THE LATEST OMICRON CLUES

This Monday finds the world without any major war, natural disaster or particularly newsworthy item, except maybe Omicron, the latest COVID-19 virus of concern:

• It is the 13th variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
• Thus we should be up to the 13th Greek letter to name this strain.
• But the World Health Organization skipped #13 Nu and #14 Xi...why?
• Nu sounds like new, which could confuse people, they say.  But it is new, so why not?
• Xi sounds like Xi Jinping, and the UN is afraid of the Chinese president.  
• Or maybe it was to not stigmatize a region.
• 
  If you're wondering why you never read or heard about Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda and Mu, they were definitely variants, but never reached the level of concern.  Actually, though, Lambda (Peru) and Mu (Columbia) remain variants of interest.
• Best as I can tell, you can pronounce OMICRON any way you want.  However, if you had to pick one, say oh-MY-cron:
• Oh-muh-cron.
• “The correct pronunciation is “oh-my-cron”, with the emphasis on the second syllable.”
• Cambridge Dictionary offers two different English pronunciations of the letter, suggesting “oh-MY-cron” for British English, and “OH-mi-cron” for American English.
• Om-mee-cron.
• Omicron can be pronounced both ä-mə-ˌkrän or ō-ˈmī-(ˌ)krän, according to Merriam-Webster.
• 
  I said yesterday that South Africa was where the first case appeared. 
• Today, I read that Botswana is said to be the first.  I have always wanted to visit this country because it is Hawaii's antipode.  That is, if I dig down from where I live through Planet Earth, I would re-appear in Botswana.  Think I'll skip this bucket list item.
• Then I learned that South Africa first reported this Omicron variant of November 24, while Botswana collected the first positive sample on November 11.  
• But, that November 24 case from South Africa was a result of sampling on November 9.
• So WHO later today just lists multiple countries in South Africa.
• 
  But pronunciation and original source are the least of your concerns:
• The Beta variant also was traced to South Africa, and spread to 117 countries.  
• The worry was that this microorganism appeared to be resistant to vaccines.  
• But Malaysia had one case last month, so forget this one.
• The Gamma variant was detected in Brazil in January and was said to be from 40% to 160% more transmissible, and was like Beta, more resistant to vaccines.  
• Ninety countries got this variant, but this now outbreakl dropped to only South America this past month.
• The Delta variant appeared in India in October of 2020, became of international interest only in April, and upgraded to a concern in May.  
• It was 40% to 60% more transmissible than Alpha, caused more severe illnesses and had a high viral load.
• Delta is now in 179 countries and responsible for 99% of all cases today, and also now said to be twice as contagious as previous variants.
• Some countries are taking drastic action this time:
• Morocco is suspending ALL incoming flights for two weeks.
• Japan today announced a ban on ALL incoming foreign travelers for one month.  All means even students and business travelers...FROM EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.
• Israel is excluding foreign entry and making quarantine mandatory for all Israelis arriving from abroad.
• 
  The U.S. is only banning visitors from eight African countries.  President Joe Biden said Omicron is a cause for concern, not a cause for panic.
• Biden is right, and it will take a week or two to better understand what is happening.  

A Quora entry sent to me by a colleague featuring Dr Jo, a clinician from New Zealand;

• South Africa today:

• Further:

Here are the things we haven’t learnt:

1. That this is an international plague, so we need a solid international effort. Not lip service.
2. That we should have put particular effort into getting vaccines into other countries—especially in developing nations, which otherwise become variant-developing nations.
3. That trying to ‘live with the virus’ may be more than a bit silly.[8] With every new wave—sometimes even before every new wave—we have convinced ourselves that we can happily let a few people die, often those at the margins, so we can “keep our economies open”.
4. That there is no ‘normal’ to ‘go back to’. The old gluttony must go. We need to re-fashion our entire world economy, to support those who are crushed by pandemics like this. Otherwise, they will rise up and crush us in turn. Together with the new variants grown in their bosom.
5. That this is not a war. The virus is not a military power, to be fought on the battlefield. Our real enemy is ourselves—and the virus is simply exposing our weaknesses.

About the U.S. and other rich nations helping out the developing world with more free vaccinations:

• Cost of each dose of vaccine:

• Arbitrarily, we need 10 billion more dosages:
• At the $4 cost of the Oxford vaccine:  $80 billion.  Seems affordable.
• At the $37 cost of the Moderna vaccine;  $370 billion.

• There are 7.8 billion people in the world.  Interestingly enough, as of today, 7.8 billion dosages had been given, and 3.33 billion are fully vaccinated, or 43% of the global population.
• % of population fully vaccinated:
• Gibraltar  99%
• UAE  89%
• Singapore  88%
• Portugal  87%
• Cambodia  79%
• Spain  79%
• South Korea  79%
• Japan  77%
• Germany 69%
• UK  69%
• U.S. 59%
• Russia 39%
• South Africa  24%
• Botswana  20%
• Egypt  14%
• Uganda  2%
• Nigeria 1.7%
• Sudan  1.3%
• Ethiopia  1.2%
• Chad  0.4%
• Congo  0.1%

I'll close with some modern art:

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