Christmas was supposed to feel a lot more normal this year for D.L.Anderson, 42, of Taylors Falls, Minn.She’s vaccinated and boosted.She had hoped the pandemic wouldn’t disrupt another holiday season.Then came omicron, a blizzard of it, requiring a recalculation of risk.So she won’t go to church after all.
And hugs are no longer on the agenda.But she’s sticking to her plan to have a holiday meal with her family.
There are limits to the concessions she will make to the coronavirus .“There’s an emotional cost to this too: We can’t keep living in isolation,” Anderson said in a phone interview this week after she’d written to The Washington Post seeking guidance on how to navigate the holidays.This is not the worst moment of America’s viral emergency, but it’s one of the most disappointing, as the omicron variant spreads explosively and the pandemic barrels mercilessly into its third year.Americans now have pandemic fatigue fatigue .As of Wednesday, the seven-day average count of coronavirus cases in the United States — 168,981 — exceeded the summertime peak average of 165,187 on Sept.1 as the delta variant was surging, according to Washington Post data.
You’re vaccinated and boosted.How should omicron affect your plans? As national leaders ponder their options, few of which are likely to be both popular and effective, individuals are once again forced to make complex risk calculations based on fuzzy official guidance, confusing information and a changing virological landscape in which, almost overnight, everyone knows someone with the coronavirus — and it might be the person in the mirror.It’s amateur epidemiology hour once again.So many personal decisions pivot on scientific questions not clearly answered at this point.
How dangerous is omicron if you’re vaccinated and boosted? How dangerous if you’re not? How long is an omicron-infected person contagious?How worrisome is a sore throat, a dry cough, feeling a little flushed? Are rapid tests truly accurate? (And where do you find one?) Omicron and holidays unleash scramble for coronavirus tests across the U.S.President Biden has vowed to weather the omicron maelstrom with booster shots and expanded testing, not lockdowns.This is not March 2020, he said.That means the blunt tool of a national shutdown, which “crushed the curve” in a matter of weeks at tremendous economic and social cost, is not on the table.But the sheer velocity of this new coronavirus variant’s spread is poised to create a grass-roots national shutdown of sorts.Many institutions are not waiting for government edicts before deciding to cancel events or go all-remote again.That trend is likely to intensify in coming days as schools , restaurants and grocery stores struggle to find workers — or, in the case of the National Football League , players — who haven’t tested positive for the virus.The one virtue of the extraordinarily rapid spread of omicron — infections from which are doubling every 2.1 days, according to data from the Houston Methodist hospital system — is that this winter surge may end quickly as well.Exactly why omicron is so transmissible isn’t fully established, but immune evasion is clearly a factor.
Omicron has 30 mutations in the spike protein, the target of antibodies, whether generated through vaccination or prior infection.That makes omicron hard to neutralize with the front-line immune system defenses.Other elements of the immune system can still prevent severe illness for most people with some level of immunity.New data from the United Kingdom and South Africa point to lower hospitalization rates from omicron infections compared to those caused by earlier variants.Prior exposure to the virus may explain much of that decline in virulence.And two doses of vaccine still provide protection against hospitalization “even if protection against infection has been largely lost” against omicron, according to a report released Wednesday from the researchers at Imperial College London.What to know about the omicron variant of the coronavirus The presumption that omicron is gentler may be one reason many people in America are making minimal adjustments to their holiday plans.The omicron explosion has put only a small dent in airline travel.Just under 2 million airline travelers went through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints Tuesday, more than double the number from a comparable Tuesday a year ago and almost exactly the same number as in pre-pandemic 2019.There is some fatalism in the air.
People know that omicron has the upper hand and cannot be controlled in the near term.Some are buckling up but not isolating — especially if they have had their shots.“With omicron I suddenly feel like we aren’t going to escape it,” said Paola Kindred, 59, who lives in Minnesota and also contacted The Post seeking guidance.“Even with delta , I felt like we could escape it because we were cautious.
But now with omicron doubling every day: How can anyone escape that? … We are going to have to learn how to live with this, and I think the omicron in a way is bringing that home to everyone.”That happens to be what some professionals are saying, too.“We all have a date with omicron,” said Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease physician and senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.“The goal is to make sure that date occurs when you’re vaccinated.” You have a breakthrough covid infection.Now what? The virus is spreading in a changed immunological landscape — most people’s immune systems have some inkling that there’s a coronavirus on the loose.Vaccinated and boosted people may have minimal or no discernible symptoms of covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, even if they are infected.But this is the most transmissible variant yet.It appears to function like a breakthrough infection bulldozer as it spreads.The coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, is inevitably going to be an endemic virus, one that, like four other coronaviruses, circulates in the human population and causes respiratory infections.
The other four coronaviruses cause colds.SARS-CoV-2 is not yet a cold virus — certainly not for the millions of people who have not been vaccinated, or who are immunocompromised and remain vulnerable to a severe outcome .“This is not a transient threat.SARS-CoV-2 will be with us 20 years from now,” Adalja said.“That’s what omicron represents — it’s the speeding up of what was inevitably going to happen.”John D’Angelo, who oversees operations and emergency medicine at Northwell Health, New York’s largest hospital network, said the system does not project a catastrophic winter surge even with the omicron variant.
Hospital officials have been basing their models in part on the overseas data that suggests omicron is less likely to result in hospitalization than other variants.But while an explosion in mild omicron cases may not fill up hospital beds , it could render hospital employees unable to staff them.“We have to watch very closely sick calls,” D’Angelo said.“Given the magnitude of people that could become infected, we probably still will see some rise in hospitalizations and we need to keep our hospitals running and operating for all emergencies and all needs.”The decision within the past week by the NFL to reduce testing of vaccinated players, focusing only on those displaying symptoms, reflects a desperation to keep the football season from disintegrating right as the playoffs near.And it may prefigure what might happen at the national level if leaders decide to go the way of “harm reduction,” a policy that tries to limit the impact of the virus rather than eliminate it.Tracking the coronavirus vaccine The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has guidelines for people known to be infected: They are supposed to go into isolation, staying home, and away from other vulnerable household members, for 10 full days after they test positive and/or develop symptoms.There are additional guidelines for quarantine, which covers people exposed to someone with the virus.But those guidelines were written before the CDC analyzed modeling data showing that omicron cases, in the agency’s words, “are likely to lead to a national surge in the coming weeks with peak daily numbers of new infections that could exceed previous peaks.”The CDC could update its guidance to give institutions greater flexibility in bringing back workers, said William Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health.He said such an adjustment would likely have to be done without the typically desirable compendium of rigorous scientific research.“The protocols that we have in place are going to lead to real societal disruption,” Hanage said.Many local jurisdictions are bringing back NPIs — non-pharmaceutical interventions.Rhode Island Gov.
Dan McKee (D), for example, reimposed a mask mandate for large indoor venues, while instructing smaller venues and businesses to require masks or proof of vaccines.D.C.Mayor Muriel E.Bowser (D) reinstated an indoor mask mandate Tuesday through the end of January just one month after lifting the requirement.The mayors of D.C., Boston and Chicago in recent days also announced they would mandate proof of vaccination to enter public establishments such as restaurants, gyms, theaters and sports venues.
New York Gov.Kathy Hochul (D) announced the state would give localities up to $65 million to support vaccination and testing drives.Smaller communities are also bringing back mask mandates, including Keene, N.H., where infections are raging and hospitals postponed elective surgeries.Pima, Ariz., reinstated an indoor mask mandate this week, drawing criticism from Gov.Doug Ducey (R), who has opposed mask mandates after winning plaudits early in the pandemic for a mask requirement credited for quelling an outbreak.A host of schools have also been closing early or shifting virtual for the holiday break as cases rise, according to tracking by the firm Burbio, including Hamtramck, Mich.; Estancia Municipal School District in New Mexico; Oswego City School District in New York; St.
Louis Park, Minn.; and Prince George’s County schools in Maryland.Some institutions are now expanding their vaccine mandates to include booster doses, including the University of Oregon and the District of Columbia government workforce.The viral landscape is changing by the hour as omicron spreads.
That’s another feature of this pandemic moment: One’s feelings about the virus may be just one test result away.Along those lines, there’s a postscript from Kindred, the Minnesota woman who told The Post on Monday she didn’t see how omicron could be avoided after a vaccinated child home from college had tested positive.On Tuesday, she tested positive too — as did her husband.So the family can dine together, and roam the house freely without worrying about infecting one another, even though they’ll have to skip the movies and sledding.Feeling only mild symptoms so far, they are banking on their vaccines to keep their illnesses from getting worse.“We were almost celebratory at dinner together — we could eat together! — even giddy,” she said in a text message.“Except that my husband was starting to feel sick so that wasn’t great.
…I never thought I would feel relief when I learned I had Covid.That is how Omicron has changed the pandemic for us.It’s utterly bizarre.” Amy Goldstein contributed to this report..
