Omicron, Omega, and de facto Covid-Zero

Last update: 11/30/21

We are now at a most unwelcome inflection point. If Omicron is "merely" far more transmissible, but not more deadly than Delta, we just have to continue our vaccination efforts and apply well known mitigation procedures for a while longer. But if Omicron evades our vaccines, we should rename it "Omega", the last letter in the Greek alphabet, as acknowledgement that we are at the end of one pandemic, and at the beginning of a new one that will require new vaccines for everyone plus a return to extensive reliance on quarantines and lockdowns until the new vaccines are developed and widely distributed.

Although we won't know which option has been realized until a few weeks from now, many experts have expressed very tentative, very preliminary assessments that Omicron is probably Delta's bigger brother, rather than the first born virus in a new pandemic family.

If these "optimistic" assessments prevail, we should pause long enough to reconsider our objectives. Nowadays the Biden administration seems to be lurching towards a de facto Covid-zero policy, like China's, but using substantially different mechanisms. Bide's preference is for a high tech fix, i.e., updated booster shots for everyone as often as necessary that will suppress all new infections, not just hospitalizations and deaths. China seems prepared to impose severe lock downs on communities of millions of residents whenever a handful of new infections are detected in these communities. 

• "Near-Daily Covid Tests, Sleeping in Classrooms: Life in Covid-Zero China", Vivian Wang and Joy Dong, NY Times, 11/5/21 

Is either strategy sustainable? Is it possible that China's grossly invasive mitigation diktats will provoke extreme reactions, so violent as to border on insurrection? And is it possible that the Biden administration's forever booster campaigns will elicit sullen backlash manifest by growing segments of the U.S. population ignoring all FDA/CDC guidelines?

For a brief period it seemed like we were moving towards the same broad objectives as other countries in Europe and Asia, learning to tolerate severe illness and death for a few in exchange for a return to normal living for the many. 

• Australia, "Covid Zero Is No Longer Working for Australia", Edward Cliff and Brian Fernandes, NY Times, 9/8/21 
  
  
• Great Britain, "Rise in Cases and Deaths Tests Britain’s Gamble on Few Virus Restrictions", Mark Landler and Stephen Castle, NY Times, 10/21/21 ... The essence of the British strategy is captured by the following quote: "At issue is the core trade off British officials made last summer: They decided they could tolerate a widely circulating virus as the price of reopening the economy, so long as only a small fraction of infected people ended up in the hospital. That laissez-faire approach has been watched by the United States and other European countries as a possible model for how to plot a way out of the pandemic" 

This is the stuff of political compromise, however messy; not medical high tech, however tidy. It is the wisdom sought in the Serenity Prayer:

• "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference."

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Related notes on this blog

• "Living with Covid on campus". Last update: 11/21/21