Uh Oh Omicron? Not So Fast
People are kind of freaking out about this new variant detected in South Africa, named after the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet, Omicron. I must say I was a little surprised that we are up to the 15th Greek letter already.
I knew we had gotten as far as Mu, but I don't remember a Nu or an Xi. Turns out they are skipping former because it's not pronounced like it's spelled, and they are skipping the latter to avoid offending the Chinese president.
Boo!!! If we have a deadly new variant, wouldn't it be perfectly fitting to name it after a genocidal dictator? But I digress.
Travel from South Africa is being banned all over the place. South Africa is complaining that it's being "punished" with these travel bans because it detected the new variant.
Huh? Other countries are supposed to forego steps to prevent spread of a dangerous variant just because South Africa detected it? I don't get it.
The new variant has a whole bunch of mutations, most of which have been seen in other variants but not all together in one package. This is reason for concern, to be sure, but I wonder if it's a good idea to hit the panic button before we understand the impact of these mutations.
On one hand, credible sources are sounding the alarm. The WHO says the risk is very high and the variant could lead to new surges with "severe consequences." The CEO of Moderna frets that the variant could decrease vaccine effectiveness, saying:
I think it’s going to be a material drop. I just don’t know how much because we need to wait for the data. But all the scientists I’ve talked to . . . are like, "This is not going to be good."
Of course he's not exactly a disinterested party. His company would get even richer producing boosters to fight the new variant if they are needed. So he's probably rooting for a big "material drop."
On the other hand, we are already dealing with the heavily mutated variant Delta. The vaccines are holding up against it pretty well. A South African infectious disease specialist reminds us:
There’s a lot we don’t understand about this variant. The mutation profile gives us concern, but now we need to do the work to understand the significance of this variant and what it means for the response to the pandemic.
That is a good reason to take all of this hand-wringing with a grain of salt. After all, we have been here before.
Remember back in July when everybody was fretting about the Lambda variant and its vaccine-evading properties? Those worries were never realized.
In October people thought the Mu variant spelled trouble. Newsweek breathlessly called it a "doomsday variant." It went nowhere too. In fact, most of the variants except Beta and Delta have amounted to nothing more dangerous than the OG virus.
Now there is even a report from South Africa that people who have Omicron tend to have "very mild" symptoms. It could actually be a good thing if a more contagious variant with milder symptoms crowded-out Delta.
So, I'm just going to try and stay calm about this one until we know more about it. Meanwhile right-wing bottom-feeders—never ones to promote calm about anything—are exploiting the situation.
T**** sychophant and lump-of-excrement Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson* is launching a new conspiracy theory. See, the new variant has been scheduled to occur to provide an excuse to require mail-in ballots in 2022, and we will see another one every other October from now on.
OMG, how could we have missed this?!? The virus is a actually a Democrat and is mutating on-schedule to enable the dirty libs to commit election fraud! This explains everything!!!
*The guy is a physician too, another example of someone who should have his license revoked for spreading medical disinformation.
Update 4:30 pm
There is a report out of the Netherlands that Omicron was detected there at least a week before it was detected and reported in South Africa. So we don't know if it came there from South Africa, or vice versa, or to both places from somewhere else. It will be interesting to see if we get travel bans on Europe now, too.
Image by Corona-zona
