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The issue of booster shots is increasingly cloudy. Waning vaccine effectiveness and rapid evolution of the virus have raised questions about whether it would be wise for those under 50 years old to get a second booster now or wait for a new generation of shots due in a few months. (7/13)

Now that most people have been infected, there’s really no other way a new variant can take over except by breaking through immunity from past infections and vaccinations. That’s one reason the Washington Post called BA.5, the currently circulating sub-variant of the highly transmissible omicron, “the worst variant.” (Faye Flam, 7/13)

One silver lining of the interminable Covid pandemic is that it has revealed just how prepared humanity is for a zombie apocalypse. We’ve proven we can ignore any public-health menace provided it sticks around long enough. (Mark Gongloff, 7/13)

A new variant of the coronavirus, even more contagious than previous strains, is now dominant in the United States. But rising cases should not prompt calls for most Americans to hunker down or policymakers to reimpose restrictions. Instead, the rapid spread of the BA.5 omicron subvariant is a window into what the future with this coronavirus looks like. (Leana S. Wen, 7/13)

In the early days of the COVID pandemic, many of us doctors felt helpless. Hospitals were filled with patients who were sick and dying of a novel, virulent pathogen. Doctors and scientists scrambled to understand how to treat it and prevent its transmission. We also worried about catching it, bringing it home and putting our families and children at risk. As the pandemic unfolded and our knowledge evolved, it became evident that we needed a vaccine. Then the data on COVID vaccines for adults showed significant protection from hospitalization and death. I felt so relieved the day I first got vaccinated alongside my colleagues. Getting myself vaccinated was a no-brainer for me as a pediatrician trained in public health. (Lisa Meneses, 7/13)

The monumental battle over remote work in San Francisco and elsewhere is heating up this summer as more traditionalist business leaders are demanding that employees come to the office much or all of the time. Google Maps workers, asked to come back to the office full-time recently, fought back with a petition and threats of a strike, and won a reprieve of 90 days. Elon Musk demanded that all Tesla staff come to the office full-time, resulting in Tesla workers getting recruited by other companies. And big city mayors like San Francisco’s London Breed and New York’s Eric Adams are pushing their workers to get back to the office, including by writing stern and reprimanding letters. Yet what these traditionalist executives are failing to realize is that the drama, stress and tensions caused by their demands won’t matter. Remote work will win this fall. (Gleb Tsipursky, 7/12)

After two years of taking every precaution, including vaxxing and double-boosting, I finally got COVID at the end of a family vacation last month. All four of us in our family had worn masks on multiple airplanes for the long journey from California to Hawaii and back. Still, we noticed that most other passengers eschewed masks on crowded planes and in the long airport lines. (Marcos Bretón, 7/13)

As we continue to face episodic COVID surges globally, the U.S. government and its Centers for Disease Control need to focus on enhancing our systems for detecting the next highly infectious variant before we are caught unprepared once more. (Abraar Karan, Benjamin Pinsky and Sikhulile Moyo, 7/13)