Welcome to 2022. This isn’t 2020, and it isn’t 2021. The latest version of Covid — Omicron — is insanely transmissible. In the past week, a cousin, two co-workers (one of whom may have exposed me), two of my parents friends, There are a number of possible reasons for this:
That’s on top of all the other ways that Covid might spread, that haven’t been fully accounted for. Fecal-oral and fecal-aerosol transmission still haven’t been ruled out, after almost two years, and there’s certainly ample circumstantial evidence that some of that is happening (hard to imagine how else it could have made its way to over a third of white tailed deer, other than wastewater). The number of susceptible animal hosts is staggering enough that Covid probably qualifies as a panzootic (mustelids — animals like minks, otters, badgers, etc — are extremely prone to infection).
All this is to say, that in the early days of the pandemic — remember them? — there were things you could reasonably do to guarantee not catching Covid. Abscond from densely packed urban areas, or if that wasn’t possible at least isolate in your apartment. Although I live alone in my rent stabilized studio in Brooklyn, and wear an N95 when I’m out of the home, I’m under no illusion that it’s not just a matter of time before it finds me. Remember — again, thinking back to the early days — medical professionals, people who one assumes were on their A-game — were coming down with it left, right, and center? That’s because they were practically swimming in Covid every day. That’s all of us now. It’s everywhere, and it’s ludicrously airborne.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t do your level best to avoid it as long as possible. Flattening the curve still matters — it’s better for everyone if we try not to get sick at the same time. On the other hand if it turns out that, in some places, the curve is “unflattenable” then that’s something we need to reckon with too, which might be why the CDC was left making the unpopular suggestion to shorten isolation times. If 20% of the community is infected, and you’re 90% certain that you’ve cleared the virus after five days, that’s probably good enough — especially if you’re an essential worker.
But make no mistake — it’s here to stay, and it’s going to find you. If it’s not specifically Omicron that gets you, it’s probably going to be something pretty similar. The virus has shown a remarkable amount of convergent evolution, meaning that variants aren’t very variable, so whatever process gave rise to Omicron in the first place could very easily reoccur, and give rise to something predictably similar (that’s good news, in a sense).
Do your best to delay it as long as possible. Wear a better mask, and get boosted if you haven’t already. The Swiss cheese theory of risk mitigation is still very much applicable. But understand that whatever you do, there are always going to be tiny holes, literally and figuratively (did you know, for instance, that N95’s don’t work nearly as well if you have facial hair? or that N95’s need to be frequently changed? or that somehow, Covid managed to get from one room to another in a quarantine hotel in Hong Kong, despite the fact that neither of the fully vaccinated guests left their rooms?). The point is that however much you do, there will always be one more thing you could have done, and there’s simply no way any of us are so good that we’re going to keep dodging this forever. As a case in point, this is Katelyn Jetelina, the author of the Your Local Epidemiologist on substack, led with this in a recent post:
I was hoping for a relatively quiet week. But, as with a lot of people right now, SARS-CoV-2 finally caught up with my little family. I finally got a break at our “hot mess express” house to get a handle on the current state of affairs. This is where we are today…
To quote Thomas Huxley:
“The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.”
You’re going to get it. Put it off as long as you can, say until Paxlovid becomes widely available, or until people in your life who are immunocompromised can get Evusheld or until hospitals aren’t as overwhelmed. Talk to your household members and your doctor about what to do when that happens when the dam breaks. But make no mistake: you’re going to get it. And when you do, be kind to yourself. You still put it off as long as you could, but you put it off long enough to keep the curve flat.
Happy New Year, and wishing you a speedy recovery.