"Everyone is afraid that omicron will be significantly more transmissible than delta. Upon first impression, it looks like it could be," he says. "But that could be totally wrong. Right now, nobody knows. The problem is that our data is very limited."
At the moment, the only data scientists have to estimate omicron's transmissibility comes largely from the cluster of cases at a university in Pretoria. The rapid rise in cases there could be due, in part, to a superspreading event.
However, some specific mutations in omicron do suggest it will be quite transmissible, Luban says.
As a result, the vaccines will likely be less effective against this variant, he predicts. But his research so far also suggests that people can boost their protection ā against any variant ā by having three exposures to the virus. So that means either three doses of the vaccine or two doses after a natural infection.
That seems to broaden your defenses, says Shi, the virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch. "After the third dose of the vaccine, our antibody profile inside our body becomes more capable of blocking the variants," he says. "Our bodies create different antibodies that are much more able to push back on the variants."
I offered to give her one of mine, either one or both. She refused. 