Omicron might be less dangerous, but it's twisting the nation in knots

Every American is being drawn into a reckoning over how much risk is acceptable to get the nation back on its feet as the new Omicron variant of Covid-19 rages out of control.

The country is being buried under an avalanche of new infections, but after two exhausting, demoralizing years, the impetus among millions of people to try to find a way to live more normally alongside the disease has never been stronger. Striking the right balance is complicated since the pandemic has reached its most paradoxical phase yet.

Signs of a worsening winter crisis are cropping up everywhere even as new hope stirs that a virus that wrecked the last two years is not, perhaps, as frightening in its latest guise. It's also jarring that infection curves are shooting straight up in vertical lines as hospitals overflow but many Americans who get Covid-19 for the first time shrug it off like it's a mild cold.