The Omicron strain is lulling humanity into believing the pandemic is ending, even as Covid keeps killing 6,000 people a day.

(Originally published Jan. 5 in “What in the World“) As the U.S. surpasses a million new Covid infections a day and responds by doing next to nothing, the words of the fictional dwarf Tyrion Lannister in “Game of Thrones” come to mind as he explains why it’s so difficult to muster support against the existential threat of a zombie army:

People’s minds aren’t made for problems that large. White walkers, the Night King, Army of the Dead… it’s almost a relief to confront a comfortable, familiar monster…

The Food and Drug Administration now recommends getting a booster five months after vaccination, down from six, but still longer than the three months some governments are now recommending. This increased caution comes as the World Health Organization grudgingly acknowledges that the Omicron strain does appear to be less virulent than previous strains, causing less damage to the lungs.

The WHO said it would need more data before it could reach any definite conclusions—after all, Omicron has only been with us about a month. Much of Omicron’s lower lethality still appears connected to higher vaccination rates, which has led many otherwise intelligent people to conclude that Omicron poses a lower risk. This is a dangerous misinterpretation that ignores how much more contagious the new strain is and how little protection vaccines seem to provide against infection.

Here’s a graphic representation of what’s happening in the United States, which is a good example because immunization there took place early enough that immunity is wearing off for most folks and boosters aren’t yet as widespread as in other places Omicron is raging, such as the United Kingdom and Europe:

Infections are soaring, but deaths are not. That suggests that Omicron is less likely to kill you if you get it. But notice also that deaths aren’t falling, they’re staying the same. Hospitalizations are also soaring, though a smaller proportion of those patients require intensive care:

So, yes, if you catch Omicron and are vaccinated against Covid you are much less likely to be hospitalized or die than if you catch Delta or another version of Covid. BUT…. you are MUCH more likely to catch Omicron than Delta or other strains. Thus, the likelihood that you’ll be hospitalized by Covid and possibly die from it is at least as high as it was with Delta, simply because the likelihood that you’ll be infected by Omicron—even if you’re vaccinated—is so much higher. Omicron is spreading at least 70 times faster than Delta.

This danger is compounded by the fact that so many people are underestimating the risk from Omicron. By relaxing their guard and mingling without masks, they increase the likelihood that they will catch and transmit Omicron. And because they are less likely to be noticeably ill if they catch Omicron, they won’t even know they’re doing it. While this has been a problem with Covid all along, it’s been magnified by Omicron. That’s a huge gain for Covid, because now it is much more infectious and less likely to take infected people out of the population.

Governments aren’t helping much either. Because of what the perceive as Omicron’s lower risk, they’re reimposing restrictions more slowly than before despite the fact that Omicron is surging at a rate dramatically faster than earlier strains. These new controls are “a day late and a dollar short.” The White House continues to pretend the U.S. can somehow live with the virus, controlling it without returning to limits on travel and gathering. Instead it continues to emphasize testing, which is closing the door after the horse has bolted, and buying Paxlovid pills from Pfizer that help alleviate symptoms of severe Covid cases once diagnosed and if taken within five days.

Omicron is thus still a long, long way from rendering Covid “like the flu.” Even with Omicron now dominant in many countries, Covid is still killing people at a rate many times higher than the flu does. And it’s doing so despite levels of immunization in the population we don’t need to maintain to keep flu fatalities as low as they are. That’s why it’s important for governments to keep pressuring citizens, as French President Emmanuel Macron admits is his policy, to get vaccinated and keep their immunization topped up. But this only works if combined with social distancing and quarantines. Only by reducing transmission of Omicron can we hope to bring down by infections and deaths.

And if you think just letting Omicron wash through the population to create herd immunity is the answer, think again. Even if infection with Omicron provided lifelong immunity, we’d still need to infect roughly 62% more Americans before we achieved the level of immunity necessary. And at current fatality rates, that would mean the deaths of more than 2 million more Americans.

There’s also still no reason to believe that surviving an Omicron infection would be the end of it. You could still be reinfected by Omicron or some new strain of Covid. While there is evidence that Omicron infection does provide antibodies that work against Delta and other strains, so far all the antibodies created against Covid appear to ebb fairly fast to levels that may protect against severe illness, but not against reinfection.

Yet we’re once again hearing the same palaver we heard when Delta first hit the West: that case counts no longer matter, only hospitalizations. And just as then, that’s nonsense. Case numbers let us know how good (or bad) a job we’re doing at limiting transmission of the virus, which is directly proportional not only to how many people risk illness, but to how many opportunities the virus has—and thus the likelihood that it does—mutate into something even more effective. Like Omicron.

There’s a new narrative circulating that somehow vaccines were never meant to prevent infection, only reduce the severity of illness. This is fake news. Vaccines are always designed to prevent infection. They don’t prevent infection in every exposure in every individual, however. And as new strains of the virus they are designed for emerge, they may do little more than lower the intensity of infection. That’s what’s happening now with our present vaccines and Omicron. Here’s how Pfizer put it in its press release from Dec. 11 2020 announcing the approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine Comirnaty:

The trial’s primary endpoints are prevention of COVID-19 in those who have not been infected by SARS-CoV-2 prior to immunization, and prevention of COVID-19 regardless of whether participants have previously been infected by SARS-CoV-2. Secondary endpoints include prevention of severe COVID-19 in those groups.

Omicron is the 13th variant of Covid to earn a Greek letter from the WHO and, at this point, is pretty far removed from the classic version Covid that vaccines were designed for. Fortunately, there are enough similarities that the antibodies the body creates in reaction to the vaccines still recognize Omicron somewhat, and new research suggests B- and T-cells maintain vigilance against it.

But there’s also no evidence yet whether or not Omicron can cause the “long Covid” experienced by many Covid survivors. Evidence does continue to emerge, however, about Covid’s pernicious, long-term effects. The latest is that it can leave antibodies that continue to attack healthy tissue long after the infection is over.