Biden needs an ‘Operation Warp Speed’ for omicron 

Omicron has changed the COVID paradigm, but here in the U.S., our leaders are too slow to adapt to the change.  

For one thing, even though the vast majority of omicron cases are mild — especially if you have had the vaccine and a booster, or recovered from COVID with a vaccine on top of it — we continue to act as if the virus is severe. Consider that a 10-day isolation period from the onset of symptoms is depleting our work force. Since omicron leads to a more rapid onset from the time of exposure to the time of symptom onset, it makes complete sense for the period of isolation to be five days if fully vaccinated, with return to work or school predicated on a negative rapid test. 

These tests should be available for free in every home; waiting in line at a rapid test center presents an easy opportunity to spread the virus. But they are still both scarce and expensive. Though the White House has promised 500 million rapid home tests by sometime in January, accessible via a website, a bureaucratic nightmare seems likely. 

What’s more, vaccine mandates make less sense than before since the protection against omicron quickly wanes. Don’t get me wrong, the more immune protection the better, but the Biden administration needs to focus on filling its tool chest, rather than flogging us with the same tool over and over. 

Though President Biden and his administration have said they were blindsided by omicron, it was entirely predictable that more transmissible, less lethal variants would emerge from regions with low vaccination rates. We also had every reason to expect that immune evasion (where a variant is partly resistant to the vaccine and monoclonal antibodies and re-infects those who recover from infection with previous variants) would provide a variant with a survival advantage. 

We all want the same thing: to exit the pandemic and enter a phase where the virus is endemic and more manageable. The fastest way for this to happen is by making the most expeditious use of our biotechnological tools.  

The rapid emergence of the vaccines under President Trump’s aptly named Operation Warp Speed program should have provided a paradigm for the Biden administration. Free rapid antigen home tests should have been offered to every American a long time ago, so we could know who is infected with the omicron variant without their having to leave the house.  The monoclonal antibodies that work best against omicron, GSK’s sotrovimab, are hardly available, though we need them now for high-risk cases, especially among the unvaccinated.  

And now that Pfizer’s exciting new pill to decrease severity, Paxlovid, has been approved, the Biden administration has once again been found to be too slow on the draw. We needed an extension of Operation Warp Speed to pre-purchase at least 50 million dose courses and spur production. Not only weren’t the 10 million courses allotted by HHS enough, but under this White House’s slow hand it will take several weeks — if not months — before a significant amount of the drug reaches the pharmacies. We lack the distribution plan between the drug company and the states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the military, that characterized the original Operation Warp Speed.  

The Biden administration is attempting to control the pandemic and the public response through fear rhetoric when concrete biotechnical tools would work much better. Tests, boosters and therapeutics are the way forward. We need to return to warp speed as soon as possible to help us tame the latest variant and exit the pandemic once and for all. 

Marc Siegel, M.D., is a professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health. He is a Fox News medical correspondent and author of the new book, “COVID; the Politics of Fear and the Power of Science.”