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Are We in Omicron? (COVID Notes #4)

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December 16, 2021 6:42 p.m.
THE BACKCHANNEL
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Until perhaps as recently as yesterday the assumption was that the current run-up of cases, especially in the Northeast, is actually still Delta. Omicron is still to come. That no longer appears to be the case. We don’t know for certain yet because we don’t have the scope and speed of genomic sequencing that would allow us to know definitively. But the assumption now is that we’re already here, in Omicron. Almost two years into this pandemic we have managed to be at least partly caught off guard by another blowup of the disease.

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