Look at the rate of deaths. Last December was about half the death rate of december before that. It's looking like this year will be half of the prior year. Thi

Look at the rate of deaths. Last December was about half the death rate of december before that. It's looking like this year will be half of the prior year. This is despite the number of cases generally being higher in the latter years generally. Some dependence on when the virus first hit. Long term side effects and hospitalizations are going to correlate with the death rate more than the infection rate. I find the the NYT data viz to be the best and most accessible: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/new-york-covid-cases.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/new-york-covid-c... There is strong reason to believe that despite omicron's higher spread factor, it won't increase exponentially forever and will instead drop off rapidly as its done every year in every geography sometime soon. It's not a dud yet, but it's trending towards that through a combination of better treatment, vaccinations, immunity, and particularly vulnerable people dying. Omicron looks like it could reach a much higher number of infected in new york soon, but I doubt we will see a higher rate of hospitalizations or deaths than last year in spite of this. We should have the evidence to confirm or deny these assumptions in a few weeks once we're comfortable with any lagging data issues.