Omicron Isn’t Milder for Everyone, Like Our Patients

From the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the risk of getting infected with the coronavirus and developing severe disease from it was substantially higher for the millions of Americans with weakened immune systems because of treatment for cancer, autoimmune disorders, transplants and many other conditions.

Vaccines promised a respite. But physicians like us who care for immunocompromised people quickly learned that our patients’ immune responses from vaccines were often weak. For example, in one study we showed that transplant recipients who were vaccinated with two doses of mRNA vaccines made by...