Are you sure about that?
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20...-variants.aspx
It could be it is only the extremely successful vaccination campaign that has made Omicron 'seem' less deadly. New Zealand is near the top of the ladder in death rates per 100,000 people right now. We are on track for around 3,000 deaths 'with Covid' this year I reckon. The historical estimate is that we lose 500 people 'with the flu' each year. So it looks like Omicron is six times worse than the flu from a mortality perspective. And that is because Covid-19 is so much more transmissible than the flu, not because it is necessarily more pathogenic. It is the R value that is the real menace behind Covid-19 these days, not the pathenogicity.
I am going to wait for the Omicron wave to wash though before I let my guard down. That isn't because of fear (I do believe I will get Covid-19 in the end, am resigned to it, as in the longer term there will be no way to dodge it). But I would rather catch it later, when we have more meds and the medical boffins know more about the virus, and there are more hospital beds available.
The United Kingdom is currently the only country in the OECD with a higher hospitalisation and death rate than NZ. Not exactly a shining example to follow.
SNOOPY