In particular, the tradeoff for slower individual infection by omicron variants appears to be greater communal transmission enabled by viral preference for transmission-friendly (but TMPRSS2-poor) nasopharyngeal tissue [93,94] while posing less threat to TMPRSS2-rich tissues, such as the deep lung [95,96] and olfactory epithelium [97,98]. Here, TMPRSS2 is linked to infection.