North Texas, like many other parts of the U.S. Southwest, seems to be falling fast down the far slope of Omicron Mountain. The Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 1First officially reported by scientists in South Africa in November 2021, the variant raced across the world due to its unprecedented transmissibility and quickly instigated a new wave of cases in the U.S. beginning in December. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sars-cov-2_omicron_variant exploded across the globe and quickly became the dominant strain, now accounting for 98.8% of all COVID-19 cases world-wide2https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2021/tracker-omicron-spread/?itid=sf_coronavirus_sn_tracker-omicron-spread_4. It led to a rapid rise in cases through December and January, peaking in late January in the U.S. Southwest before beginning an equally precipitous fall. We are now, here in Collin County, TX, back to levels of new COVID-19 cases comparable to what we saw about 60 days ago.
The last 2 months have been worrying. Omicron rose so fast that the time to double the total number of cases in my county went from almost 600 days, to about a month or less at the peak of the Omicron wave, to now again almost 600 days again. Deaths also rose, lagging cases and then hospitalizations by a couple of weeks. The Omicron wave was the first one to take a well-known family member from me.
I will not miss Omicron. We may not entirely be saying goodbye to it, of course. As was inevitable, with so much spread the virus had ample time to mutate. A new variant was possible, and one seems to be emerging. The BA.2 variant of Omicron has now begun to spread, with more prevalence in Asia and Europe and currently making up 3-4% of cases in the U.S.3https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/11/26/faq-new-variant-omicron/.
I, like many others tracking the course of this pandemic, am bracing for what might happen next. Each lull has permitted another variant to rise in the void. There will likely never be an end to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, but I am still waiting to the time when finally this disease folds into the annual noise of influenza, seasonal cold, strep throat, and other common transmissible ailments. We’re not there yet … but maybe this time. Maybe this time.
