There is also still a large percentage of the population who completely avoid any indoor (and even many outdoor) activities. They probably will not get exposed. All the sudden, the percentage of people who have natural or vaccinated immunity and are out in society is much higher then even the 40% referenced above (I too am starting to see that repotted in media outlets). Plus, it seems that the vast majority of ultra high risk population has fortunately gotten vaccinated so they will probably not show up in hospitalization / death statistics.
I agree that the insistent fear mongering over the variants is frustrating, but at the same time - I don’t want to see all this progress for naught if there is another spike in hospitalizations like we saw the past few months. The good news seems that serious infection with even the ‘aggressive’ variants can be minimized with nearly all the approved vaccinations (maybe not Oxford).
In all cases, I’m optimistic that come late spring we will see daily deaths / hospitalizations more similar to a flu season, and then we can stop talking about it.