In the US, inequality has been increasing pretty steadily since the 1970s, with periodic brief dips. 10 years ago, we thought that we could hold global warming to 1.5°C over the course of the century. Of course, we've blown past that already, and if everyone cooperated, which we won't, we could probably hold it to 3°C now. Current median predictions are worse than the "worst case, won't happen" predictions of 10 years ago. Covid and other zoonotic diseases are deeply intertwingled with climate change; Covid is not the last pandemic we're going to see in our lifetimes.
When I was a kid in the 80s, we were living under the shadow of nuclear annihilation. That threat seemed to recede, but really, we just forgot about it. Now it's worse than it was then, because it seems that the social mechanisms we had for preventing it during the Cold War no longer exist.
It's true that we probably aren't going to hit the 1.5 C goal but so far we are only at 1.2 C total, so we haven't actually "blown past" it.
Actually the worst case predictions of the past have proven to be wildly pessimistic. I think we're even doing better than the average case predictions, primarily because of less use of coal.
And COVID has nothing to do with climate change, that's just silly (especially with the recent evidence in favor of lab leak).
When I was a kid in the 80s, we were living under the shadow of nuclear annihilation. That threat seemed to recede, but really, we just forgot about it. Now it's worse than it was then, because it seems that the social mechanisms we had for preventing it during the Cold War no longer exist.