I have a question. My understanding is that the Omicron variant has 40 mutations from Delta. The cold is a coronavirus and we don’t call it COVID-19. At what point does a virus mutate enough that you don’t even call it the same thing?
“The cold is a coronavirus and we don’t call it COVID-19. At what point does a virus mutate enough that you don’t even call it the same thing?“
That point is reached when politicians realize that they can use it - giving a cold a scary name - to frighten citizens enough to completely relinquish control and ultimate power to said politicians.
When the Dimocrats find it to their advantage.
Omicron did not mutate away from Delta. It mutated away from an earlier strain that does not have a fancy name.
Mutation counts are called divergence from the original strain. What was surprising with Omicron is the big jump in mutations in a single step. Overall, there are Delta strains as far removed from the original as Omicron.
Take a look at:
https://nextstrain.org/ncov/gisaid/global?m=div