Your assumption that lesser severity of illness implies "greatly" reduced viral load is wrong (one might even say, moronic?): > During the Omicron period (Fig.

Your assumption that lesser severity of illness implies "greatly" reduced viral load is wrong (one might even say, moronic?): > During the Omicron period (Fig. 1b), a recent 3rd-dose increases Ct among vaccinees, and is similar to infection-derived protection. Otherwise, the differences in Ct for the unvaccinated (adjusted Ct 25.9), 2-dose (adjusted Ct 25.7) and late 3-dose groups (adjusted Ct 25.8) are negligible (Fig. 1b). In general, the effect of immune status for Omicron is less pronounced than for Delta even upon recent receipt of the 3rd vaccine dose or a previous infection, as manifested by reduced Ct-values gaps between these groups and the unvaccinated. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33096-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33096-0 "Recent" here meant having had a booster within the past 70 days. Call me crazy, but I don't think boostering the entire population against SARS-CoV-2 every 70 days is a realistic strategy to prevent new variants, or likely to lead to good health outcomes. These numbers for Omicron were also a significant narrowing of the gap from Delta; it will be interesting to see what happens to it with the new variant referenced in the OP!