and pulmonary health, and seems to be inducing autoimmune reactions.<p>Sudden cardiac deaths, just like ischemic strokes, in young healthy adults are a symptom of how much damage COVID can do.
A more serious source like <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org" rel="nofollow">https://www.medrxiv.org</a> might be a better source of information than social media videos. A good search term for what you're looking for is "post-acute sequelae SARS-Cov-2". Some papers have images which leave nothing to the imagination, even for people not trained in medicine.<p>Unfortunately this has become an extremely contentious subject and most people have moved far beyond the simple concept of not getting sick with an extremely serious disease.<p>With your health situation, I'd take the fourth shot, and remain careful when it comes to the risk of getting infected. Not getting sick is the best course of action.