San Franciscans not immune to pandemic fatigue

Hubler

SAN FRANCISCO — For two years, San Franciscans have been pandemic poster children. When COVID-19 hit, the city was among the first in the nation to declare a state of emergency.

Masks have been de rigueur since April 2020. The vaccination rate is among the world’s highest. When the wildly popular In-n-out Burger stand at Fisherman’s Wharf refused to ask custom- ers for proof of inoculation, the city shut down its indoor dining. “In-n-out(side),” the city public health depart- ment scolded via tweet.

No matter: On Wednesday, as health authorities confirmed that the omicron vari- ant of the coronavirus had arrived in the United States, the first known case was in San Francisco. The infected person, who authorities said was self-isolating and partic- ipating in aggressive contact tracing, had noticed symp- toms after returning from South Africa, where the variant was first identified.

Now the city that has led the nation in coronavi- rus caution is preparing to hunker down. Again. Maybe harder.

“We were thinking of maybe traveling again in the spring,” said Linda Wollman, 67, a retiree who has not seen her European relatives since the pandemic started, and who has avoided crowds, restaurants and anyone who is unvaccinated, except her 15-month-old grandson.

“Now I guess we’ll just lay low. Or lay lower. If that’s at all possible.”

Health officials braced for pandemic fatigue across the country this week as word spread that the new variant had reached California, with the inevitability of cases being identified elsewhere.

By Thursday morning, a second case was reported in Minnesota, in a resident who had recently traveled to an anime convention in New York, suggesting that the variant already had begun to circulate.

Omicron carries more than 50 genetic mutations that in theory may make it both more contagious and less vulnerable to the body’s immune defenses than previous variants.

Available vaccines may still offer substantial protection against severe illness and death following infection with the variant, but much remains unknown.

Most of the mutations are on the virus’s spike protein, which the existing vaccines target. Federal officials are asking vaccinated people to get booster shots and the makers of the two most effective vaccines, Pfizer-bionTech and Moderna, are preparing to reformulate their shots, if needed.

But it remains unclear whether omicron will change the anti-coronavirus playbook. If the new variant turns out to be more transmissible than, say, the delta variant, officials said, health guidance may stiffen — more vigilance about masking indoors, sterner requirements for boosters.

“It’s worth re-asking the question, ‘I’ve started to get a little less careful than I was — is that the right thing?’” said Dr. Bob Wachter, a professor and chair of the department of medicine at University of California, San Francisco.

“If, psychologically, you need a month to get prepared to move backwards, you should get ready for the possibility.”