The vast majority of hospitalized patients will still be the unvaccinated. The holy grail of true herd immunity has now evaporated, but the omicron variant may create a different version, “herd mitigation”, in which the population gets one last blast of infection and then covid disease ebbs and flows with a dampening of the spikes. To get there, though, hospitals will be overwhelmed, people will retreat back to their homes, the economy will take another hit, and this time Biden will be blamed.

Let’s just hope that a variant with omicron’s transmissibility and the original SARS-Cov-2 virus’ predilection for lung tissue doesn’t emerge. That will be the true Frankenstein’s monster.