This morning, New York Times columnist David Leonhardt – who is so influential within the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he might as well be the director – writes that to vaccinated people, Omicron is now slightly less dangerous than the flu:
For now, the available evidence suggests that Omicron is less threatening to a vaccinated person than a normal flu. Obviously, the Omicron wave has still been damaging, because the variant is so contagious that it has infected tens of millions of Americans in a matter of weeks. Small individual risks have added up to large societal damage.
In general, Omicron being less virulent and threatening is terrific news. But as we’ve witnessed, even a less virulent virus can create far-reaching problems for the country. A significant portion of people who test positive will follow CDC guidance and either self-isolate for five to eleven days, or stay home from work. Or people will stay home to take care of kids, elderly relatives, or spouses who come down with Omicron.
When the country is still averaging 700,000 to 800,000 new cases per day, that’s a lot of people staying home from work! And that’s exacerbating the preexisting problems of labor shortages and supply chain issues, in school districts, hospitals, child care centers, restaurants, you name it. The only policy response that could mitigate this at the margins is if the CDC told people that if they were asymptomatic, they could safely go to work and mask up, with minimal chance of spreading it to their co-workers or customers. But considering the reaction when the CDC reduced the isolation period from ten days to five, it is extremely unlikely the guidance will change in a direction that gets infected Americans back into the workplace quicker.