First case. New variant in New Jersey. Georgia woman who traveled here after visiting South Africa. // Omicron. Variant of concern. Prevalent in southern Africa. Spreading quickly. To Europe. Australia. Here. “This clearly demonstrates the pandemic is not over,” Australian official said last week. // On Fox, they’re dismissive. Question the timing. Tie it to elections. Everything is conspiracy. Covid mutates. Spreads. Mutates again. Too many still unvaccinated. Especially in the developing world. The West hordes vaccines. The rest wait. Guinea pigs in a global pandemic. // “Each coronavirus contains nearly 30,000 letters of RNA” that let the virus “infect cells and hijack them to make new viruses,” reports the Times. Copying errors. Mutations. “A group of coronaviruses that share the same inherited set of distinctive mutations is called a variant.” // We’re not at square one, the reporter says. Not back to the start. We have vaccines that temper the worst of the virus’ symptoms. Protect us, shorten its impact. But we have holes in the force field. Failures of capitalism to distribute shots to poor nations. To poor neighborhoods. And a political stalemate that conflates a false sense of liberty with a right to endanger others. That liberty excludes community. // What happens next depends on us. Our bodies. Our weaknesses. Our hubris. //
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