Pessimism is mounting as the new strain hopscotches the globe. But Omicron has yet to prove itself more dangerous than Delta.

(Originally published Dec. 2 in “What in the World“) The Omicron variant continues to spread like wildfire around the world despite efforts to restrict travel out of southern Africa. The new strain has now penetrated the United States, arriving in a passenger who traveled to San Francisco from South Africa in late-November. It’s spreading across Africa, arriving in the continent’s most populous nation, Nigeria. And it has now been detected in France, where an expert predicted it could displace Delta to become the dominant Covid strain in weeks.

As quickly as Omicron spreads, so does the revival of piecemeal restrictions on travel and gatherings. U.S. President Joe Biden, still struggling to overcome legal objections to his vaccine mandates, has extended a mandate for travelers in the U.S. to wear masks. And Germany, already battling a dramatic surge in Delta infections, is tightening restrictions against unvaccinated individuals.

Politicians face mounting opposition to reviving restrictions from a weary public, particularly from young, vaccinated constituents who erroneously believe they face little risk from Covid. But it’s a brave politician who, in the face of a public health emergency, errs on the side of optimism and risks lives just to avoid a temporary inconvenience. But financial markets already know which way this is all going to go. Fears about a new wave of infections by Omicron is battering stocks and commodities amid fears it could derail economic recovery.

The rapid spread of the new variant is convincing more experts of the need for vaccinated adults to get booster shots. Experts now seem swayed by the “better safe, than sorry” school of thought espoused by this newsletter in September. Worryingly, Omicron is sparking a surge in new infections in South Africa, and anecdotally there have been reports from South Africa of people being reinfected by Omicron who had already suffered infection by Covid-19. Many of the people being found carrying Omicron to other countries from Africa were fully vaccinated. against Covid-19, including the woman who carried it to Australia. So clearly vaccines aren’t foolproof against Omicron.

What’s most likely is that vaccines offer some defense, but less than against the original strains, in the way that vaccines work against the Delta strain, offering high protection against severe illness even if offering only partial protection from infection. That’s what South African experts told the Guardian: “The NICD said early epidemiological data showed Omicron was able to evade some immunity, but exisiting vaccines should still protect against severe disease and death.”

Immunity is, after all, measured on a spectrum and vaccines meant for one version of a virus may have lower effectiveness against a similar virus. The immunity provided by vaccines, moreover, fades over time. The point is, any additional immunity is better than no immunity.

And evidence continues to mount that Covid leaves more than memories with those who survive it. A new University of Florida study suggests those who survive severe infections are twice as likely to die in the next year than people who don’t catch the virus.

But might Omicron be the strain we’ve been waiting for? Despite it’s rapid spread, there still haven’t been any reports of people dropping like flies the way we saw last spring when Delta took hold in India. Omicron may prove to be more transmissible, but less virulent, finally providing us the “like a flu” conclusion to the pandemic we’ve all been longing for.

Omicron’s emergence, and the fact that it was first detected in Africa, has revived criticism of the rich world’s failure to share sufficient vaccines with the developed world. Arguably, had Africans been vaccinated, Covid might not have had the opportunity to mutate into Omicron.

These criticisms hold less water, however, when weighed against the fact that simply supplying poor nations with planeloads of vaccines isn’t enough. Few such countries have the infrastructure necessary to deliver and administer vaccines. And even where doses have been made available, many in Africa share the same unwillingness to get the jab as uninformed people in Europe and the United States do.

This isn’t an excuse for rich countries not to do more to get vaccines to poor ones. It’s just important to realize that it will take a lot more than sharing patents or air-lifting vaccines to Africa to end the pandemic. Besides, at least one expert is theorizing that Omicron may have evolved not in unvaccinated humans, but rather in animals, slowly gathering mutations before then venturing back into the human population.