The new and incredibly infectiousness strain is shutting down businesses and scuttling flights.

(Originally published Dec. 27 in “What in the World“) Omicron has joined Delta to create Covid’s second greatest surge in infections since the pandemic began. The virus continues to envelop Europe, particularly France, which reported record cases Sunday amid its continued refusal to reimpose restrictions on movement.

In the U.S., Omicron is making so many people ill that businesses are being forced to close due to staff shortages. That includes U.S. airlines, which over the Holiday weekend were forced to cancel over 2,000 flights as infections continued to grow. Holiday sales still rose by an estimated 17%, which unless most of those sales were online, may be a reflection of how little Americans are doing to avoid infecting each other despite warnings from White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci that Omicron’s greater infectiousness might likely offset any lower severity when it comes to hospitalizations and deaths.

The latest winter surge still hasn’t produced a corresponding rise in deaths, lending credence to findings that Omicron doesn’t produce symptoms as severe as the Delta strain. Indeed, deaths appear to be falling rapidly in Europe while cases rise. More people are being hospitalized on a nominal basis thanks to the explosion in cases, but not as many on a proportional basis as during previous surges.

This may, however, be due to higher vaccination rates than any reduction in the virus’ virulence. While few governments have started mandating boosters, it’s becoming clearer that only those who have received booster shots have much hope of resisting infection by Omicron. And we still await evidence about whether Omicron causes the same kind of persistent symptoms other have experienced from earlier strains—so-called “long Covid.” A new study has found that Covid can infect organs throughout the body, including the brain, for months after a person has “recovered.”

The Atlantic published an excellent critique just before Christmas of our continued failure to keep up the fight against Covid, and how Omicron is capitalizing on that failure with lightning speed. The article makes several crucial points:

• “We treat vaccines as all-or-nothing shields against infection:
  • Our COVID shots were never going to stop infections forever—that’s not really what any vaccines do, especially when they’re fighting swiftly shape-shifting respiratory viruses.”
  • “The vaccinated, who can still carry and pass on the virus, cannot exempt themselves from the pandemic”
• “Travel bans are enacted too late and, in any case, are incredibly porous, banning travel by foreigners but not Americans (as if the virus cared about passports)”
• “We still try to use testing as a one-stop solution: test results offer only a snapshot in time—they just tell you if they detected the virus at the moment you swabbed your nose.”