from what I understand, Omicron variant doesn't work with the vaccines and as predicted, respiratory viruses tend to mutate to become more transmissible and less virulent.. which is probably what we are seeing. due to the nature of the testing and the vaccine/variant relationship (plus other things) it's only really 'all cause mortality' that can be used to assess the damage done by COVID19. Using 'cases' as a metric is 100% flawed, though obviously it doesn't stop government and mass media using it to try to sell a story.