The actual infection fatality rate in the US was never as high as 1.4%. The CDC estimated it at 0.6% back when almost no one was vaccinated. Now with vaccines and improved therapies the fatality rate is much lower.
The earliest IFR's were always around 0.3%, and nothing much changed since. Officially they inflated the numbers with tricks by factor 10 (ie reporting only the CFR). Statisticians were furious.
Severity changed drastically, with Delta suddenly targeting young people and long COVID. But people got vaccinated, IFR stayed low. Now severity is swinging down with Omicron.
"even if we grossly inflated the death rate by using reported cases as a crude metric, it would still be just 1.4 percent"