2 years of almost 24/7 daily death counts by the media. Non stop fearing mongering and doom by the talking heads. Mandates and other restrictions. Then Russia invaded and the news never talked about it again. Then all other restrictions were lifted.
Personally I think the narrative was simply collapsing. Even for normies having 3 vaccines and still catching covid makes absolutely no fucking sense.
The population was weakened enough, panic was getting diminishing returns in terms of emotional response, and enough economic damage was done anyway to be satisfied with the whole thing.
Much better to introduce a new, fresh, panic scare to which people still haven't adapted emotionally to, to start milking them dry again from another angle.
Also there is only so much attention you can milk from a single person at a time. Now the narrative must start be about wars, so spending too much time worrying people about viruses is silly for the time being.
If the war even gets boring and people lose interest, it will be resetted to another virus scare. Then another war. All up until 2030 when the NWO is finally ready to unveil and pick up the mankind scraps and put them back together under some fancy form of feel good slavery