You don't know that it's only like a cold. You know that the symptoms are more like a cold than the flu.

They also said Delta and the original strain were like pneumonia and the flu. Symptomatically, the symptoms were much the same.

But the autopsies showed a lot of damage to the vasculature and organs. All of them. Avlot of people who survived Covid now have chronic problems akin to MS, IBS, etc. I saw an article about someone who now has diabetes after Omicron. No verification yet, so grain of salt, but still.

Don't confuse symptoms with disease.

The same symptoms that might mean you have the flu may also mean you have a brain parasite that's most likely going to kill you. While that's obviously an extreme example, the point is to not assume disease severity will follow symptom severity in every case.

We don't know for certain what kind of long term effects this virus is going to have on the quality of life of people who have had it.