I hope you’re right but it may be a little too soon to say. Deaths are a trailing indicator as I know you know. But it could be any of or combination of things including vaccines, better treatments, and a less virulent strain all working in our favor.
Unfortunately, daily deaths are pretty much the same they were before vaccines. But infections are triple what they were at the peak in 2020! So I am hopeful that this will be the end of it as you are but with this many new infections it’s just too early imo to say for sure. With 750,000 infections a day it’s going to take several weeks to see if Omicron is less deadly or if the vaccines are preventing deaths from climbing in proportion.
It is an anecdote, but I know of several people tested positive in the last few weeks - I knew very few before Omicron. All of them suffered flu like symptoms but none of them required anything more than at home care, bed rest, fluids. Some are still recovering. All of them are relatively young and otherwise relatively healthy people. I do worry about my elderly relatives right now and hope they avoid the virus.
DEATHS
2,654 JAN 11 2022
2,048 JAN 11 2021
“Deaths are a trailing indicator”
It seems that with Omicron, all of the lag times are significantly shorter - the doubling time, the time for a wave to peak, the time between infection and symptoms, the average time to get out of the hospital, etc.
In the London Omicron wave, the crest in new cases was followed almost concurrently by hospitalizations.
I expect that we will see the death rate follow the drop in cases more closely than past waves as well.