I expect that in the near future, supply chain problems will get worse, as will availability of many services. Flight cancellations and public transit cutbacks are two examples we've already seen due to employee illnesses. I expect omicron to cause havoc at facilities like meatpacking plants when the variant arrives there.
Here in the DC metropolitan area, cases have skyrocketed, and this area has a very high vaccination rate. DC and suburban MD have masking mandates which are well-respected. One month ago, the 7-day average daily new case rate in DC was 11 per 100,000 population. Today it is 291. MD is 147 per 100,000 which is still a huge number. MD presently has the 4th highest new infection rate among the 50 states, and DC is higher than all of them. Hospitalizations are at record highs in MD, though the percentage of people infected with covid requiring hospitalization is lower than for other variants, so far.
Urban areas in the northeast are getting hammered with covid right now, and I expect this explosive case growth to spread throughout North America, and then Latin America.
This entire metro area had weathered the covid storm better than most regions until now thanks to high vaccination rates and responsible behavior. Infection rates here are now the highest they've been since the pandemic began, which is indicative of just how infectious omicron is. One suburban MD county reportedly has the highest vaccination rate in the country (NIH & FDA are located within the county), but even the new infection rate there is sky-high right now.
I have to be inside my 100 year old mother's home a few times each week. I mask there. Her 4 caregivers are vaxed. Mom is homebound and she's had 2 JnJ shots thanks to a county nurse who came and administered them. The JnJ vaccine is the only vaccine they would give to homebound people there, due to the simple storage requirements and the original thinking that it was "one and done".
My mom began home hospice care a year ago after breaking her hip, but she was discharged 6 months later because she doesn't have a known fatal condition, though she has fairly advanced dementia. Elderly patients usually don't survive too long after a hip fracture, which is why she was initially accepted for home hospice. My nightmare scenario is if one of the caregivers or myself brings in the virus to my mom. I wouldn't expect non-infected caregivers to continue taking care of my mom if she were infectious. I honestly don't know what I would do.
I've remained careful even when case numbers were low here. I never stopped masking, nor did most other folks here, and I only wear a KN95 mask. I've continued in-person food shopping throughout the pandemic, but now I've resumed doing what I did last winter, which is to do grocery shopping very early in the morning so that the stores are nearly empty.
A friend e-mailed me and 5 other friends this week, suggesting we meet for dinner this weekend at a restaurant in DC. I thought he was nuts. I declined, as did 2 others, all of us citing the current covid situation here. I have had a small number of boosted friends in my home for dinner, and I've eaten in some of their homes. I think I'll stop that for now, until the covid explosion here burns itself out. I had been going to museums, but I'll stop that for the time being, too. The Smithsonian closed 4 smaller museums here because they needed to send the staff in those museums to more popular ones, due to staffing issues related to covid. I still take brief trips to the library, which is notably emptier this week.
I expect to get omicron at some point (I'm boosted with Pfizer), but I'd like to hold if off for as long as possible. It's very difficult to get a timely PCR test reservation here right now because demand is so high. Actual infection case rates are probably even higher than our high numbers due to non-reporting of antigen tests results, as well as all of the folks who are unable to get tested at all. There are also recent reports that antigen tests are less likely to detect an omicron infection than infections from earlier variants.