Omicron sends cases and hospitalizations soaring
What happened
Troubling new Covid records were set as the highly contagious Omicron variant tore across the U.S. this week, with more than 1.4 million new Covid cases being reported in a single day and hospitalization numbers hitting new highs. An average of 760,000 infections are now being detected daily, triple the number of the last peak in January 2021; former Food and Drug Administration director Scott Gottlieb estimates that 40 percent of Americans will have been infected by the time the surge ends. More than 147,000 people are currently in the hospital with Covid—some 5,000 more than last winter’s high— and disease modelers predict that total will reach 300,000 within weeks. Some of the hospitalizations come from people being admitted for other reasons and then testing positive, indicating how widespread the infections have become.
About 1,700 Americans are dying of Covid daily, roughly half the number at last year’s peak, aligning with evidence from Europe and South Africa that while Omicron is far more infectious than previous variants, it tends to produce milder illness. Still, data from New York indicate that Omicron remains dangerous for the unvaccinated, who are 13 times more likely to be hospitalized with the disease than the fully vaccinated. New infections appear to be stabilizing in the New York metro area and in Washington, D.C., suggesting the Omicron surge may be short-lived, but the variant is now expected to hit the Midwest and the Great Plains. “It’s hard to process what’s actually happening,” said acting FDA commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock, “which is most people are going to get Covid.”
What the editorials said
A year ago, President Biden “vowed to defeat the virus,” said the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. His plans didn’t survive contact with the enemy. Realizing that the pathogen is no respecter of federal power, Biden and his team are now prepping “Americans to accept the virus as part of life,” with the president even admitting last week that the virus “is probably here to stay.” That “sounds a lot like what Trumpers used to say at the beginning of this whole thing.”
Biden can still turn Covid from “a dire emergency to just another manageable malady,” said The Washington Post. Six public-health and medical officials who took part in his presidential transition detailed how to do that last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They urged the administration to vastly improve access to low-cost diagnostic testing and create a comprehensive federal infection-reporting system; accelerate efforts to develop a universal coronavirus vaccine, “one shot that would hit all variants”; and to provide no-cost, convenient outpatient treatments for all Covid patients. These are hefty undertakings, but “the investment will be well worth it.”
What the columnists said
“Omicron isn’t living up to the apocalyptic predictions of some particularly fearful public-health experts,” said Jim Geraghty in National Review. Still, “complications, headaches, and inconveniences are piling up.” At least 5,225 U.S. schools experienced pandemic-related disruptions over the past week; some simply didn’t have enough healthy teachers to send to classrooms. In New York City, subway lines had to shut down and trash went uncollected because so many workers were out sick.
Omicron is more than an inconvenience for hospitals, said Dr. Craig Spencer in The New York Times. In the emergency room where I work, “fewer of my patients today need life support” than in March 2020. But the sheer number of Omicron patients is overwhelming already exhausted staff—and “creating another source of infection” for doctors and nurses. About half a million health-care workers have quit since February 2020, and 15 percent of staff at some hospitals are now out with the virus. Hospitals cannot operate with such shortages. To avoid the complete collapse of our health-care system, we need even vaccinated people to behave responsibly in the coming weeks, including by staying home if they’re not feeling well.
In places hit by Omicron before us, “nearly all the signs have been positive,” said David Wallace-Wells in New York magazine. South Africa’s surge peaked after four weeks, with a fraction of the deaths in the previous wave. In the U.K., the current wave also appears to be subsiding rapidly. But the U.S. doesn’t have South Africa’s young population, nor the U.K.’s high vaccination rate. By the time Omicron ebbs here, we may have suffered “considerably more severe illness and death than we’ve seen on the other side of the Atlantic.”