We don't know much about omicron, but we know how to respond. We have this whole time.
We are again at the point of the COVID-19 pandemic where we have to figure out what’s going on with a new variant.
Months after wrestling with the delta variant that ripped through the country, we’re back on the internet searching for what in the heck this new omicron variant is and what will happen now.
There is even confusion on how to say it, for Pete's sake.
And the truth is that we don’t know yet what's coming. We just don’t know. This was reinforced by Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who spent some of Tuesday afternoon meeting with the USA TODAY Editorial Board to talk about all things pandemic and this new mysterious variant.
During an hour-long conversation, Gottlieb, a former head of the Food and Drug Administration, covered a number of threads related to the pandemic. He expects a revolution in home testing, for example. He’s worried that eventually children will be the hardest hit as the rest of us continue to upgrade and refresh our protections via the vaccines and boosters.
What we know: Omicron could be more contagious, less dangerous. That would be 'good news for the human race.'
He thinks President Joe Biden has done a good job responding to the variants and pushing the need for boosters to become the norm.
You already know what to do
Nonetheless, as he was talking about what we still don’t know about omicron, I couldn’t help but focus on how the truths about what we do know about the pandemic have always been the same.
Like, we’ve known this whole time how best to protect ourselves. We just weren’t always that keen on doing it. Stay with me on this.
We don’t know how dangerous omicron will be. Gottlieb, who now serves on the board of Pfizer, offered three scenarios about how the variant even started and is spreading. The most intriguing one is that it has been there this whole time but just now made its grand debut.
President Biden: My winter plan fights COVID with testing and vaccines and without lockdowns
He said we still don’t know with clarity how transmissible it is, but data suggests it spreads easier than delta, although it might not be as deadly.
“It’s still early, but so far the trends are encouraging in that regard,” he said.
So how do we prepare for a variant that has the potential to spread like a genius cat meme if we don’t know what the impact will be and how bad it will be once it goes mainstream?
The good news is that we’ve known the answer to that question for some time.
How did we initially flatten that blessed curve when this all started? How did we get to where cases plummeted just before delta took center stage? And how did we reach a point where schools are back in business across the country?
Spread out. Masks. Vaccines. Boosters.
Anybody looking to create a chart that examines how the virus has spread versus our response will see that spread out, masks, vaccines, boosters will tell the tale no matter what variant comes our way.
Living with COVID-19
Yes, that same chart will show tremendous resistance and political warfare over the response. For sure, they’ll see that more people have died than should have and that reluctance to stick to the response created needless deaths.
And we can be honest here and say that the details of the response changed. We went from 6 feet apart to 3 feet with masks, for example.
But whether we like it or not, the initial response has stood the test of time and has proved to be the most consistent and protective way for us to weather this viral storm.
Gottlieb suggested as much during his talk with us on Tuesday, but said it in a way that gets to what our immediate future will be in a world where a virus continues to be confusing but our response should by now be certain and established law.
“I think we’re learning to live with COVID,” he said.
We could, Gottlieb said, reach a point where each winter brings a return of COVID-19 along with the flu season. So the long-term normal could require us to be more vigilant during those months than we were with the flu before all this madness started.
Spread out. Masks. Vaccines. Boosters. Now we wait.
Louie Villalobos is a member of the Editorial Board and an editor at USA TODAY Opinion. Follow him on Twitter: @louievillalobos
You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Omicron is here, but we don't know how hard. We know how to respond.
