Every COVID variant has the possibility to be more transmissible and more deadly. Taking this with the cavalier attitude you want to is ridiculous. You sound like the “it’s just the flu” people, who ignore the fact that 50 million people died of the flu in 1918.
COVID needs funding because COVID is even more serious. We don’t know how to treat it as well as we do influenza, which is well-studied and nowhere near as novel.
So it doesn’t matter if it isn’t severe right now. The potential is not worth taking lightly.