Experts are looking into COVID's crystal ball to predict where the Omicron variant will lead the U.S., but the picture is far from clear.
White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci said Monday that it's "an open question" whether Omicron will be the last variant wave to majorly disrupt regular life, reports CNBC. Asked whether the highly transmissible variant could spread widely enough to hasten the end of the pandemic, Fauci said, "I would hope that that's the case. But that would only be the case if we don't get another variant that eludes the immune response of the prior variant."
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, meanwhile, predicted a "return to normal life" sometime in the spring, reports Fox Business, citing an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro. Bourla argues COVID-19 antiviral drugs in development could work alongside vaccines to prevent severe disease. Separately, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said the company's combined COVID-19 and flu shot could roll out by fall 2023, per CNN.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Other experts, like London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine's Annelies Wilder-Smith, say it's "too early" to call COVID endemic, but predict "there is a high probability that we will have a new variant" before then, though it would likely be less severe.
Regardless of the murky post-Omicron pandemic, all agree that while still in the grips of the current variant, we should first focus on getting through our more immediate future. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned Sunday that this record-setting wave has not yet peaked, and declared "the next few weeks will be tough."
-
Five things we learnt from Virginia Giuffre’s memoirThe Explainer Nobody’s Girl recounts ‘harrowing’ details of Giuffre’s suffering as a teenage victim of Jeffrey Epstein and his circle
-
Prince Andrew: a timeline of disgraced royal’s Epstein scandalIn Depth How the Queen’s favourite child went from Falklands War hero to public pariah
-
Prince Andrew: is the royal family doing enough?Today’s Big Question King Charles faces calls for tougher action against Andrew after latest allegations about Virginia Giuffre and Jeffrey Epstein
-
FDA OKs generic abortion pill, riling the rightSpeed Read The drug in question is a generic version of mifepristone, used to carry out two-thirds of US abortions
-
The new Stratus Covid strain – and why it’s on the riseThe Explainer ‘No evidence’ new variant is more dangerous or that vaccines won’t work against it, say UK health experts
-
RFK Jr. vaccine panel advises restricting MMRV shotSpeed Read The committee voted to restrict access to a childhood vaccine against chickenpox
-
Texas declares end to measles outbreakSpeed Read The vaccine-preventable disease is still spreading in neighboring states, Mexico and Canada
-
RFK Jr. shuts down mRNA vaccine funding at agencySpeed Read The decision canceled or modified 22 projects, primarily for work on vaccines and therapeutics for respiratory viruses
-
Measles cases surge to 33-year highSpeed Read The infection was declared eliminated from the US in 2000 but has seen a resurgence amid vaccine hesitancy
-
Kennedy's vaccine panel signals skepticism, changeSpeed Read RFK Jr.'s new vaccine advisory board intends to make changes to the decades-old US immunization system
-
Kennedy ousts entire CDC vaccine advisory panelspeed read Health Secretary RFK Jr. is a longtime anti-vaccine activist who has criticized the panel of experts
