For sure psychogenic suffering is still suffering, with real consequences to both body and mind. This wasn't intended to be seen as dismissive.
But there might be still a real problem of people that might come to suffer from long-term symptoms simply because they expect that to be a common occurrence. Not to mention a lot of post-traumatic stress because most overestimate their personal chances of dying from Covid by orders of magnitude.
All that fear has consequences. So now instead of going like "well, maybe we SHOULD vaccinate those African peoples with HIV!" (assuming Omicron isn't zoonotic - it has a *lot* of markers found in zoonotic SARS-CoV-2 strains) , we have borders being shut, more uncertainty and panic in the media, third doses for healthy young people, etc.
