A possible silver lining for the Omicron variant

*If* it's more transmissible but less severe, it might help bring this pandemic to an end.

I mentioned the /r/AgedLikeMilk subreddit a few days ago, so I’m using all of my lawyerly powers to use extremely guarded language for this post. If the Omicron variant turns out to be like The Stand, please forget that I implied anything less. (Of course, under these circumstances, my bad predictions would be the least of your worries.)

That said, I am somewhat intrigued by the idea that Omicron (which has reportedly claimed its first life, in Britain) could be extremely transmissible but doesn’t cause illness as severe as other variants of COVID-19. In the Spanish newspaper El Pais, Pablo Linde explains why that could actually work out in our favor:

The omicron variant of the coronavirus is worrying for a reason: if it is confirmed that it is more transmissible, as all the preliminary data indicate, it will start to replace delta, which is the only strain that has been able to become dominant in nearly every country in the world. Omicron will lead to more contagions and this, depen…