Last week the Omicron variant was being spotted here and there–South Africa, then the UK, the Netherlands, California, and Minnesota. Even in Amsterdam, which is where I’ll be on Saturday.

There are three of us planning to go to Europe in December. Last night we got an email from our travel agent starting “Please read **URGENT**” and that is never good.

Vaccinations provide powerful, but invisible, protection, but masks have become the outward and visible sign of how we feel about the pandemic, individually and collectively. Sometimes wearing one is a question of legality, sometimes an assessment of the risks, and sometimes we depend on an incipient, but fuzzy, mask etiquette.

Scott Gottlieb made a startling announcement last Friday. The new OSHA vaccine mandates that take effect on Jan. 4 “are coming on the tail end of this pandemic,” he said. “By Jan. 4 this pandemic may well be over, at least as it relates to the United States,”