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Two doses? Three? More? The euphoria that greeted safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines a year ago has turned to confusion and debate in the face of resurgent cases and an ugly new variant. The rich world is doubling down on booster doses, ignoring warnings from the World Health Organization that this will worsen supply shortages in the developing world. (Lionel Laurent, 12/3)

The saddest thing about the emergence of the omicron variant is its utter predictability. For months, even longer, public health officials have been warning that as long as the coronavirus can circulate freely and widely, it would change its form, and that those mutations could be more difficult to handle than the original variant. In October, former British prime minister, Gordon Brown predicted this. He said: “We in the West may feel safe and blessed at the moment, because we’ve had the vaccines, but we may find a new variant that comes out of Africa or Asia, where people have not been vaccinated and are not protected. And it obviously isn’t susceptible to the vaccines that we have at the moment.” (Fareed Zakaria, 12/2)

As we approach the two-year mark since “coronavirus” became a household word, I get the frustration, the impatience, the exhaustion. I feel and fight them myself. I want to know when I can make travel plans without first making intricate assessments of risk, when I can stop ordering masks in bulk, when I can rip off the one through which I strain to be heard by the students I teach, when I can breathe free. (Frank Bruni, 12/2)

Almost two years into a punishing pandemic, as vaccination rates creep higher and the number of COVID-19 deaths declines in many countries, many people are asking how much longer will it be before we can return to normal. While there have been causes for optimism, this crisis has seen its share of false dawns, not least is the recent emergence of the new Omicron variant, which has revived fears and increased doubt. (Haruka Sakamoto, 12/2)

It can be hard to remain calm when there’s yet another variant of the coronavirus, possibly even more transmissible than Delta, circulating in the United States. The first domestic case — an air passenger from South Africa — was reported in California on Wednesday, and several more have been confirmed since then. But let’s stay cool, for the moment anyway. (12/2)

When the coronavirus pandemic first hit, many states and towns closed everything, including schools. Public-health experts didn’t know enough about how COVID was spread or how contagious it was, and the health-care system was overwhelmed in parts of the country. The American public could see the disaster unfolding in Italy, and many people believed that the U.S. needed to act before things got out of control. (Aaron E. Carroll, 12/2)