The nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci says the Omicron variant will "find just about everybody" regardless of vaccination status.
"I think, in many respects, Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will, ultimately, find just about everybody. Those who have been vaccinated and vaccinated and boosted would get exposed. Some, maybe a lot of them, will get infected but will very likely, with some exceptions, do reasonably well in the sense of not having hospitalization and death,"
Fauci said to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.Fauci also says the unvaccinated are 20 times likelier to die, 17 times likelier to be hospitalized, and 10 times likelier to be infected than the vaccinated.
In addition to getting the vaccine, Fauci also suggests upgrading your mask.
“I recommend you get the highest quality mask you can tolerate and that's available to you. Right now, there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of the masks that some time ago were not available. If you can tolerate an N95, if you want to get a K95, fine. But what the CDC is saying, and it gets misinterpreted, is that wearing any mask is better than wearing no mask at all."
Associate Chair of Emergency Medicine at Long Island Jewish Medical Center Dr. Adam Berman says anyone wearing a surgical mask should make sure there are no gaps and that it fits around the face properly.
"Make sure it's over your nose, make sure you get a good seal over your nose," Berman says. "You should be able to take a deep breath in and actually suck up against your face, that means there's a good seal there."
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky tweeted "any mask is better than no mask"
Health experts also say another way to maximize protection is to double up with a cloth and surgical style mask if you do not have a respirator mask.
They say the KN95 and N95 masks filter out at least 95% of airborne particles.