Following the Omicron wave, scientists predict the following events in 2022.

Consider a day in the not-too-distant future when you can arrange that summer trip to Italy or when you won't have to remember to take off your graduation mask. After the previous 25 months, it may seem impossible to forget about the pandemic for even a moment — after all, the coronavirus has gotten our hopes up before.

Infectious illness experts, on the other hand, believe there may be an end in sight. Maybe.

Let's just say it's not completely out of the question in 2022.

Dr. Tom Frieden, who served as head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Obama and is currently the CEO and president of Resolve to Save Life, stated, "I think if we do it correctly, we're going to have a 2022 when Covid doesn't rule our lives as much."

Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, an epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist at Stanford Medicine, and specialists from government agencies, academic colleagues, and local public health authorities spent the holidays attempting to figure out what the next phase of the pandemic would look like and when it will arrive.

The experts were unanimous in their predictions for what would happen next: "We don't know for sure," Maldonado added.

There are disease models and lessons from previous pandemics, but the scientists' figurative crystal ball got a little cloudy when the extremely contagious Omicron variety appeared.

"None of us expected Omicron," Maldonado explained. "There were signs, but we didn't anticipate it to unfold in the manner it did."

Omicron has accomplished a great deal. According to statistics from Johns Hopkins University, more over a quarter of the Covid-19 pandemic's total cases in the United States have been documented in the last month, during the Omicron spike.

According to Johns Hopkins statistics, infections in 14 states had decreased by at least 10% from the previous week, while cases in 26 states had increased by at least 10%.

The wave appears to have peaked in Boston and New York, where the Omicron variety first appeared in the United States. However, it continues to rage uncontrollably in other regions of the nation.

Hospitals in metro Atlanta, for example, are still overburdened, according to medical authorities in Georgia. Because so many of its employees are sick, the National Guard is now filling in the gaps in health care in places like Minnesota. The "tremendous" number of Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities has resulted in "as much as we've ever had in the state of Louisiana," according to Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards.

Infectious disease experts, on the other hand, see reason for optimism in what has occurred in South Africa.

"South Africa is our canary in the coal mine," Maldonado remarked, referring to the fact that they were the first to detect the Omicron variety.

The variation was discovered by South African scientists in November. Cases there surged and then immediately went off. In the United Kingdom, they did the same thing. And, according to experts, this is what will happen all around the world.

"I expect it to be quite harsh in the near term — the next six weeks, four to six weeks," said Dr. John Swartzberg, an infectious disease and vaccinology expert and clinical professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Public Health. "It won't be until around the middle of February that we start to see things improving."

Many analysts believe that if this rise burns off fast, there will be a "calm period."

Swartzberg predicts that the number of cases will continue to fall from March through spring or into summer, as it did last year. "There will be a sense of hope," Swartzberg added, "and then we will be able to accomplish more things in our lives." "I believe May or June will be a turning point for us. I have a lot of hope."

Part of his confidence originates from the fact that the immune population will be considerably greater, thanks to the growing number of persons who have been vaccinated and boosted, as well as those who got Covid-19 during the Omicron outbreak.

"Generally speaking, our population's level of immunity will be considerably greater than it was during the Omicron pandemic, and that will assist us not just with Omicron and Delta, if they're still circulating, but also with any new varieties," Swartzberg said. "To what extent will depend on the availability of intervening therapies."

This is due to the fact that the coronavirus will very certainly never go away completely.

"I absolutely expect a new strain of the virus to emerge," Maldonado added. "Those are the instances that truly make you wonder what's going to happen next."