If you are the cautiously optimistic type, the news on the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has been largely positive so far — though, you’d never tell that from the media coverage. As RedState reported, South Africa’s hospitalization numbers actually dropped during their wave and cases are already tailing off.

Meanwhile, in France, they are seeing people get less sick and those that are hospitalized are in the ICU for a shorter period of time. That’s more evidence pointing to a lack of virulence regarding Omicron. Even as it is more transmissible, it seems to be far less dangerous, presenting itself as a mild cold in most cases.

“.. emerging good news from France, .. the vast majority of French ICU patients leave within a week, in sharp contrast to the earlier Covid waves.” We’re “increasingly hopeful that the Omicron hospitalization numbers will be much less alarming than the case data.” @PantheonMacro pic.twitter.com/Ro3SivPZz7

— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) December 21, 2021

But while that might seem positive to normal people, it’s bad news for many on the left because they’ve invested so much of their personal being and political future into the pandemic. For figures like Joe Biden, Omicron presenting mild symptoms means losing his favorite punching bag — the unvaccinated. That’s why he just outright lied multiple times about what the data is showing on the new variant yesterday.

Then there’s stuff like this, where you can literally feel the disappointment.

Some experts are saying that the illness appears to be more mild, although mild symptoms can still be debilitating. There’s also a chance that a mild infection can still lead to long COVID. The main symptoms so far include congestion, a scratchy or sore throat, and body aches.

— HuffPost (@HuffPost) December 21, 2021

It’s mild, but it can still be debilitating! And you might get “long COVID”!

Of course, I’m skeptical “long COVID” actually exists on any widespread level given the “symptoms” track with a million other things human beings tend to randomly suffer from. There’s also a study involving children that showed the control group actually had more “long COVID” symptoms than those who actually were infected with the coronavirus. What’s that tell you?

Regardless, it just feels like the left is rooting for this thing to be way worse than it is. Here’s another example, in which an editor with the Florida Sun Sentinel tries to give Marco Rubio a hard time for stating the obvious.

Not that these are the hospitalization rates for delta and omicron. Just pointing out that a less potent but more virulent strain doesn't necessarily translate to less hospitalization and death.

BTW, the first U.S. omicron death was reported in Houston yesterday. Unvaxed.

— Dan Sweeney (@Daniel_Sweeney) December 21, 2021

While I’m thankful for that math lesson, Omicron’s lack of potency is, in fact, leading to less hospitalization and death. Again, as I linked to earlier in this piece, we have well over a month of hospitalization data out of South Africa, and we are beginning to see useful data sets coming out of Europe as well. Deaths have been extremely minimal (including just one in the United States). Clearly, the increased transmissibility of Omicron is not overcoming the fact that it’s far less deadly than the Delta variant.

As a nation, we should be celebrating the data we have so far on Omicron. Instead, the left appears to be in mourning while tyrannical political leaders pretend that positive data doesn’t even exist, instituting more asinine mitigation measures that only serve to punish and discriminate. These people are never going to let go of COVID until voters force them to let go at the ballot box. But we can point and laugh at them in the meantime, I suppose.