Yes, each can't replace the other but let's admit it, online gambling help us survive during the pandemic time. They are very effective as alternative to the physical gambling. There are risks in online gambling but that can be prevented. One of it is to be scammed by the casino.
We don't need to rush but we must look for feedbacks first if this casino here is truly legit or not. In case something bad happens to us like we lost our funds. We can try to report them to the gambling authorities including here on our forum. I already saw lots of successful stories here where a gamblers account have been recovered or their funds have been returned.
The pandemic changed everything, people realized how frail was the world they were living and with that realization came a sense of doing what they could to live a normal life under those circumstances, and gambling online was one of the ways in which those people learned to cope with the situation, after all we must not forget there was nothing to watch on TV as no new shows were being produced, sport competitions were suspended and only old shows were aired, so people desperate to find some sort of excitement on their lives used online gambling to deal with this.
Hence why online casinos became a trend and the pandemic even paved a way for these casinos to be a much bigger industry than what it is a decade ago. And just like you guys have said, people did not have that much option about finding past time and a sort of entertainment at that time as there is no radio to hear and no television shows to see as people are barred to go outside their house. Even now, online casinos are still booming and we here knows that very well as we did notice a lot of casinos surfaced that wanted a promotion from us.