But is this the last wave? That is the $64 million (inflation adjusted) question. Hopefully Omicron is just a highly contagious, endemic and not much more lethal version of the flu from now on. Any guesses on when we will know that?
The second Omicron variant is out in the wild and it might be more dangerous than Omicron 1 and it may not. I've seen evidence that points both ways.
Viruses that cause pandemics have in the past either mutated themselves out of existence or mutated themselves into more virulent, but less dangerous strains. The virus wants to survive, so being less lethal gives it a better chance at survival since people infected will be more likely to be out in public with it.
Though before vaccines we did have some pretty nasty viruses that were endemic like small pox, measles, etc. This virus family tree have also proven capable of leaving a person with long term problems (long COVID). It could mutate into a virus that is highly contagious, doesn't kill short term, but can kill a person over a period of many years, or leave them permanently disabled. If a variant came along that created much more long COVID, it could be a serious problem until we figure out how to kill it off.
We have all lived in a tiny slice of human history where infectious diseases were mostly just a nuisance rather than a serious threat to everyone. Non-infectious disease started over taking infectious disease as the biggest killers around 1900, first in the US and Britain, but was almost world-wide by the time COVID came along.
The 1918 flu pandemic left a mark, but not as significant as COVID probably will because most people around then were familiar with infectious diseases that kill. It was just a bigger outbreak of the sort of thing they had seen before.
Chances are that it will most likely mutate into something that is more or less a nuisance, but that isn't guaranteed. Imagine having to live in a world with measles and a vaccine that is not essentially 100% effective, with the constant chance it will mutate again and get worse.
