As even tots roll up and do their duty in the fight against Omicron, a small group of the U.S. Navy’s elite fighters are recoiling from a tiny pinprick

(Originally published Dec. 21 in “What in the World“) Omicron now accounts for three of ever four new U.S. infections, and its spread is still prompting a revival of restrictions—the latest being that New Zealand is shutting its borders again. In addition to evidence from Hong Kong that Omicron’s higher contagiousness stems from its ability to replicate in airways faster than Delta, scientists are learning that it has a lower incubation period—between infection and infectiousness—of just three days instead of four days for Delta and five to six for Covid Classic.

Experts are nervous about what that means: an exponential increase in infections, even with a less virulent virus, could translate into a geometric rise in hospitalizations and deaths. U.S. President Joe Biden is reportedly preparing to issue another plea to the public to get vaccinated. And parents are nervously wondering if they should just go ahead and get their kids a second vaccine dose rather than wait. It’s a thorny dilemma: as long as they’re only half-vaccinated, kids are more likely to catch Covid and pass it to their elders; but the longer they wait to get their second shot, their immunity to Covid will be higher than if they get one right away.

And current vaccines don’t really work against Omicron anyway. With two doses, the best you do is prevent severe illness, which is more or less what you have against Delta now. But two doses doesn’t really prevent infection by Omicron; only a booster brings you back to the slightly better than 50/50 odds you have against infection by Delta with two doses.

Which of course means we’ll need new vaccines tailored for Omicron, which Pfizer/BioNTech say they’l have ready by March. The EU has already pre-ordered 180 million doses.

Even as America’s tiniest citizens roll up for a jab and a lollipop, some of America’s toughest are proving too cowardly to do their part to protect their nation against the virus. Roughly two dozen members of the Navy SEAL’s have sued for an exemption to the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate on “religious grounds.” Presumably they have no religious objections to risking their lives to kill America’s enemies on foreign soil on the flimsy rationale that doing so protects their countrymen at home. They just object to risking their lives at home to protect their countrymen from a microscopic enemy. Dishonourable.