Playing devil's advocate (I don't agree with the conspiracy one bit). They might be saying that the war happened, and then "the media" used that to stop talking about covid.
Honestly, I would say that's just the media jumping on the next thing. Everybody was sick of hearing about covid for 2 years. The war was also a lot more threatening by then (at least in Europe).
As for Covid's evolution, like all pandemics before it (plague, spanish flu, swine flu, ...) disease evolution and human immunity reduces its danger and importance.
