Omicron’s potential to be the first variant requiring this cycle has several high-profile scientists arguing that the Biden administration needs to think bigger. They want the president to lead a global effort to develop a so-called super vaccine, one that would protect against any new variant of coronavirus.

“This is probably the most important project that we can undertake,” Dr. BRUCE GELLIN, a world renowned vaccine and infectious disease expert who is now the Chief of Global Public Health Strategy at The Rockefeller Foundation’s pandemic prevention institute, told Playbook. “It’s now obvious that coronaviruses are a persistent threat, given the recent history of SARS, MERS, COVID, and COVID variants. We have to develop a vaccine before we need it, which means a vaccine that will protect against any coronavirus, including those that have yet to emerge.”

“This has been a major disappointment to not make this the highest priority,” said Scripps Research Translational Institute’s ERIC TOPOL, who has one of the most closely followed Twitter accounts on the coronavirus pandemic. “We need a universal coronavirus vaccine that’s not affected by variants. We can do this but there hasn’t been the will or the prioritizing. Many months ago, before Omicron, we could have had an Operation Warp Speed-like effort to take this on. It was expected that we would have a really tough variant beyond Delta.”