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Top U.S. health officials are urging caution amid reports of coronavirus cases peaking in some areas and speculation that the omicron variant could be a pandemic killer. “It is an open question whether it will be the live virus vaccination that everyone is hoping for,” Anthony S. Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, said Monday during a virtual panel at the Davos Agenda. (Jeong, 1/18)

Anthony Fauci, the top medical adviser to the U.S. president, said it’s too soon to say whether the omicron variant will herald a shift in the Covid-19 pandemic to endemic. “It’s an open question as to whether or not omicron is going to be the live virus vaccination everyone is hoping for,” Fauci said Monday at the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda online conference. Other scientists and government officials have expressed optimism that omicron’s rapid spread and milder outcomes could signal an eventual shift to learning to live with the virus, much like the world does with seasonal flu. Pfizer’s Chief Executive Albert Bourla told French newspaper Le Figaro that life could soon return to normal. (Hoffman and Gretler, 1/17)

The pattern fits with what recent models predict. National case counts will hit a maximum this month, maybe a touch later. (Some think that the peak is already behind us.) It’s all a bit squishy still, but epidemiologists such as Justin Lessler of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are “pretty confident” that the American apex is nigh. Peak could then give way to plunge, as it did in South Africa. It’s tempting, then, to imagine Omicron loosening its vise grip on the United States just as quickly as it latched on. February will be better; March, rosier still. Americans will get something like a Hot Post-Omi Spring. (Wu, 1/14)

The phrase often heard now in the United States and many other nations is “live with the virus.” That new stance is applauded by some officials and scientists, and welcomed by people exhausted with the hardships and disruptions of this global health emergency entering its third year. But there are also disease experts who fear the pendulum will swing too far the other way. They worry that many world leaders are gambling on a relatively benign outcome from this omicron variant surge, and sending messages that will lead people who are normally prudent to abandon the social distancing and mask-wearing known to limit the pathogen’s spread. Epidemiologists say the live-with-it strategy underestimates the dangers posed by omicron. (Achenbach, 1/15)

As the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc, an expert panel at the World Economic Forum delivered a mix of good news and bad news on Monday: More variants will emerge, but vaccine production is accelerating and research is progressing toward a combined shot that may be able to attack these different variants. On one hand, the world needs to prepare for newer strains that could be more vexing, or the “worst case scenario,” said Annelies Wilder-Smith, a professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “Omicron will not be the last variant. There’s a high probability we will have another variant coming up. The question is when and will it be less dangerous?” (Silverman, 1/17)