It Is Too Early to Declare Victory Over Omicron

If you follow every twist and turn of the pandemic hour by hour, day by day, you can easily think that summer is coming and the pandemic will become endemic and we’ll just get our annual vaccination for the virus later in 2022.

That could still be all “happy talk” at this point, but that is what I’m reading and hearing in some places.

Another two weeks will tell the tale on omicron and hospitalizations. It takes about two weeks after infection for people to present at hospitals and we are another 10 days or so before we are in that window. Even if the infections from omicron are not as deadly, the sheer number of cases is going to impact more and more people who could be susceptible to getting really sick and dying.

On a football Sunday as I write this, it is not time to spike the football on omicron — not yet anyway.