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Hey smart people, Joe, here.

There it is folks.

Red line means stop.

You've got COVID or I've got COVID.

That's what I'm saying, I've got COVID.

I'm vaccinated, I am boosted.

And I'm definitely not alone.

All of you out there who have been infected or gotten sick or are worried when it's gonna come for you.

I'm asking myself the same questions you are.

First and foremost, what the heck?

I mean, what have we been doing the past two years?

All the masks and the staying home and the hand sanitizer and the vaccines and the boosters.

And I still got the virus.

Yeah, that happened.

What does this mean?

Is it gonna come for all of us?

Do I have like COVID superhero immunity now.

Do those three shots that I got even work?

What is this Omicron thing mean for the possible end of the pandemic?

Did science fail us?

Oh, I've got nothing but time right now, isolated at home.

So let's chat about it.

(upbeat music) First, some history because in a pandemic eight weeks ago counts as history.

What is Omicron?

Well, in late November doctors in South Africa called up the World Health Organization and said, "Hey we found a new mutant strain in that virus that causes COVID-19."

And the WHO was like, "Cool, thanks for letting us know."

And South Africa was like, "Oh, by the way everyone is getting it, click."

And that's when things got shall we say a little outta hand.

This new variant was given the name Omicron which sounds like a cool transformer, but it is not unfortunately.

It is a mutant strain or variant of SARS-COV-2 which is everyone's least favorite acronym.

And also the virus behind this pandemic.

So why are we getting mutants?

Well, it's actually pretty simple.

If you let a virus replicate in millions of hosts for two years, natural selection's gonna make some new version.

Never underestimate natural selection.

Oldest rule in the book you're gonna lose every time.

Now, Omicron is significantly more contagious than earlier variants.

In less than two months it now accounts for more than 95% of all cases in the US.

And pretty much everywhere it's shown up the trends are similar.

If you get COVID in the US, now or in the near future it's almost certainly going to be Omicron.

Why is Omicron more contagious?

Well, it reproduces in the airways.

Something like 70 times faster than COVID classic which means more virus being coughed and breathed out sooner after you're infected, which means on average you have to spend less time with an infected person to get it.

And the things that we put in the way of getting it like masks and vaccines might have a lower level of protection versus those earlier variants.

Hence this, me getting COVID.

Like millions of other people in the past few months since we first met the little O.

Get it little O because Omicron is literally Greek for the little O.

As I film this somewhere around 800,000 people every day are getting infected with COVID just in the US.

800,000 people a day is so many people.

And that's just that we know about because some experts think that maybe only like one in four or one in five people that test positive actually report that in any way.

They just take the test at home and don't tell anyone from like the government.

And to be totally honest, that is what I did.

I just took the test and now I'm telling you.

In the end, some experts think that here in the US by mid-February maybe 40% of people will have been infected by Omicron.

If you're watching this in the future fact check that, that means in a span of eight weeks four out of 10 people in this country will be infected by one germ, that is bonkers.

This has some researchers saying things like I've never seen anything so infectious, which may or may not be the case but that is not something researchers usually say.

Now, why is this happening?

Omicron infects more easily because it's mutated in some special places, particularly on the spike protein that it uses to get inside of our cells.

And since those mutations change the way the virus looks and the way that it's shaped ever so slightly, the antibodies, the immune system defenders inside our bodies, whether they're from vaccines or from a previous infection with some other flavor of COVID.

Well, those antibodies might not recognize Omicron as well as they did other variants.

Meaning even if you have the vaccine or if you've had COVID before you might still get sick hence this, vaccinated boosted sick guy.

But researchers have looked at how Omicron infects animals which is commonly done to act as a kind of model for how the disease ease affects humans.

And those experiments suggest that it's really, really good better than old variants, even at infecting the nose and all this upper breathy stuff but it's less good at infecting lung cells which could be why it's so good at getting passed from person to person, but isn't causing a severe disease.

So is Omicron less severe?

Yes.

Multiple lines of evidence support that that on average Omicron causes a less severe form of COVID-19 in all age groups but doctors and scientists have been very clear here.

Less severe is not the same as mild.

Here I'm gonna give you my personal experience with Omicron as a healthy, relatively young person who's in pretty good shape, sleeps enough and has a pretty good diet most of the time.

I have had a fever, I have had night sweats, the strangest fever dreams and the inability to concentrate on anything for longer than like 2.7 seconds.

And this coughing chest congestion that feels like someone is rubbing needles inside of my lung.

(coughing) Feels like it's coming from the very depths of my soul.

Not a fun time.

Like, don't get this if you can help it.

Zero out of 10, would not recommend.

Still the evidence is stacking up that adults with Omicron are much less likely to go to the ER, to be hospitalized, to need oxygen or to die from Omicron infection.

But you can do some back of the envelope math here and see that an extremely high rate of spread means that even if Omicron is sending people to the hospital, much lower rate it also means many, many more infections total.

And a small percentage of a huge number is still a very big number, which is why the risk of infection spikes, overwhelming healthcare systems is still very real.

Even if it's less severe.

Of course, we also don't know how Omicron might contribute to long COVID symptoms that affect people months down the road.

And for anyone out there who's immunocompromised who has any sort of preexisting condition that might lessen their ability to fight this virus.

Or if you're unvaccinated, your experience with Omicron could be potentially much more dangerous.

Unvaccinated people are overwhelmingly more likely to go to the hospital if they get COVID.

Omicron included.

Speaking of vaccines, let's just get it out there.

I know what some of you are wondering does this mean the vaccines don't work?

Was it all just some big scam?

- Stop it, get some help.

- Look throughout this pandemic data has made it clear.

You are many times more likely to go to the hospital from COVID if you're not vaccinated.

You are many times more likely to die from COVID if you're not vaccinated.

There's no reason to think that will be different with Omicron.

In fact, we're already seeing data that says people who are fully boosted are up to 88% less likely to be hospitalized with Omicron.

Well, I can hear some of you saying doesn't matter for me, I'm young and healthy.

So if I get it, it's gonna be a mild case.

If you think that you can control or know in advance how your body will react to this virus because you're young or strong or in shape, you can't, you can hope.

I mean, you can look at statistics but you cannot see the future.

We can only prepare ourselves to be as protected as possible and vaccines along with booster doses remain the safest, easiest way to protect yourself.

And in most places they're free.

If someone offered you a safe, free way to lower your chance of dying, why wouldn't you take it?

Here's maybe another way to look at it.

Every time I get in my car there's this minuscule barely above zero chance that I'll get in a crash and be hurt or even killed.

But there's a cheap, easy and free way to lower that tiny, tiny chance even further.

And I use it every time and I bet you do too.

So why not get vaccinated?

Yes, you might still get sick with Omicron like me but you are much less likely to have a really bad time.

I think one of the biggest failures in communication from the start of this pandemic and something that we need to work to educate people better about in the future is that vaccines are not and were never going to be a magic wand kind of tool that would make you completely invincible from ever getting infected with COVID.

There are a lot of reasons for that.

For one evolution, germs are constantly evolving and being pressured to evade our efforts to make them go extinct.

Variation in how the immune system responds and develops long term protection in different people.

And simply that's just how vaccines work.

I mean, think back to the the shots you got when you were a kid, they almost always involved later doses after the first one to keep your immune system as ready as possible.

And guess what infections still leak through, smallpox is still the only disease that we've totally eradicated with vaccines, but the rest of those vaccines, we take, they have saved countless lives because wherever they might fail at preventing infection and they actually do a really good job of that in most cases they are super effective at preventing serious disease.

And that is true for COVID vaccines as well.

Yes, vaccinated and boosted people are still getting sick.

I'm one of them.

but a smaller and smaller percentage of sick people are dying.

And that is what vaccines have done and continue to do for us.

It would be great if vaccines gave us some invincible virus force field but saving lives is a success no matter how you slice it.

One of the most interesting questions that come outta all this is whether getting infected with the virus might give you a better form of immunity like some organic, all natural antibodies or something.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

But injection versus infection, which protects better?

And is injection plus infection even better still?

Now immunity is not some on, off kind of things.

It works in degrees of protection and different people will have different responses on the individual levels.

So we can only talk about averages here.

Now, before Omicron getting the vaccine or having a previous infection they both appeared to reduce people's risk of reinfection to a similar degree with maybe like a slight edge to vaccine.

Both forms of immunity get weaker over time which is why we got boosters which helped raise vaccine immunity back up.

Now, of course, if the end result is just getting protected then vaccine immunity wins out because you get all that immunity without any of the risks no matter how small they might be from getting infected.

Now, Omicron can sneak past natural antibodies in the same way that it can sneak past vaccine antibodies.

It's a mutant.

So everyone's less protected here than we were for earlier variants.

What's super interesting is that getting both vaccine and infection induced immunity seems to create a kind of hybrid immunity that is better than either alone.

So if you already have the vaccine or the vaccine plus a booster and then you get a breakthrough infection, not only are you less likely to get dangerously sick you'll likely get even better immunity in the end.

And that means I'm gonna have super antibodies.

How about that huh?

Can I join your team?

Think of being in a pandemic, like going to school and getting COVID is like taking your final exam.

How much practice do you want to give your body before the test?

You wanna pop quiz with no preparation or do you wanna take as many lessons as you can first?

You get it.

If you want the best, A plus immunity, get the vaccine too.

Now, honestly getting COVID like two years into this after all that we've been through, it's hard not to be a little disappointed, even knowing as much as I do about the science behind all this but there might be some silver lining because Omicron might give us a path out of this pandemic.

Specifically, what was a pandemic virus will probably become an endemic virus.

Now, when a virus is pandemic, it is basically infecting people everywhere, all at the same time and in big numbers, basically the last two years.

When a virus becomes endemic, it keeps circulating in different populations around the globe but it's less prevalent and has less impact on society.

And it's all in all more manageable.

That doesn't mean it's no longer dangerous or that people aren't still going to get very sick or die but its impact will be much less.

Now if Omicron basically out competes every other variant and drives them all extinct by sheer numbers and enough people get infected with Omicron and recover and develop long lasting immunity to it.

And it doesn't further evolve into some more nasty version of its contagious self.

Then there's a chance that the pandemic phase of COVID will start to fizzle out and COVID becomes endemic.

This less severe form of COVID establishes itself as a permanent part of our existence, flares up in smaller pockets around the world from time to time, maybe every year, maybe every 10 years no one knows, no one knows if Omicron will in fact end this pandemic, but it's plausible, possible even likely depending on who you ask.

And I mean, if there is a way out of this pandemic in sight a light at the end of the tunnel then this close to the finish line why not do everything in your power to make sure that you walk out of the other end of the tunnel.

There's this famous saying it's really difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.

Well, science is the best tool we have to make that impossible task just a little bit easier because it lets us figure out exactly which lessons from the past are most likely to help us tomorrow.

And as the universe continues to change and surprise us it's our best guide to all the tomorrows after that.

All things considered, I think it's doing a pretty good job.

You stay safe and stay curious.