I honestly suspect Omicron is going to mark the end of the COVID “state of exception” in America – it’s apparently so infectious that everyone will have the experience of seeing multiple close contacts catch it.

So, in mostly vaccinated social circles, the wave will make a sufficient impression of people catching COVID and it mostly being a bother to overwrite any earlier impression of outbreak as catastrophic; it will join the other human coronaviruses as perpetually in circulation, coming in waves that might have a body count in a nursing home you’ll probably catch and feel under the weather. You might even see people born from here out developing their immunological armor the old-fashioned way, by getting repeatedly infected as resilient children

Unvaccinated and mixed social scenes, by contrast, would presumably experience the wave as more traumatic in a way that pushes them to join the first group or generates sufficient will to apply other measures to raise vaccination rates

I absolutely believe a flood of even minor cases might saturate our healthcare system to the point of collapse in the meantime, but I don’t think the truth of this fact would generate enough will to apply or sustain any measures sufficient to make the difference in preempting it, so feh