Christmas is here, just like we all wanted! After last year’s lonely lockdown Christmas, we deserve to celebrate this year. It’s time for family and friends to get together again and enjoy the holiday with a lot of fun—eating, drinking, and exchanging gifts in person. Now we can let the children go from house to house singing carols to spread the spirit of Christmas.
Unfortunately, the Omicron variant has arrived to spoil a season of joy. It is threatening to destroy our holiday plans. Will we allow it to put Christmas festivities on hold again?
As with everything else in life, we have to accept current realities—including the fact that the pandemic has made life more complicated for us with the arrival of the new, more infectious variant.
Omicron has been overtaking the Delta variant among new Covid infections across the globe. As of December 20, we have three confirmed Omicron cases in the country. Omicron can evade some of the protection provided by full vaccination. Its initial symptoms are almost identical to a common cold or the flu, but we don’t know yet if it will cause severe illness requiring hospitalization.
What is alarming is that a growing body of preliminary research suggests that Covid vaccines used in most of the world offer almost no defense against the highly contagious Omicron variant. For example, two US senators—Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker—who are both “fully vaccinated” and “boosted,” revealed on Sunday that they’ve come down with symptomatic Covid.
Warren tweeted: “I regularly test for Covid & while I tested negative earlier this week, today I tested positive with a breakthrough case. Thankfully, I am only experiencing mild symptoms & am grateful for the protection provided against serious illness that comes from being vaccinated & boosted.”
The United Kingdom, the US and Denmark are three of the countries where the Omicron variant is currently surging, about a month after it was first detected in South Africa. UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid said on Tuesday that Omicron cases were doubling around every two days in the country. On Friday, the UK reported 93,045 new coronavirus cases—the highest daily number since the pandemic began.
From the Associated Press: “Omicron has raced ahead of other variants and is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the US, accounting for 73 percent of new infections last week, federal health officials said Monday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers showed nearly a six-fold increase in Omicron’s share of infections in only one week. In much of the country, it’s even higher. Omicron is responsible for an estimated 90 percent or more of new infections in the New York area, the Southeast, the industrial Midwest and the Pacific Northwest. The national rate suggests that more than 650,000 Omicron infections occurred in the US last week.”
From Bloomberg: “The surge is already having an impact on workplaces and on campuses. CNN closed its offices to nonessential workers last weekend. Apple Inc., Google and Uber Technologies Inc. have all delayed return-to-office plans indefinitely. Ford Motor Co. delayed its return until March. Lyft Inc. says workers don’t have to show until 2023.”
Bloomberg reported other Omicron cancellations: “The World Economic Forum, scheduled for Davos, Switzerland in January, has been put off until summer. It’s the latest big conference to reconsider an in-person gathering.”
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday urged people to cancel holiday gatherings as Omicron continues to spread. He said: “All of us are sick of this pandemic. All of us want to spend time with friends and family. All of us want to get back to normal. The fastest way to do this is for all of us leaders and individuals to make the difficult decisions that must be made to protect others and ourselves. In some cases, that will mean cancelling or delaying events. But an event cancelled is better than a life cancelled. It’s better to cancel now and celebrate later than to celebrate now and grieve later.”
Do we want to follow the WHO chief’s recommendation and again cancel this year’s Christmas celebration, or do we want to go ahead with plans to celebrate with our loved ones and friends now that restrictions have been lifted? The choice is ours to make.