It's hard to know what omicron means for the future of the pandemic. While some have optimistically suggested this could be the final surge before the U.S. moves into a more hopeful period of endemicity, scientists have also warned that the omicron variant — which is less severe albeit more transmissible than delta — could turn into something deadlier.
"People have wondered whether the virus will evolve to mildness, but there's no particular reason for it to do so," Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University, told the Associated Press last week. "I don't think we can be confident that the virus will become less lethal over time."
