The intense focus on vaccines, and the concurrent avoidance of focus on social responsibility (test/trace/isolate, ventilation, hygiene, wastewater testing, etc.), is an effective way to maintain a hyper-individualist, consumption-based culture.

As you say, COVID doesn't give a rip about our feelings, or our politics. Or our sayings, like "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." As individuals, it kills some of us, or weakens us long term. Doesn't make those individuals stronger. And we think about ourselves mostly as individuals. That's another big piece of White Empire mental colonization that has pervaded most of humanity.

So it may seem the saying isn't true. But as a species, the saying is true. Covid (and whatever else comes along) kills or weakens the less resistant individuals among us, they don't breed any more, and our species becomes overall more resistant. We might become more resistant as a species in other ways, as you describe, but we are not choosing those ways.

Larger systems don't give a rip about our alleged brilliance or our obvious stupidity. As Humberto Maturana puts it - we do what we do to get what we get, even when we say we do not want what we get. We make choices. They have consequences, whether we like those consequences or not.