[DaFace]

Pretty good read from a Harvard epidemiologist about omicron. A few highlights:

GAZETTE: When the vaccines came out, manufacturers emphasized protection against severe disease as the most important effect. At this point, it seems like that is still going to be the case?

HANAGE: Data is still coming in, but that’s my expectation based on the amount of antibodies which are generated by the vaccines. One thing that was being underreported before this was the fact that if a lot of people got boosters, we had the prospect of the virus struggling to infect a person who had received three shots. And, at least in the short term, people with three shots would be substantially protected against all infection. It’s early days, but it looks like that’s not going to be the case with Omicron. What remains to be seen is how serious the infections are. That’s the crucial thing.

About all we can exclude are the extremes. We know that it’s not very mild because hospitalizations are ticking up in South Africa. We know that it’s not incredibly serious, because hospitalizations are ticking up but not incredibly fast. So, all we can exclude is the extremes, and there’s a lot of room between those extremes for the virus to spring a nasty surprise upon us.

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GAZETTE: What are the implications of this for the end of the pandemic? It seemed like we were heading toward a situation in the U.S. with widespread resistance from vaccination or infection, where the virus is still here but illness is largely less severe. Does this push that back?

HANAGE: Yes. But I think that it’s reasonable to say that whatever is going to happen with Omicron could happen really quickly. The other thing I would point out is that anybody who has talked about the “end of the pandemic” has been doing people a disservice. Because you don’t get “ends,” what you get is a point where, gradually, people are able to chill, and they chill at different rates depending on their own attitudes about risk. Eventually, we get to a point where the pandemic is in the rearview mirror, but that point is going to be different for everybody. What this definitely means is that those of us who work in public health and those of us who work in infectious disease have got something new, serious, and very concerning on our plate to deal with. Looking at the sequence of Omicron is one of the most extraordinary moments I’ve experienced over a couple of years, which themselves have been extraordinary.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/sto...on-of-omicron/