Sure, it makes some news, but I personally didn't see marked exaggeration. It was labeled a variant of concern and we didn't know how bad it could be.
I don't have a problem with how I saw it reported. Maybe you have an example of something egregious?
I think at the beginning it looked like it spreads like wildfire, and the concern was that with ~2x the number of spike protein mutations compared to Delta, that it would render our immunity (whether vaccine or natural) ineffective.
I think the reporting wasn't exactly "the end is nigh!!!" level, but it was definitely alarmist about the
potential implications of the above.
Remember that three things would ABSOLUTELY warrant quite alarmist reporting, if all three were true:
- Omicron spreads much more quickly and effectively than Delta.
- Omicron significantly evades our natural- and/or vaccine-derived immunity.
- Omicron is similarly lethal in relation to Alpha or Delta strains.
Right now #1 looks to be true. As far as we can tell, #2 may not be--our vaccines may still protect (at least outcome-wise, if not infection/transmission wise) from Omicron. And the early data suggests that #3 may not be true.
So... We'll see. As long as the vaccines are still effective at preventing hospitalization/death, and especially if Omicron is by nature less lethal than previous strains, it won't be all that big of a deal, at least in developed countries with high vax rates and robust medical infrastructure.
