Whether or not it proves as cuddly as we hope, Omicron is outrunning current vaccines and drugs. We’re gonna need new jabs.

(Originally published Dec. 20 in “What in the World“) Omicron continues its breathtakingly rapid spread, prompting a correspondingly rapid revival of travel restrictions—and even a new lockdown in the Netherlands. That’s already hitting businesses as people cancel Holiday travel plans and start retreating from normal consumer activity. White House chief health advisor Anthony Fauci is recommending people pile on the precaution: vaccinate, get a booster shot, and wear a mask everywhere—especially on an airplane—to reduce your risk of catching Omicron.

Why bother? you may ask. Deaths still don’t appear to be increasing almost a month since Omicron first started its blitz around the world.

The answer is simple—math. Even with a lower proportion of illnesses and deaths, Omicron is so much more infectious—and vaccines so useless against it—that it is on track to infect so many more people so rapidly that it stands to produce a surge in hopsitalizations and deaths. Experts are now learning that only those who have received booster shots stand much of a chance avoiding an Omicron infection, while initial vaccination with the Pfizer/BioNTech (and seemingly Moderna) vaccine does little more than protect against severe illness. Other vaccines appear to do almost no good at all.

That also means that standard treatments for those who do get infected are likely to be less effective against Omicron, too, since they rely on antibodies that were designed in response to earlier strains of Covid.

Also, we still can’t be sure Omicron is as warm and cuddly as we hope it is. In areas where Omicron is most prevalent (i.e. South Africa and the United Kingdom), people are either highly vaccinated or have already had Covid, giving them at least some protection against severe illness when infected by the new variant. That is why experts still fear Omicron will lay waste unvaccinated populations that have yet to be exposed to Covid—that is to say, roughly half of the planet’s population.

Fortunately, a U.S. federal appeals court has overturned a lower court’s stay against the Biden administration’s mandate for large employers to vaccinate all employees by early-January. That will at least protect most of those workers from severe Omicron-related illness. Those vaccinations will likely come too late to protect them from infection by the new strain, however.

Soon, it won’t be enough to have been vaccinated to enjoy the freedom of movement that it confers. It will become necessary to prove how recently you’ve been vaccinated. And it’s now becoming clear that our next jabs may not be a repeat of what we’ve already had. Thanks to Omicron, we’re going to need a completely new vaccine.