These latest COVID variants can still vary a lot in their effect on a person. My youngest brother got one of them about 10 days ago (or at least that’s when symptoms started to show up.) He was pretty sick - about like a bad flu, tho’ not quite the same symptoms. The fatigue part was the worst, he told me. Just knocked pretty flat for several days. He’s a few years over 60 and pretty healthy — but as he put it “I guess I’m no longer the Iron Man”. If he’d been seriously overweight or out of shape, it’d have likely clonked him harder.
He’s hoping to be back to work next week, but leery of follow up effects, as he works with a lot of older people through his job at a VA clinic, and he’s seen a bunch of patients get smacked down after initial recovery, with some not surviving the round 2 problems. In general, severe cases are rarer than the Delta wave in particular, but not everyone is lucky.
BTW, flu is nothing to, ahem, sneeze at, if you have co-morbidities. My other brother was in his mid 50’s in good physical condition (walked to and from work each day, about a 2 mile round trip, and lots of activity at work), but he smoked. Flu came about this far || from killing him.
I should perhaps modify my last sentence: Strictly speaking, complications from the flu nearly killed my brother. But since flu and his smoking set up the conditions for the complications to occur, and since he’d not suffered serious health problems until he caught the flu, flu as a major causative agent still works for me. :(