Omicron is one of those variants of COVID that caused the most fuss across the world. There’s no wonder why, though: doctors are telling us that it’s significantly more contagious than the other strains.
But we all know what they say that all things must come to an end. It even applies to the COVID pandemic, along with all of its restrictions. So when will it all be over? Bill Gates thinks that he has the answer.
COVID will become just seasonal flu after Omicron ends
The famous American business magnate Bill Gates thinks that once the current COVID surge is over, which is mainly caused by the spread of the Omicron variant, countries will have to deal with far fewer infections through the rest of the current year.
Here’s what Bill Gates had to say during a Q&A with Devi Sridhar, who is chair of global public health from the University of Edinburgh:
As countries experience their Omicron wave health systems will be challenged. Most of the severe cases will be unvaccinated people. Once Omicron goes through a country then the rest of the year should see far fewer cases so Covid can be treated more like seasonal flu.
— Bill Gates (@BillGates) January 11, 2022
As you can easily observe, there’s no room for misinterpretation here. Bill Gates was asked straight, “how and when will the pandemic be over?”.
However, not everybody shares Bill Gates’ view on the future of the Omicron variant and of the ongoing COVID pandemic in general. Some people are even on the opposite side. One of them is Dr. Shaun Truelove from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. When the idea of a special vaccine for Omicron to be developed was raised, he declared, as quoted by CNBC.com:
Given how quickly this [variant] is happening, [the targeted vaccine] may not matter because everybody’s going to be infected.
Therefore, the doctor believes that it would be too late for an Omicron-specific vaccine to be developed.
Feel free to share with us your own view on the near future of the COVID pandemic! The comment section is available for everyone to express their thoughts!
