The truth is we still don't know anything about omicron. Read the two paragraphs below, I have bolded the sentences of concern to me:
South Africa has seen only a modest increase in hospitalizations for severe COVID-19, even 1 month after cases started to explode there. “We’re all still really cautious about that data, but it seems to be holding out,” says virologist Wendy Burgers of the University of Cape Town. Moreover, early signs suggest South Africa’s Omicron wave may not last long. Cases are already decreasing in Gauteng province, the outbreak’s epicenter, which is a bit of a mystery given how transmissible Omicron seems to be, says Trevor Bedford, a bioinformatics specialist at the University of Washington, Seattle, and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He suspects part of the explanation is that more infections than usual went unnoticed because they were mild or asymptomatic, so the real peak was even larger than official statistics showed.
But early data from Europe, which has an older population than South Africa, are less hopeful. Based on early hospitalization data, for example, a report by modelers at ICL concluded there are “at most limited changes in severity compared with Delta.” “I don’t know how to square these two things, and that is probably giving me the most pause at the moment,” Bedford says.
Are we more like Europe or South Africa? We tend to be older, so there is a risk we are more like Europe. But anyone saying this is certainly milder or certainly as bad as Delta is selling something at this point. We don't have a wide range of data in. I am still hopeful it is milder and the European numbers are an abnormality. But hope isn't proof.