Oh, fuck off with that shit.
The reason the flu and cold numbers are down is because people are isolating. Fewer people clustered together + fewer people in offices + fewer people in schools + mask laws + social distancing == fewer people getting sick. That's common sense shit.
And just to preempt that commonly-spread alt-news gem where masks are ineffective because viruses are small enough to travel through them: the point of masks is to catch saliva aerosol, and it's extremely effective at that. "Airborne" pathogens don't spread through air particles, but rather through saliva. The asian countries figured that out decades ago, and masks were in widespread use in Japan long before COVID due to their proven ability to reduce the spread of viral infections.
I suppose I should also point out that one of my best friends ended up with COVID. Not a serious case, but it was enough to knock her on her ass for nearly two weeks, and she remained lethargic for the following week. Another one of my friends was basically useless for a full week. I don't know about the former, but the latter said it was way worse than any cold or flu he'd ever had before. Both are healthy individuals, one in their early 30s and one in their late 20s.
Like anything else, it affects people differently. There are plenty of well-documented cases of otherwise healthy people ending up on respirators, while there are some cases of people who got away with a relatively light case or showed no symptoms. The flu can also kill people (we'll get into how lethal it is in a sec), but it just doesn't have a two week incubation period (therefore greatly limiting its spread from both asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic hosts) and the risk of developing severe complications, including the possibility of permanent organ damage, is significantly lower. So, you know, just a slight difference between the two.
As for the protests...uh, what? If you were actually paying attention you'd know that the number of cases, particularly in certain hot spots, spiked around May/June 2020 then. It just wasn't being widely reported on because--I dunno--there were fucking riots happening? How about paying attention to the actual data instead of the sensationalist headlines?
The mainstream news is far from the most reliable and unbiased source, but the alternative is just as bad for the exact same reason. All it does is encourage people to regurgitate bullshit and eschew common sense and basic logic.
The reason COVID is a big deal while far more lethal diseases aren't is because it has a long period in which people can be unwitting carriers, as well as a non-negligable risk of death (2% of 1,000,000 is still 20,000) as well as an elevated risk of developing severe complications such as pnumonia. For comparison, per the CDC, the death rate of influenza is 0.0152% (the WHO estimates a figure of 0.1% across the global population). Of course, the actual death rate is difficult to determine since the number of asymptomatic hosts is impossible to determine, but the other factors at play make COVID-19 a far more serious pathogen than the common cold or the flu.
Oh, and before you even think about making a big deal about asymptomatic cases skewing the results: that's not limited to COVID. You could argue that the death rate on the flu is also inflated since one can also carry and spread influenza (and other pathogens) without showing symptoms. If you've ever been in a workplace where you were the only person who didn't come down with a virus, you were almost certainly an asymptomatic host and possibly spread the virus to others at some point. Food for thought.
In closing, they didn't declare a global pandemic for the fun of it. Considering how many politicians have their grubby hands in big business, why the fuck would they do something that would hurt their bottom line that badly? Was it for control? If it was, the sudden spike in firearms ownership in the US and predictable rising distrust of authority from both the left and right kinda made that a fool's errand, don't you think?