Thread by @DrEricDing

📍VARIANTS OUTLOOK—I’m old enough to recall a few smug virologists who were adamant that “#SARS2 don’t mutate much”/ “re-infections impossible”—then tried to silence & shame anyone warning about reinfections. ➡️Well, here is our #COVID19 winter roadmap—many are immunity evading👀

2) Here is what you need to focus on —it’s scary how now there is **CONVERGENT EVOLUTION** of very specific combinations of mutations that are showing up together across many different Omicron family trees. They all are converging to IMMUNITY EVASION.

3) I’m also old enough to have seen the #COVID denialism and minimizers become wrong TIME AND TIME again… each time dismissing restrictions and then each time claiming “nobody could have foreseen this” sudden hospitalization surge! UK 🇬🇧 hospitals for example… HT @TRyanGregory

4) the denialism didn’t just come from the UK 🇬🇧 but also in many countries like Canada — especially British Columbia 🇨🇦 under Bonnie Henry. Similar COVID denialism phenomenon each wave 🌊…

5) meantime, you need to up your #COVID19 testing skills… most people have been doing it potentially wrong / inadequately all this time.

https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1574335412067352577

6) The US’s @CDCgov is also doing a lousy job mitigating COVID and completely gaslighting healthcare workers and nursing home workers and residents that they don’t need to mask. The @CDCDirector is unfortunately supporting such a heinous move. A complete dereliction of health.

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1574634767030444032

7) Acknowledgement - @dfocosi was the creator of the Omicron variant map 🗺️— I didn’t know who was the original author until now. Thank you Daniele.

https://twitter.com/dfocosi/status/1574319177602670592

8) COVID is most definitely not over. The excess mortality burden is still very large in non rich countries.

https://twitter.com/fibke/status/1574721621327241216

9) we need to give better easier nicknames to new Omicron sub variants. Saying just “Omicron” at this point is like saying “mammal” in the taxonomy of total animals. It’s not very specific or helpful to understand new variants anymore.

https://twitter.com/tryangregory/status/1574911099165614080

10) So in absence of more friendly names that’s official, we have this nickname convention by @TRyanGregory - based on mythological creatures (for example @xabitron1 first nicknamed BA275 as Centaurus), while the new BQ.1.1 is now nicknamed Cerberus.

11) This random twitter users nicknaming sub variants of Omicron is crazy? Think again… Centaurus nickname caught on as a worldwide name after @xabitron1 coined it. And it stuck! washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/…