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Exactly - Delta had a reputation for being both prolific and extremely virulent. Long COVID, loss of smell & taste, heart and lung problems, etc. A terrible illness.

Omicron seems to carry far fewer of those risks from what data we have, especially if you are vaccinated.

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My hope is that we're approaching a similar point the Spanish Flu did after this amount of time: Spanish Flu eventually lost its lethality and became symptomatically indistinguishable from your run of the mill flu, and hopefully COVID will eventually do the same and be symptomatically indistinguishable from your run of the mill cold. Obviously we ain't there quite yet, but with Omicron being both wider-spreading and more mild, hopefully we'll get there soon.

Iirc the Spanish flue lasted 5 years so we still have some time to go.

Started February 1918, ended April 1920; after that point it was indistinguishable from seasonal flu in terms of lethality.

I think the increase in travel sufficiently "stirs the pot" to accelerate this one. Hopefully anyway.

Interesting. Here in the UK, Delta wasn't too much of a concern. I suspect because the public messaging was much more focused on getting everyone vaccinated.

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