Looking back, we went from "The pandemic will be over when we reach herd immunity" (the last correct statement from Fauci), to "Vaccinated people can't get COVID", to "vaccines protect against hospitalization and death", to now knowing that they offer only a little protection and wear off very quickly.
Adults who aren’t up to date on their COVID-19 boosters may have “relatively little remaining protection" against hospitalization compared to those who haven’t been vaccinated: CDC
www.foxnews.com
During most of that time, the "experts" were also saying natural immunity wasn't effective and lasted almost no time. We now know that it's far more effective than the vaccine and can potentially last for years, some say a lifetime. And it appears that the people who had the really bad cases of COVID tend to have the strongest immunity from it.
Some of the other things we learned from COVID:
-We were (and probably still are) ill prepared for such viruses
-Money and big pharma controls the people in charge
-Politics has infiltrated healthcare
And none of those things are good. Our country did a shameful job responding to COVID and we need to be demanding better from our government. I suspect our response also led much of the world on their poor handling of it.
It seems like the more a country tried to play Mother Nature, the longer the pandemic lasted. China is still in a mess, currently having yet another major outbreak. I suspect masks and vaccines made the pandemic last longer here too. Countries who let it run it's course reached herd immunity sooner. Granted, they might have had more initial deaths, but possibly less in the long run.