Plagues. Plural. That's the outcome of allowing a disease to run rampant that damages our immune system; It increases the vulnerability of the overall community to other diseases that our community should be more easily suppressing. Like monkeypox.

Also, downplaying lockdowns on a plague of this timescale would only serve to increase the odds of the exact same outcome over a longer period of time.

New Covid subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 are the most contagious yet – and driving Australia’s third Omicron wave | Adrian Esterman

The latest variants are masters at evading immunity – meaning previous infection and vaccines are unlikely to provide much protection against catching it

While still not as concerned as they should be, for hundreds of thousands of people dying, this article is surprisingly candid for corporate media nowadays. Like mentioning that the omicron strains are different enough that they should probably have their own letters but for some reason the WHO hasn't done so...🤔

Also, the "original" Wuhan strain had an R-0 of 3.3, omicron ba.4/5 is running around at18.6!🤯

OG Omicron had one around 10, I think.

To be fair, a lot of the data on the long-term effects and low immunization of Omicron were only examined in recent months. Initially, people were happy that it did not seem as severe.

Hot take: you don't need to be fair to people who think your life is less important than rich peoples' money. And there were plenty of warning signs that OG omicron was not less severe and numerous doctors out there trying to get people to stop calling it mild. Omicron, all the way back in december/january, was known to at the very least be on par with the alpha variants, but a lot of news media kept calling it mild (forgetting to mention: compared to Delta) so they could try and give the illusion that covid was evolving to become less severe and the bullshit version of what they called Endemic. That's how we ended up with suckers like ENZ coming around here saying, "Why should we be literally sequestered in our homes indefinitely in fear of a virus with a less than 1% fatality rate that's getting milder and milder with ever passing mutation?"