Attorney Jon Krell often comes into children’s lives when they have been taken from everything they know and relatives are working to get them back home. He describes parents telling him of their visitations, “It hurts so much — I get to hug them and then I have to give them back.”

What emerges on omicron in coming days will determine what the final wave of 2021 consumer spending looks like. After hospitality businesses missed out on their most lucrative trading period in 2020, and given the high expectations for the so-called golden quarter this year, a significant scaling back would be a double blow.