BBC: (A) study in South Africa .. points to the Omicron wave being milder.

It showed people were 70-80% less likely to need hospital treatment, depending on whether Omicron is compared to previous waves, or other variants currently circulating.

Prof Cheryl Cohen, National Institute for Communicable Diseases, South Africa: Compellingly, together our data really suggest a positive story of a reduced severity of Omicron compared to other variants.

There are other studies but the SA one might be the most informative since they have a low vaccine uptake rate - so we know it's not just the vax that's reducing severity.

BBC: The University of Hong Kong found Omicron was better at infecting the airways, but worse at getting into the deep tissues of the lungs, where it can do more damage.

Great. Stay the fuck out of the deep lung tissue. If you can exist in the airways then we can all get along fine.

Although Omicron could be a blessing, i can't see any reason why it couldn't mutate again to become more severe - especially with thousands of labs around the world madly passaging it through humanized mice and god knows what to achieve exactly that result.

The bottom-line is that those in greatest danger of an adverse Omicron effect are the elderly with co-morbidities - and the the drug companies.