Youtube suddenly slow to load in Safari on MacOS

As of about two weeks ago, Youtube has suddenly started getting really slow to load. I click on a video and sound starts coming out before the video and the controls. It then takes several seconds for it to slowly "assemble" parts of the page. It WILL eventually load, but it takes a long time and it only happens in MacOS. The iPhone and iPad seem to be fine. I'm now having to open Youtube in Chrome on the desktop.

I'm hoping this can get resolved for MacOS soon. It's really frustrating. I've noticed that other people are have posted about the same issue in Reddit. Has anyone else had this problem? Has anyone found a solution?