Omicron watch

“Scientists, however, say vaccines, together with booster shots, are still by far still the best insurance hereabouts against Omicron. Alongside, of course, strict maskwearing and social distancing protocols.

Here’s the thing: The Omicron variant remains a mystery and — give or take a week before or after — remains a mystery until Christmas.

Which practically means we’re in for an edgy, tense holiday season, with all bets off that this will be a better Christmas than last year.

Omicron comes just as we all thought, after seeing fewer reported daily cases, we had turned a corner in this pandemic. So, what now?

It’s normal in times of scourge and calamity to fervently wish for the end of collective suffering. Just as it is normal to be despondent if things aren’t yet returning to normal.

One thing you need to avoid, though, is to get sucked into crazed conspiracy theories as you gingerly wrap affordable gifts bought from Shopee or Lazada.

Chuckle through all the pompousness. Avoid rage-filled amateur virologists like the virus.

Instead, see the uncertainties as us buying time for fully grasping informed judgments on the risks Omicron’s Frankenstein mix of mutations.

Rather than overreacting, far better to react wisely and sensibly, using the anti-contagion tools we already have and paying better attention to what the scientists are so far telling us. Singapore’s Health Minister Ong Ye Kung perhaps best describes what we’re undergoing.

The Singaporean official compared our predicament to a game of snakes and ladders squares.

If the Omicron variant is more infectious or harmful and vaccines do not work well against it, we have landed on a square of “snakes”. That means the pandemic sets us back, a long way back.

But if Omicron turns out only a more infectious variant but “a less harmful virus” it’s a positive advance. It means we’ve landed on a ladder wherein we use for transiting towards living with Covid-19.

Still, how the game plays out we’ll know only by middle-to-end of December.

Anyway, what do — and don’t — we know about Omicron right now which has triggered worldwide panic, prompting preemptive moves like travel bans?

Generally, Omicron is the fifth “virus of concern (VoC)”. But it’s the fastest of any other emerging variant, shooting alarmingly to the top in a matter of two weeks since South African scientists saw it.

Other variants took between two-and-seven months from emergence before being declared VoC.

With Omicron, scientists are still looking at three things: whether this variant actually spreads faster than others, whether it’s evading immune responses, and whether it causes more serious disease than other variants.

Scientists right now have the genetic sequence and so far, they’ve seen 32 mutations out of 5,000 genes on Omicron’s spike protein.

They don’t know if the mutations are weighty since they don’t have a lot of data. What they only have are hypotheses based on the sequence but no real-world data yet.

Omicron, however, is fairly different from the dominant Delta strain. Omicron’s 32 mutations in the spike protein are about double that of Delta.

As it is, the Delta variant is far more infectious than other variants, meaning a person infected by Delta usually carries far more viruses than someone infected with the original strain. This tells us a lot about Omicron’s virulence.

Scientists, meanwhile, are now running experiments to see how the vaccines fare against Omicron.

It’s not yet known whether Omicron’s mutations evade the immunity defense provided by vaccines, thereby affecting the transmission or severity of the disease.

Scientists, however, say vaccines, together with booster shots, are still by far still the best insurance hereabouts against Omicron. Alongside, of course, strict mask-wearing and social distancing protocols.

This, despite the admission by the head of drugmaker Moderna who says Covid-19 vaccines are unlikely to be effective against the Omicron.

Nonetheless, whether present vaccines work or not, again we won’t know for a couple more weeks.

But once scientists do manage to examine thoroughly Omicron that would be the only time we’ll know if vaccines need tweaking or if authorities can prolong the pandemic’s agony, with face shields to boot.

Should it happen Omicron goes berserk, it’s an economic and political nightmare for all of us since it would mean three or more months of either tightened restrictions or more lockdowns. Pray we don’t get there.

“Rather than overreacting, far better to react wisely and sensibly, using the anti-contagion tools we already have and paying better attention to what the scientists are so far telling us.