BOSTON, MA - After a nail-biting fifteen minutes, local man Rod Brown was blessed to discover that his COVID test came back positive for the Omicron variant - which is nothing more than a gentle case of the sniffles.
"I'm so relieved!" he cried to the heavens. "I was obsessing about that for a solid ten minutes! I'm just so thankful it's not real COVID. This is just that fake, wimpy, harmless one I keep hearing about from Jim Acosta."
With renewed vigor, he hugged his wife. According to sources, his wife wouldn't let him anywhere near her while he had a runny nose, but once she found out it was just a lame, boring Omicron infection, she relaxed and took off the hazmat suit she'd been wearing for the last three days.
"I'm surprised you have any major symptoms at all," she later confessed.
Rod's primary doctor, Dr. Olivia Soliq, was eager to give the good news. "Since it's just Omicron, he'll be given natural immunity with zero health risk! It's a remarkable variant."
At publishing time, Brown unfortunately found himself in the hospital with a broken hip after a police officer tackled him for trying to buy a doughnut without a vax card.
Citing concerns about stiff competition from Amazon and an impossible-to-please Gen Z, Santa has announced he's hanging up the hat for good.
