You rightly noted that deaths occur a few weeks after contraction of the virus, and hospitalization usually somewhere between those two dates. So the hospitaliz

You rightly noted that deaths occur a few weeks after contraction of the virus, and hospitalization usually somewhere between those two dates. So the hospitalization curve also follows the infection curve with a delay. Therefore, hospitalization might still go up. The following argument is often completely ignored, even if Omicron hospitalizes only half as many percent of infected people as Delta, it will reach the same absolute number of hospital patients one doubling period later, which is around two to three days later for most countries. I.e. it doesn't matter for the question whether public health systems collapse if you don't stop the wave of infections.