For shits and not many giggles, I just went back through this thread. It pretty much seems that my "pessimism" was warranted.
How are those who earlier considered this pandemic fake news doing these days? Over 800,000 Americans dead so far, and Omicron has only just started its tour in the hospitals. Impossible to say how many have died globally, but certainly multiple million and counting.
No fake news peeps, this virus is real, dangerous, and not done with us yet. Please, please take the local advice of your public health experts, not opinions and advice from conspiracy theorists or politicians. The focus of public health authorities at the moment is to try to ensure that Omicron does not completely overwhelm hospitals. It is milder disease, but far, far more contagious, so the pure numbers of infected persons may yet prove to overload hospitals.
One expert I heard interviewed said that Delta (the last dominant strain now being kicked out by Omicron) was the most contagious respiratory virus known when it was studied. He also said that Omicron is far, far more transmissible than Delta. Omicron is a whole new ball game in transmissibility, which is why it is exploding in so many jurisdictions. There is a bit of good news with this - it is possible that Omicron is as contagious as a corona virus is likely to get, and that will make it more difficult for new potentially more lethal strains to out compete it.
Stay safe peeps, with luck and a bit of management by authorities, the Omicron wave may be the last really bad one.