Covid is infecting more people every day than ever—and killing as many as it did at the pandemic’s start.

(Originally published Jan. 3 in “What in the World“) If you’d like to see a movie that perfectly captures the willful failure of Western civilization to rise to the challenge posed by a clear-and-present danger like Covid-19, watch the hilarious new black comedy “Don’t Look Up.” This weekend, White House chief health advisor Anthony Fauci (channeling Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in the film, Dr. Randall Mindy) took to the airwaves to warn the American people what should be plainly obvious if they bothered to pay attention to the world around them, that Omicron’s greater infectiousness means more of them are getting seriously ill. Yet Americans—and indeed people everywhere—remain in denial about Omicron despite how it’s very plainly debilitating society and the economy.

Instead, most people have chosen a warmer and cuddlier narrative, that Omicron is less lethal than previous strains of the virus and therefore they can continue to relax the precautions against catching and transmitting it. Even if someone they know catches Covid, if that person doesn’t die, it only confirms how much less we have to worry about. Confronted by continued, documented evidence that the virus continues to kill people everywhere, it takes a fatality in one’s own circle before people will actually take the mortal threat to them and their loved ones seriously and modify their behavior. People have instead chosen to believe that we no longer need to worry about Covid.

And, thanks to a combination of higher vaccination rates and what is indeed Omicron’s slightly lower lethality, the death rate due to Covid continues to edge lower. But the declines are only very slight, and the virus continues to kill roughly 6,000 people every day. That’s as high as when Covid was new to humanity and we had no immunity against it whatsoever. Yet New York state this weekend reported more new infections than it has at any time during the pandemic.

Yet France has created headlines by brewing the weak tea of requiring unvaccinated Americans arriving in the country to quarantine for 10 days, while shortening the quarantine for its own citizens who test positive to just 5 days. Vaccinated Americans heading to France have to produce a negative PCR test before boarding their flight. Since vaccinated people can easily catch Omicron without developing symptoms, they’re actually more dangerous than unvaccinated travelers, since they’re likely to infect more people and not be taken out of circulation by falling ill themselves. And since all these eggs, vaccinated and unvaccinated, have been in the same aluminum crate for hours crossing the Atlantic, all of them should be quarantined upon arrival.

There are plenty of countries with infection rates low enough that their residents don’t deserve quarantine on arrival if they can produce a negative PCR test (provided they haven’t been cooped up on a plane with residents of other countries that DO warrant quarantine). Most of them are in Asia (China, Indonesia, Japan, et. al.) The United States is not one of those countries.

Keep in mind that half of the world hasn’t received a single vaccine dose and so remains susceptible to Omicron, the strains that preceded it, and remains ready and waiting to host whatever strains come after it.