I've just taken a look and if stories aren't your thing, there's a toggle to just turn the whole feature off and it disappears from the UI.

I love this! I wish WhatsApp had such a toggle, since nobody in my contacts uses the "Status" feature so I just want to hide it somewhere.

I'm not sure if I'll use it much, but giving me a simple setting to decide for myself makes me much more optimistic towards this.