Patient 0 for Omicron was thought to be an HIV+ patient. No suprise there. Immunocompromised patients can harbor low levels of a virus for a very long time while they mutate away under “low pressure” from the patient’s immune system. In a host with a healthy immune system, the virus is wiped out in fairly short order — or, in the case of Covid and some other diseases, the immune system might sometimes go into overdrive (cytokine storm) and kill the host.
Given the high prevalence of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, it’s no wonder Omicron emerged there. Do an internet search on “Omicron Africa HIV” (without the quotation marks) and you will see.
Don’t believe that at all. Omicron is not a derivation of the first Alpha version. Its got half of the two cleaves. It did not go to some African HIV patient and stay there for 18 months before finding a second host. Its a second lab leak. Its a precursor. And its acting the part of a live vaccine.
Your story would be a child of Alpha that leaked, not the first Alpha patient. But rather the patient before him. Who would be a HIV lab worker. Boy is that a bad job. Then that guy would have to go to Africa and maybe 14 months later give the virus to another guy, who spreads it all around southern Africa. Hard to imagine. Easier to imagine China or America is trying to save millions of people but does not want self incrimination. So they let their live vaccine go in a place that has little advanced systems for tracking or detecting a virus. To give it a nice head start. Eventually South Africa spots it but only after it has gone through several African countries.
Remember the lab has the virus before the cleave and any partial versions. So it already has a vaccine. But to let that version go in China would be admitting the lab leak to the world. So they need to give it to someone else and let it find its way back to China or America.