Seems to me that it's too early to tell.
We saw similar coverage pertaining to the "Mu" variant, and that dropped out of the headlines pretty quick.
Seems to me like this one could go either way.
Either they'll come back in a few weeks and tell us that the vaccines and prior infections still confer a certain level of protection against it, or they'll tell us it doesn't.
And even if it doesn't, the part that I think many people are overlooking in all of the articles discussing it is that the symptoms themselves from the Omicron variant are "very mild" according to all current reports.
So far, from the "boots on the ground" so to speak (the doctors treating it), it's mild, and the symptoms are "sore muscles and feeling tired for a day or two".
Angelique Coetzee, the chair of the South African Medical Association (SAMA), told The Telegraph that so far Omicron cases seem to present with strange but mild symptoms. "Their symptoms were so different and so mild from those I had treated before," she said.
Most of the Omicron patients Coetzee has treated arrived "feeling so tired," making intense fatigue the most consistent symptom that's been reported. On the other hand, none of these patients suffered from loss of taste or smell, which has been one of the tell-tale COVID symptoms up to this point.
Coetzee has stressed that it's too early to make any larger predictions about what an Omicron wave would mean for the world—and if we'll even reach that point. In an interview with The Guardian, she reiterated that the cases she's seen have been mild, but acknowledged that it's too soon to know for sure if that will hold for a broader spectrum of Omicron infections.
"It's all speculation at this stage. It may be it's highly transmissible, but so far the cases we are seeing are extremely mild,"
That would follow the pattern of what we know about viruses that become endemic. From an evolutionary standpoint, a virus that wants to survive typically becomes "more contagious, but less lethal"
And based on the tone of the Guardian article, South African health officials are suggesting that other countries in Europe and the US are having a "knee jerk" reaction to it.