Wapo has an article. Here are important parts for those who hit the paywall:
In a preprint paper not yet peer-reviewed, scientists in South Africa reported a large, 41-fold drop in antibodies’ virus-blocking ability — “much more extensive escape” than seen against previous variants using similar experiments. But the scientists stressed the positive element of their research: Omicron did not escape antibodies completely, and people who had been previously infected and fully vaccinated with two shots of the vaccine retained “relatively high” levels of antibodies protective against omicron.
“Omicron evades most of the vaccine response,” said Michel C. Nussenzweig, a Rockefeller University investigator who was not part of the South Africa research team but whose experiments predicted a similar drop in antibodies’ neutralizing ability. He stopped short of saying that vaccines will have to be rebooted to match omicron’s highly mutated spike protein.
“We don’t know what will happen with hospitalization or severe disease. If vaccines are keeping people out of the hospital and are making what could be a bad disease into something like a common cold, or something a bit more severe but not life-threatening in any way, then we’re good,” Nussenzweig said.
“Thank goodness we have some concrete data now,” Benjamin Neuman, a virologist at Texas A&M University, said in an email. He said scientists had worried that omicron would be able to elude entirely the first line of defense, the neutralizing antibodies. Not so. The lab research supports the need for boosters, he added.
“It looks like quantity of antibodies will overcome the natural resistance of omicron, and that is a very good thing,” he said. “Boosters not only let the body make more diverse antibodies, they also raise antibody levels. In other words, Omicron may be vaccine-resistant, but it is not booster-proof.”
So as not to quote more, I’ll also summarize some other bits. William Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says that this does not mean that having had COVID-19 is more protective on its own, only along with vaccines. And David R. Martinez, a viral immunologist at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health, reminds people that healthy people will likely be more protected from severe disease due to there being other aspects of the immune system besides the antibodies, and that this does not mean we’re back to square one with COVID-19.
If only…