1/6 Being asked my thoughts about what the post-omicron world looks like? Especially for the US. Always perilous to make pandemic predictions, but here are a few scenarios I'm looking at...
2/6 SCENARIO #1. Annual winter peaks. This was put forward by @mlipsitch and his @HarvardChanSPH team early in the pandemic, but I think it still holds up well. Arguably what's happening now is an example. Here's his 2020 paper from SCIENCE science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
3/6 SCENARIO #2. Happy endings. My view: The least plausible. It makes the case omicron = mild virus that infects everyone to establish global herd immunity. But we've learned how infection alone does not produce durable protection esp for upper resp CoVs nature.com/articles/s4159…
4/6 SCENARIO #3. More of the same. Waves of new CoV VOCs arise from the unvaccinated Southern Hemisphere and LMICs continue to fly in or wash ashore, with the next big one starting up again late spring early summer. In some ways this is default if we don't move to Scenario #4.
5/6 SCENARIO #4. We're not going to take it. The G7 leaders finally wake up to the realization that delta and omicron arose from large unvaccinated populations in LMICs and finally redouble efforts to vaccinate the world, especially Southern Hemisphere
6/6 We don't have to live this way. But we need 9 billion doses of COVID vaccine to vaccinate the Global South and halt future variants from emerging. We think our @TexasChildrens vaccine is part of the solution npr.org/sections/goats…
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