As Russia taunts the West into forcing it to invade Ukraine, the Danes find Omicron has tricks up its sleeve, too.

(Originally published Jan. 25 in “What in the World“) U.S. deaths from Covid continue to climb despite a much ballyhooed decline in new infections, and the World Health Organization is again warning the world not to assume, as it did with Delta, that Omicron will be the last strain to come along. Indeed, Omicron’s much wider and more rapid spread almost guarantees that someone is out there right now cooking up a new batch without feeling a thing.

Cue the Danes: Experts in Denmark say they’re seeing a new and improved version of Omicron that’s even more contagious than Omicron Prime—okay, I just made that name up—and it’s tearing through their population. So far, this new strain is just called BA.2, but some say it deserves its own Greek letter. BA.2 has already been found in Australia, Germany, India, the U.K. and the U.S.

If you want to a truly depressing prognosis for our odds of ending the pandemic merely by pumping vaccines into our arms or just catching the virus, look no further than Denmark. You remember the Danes: they declared early victory over Covid and lifted restrictions not once, but three times. First last April, then last August, and again just this month. And why not? More than 80% of the Danish population has been vaccinated and almost 60% have received a booster shot. They should be pretty well-protected against the virus, no?

Yeah, nope.

High vaccination rates have enabled Denmark to keep its overall death rate from Covid lower than the European, or even the global, average so far. But reopening so early has come at a cost: at least one of every four Danes has contracted Covid. That means that Denmark could have saved many of the more than 3,500 citizens it has sacrificed to Covid, had it been willing to maintain restrictions until now. What’s worse is that, though its entire population is inoculated against Covid either through vaccination or infection, Omicron is sweeping through the Danes like a hot knife through butter. Denmark’s infection rate is the second-highest in the world. The highest is Israel, another country that has led the world in vaccinating its people.

Vaccines were designed for the earliest strains of Covid. They sharply lower the odds of dying from Delta or Omicron but they don’t eliminate it. And they only slightly lower the odds of catching Delta or Omicron, which because they’re so much more infectious than the earliest strains of the virus, means that more people become asymptomatic carriers who spread Covid to the unvaccinated or immunologically vulnerable. As a result, the death rate in both Denmark and Israel is rebounding as Omicron sweeps through.

The answer isn’t permanent restrictions on gathering and movement. It’s to adopt those restrictions and maintain them long enough for transmission rates to drop to a level that doesn’t overwhelm herd immunity. Given how fast Omicron clears those infected, that could be about 10 days. There will still be isolated outbreaks, which can be dealt with through repeated restrictions. But every time this is repeated, the restrictions can be applied to a successively narrow population of people.

This is what has worked in those parts of the world still enjoying low rates of infection and loss of life to Covid, despite all the hand-wringing about the painful cost to their economies and to those affluent elites accustomed to frequent international travel. These are almost all places that have strictly limited entry by people from abroad, maintained quarantines and strict rules on gathering and mask-wearing, like China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan—and, yes, Hong Kong.

The U.S. and Europe have decided to respond to what Russia insists isn’t its looming invasion of Ukraine. The Pentagon has put 8,500 troops on “high alert” for a winter ski trip to Eastern Europe and NATO members are moving ships and planes there. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, stating the obvious, has warned Russia that any invasion of Ukraine would be painful and bloody as the United Kingdom joins the U.S. in pulling diplomatic families out of Kyiv.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has warned of a potential Russian cyberattack ahead of any invasion—or just as a reaction to NATO’s response to the perceived threat of an invasion. The DHS is right, of course. NATO’s moves only help justify what Moscow says it never intended to do—invade Ukraine to secure itself against a menacing NATO.

So Russian President Vladimir Putin has managed to put the West in a position where no matter what it does, the result will result in Russian control of Ukraine. If the West fails to give Russia the legal guarantees it has demanded that the West won’t extend NATO protection to Ukraine, Russia will invade. If it gives Russia those guarantees, Russia won’t need to invade; it will effectively be able to control Ukraine without firing a shot. If the West moves forces to prevent or retaliate against a possible invasion, Moscow can say it demonstrates the threat that prompted Russia’s demands for legal guarantees in the first place—and then invade Ukraine.

Heads Putin wins; tails Ukraine loses. Pass the Omicron, please.