Is the new COVID-19 normal a new, worrisome variant every few months?

For the past two years, humanity has been adrift in a sea of COVID-19. Now nations are waiting to see if the omicron variant of the coronavirus is just another swell in that sea or a monster wave that will crash down with devastating effect.

Is this to be our new reality, always fearful some new mutation will destroy what little normalcy we've been able to recover? Experts say only time, and research, will tell.

“We haven’t had anything that looks like normal yet,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, a professor of statistical and data science and director of the COVID-19 Modeling Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin.

Coming to terms with this ongoing turbulence will require nimble reactions. The world must be on guard for particularly large waves on the horizon and respond quickly – even if it's just hitting the "pause" button.

"We might need to take a moment, limit travel and encourage mask-wearing until we know what we're dealing with so we don't let something that's more contagious and deadly get out of control," Meyers said.

That pause could give governments time to prepare, if the news is bad, and allow vaccine makers to work on updated boosters that address a new variant.

To keep the public's trust, transparency and openness will be necessary, much as South Africa alerted the world as soon as it knew the new variant had emerged.

But officials must tread lightly and be cautious, experts say.

"If there are too many false alarms, we run the risk people might stop thinking they should take the threat seriously," said Rachel Piltch-Loeb, a biostatistician at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Eventually, experts say, COVID-19 will become predictable within certain parameters much as influenza is today.

“We know when flu generally starts to spread, we have vaccines that are sometimes better and sometimes worse, but we know what we need to do to keep them current and keep deaths and hospitalizations low,” Meyers said.

For COVID-19, that manageable state is still years away.

For now, any "new normal" is uncertainty, said Piltch-Loeb. "We can still be caught flat-footed by this virus."

Two paths ahead

There are two potential paths for COVID-19 to reach a predictable pattern. They both end in the same place, but one involves much more suffering and death.

The ideal scenario is that so many people are protected through vaccination the virus has fewer chances to evolve.

At a news conference last week, President Joe Biden said the new normal should include everyone getting vaccine booster shots, reducing the number of unprotected people.

"If the virus has nowhere to spread, it has no opportunity to mutate and cause new variants to emerge," said David Souleles, director of the COVID-19 Response Team at the University of California, Irvine.