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being scared doesn't actually do anything for anyone, but the vaccinated do not have zero risk. if the virus is always kicking around, then there will always be vaccinated people dying of it.

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tens of thousands of people in the USA die every year from influenza. This does not cause most of us to be "scared" of influenza. Why not? Because (1) the individual risk is vanishing low except for a relatively small high risk demographic (2) the public health aspects (i.e. overloaded health care systems) are generally easy to control because it is not extremely infectious.

(1) is and always has been true for COVID, but (2) remains unresolved at this point.

The risk of long COVID sticking around in immiserating form long-term once you have it is unknown, but the risk of getting long COVID (defined along the lines of at least a few COVID symptoms sticking around for a few months) is much higher than the risk of death from Flu (starting from the assumption of not yet having caught either in a given year). I hesitate to post anything here on this subject that's not carefully worked out, so all I'll say is my personal back-of-the-envelope order of magitude calculation based on public data, comparing with other per-year risks such as cancer, didn't give me any confidence at all.

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