Potential good news on COVID

 Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray

It might come true. . .    

And then we'd be happy (and then we'd be happy)

Oh, wouldn't it be nice?

          The Beach Boys, 1966

Covid-conscious Democrats are in a mindset of risk and potential catastrophe. 

Sometimes things work out OK.

If so, take the win.

COVID steered conscientious people toward thinking about dangers, both known and unknown. Caution is prudent. We could get infected. We could be intubated. We could die. There could be a chain of infection that gets to us. We get vaccinated and boosted. We wear masks and hope the fit is tight enough around the nose. We can imagine getting COVID, notwithstanding our effort. We can imagine COVID taking a turn for the worse and becoming as infectious as measles and as deadly as ebola. It is too early to know what affects COVID might have on us a decade or more from now. Look at shingles, springing back 60 years after a minor childhood bout with chicken pox. Worry. 

But wait. Imagine a scenario where omicron is a good thing and it helps end the COVID problem. Wouldn't that be nice?

Smallpox killed about 30% of the people it infected in Europe. Often the people who survived were horribly scarred with pock marks. In 1796 an English physician, Edwin Jenner, noted that milkmaids got a mild disease, "cowpox," but when they later contracted smallpox they survived. He guessed that having cowpox provided an immunity to smallpox. He experimented by putting some of the pus from a cowpox sore into the arm of the child of his gardener. He then intentionally exposed the boy to smallpox. The boy never contracted smallpox.

There is a basis for hope

The early indication from South African data is that omicron causes a milder form of the disease than earlier strains. People get infected, but are less likely to need hospitalization. It could be like cowpox. Or not. We don't know yet. 

Democrats need to recognize that reflexive pessimism on COVID is as unscientific as is blind optimism. Infections sometimes become endemic and a mere nuisance, e.g. the "common cold." Omicron is so contagious that it is the equivalent to a program of mandated mass vaccination. Everyone will get exposed. The unvaccinated will get the omicron version of COVID and a few of them will die, but perhaps far fewer than if they had gotten the stronger delta variant. Having had omicron, they may then have the same risk profile of the vaccinated.. 

Democrats must not appear disappointed if it turns out that COVID disappears and Trump-supporting vaccine resisters escape some karmic justice of hospitalization and death. Some GOP leaders--and some Fox News guests--argue that the best way to end COVID is by the entire nation having gotten and survived the disease. Get it over with! They will crow that they were proven right, at least for those who survive omicron. We will have gotten herd immunity the hard way, after a million deaths, concentrated among the unvaccinated, but, still, herd immunity, like they predicted. If COVID burns itself out this way, Democrats should declare victory and take credit. No need to prolong mandates and controls just because they are the Democratic brand. No need to be trapped by policy inertia and argue that vaccines, masks, and other human interventions alone solve COVID.

The British were saved from the Spanish Armada by the intervention of a favorable wind. The British took it as God's intervention on their behalf. They took credit for the wind. They didn't insist that British gunships keep firing away long after the Spanish ships were sunk.

Democrats should do the same if omicron turns out to be a game changer. Sometimes wishes come true. Take the win.