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  • The Atlantic

    I Canceled My Birthday Party Because of Omicron

    Here’s how I thought through the decision.
    by Ed Yong Dec 17, 2021 5 minutes
    Source: Getty; The Atlantic

    I turn 40 today, and I was planning to have a party. The Delta surge made me nervous about it. The arrival of Omicron made me cancel it.

    The plan was to have an extended house party, with a couple dozen people popping by over the weekend. On the one hand, it would have been an unmasked, indoor event—the kind in which the coronavirus, in all its incarnations, spreads most easily. On the other hand, everyone who was going to be there is fully vaccinated, and most of them, myself included, have been boosted. A month ago, I would have felt comfortable about that trade-off, especially if people got tested in the preceding days, as eight friends did when they came over for Thanksgiving.

    Omicron didn’t much shift the way I weighed . Although the new variant can evade some of our immune defenses, early data suggest

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