That’s because we’re living in a thriller/sf novel these days.
I said “global”, not “national”, There are still vaccine shortages in many poorer countries. There are also distribution issues. But there is still a global vaccine shortage, and one of the arguments against the US and other wealthy nations recommending booster shots was that it means those countries will buy more vaccine, potentially keeping it from poorer nations.
But – until Omicron, we were on track to get past that, and have a global surfeit sometime in 2022.
I understand what you were saying, but as the US one of the largest users of the vaccines, its important to remember that due to the anti-vax folks out there, the demand in the US for boosters isn’t going to change due to Omicron. We can still work on the global shortage because that’s what’s really important.
Ain’t nobody gonna be safe 'til all of us is safe. Omicron is here because of the vaccine shortage and reluctance. Getting poor nations vaccinated is in our best interests and I like to pretend that our current administration understands this.
So, no sooner than we all just got ourselves boostified, we’re gonna have to go get ourselves re-boostified again?
I’m afraid this is going to be like the flu. There will routinely be new variants, and one shot just can’t last. The good news (at least so far), however, is that people who do get COVID-19 after being vaccinated are not getting it nearly as bad as the unvaccinated amongst us. The huge majority of hospitalizations and deaths have been statistically shown to be the unvaccinated. The exception, of course, are people who are already compromised by other conditions.
And you get a new shot every year for the new strains and keep an eye out for any that turn out to be particularly bad, rather than have national emergencies across the world every time there is a “variant of concern” detected anywhere. (It will help if eventually it stops being a point of political pride to dismiss it.)
More like oh-meh-cron, but yeah, it’s universal in all the newscasts I’ve heard. It surprised me because I’d pronounce it oh-micron and it wouldn’t even occur to me that it was wrong.
AFAIK, South Africa’s problems is more vaccine reluctance than vaccine shortage. They have enough vaccines. This is a nation steeped in HIV/AIDS denialism. Their former president was the denialist-in-chief.
Note he was fully vaccinated–although no booster.
And so it begins, 3 1/3 weeks before the holiday.
As I have seen in other reports, there is no reason to panic if you are vaccinated.
Please panic if you are not vaccinated and get vaccinated, will ya?
The hoops the WHO had to jump through to prevent it from being called the Xi variant I felt were pretty funny. The whole ‘well, there are a lot of folks with last names of Xi so we didn’t want to name it that’ schtick was hilarious since they didn’t seem to realize that Mu is a fairly common Chinese surname as well. 
I agree with this based on what we were told in our briefing today:
No reason to panic, go and get vaccinated and get the freaking booster. Please.
Indeed, it is sad that because of the politicization seen of this, one has to ask many of the vaccine hesitant to please panic also, so as to do what is needed.
Speaking of “Omicron”, I read a PC run amok Facebook post that stated the new variant was discovered in South Africa only because of their alert and brilliant scientists, and it actually originated somewhere else. In other words, calling it the “South African Variant” is “South-Africaphobiac”, and people doing so are being haters.
Five cases are confirmed in NYC. It’s safe to say it’s spread further than that.
It’s entirely possible that the person who posted that is an idiot. But at the same time, it’s not entirely wrong. For instance, we know now that the Spanish Flu did not originate in Spain – it’s just that Spain was the first country to widely report on it.
IMHO, California, Minnesota, and New York qualifies as “nationwide”, and we still have two weeks to go before the holiday season shifts into overdrive. In that light, our district has already mandated that all staff returning to work on the third of January get tested between 7:30 and 8:30 am that Monday.
A good summary of what is currently known about Omicron:
Thanks! 