Forecasting the Omicron winter: Experts envision various scenarios, from bad to worse
Since the Omicron variant was discovered four weeks ago, epidemiologists have been crunching data as fast as scientists on the front lines can produce it to scope out what the newest coronavirus variant means for the pandemic this winter and beyond. While many uncertainties remain, disease modelers have cranked out several potential visions for what the first months of 2022 may have in store. Worst case — they could bring the deadliest phase of the pandemic yet. But even the most optimistic scenarios aren’t exactly pretty.
Which immediate future plays out will be a function of a few big unknowns — some already baked into Omicron’s biology and some that can be altered based on how people behave in the coming days and weeks. Further out, the models get fuzzier still. But though they differ in the details, all of them point to SARS-CoV-2 being here to stay.
