I'm Brian Lehrer.

This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios.

It's Friday, December 17th.

Here's a thought about the coming of the Omicron variant that goes beyond the usual advice

to wear a mask, get vaccinated,

and boosted, get tested, and choose your interactions wisely. It's that the Omicron variant

poses a far greater threat at the collective level than the individual one. That line was

written by Atlantic Magazine science writer Ed Yong, who has done such a great job generally

covering the whole

pandemic. His new article is called America is not ready for Omicron. And it goes beyond Omicron,

this article does. It goes beyond COVID to the state. It's all left our health care system in

as it affects the rest of your health too and our health care workers too. Ed,

always good to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC. Hi, Brian. Good to be on again. And before we even

get to the societal level, you do write some things about the individual level that many

listeners are suddenly having to grapple with. I think they'll hear themselves in this. Like just in the last

couple of days, you quote virologist Trevor Bedford saying people who thought they wouldn't have

to worry about infection this winter if they had gotten their booster do still have to worry about

infection with Omicron. Can you explain the science of why that is?

Sure. So I know that everything is quite complicated right now and there's a lot of uncertainty in the air. But here's what I think we can say pretty confidently. I think everyone

is a little less protected against infection than they were about two months ago. And that's

because Omicron has the

ability to slip past some of our immune defences. Now, it doesn't do that totally. The way I

...