Editorial:
Omicron, is it?

It sounds a lot like something out of Hollywood — one of those action/sci-fi movies that demand we suspend our disbelief more than usual and go along for the ride in a world where it can’t happen here.

The problem, of course, is that it can. And it is.

We had barely dried the Thanksgiving dinner dishes when word came out of the World Health Organization that it was meeting in emergency session over a newly discovered Covid-19 variant, this one seemingly originating out of South Africa. Stock markets plunged on Black Friday. President Biden and other world leaders clamped down on international travel from the nations most immediately affected. Governor Kathy Hochul wasted no time declaring a state of emergency across New York to last through January 15, 2022.

Governor Hochul’s executive order allows hospitals to limit non-essential admissions and procedures if the facility has less than ten percent staffed bed capacity. It’s a reasonable response borne from her predecessor’s playbook, but one that we hope and trust will allow for real input and interaction with local health officials.

Thanks to the good work of Dr. Richard J. Sternberg, AllOtsego.com highlighted his thumbnail sketch of the situation as it stood early Saturday morning. We salute him for writing explicitly “what we don’t know” — the degree to which Omicron poses a threat, whether our current vaccine regimen will be affective, will emerging treatment protocol be effective. His is a measured, if not sobering, analysis.
It’s a reflection of the times that Dr. Sternberg’s Covid-19 columns feature each week on our pages here, and we are grateful for his scientific reading of the available data. As pleased as we are to publish his commentary, we’re equally discouraged that it remains a helpful tool as we continue to navigate Covid-19 in all its evil manifestations.

Covid numbers across the state show insidious upward creep — a trend experts predict will continue as we travel more deeply into the holiday season and families and friends gather more frequently. As this paper reported last week, Erie County already had installed an indoor mask mandate for everyone regardless of vaccination status — and that was before Omicron was on anyone’s radar. County executives and health directors in high-population parts of New York are, as we go to press, weighing similar options as they watch their own localized new-case numbers rise and fret about this new Omicron puzzle.

Mask mandates are polarizing, of course; we cannot imagine any local or state official jumping at the opportunity to be the one to walk out on that exceptionally thin ice. Should hospitalizations increase, though, we must assume that we’ll see a few more recommendations coming our way.

In the meantime, we believe our best strategy against Omicron, Delta, and any other Greek-letter-bearing variant to come is to listen to the advice from our doctors. The same ones we turn to when we need something for that nagging cough. The same ones we applauded and for whom we left on our front porch lights 18 months ago to show our appreciation and gratitude for their frontline bravery.
Omicron and its successors remind us that this thing is real, it’s invasive, it’s not going to go away without some frontline bravery of our own. Listen to your doctor.