According to some experts, Omicron can have a silvery lining by boosting immunity. But don’t bet on it.

As Omicron makes millions of Americans sick, some disease experts say that the massive winter wave of infection from this new coronavirus variant has something to do with the long term. We are looking to the future, speculating that it may be produced.

They say that Omicron is surprisingly contagious, but it seems unlikely that anyone will be sent to the hospital. The extraordinary infectivity of the subspecies can boost immunity as it tears the population, and once this brutal stream of events subsides, the pandemic becomes a less dangerous health emergency. ..

The idea that Omicron has a silver lining is not a fully formed scientific theory. This is a guess, and in some cases you’re not caught up in a Twitter thread and you’re in a TV interview. In the worst case, using the term used by serious scientists as a derogatory is to “shake your arm.”

And even the experts driving this idea admit that it is a knowledge-based guess and depends on the virus itself. The virus itself can repeatedly surprise experts and produce new variants that are more dangerous than Omicron.

Robert Wachter, director of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who shares speculation on social media, said: That Omicron has the potential to bring long-term benefits.

After this horrific Omicron wave has subsided, he suggests that so many people have some immunity to the virus and will not cause the same level of pain or suffering thereafter. In an interview, he said he would have submitted his thoughts to a peer-reviewed journal in the past. This process will probably take 3 months. In this health emergency, he went directly to Twitter.

“It’s hard to say that Omicron is a lucky break, but it’s a sort of thing,” Wacter said in an interview. “The pathogenicity is significantly lower, the antigenic escape is minimal, and the infectivity is so high that it is what is called the opposite of a complete storm.”

This hypothesis has created a backlash from other scientists. They say too much remains unknown about the virus to make such predictions. They say that every time experts suggest that a pandemic is nearing the end, the virus comes up with new tricks-in the case of Omicron, it is possible to make the virus more infectious and at the same time slip through it. Package dozens of mutations into a key line of immune defense.

Significantly boosting immunity comes at a very high known cost. The healthcare system is at stake and healthcare workers are on fire. World Health Organization General Tedros Adhanom Gebreez warned Thursday that Omicron infection should not be described as “mild.” “Like the previous variants, Omicron hospitalizes people and kills them.”

Coronavirus continues to mutate, and vaccine shortages in many developing countries make it easier to spread in many parts of the world. There is no scientific evidence that the virus has settled in a permanently calm state. The new variety can possibly combine the higher disease severity caused by the previous variety with the infectivity of Omicron, including the still circulating Delta variety.

Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University, said people thought the pandemic was declining last spring, and then Delta came. And in the fall, things got better and Omicron appeared.

“There is always this threat of curved balls,” she said.

Infectious disease experts say the idea that widespread Omicron infections generate immunity over a wide area of ​​the population and serve as a shield against future variants is certainly plausible. However, it is unclear how durable the immunity is or how well it is protected from future mutations.

Matthew B. Freeman, a virologist at the University of Maryland, said: School of medicine.

Monica Gandhi, a doctor and colleague at Wachter’s at the University of California, San Francisco, said in an email that the epidemic of Omicron indicates a pandemic “end of life” approach, a virus epidemic, and the virus could continue to spread. Said there is. It’s a modest level, but it doesn’t cause any disruption to society.

“”[U]Unless there is a new, more toxic variant (which can occur if we are not working hard on global vaccine fairness), we may approach the U.S. epidemic once the Omicron surge is over. “She writes.

With much of the country and the world in the midst of a health crisis, discussions of long-term benefits from Omicron will inevitably look at the 30,000-foot level. In the United States, patients are flooding hospitals and most of the country is still facing what is likely to be the worst stage of the winter surge.

Wachter acknowledges that Omicron has attractive attributes in the long run, but very bad attributes in the short run. Our hospital is overkill. “

Many people seem to have resigned from being exposed to the virus. This is a comprehensible reaction to news reports that Omicron is a milder version of the coronavirus and perhaps such infectious pathogens cannot be avoided.

Six medical professionals who advised President Biden during the transition from the Trump administration will shift their strategy to the Biden administration, ending the current cycle of endless emergencies and adapting to the reality of coronavirus infection. Published in the journal of the American Medical Association as “New Normal”. One article suggested that the administration would stop pursuing Covid’s death, independent of those caused by other potentially deadly respiratory viruses, including the flu.

“‘New Normal’ should be recognized that SARS-CoV-2 is just one of several circulating respiratory viruses, including influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), etc. COVID-19 must be considered as one of the combined risks of all respiratory viral diseases, “said Ezekiel Emanuel and Celine Gaun, prominent disease experts who have spoken frankly throughout the pandemic. Dar, Michael Osterholm writes.

The administration’s pandemic guidance has changed slightly. Still, common sense measures such as vaccination and booster shots, and wearing masks and avoiding indoor crowds are emphasized, but people need to live without isolating themselves. Scientists and government officials also emphasize that schools generally remain open to face-to-face learning.

Andrew Neumer, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Irvine, said: Irvine. “We are all going to get this in the end.”

Vaccines usually prevent serious consequences from Omicron, especially after booster immunization. And despite the shortage of supply as demand surges, many treatments continue to be effective against Omicron. So far, there has been no sharp increase in deaths, which is now weeks after the Omicron wave.

It is unclear why Omicron infections are generally less severe than those caused by Delta. Some of them are probably due to widespread immunity from vaccination and previous infections. However, the virus itself seems to behave differently. Laboratory experiments show that Omicron grows faster than Delta and can avoid important parts of the immune system, but its ability to invade lung cells and cause deadly pneumonia is hampered. ..

There is no guarantee that the next variant will do the same. And Omicron is still packed with punches.

Michael Diamond, a virologist at Washington University in St. Louis, said: “People are sick and still dying.”

He is not ready to accept Omicron as a disguised blessing.

“Yes, we will generate more immunity in the population, so maybe we will be better prepared for future varieties-maybe. Not yet seen,” Diamond said.

In the efforts of a large team, Diamond and co-workers found a consistent and impressive pattern of infecting mice and hamsters with Omicron, scattered throughout the United States and Japan.

Results published in studies that have not yet been peer-reviewed show that Omicron is biologically different from previous mutants. However, there are limits to such experiments. Mice, unlike humans, their mild illness was measured by weight loss. Mice infected with the previous version of the virus lost weight, while mice infected with Omicron did not.

In hamsters who develop respiratory illnesses similar to those experienced when humans are infected, omicrons are less likely to proliferate and damage the lungs and instead tend to cause mild upper respiratory tract infections.

“Something is different about the ability of animals to replicate, it’s slow and doesn’t seem to be able to infect the lungs at the same level as other variants,” Diamond called the discovery unexpected. But he said he was careful to extrapolate too far from the animal data. Just because Omicron is rodent and calm does not mean that it is also calm in people.

Why is Omicron not good at infecting cells deep in the lungs? Convergence lines of evidence from multiple laboratories show that Omicron invades cells using a different method than previous variants.

At the University of Cambridge, scientists created a miniature model of the human lung in a dish and found that a harmless replica of the Omicron virus was less capable of infecting cells than Delta. They traced their characteristics to the inefficient ability to enter cells by interacting with a protein called TMPRSS2, which is abundant in lung cells. Omicron also shows that it is less suitable for fusing cells. This creates a mass that is characteristic of severe covid-19 at necropsy.

Other scientists are using different experiments to reach similar conclusions. This may explain why this version of the virus is unlikely to cause fatal pneumonia and is very similar to an upper respiratory tract infection such as a cold.

This Omicron habit may be a bit of luck-it’s not a sign that all future variants will follow the path of Omicron.

“We are worried that people may have the wrong idea about this because what we have observed is what happened at Omicron. Ravindra Gupta, a virologist at the University of Cambridge, said. , Says:

Bernie Graham, a scientist who recently retired from the National Institute for Allergic Infectious Diseases, which laid the foundation for many coronavirus vaccines, said whether the change in disease severity was due to the virus itself or its predecessor. Immune said that it is becoming more and more difficult to judge.

And Graham said he was worried that a milder virus in adults might not be milder in children.

“Toddlers have a narrow airway, so they can experience the same things as adults in a different way. Therefore, if the virus is still infected and easily infected, a very young child with a small airway. May have more difficulty getting rid of it, “Graham said.

Graham said he was generally optimistic. His hope is that as the virus evolves, it will be pushed to the corner. Mutations that give the virus an advantage over human immunity occur with the Achilles tendon and can interfere with its ability to spread.

Over multiple waves of illness, the coronavirus is no longer a pandemic transmission and can instead pose a seasonal threat. But how many waves does it need? He doesn’t know The challenge is to minimize the threat of future outbreaks by increasing vaccination globally.

“I think everyone on the planet will be exposed to the virus and at some level will be infected with the virus within the next three to six years,” Graham said. “It is inevitable.”