The experience varies every case between the person, the vaccines, the variant, underlying issues, etc. Two holidays in a row, my family got it. In Jan 2021, our first experience and before any of us had vaccines, whatever we got knocked me out for 7 days but gave my dad a cold for 3 days. Jan 2022, round 2 but after a mix of vaccines, I got a tickle in my throat for a few days but it knocked my dad on his ass for a week.

What was last holiday season’s variant, razor throat? There’s multiple variables. We may be improving our immune responses over time as a whole, but logically, the reason we’re hearing about variants spreading fast is because they’ve varied into something more successful. That includes, typically, something that improves its rate of spread. Don’t rule out spread caused by trying to care for the immensely sick.

Generally the variants have been getting less severe but easier to transmit. This is fairly common as variants with those characteristics survive better. Forcing your host to remain at home in bed makes transmission harder, so those variants are more likely to die out.

This doesn’t have to be the case, but it is the trend.