Exactly what I was thinking, by omitting the <html> <head> and <body> HTML can be quite concise [1]. Additionally the closing </li> can be omitted from lists and <li> barely a step over using - for bullet points.

The worst part about HTML is the links, though. Anchor tags are awful. Having to repeatedly type <a href="..."> and closing with </a> is wayyy too boilerplate much for for something that is simply surrounded with [square](brackets) in markdown.

[1] I go to https://meiert.com/en/blog/optional-html/ for reference.