One thing omicron seems to have made abundantly clear is that this virus is undergoing recombinant replication. That doesn't bode well for existing vaccines when so many hosts are unvaccinated/unexposed globally, where it can replicate and mutate readily.

The optimist in me wants to believe omicron is a sign of things to come; more infectious but less deadly variants we can largely ignore like the common cold. But what's preventing another variant emerging that's both more infectious and more deadly after ripping through one of the less vaccinated nations? The lethality aspect seems somewhat random from where I'm sitting, not an expert.