It's going to be a chaotic month.
 | By Alexandra Sifferlin Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
From the perspective of a school principal trying to keep a school open or an airline trying to schedule flights, this might be the most uncertain point of the pandemic since March 2020. But it's not quite the same. As a New York City emergency doctor, Craig Spencer, writes in a guest essay today, the patients he's seeing during the Omicron wave are experiencing milder illness than the first wave. Health workers also have access to protective gear and treatments that they haven't before. |
But that doesn't mean Omicron isn't taking a worrisome toll. A high number of infections means a substantial strain on staffing, including for schools and hospitals. "In March 2020, we clamored for critical supplies like masks and gowns. When patients piled up, we built makeshift treatment centers in tents, sports stadiums and floating ships," Spencer writes. "What's in critically short supply now is health care providers, and qualified staff members are significantly harder to scale up than supplies or space." |
Is better than almost two years ago really where we should be aiming? As Opinion columnist Zeynep Tufekci writes, "it's so disappointing to enter 2022 with 2020 vibes, scouring for supplies, trying to make sense of official declarations that don't cohere, and wondering what to do." |
As Omicron continues to spread, the month of January will be chaotic. But there's hope that the surge could be shorter lived compared with others. Jeffrey Shaman, an infectious disease modeler, and his team at Columbia, project that cases of Omicron in the United States will peak this month. There's much anticipation over whether the peak will be followed by a substantial drop, as seen in South Africa, but, as with so much else during this pandemic, there's no guarantee. |
In January 2022 we thankfully have tools and knowledge that we didn't have in March 2020. "Collective actions over the coming weeks — the distribution and use of high-quality masks, staying home if not feeling well and getting vaccinated or a booster if eligible — could help prevent hospitals and health care workers from sliding into crisis," writes Spencer. |
And as Tufekci writes: "Two years is too long to still be hoping for luck to get through all this." |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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