Will Omicron Leave Most of Us Immune?
Even before Omicron hit the United States in full force, most of our bodies had already wised up to SARS-CoV-2’s insidious spike—through infection, injection, or both. By the end of October 2021, some 86.2 percent of American immune systems may have glimpsed the virus’s most infamous protein, according to one estimate; now, as Omicron adds roughly 800,000 known cases to the national roster each day, the cohort of spike-zero Americans, the truly immunologically naive, is shrinking fast. Virginia Pitzer, an epidemiologist at Yale’s School of Public Health and one of the scientists who arrived at the 86.2 percent estimate, has a guess for what fraction of the U.S. population will have had some experience with the spike protein when the Omicron wave subsides: 90 to 95 percent.
The close of Omicron’s crush, then, should bring the country one step closer to hitting a COVID equilibrium in which SARS-CoV-2’s still around, but disrupting our lives far less. In the most optimistic view of our future, this surge could be seen as a turning point in the country’s population-level protection. Omicron’s reach could be so comprehensive that,, this wave ends up being the pandemic’s .
