Our war with natural selection

Omicron may not necessarily be the last punishing wave

A COVID patient.
(Image credit: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.

Two years after COVID began spreading through humanity, we are still adapting to SARS-CoV-2, and it is still adapting to us. It's a Darwinian struggle, fought on the battlefield of natural selection, with immunity conferred by vaccination and infection competing against the random mutations that enable the coronavirus to shape-shift, become fitter, and launch new waves of attack. Will the Omicron wave — now starting to subside on the East Coast, as it previously did in South Africa and the U.K. — be the last big one, with COVID soon becoming a milder disease we can live with? Scientists have varying opinions — but the truth is, no one knows. There are so many variables involved: vaccination and booster rates, human behavior (do people abandon all precautions too quickly?), and whether a new variant emerges that's even more effective than Omicron in evading built-up immunity.

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William Falk

William Falk is editor-in-chief of The Week, and has held that role since the magazine's first issue in 2001. He has previously been a reporter, columnist, and editor at the Gannett Westchester Newspapers and at Newsday, where he was part of two reporting teams that won Pulitzer Prizes.