Ashish K. Jha writes:

The Omicron wave is upon us, and the national conversation is vacillating between panic and indifference. Those who are near panic point to rapidly rising case counts and lockdowns in several European nations. Those who are indifferent lean into reports of Omicron being a milder coronavirus variant; after nearly two years of COVID, that can feel like reason enough to put the pandemic in the rear-view mirror and get on with their life.

Both perspectives are understandable, but neither is helpful. Successfully navigating the next wave of the coronavirus pandemic requires charting a middle course—one designed with clear goals in mind: preventing deaths, protecting our hospitals from crushing caseloads, and keeping schools and businesses open. We can do this with the proven, effective tools we already have, while giving in to neither dismay nor dismissal.

Much remains unknown about the dynamics of Omicron, and new evidence is emerging as rapidly, it seems, as the variant is spreading. But we know enough to anticipate some key features, particularly the variant’s unprecedented transmissibility. We should now expect a very large wave of infections—one that is gathering steam already in New York City, and will spread quickly throughout the country. We will see cases rise rapidly in the next few weeks, likely peaking sometime in mid-January. With any luck, cases will then fall as quickly as they rose, getting to very low numbers by the end of February. All of this suggests that the work ahead is to manage the next six to eight weeks. [Continue reading…]