Well, that escalated quickly…
Omicron? Omicron?!?! That’s the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet!
On 9 November, a particular specimen of SARS-CoV-2 was collected in South Africa.
On 24 November, that specimen was identified as a new variant of the virus, B.1.1.529, and nicknamed Omicron.
On 26 November, the WHO designated Omicron as a variant of concern.
By 29 November, 19 countries had reported cases of Omicron.
So it’s taken a mere three weeks for Omicron to go from a novelty to a global concern.
In the meantime, the global rate of new COVID cases has been accelerating again. The 7-day rolling average was just over 400,000 new cases per day in mid-October; today, it’s over 550,000 new cases per day.
Omicron is deeply concerning because of the number of mutations it carries — more than most other variants detected so far. More mutations means greater likelihood that it can circumvent current vaccines.
But of greater concern to me is that Omicron is the 13th named COVID variant. Just because you only recall the Delta variant doesn’t mean that all the variants between δ and ο didn’t happen, though the WHO did skip two greek letters due to public perception concerns.
With over half a million new cases a day, scattered throughout every environmental region on the planet, the Earth is the largest petri disk ever — or, as the vernacular has it, a huge “variant factory.” Every replication of a virus is an opportunity for mutation; and every mutation is an opportunity to develop a new variant; and every new variant is an opportunity for a monstrous new version of SARS-CoV-2 that will truly ravage humanity.
And that’s our real long term problem, and the reason why we need to get more people vaccinated, provide boosters as necessary, and continue to wear masks, distance physically, and have the occasional hard lockdown.
It doesn’t matter if the new case rate is low in the city where you live. Somewhere on this planet, new variants are brewing right now. Most may be harmless. But all it takes is one nasty variant to ruin everyone’s day. And as the spread of Omicron has clearly demonstrated, we still haven’t accepted that significant behavioural changes are necessarily to save lives.
And let’s be clear here: it’s not just preventing a “bad cold”. Over five million people have died due to COVID so far; many of them could have been saved if more of us had had enough rationality and compassion to do the right thing, and if our governments could have stopped capitulating to big business and done their jobs.
So stop thinking COVID is over. It’s not. As long as we keep jumping the gun — and in some cases the shark too — on returning to normal, there will always be another variant, and it’s only a matter of time before the variant factory called Homo Sapiens produces a variant that will be truly catastrophic.
