You will learn more Greek letters. Scientists warn that the coronaviruses will not be the last to worry the world.
Omicron has an edge over its predecessors because it spreads faster despite being on a planet with a stronger immunity from vaccines.
More people can be affected by the virus. There is no guarantee that the sequels of omicron will cause milder illness or that existing vaccines will work against them, but experts don't know what the next variant will look like or how it will shape the epidemic.
Today's shots still work, so they want wider vaccinations.
Leonardo Martinez, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Boston University, said that the faster omicron spreads, the more opportunities there are for the creation of new variations.
Omicron has raced across the globe like fire. The variant is at least four times as infectious as the original version of the virus.
Omicron is more likely to cause infections that cause breakthrough in people who have previously had COVID-19 and to cause unvaccinated people to get infections. A record 15 million new COVID-19 cases were reported by the World Health Organization in the week of January 3-9.
The ease with which the variant spreads increases the chance that the virus will linger inside people with weakened immune systems, giving it more time to develop potent mutations.
Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert, said that the most likely breeding grounds for new variants are long-term infections. It's only when you have a lot of infections that you're going to get that chance.
The behavior of omicron has kindled hope that it could be the start of a trend that eventually makes the virus milder like a common cold.
It's a possibility, experts say, because viruses don't spread well if they kill their hosts quickly. Over time, viruses can get more deadly.
A variant could achieve its main goal if it spread the virus by interacting with others and if people got very sick later, explained Ray.
People are wondering if the virus will evolve to mildness. There is no reason for it to do that. I don't think we can be sure that the virus will be less lethal over time.
A virus can survive over the long term if you get better at evading immunity. No one was immune when the disease first hit. The virus needs to adapt to the fact that it has immunity to most of the world.
There are many possibilities for evolution. Animals could potentially create new variations. Pets, deer, and farm-raised mink are some of the animals that are vulnerable to the virus, which can cause it to change into a more dangerous form.
Ray calls it a "Frankenvariants", a hybrid of both omicron and delta infections, because of their characteristics.
Scientists said it is difficult to know which genetic features will take off when new variant develop. omicron has many more changes than previous versions, around 30 in the spikeProtein that lets it attach to human cells. The WHO is monitoring the so-called IHU variant and it seems that it doesn't seem to have spread much.
Scientists stress the need for public health measures such as getting vaccine and masking to curb the emergence of variant. While omicron is better able to evade immunity, vaccines still offer protection and booster shots reduce serious illness, hospitalizations and deaths.
Anne Thomas, an IT analyst in Rhode Island, said she's fully vaccined and boosted and tries to stay safe by mostly staying home.
She said that she has no doubt that the viruses will continue to evolve and that we will be dealing with this for a long time.
Even if vaccines don't completely stop the spread of the virus, they are still armor for humanity. He said that anything that curbs transmission can have a great effect. Ray said that when people get sick, their illness is usually milder and clears more quickly, meaning less time to create dangerous variants.
The flu won't become endemic if global vaccination rates are low. The Director-General of the World Health Organization said during a recent press conference that protecting people from future variant depends on ending vaccine inequity.
Tedros wants to see 70% of the population in every country by the middle of the year. According to statistics from the University, there are many countries where less than a quarter of the population is fully vaccineed. Many people in the United States are resistant to vaccines.
There are huge unvaccinated swaths in the U.S., Africa, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere. It's been a huge failure in global leadership that we have not been able to do.
Louis Mansky is the director of the Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Minnesota.
The virus is still in control of what's going on with so many unvaccinated people.
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