My Irish grandmother Sade was a very funny woman, and if I have any gift for humor myself, it came down from her through my father. She had funny words for things, and it was years after she died that I realized that a lot of them were real words. “Oinchek” (or close) meant “goofball” or perhaps “dumbass” in Irish slang. “Redshanks” were Irish and Scottish mercenaries of the 16th century. Sade used the term for imaginary creatures who dug up her tomato garden; we pictured them as mice in red pants. “Gomog” hasn’t turned up in my research and may be Sade’s coinage, but it’s another term for “goofball.” Then there’s “omathaun,” (simpleton, fool) which I thought Sade invented until I heard it used in Disney’s Mary Poppins. And last week, when I first heard of the “omicron variant,” I initially read it as the “omathaun variant.”
Heh. In some respects, all the variants have been omathaun variants, judging by mainstream media reactions. Oh yeah…I keep forgetting…say it with me now…we’re all gonna die!!
Fecking ijits. (You can figure that one out for yourself. Sade never used it in our hearing but it’s real.) The South African researcher who identified the omicron variant told the media that the symptoms of omicron are “unusual but mild.” Reading her description, well, it sounds like the common cold. Milder, even. In fact, the symptoms are at such variance from COVID-19 that my first reaction was, is SARS2 really behind it? Evidently that’s been established to most everyone’s satisfaction. And that’s a good thing.
Omicron could end the pandemic.
Work with me here. I have no citations to offer; this is pure speculation on my part. Omicron appears to be what evolutionists and epidemiologists predicted long ago: a mutation that spreads easily but causes a less serious disease. What it leaves in its wake is natural immunity, which doesn’t exist according to the media, but to everyone with half a brain and some education, it does. (You can get thrown off of Twitter or Facebook for even mentioning it.)
If omicron really is SARS2, then a person who gets it, stays home for a day or three and then recovers, may come away with immunity to all variants of SARS2. The fistfight over whether natural immunity is stronger and longer-lasting than vaccine immunity is ongoing. Given that the CDC no longer states that the vaccines impart immunity at all, I’m betting that natural immunity is indeed stronger and broader and longer-lasting.
As Edward Jenner discovered circa 1790, people who had recovered from a mild disease called cowpox (many of them women who milked cows) didn’t get smallpox. Jenner found that deliberately infecting people with cowpox imparted immunity to smallpox. Jenner invented vaccination, which for a long time was called variolation, after variola, the scientific name for the smallpox virus.
Omicron may finish off an inadvertent ongoing regimen of SARS2 variolation. A great many people around the world have already fought off SARS2 and are now immune to it. Vaccinated people who get breakthrough infections will come away with immunity. Those who haven’t been infected will probably get omicron eventually. They may not even realize that they had it. Omicron may “fill in the cracks” of SARS2 immunity, and turn the damned thing from pandemic to endemic, like flu. People still die from the flu every year, and we don’t go into a screaming panic over it. Or…omicron could make SARS2 rare enough that it mostly disappears. Where’s SARS1 these days, anyway?
The comparison may not be germane; I don’t know. The important thing is to read news from many sources (including international sources) and not panic. From all I’ve read (and I read a lot) the end of the pandemic is definitely in sight.
May it be so.
Yes, Jenner invented vaccination… And since you like words so much, you likely know the word itself derives from vacca — Latin for cow.
True enough–though my altar-boy Latin does not include the word for “cow,” which is not mentioned in the Latin Mass.
Seriously, though, my recall from other readings is that the Latin word for cow is “bos,” hence “Bossie the Cow.” Cassell’s Latin Dictionary (my copy is undated, and even lacks a copyright notice) translates “bos” as “ox; bullock; cow.” So we’re both right. But I believe you’re right about the origin of the word “vaccination.”
Oh, my sweet summer child, do you think the lockdowns and mask orders and shot orders and tracking are about public health?
No, the tyranny won’t end because of Omicron or any other variant. It’ll end when the people get fed up, stop obeying, and break out the tar and feathers.
If they do. I’m losing hope.
In other news, long time, no “see”. I think I flushed browser history so tapping “c” in the URL bar no longer brought up “contrapositivediary” first off, so I kinda forgot to come here. Followed a link from Daynotes (Bob Thompson’s old site, maintained in his memory) this morning.
Well, I was a summer child (June 29) but no, after I saw some graphs superimposing mask mandates and lockdowns on case counts (and found no changes to case counts after those impositions) I vaccinated myself against believing that governments have our best interests at heart in any respect at all.
More and more people are calling bullshit on the whole pandemic thing, and once omicron has worked its way through the population, only outright lies will keep the cruel business going. The midterm elections are going to send a very clear signal to the Powers.
But hey, welcome back. Very glad to have you. I don’t post here as often as I used to, but I’m not dead nor giving up on it. Writing is what I do.
Some of my pessimism may be because I live in NYS. Upstate, but in commuting distance of Albany. People and businesses are complying with the illegal executive orders regarding masking and what-not, with barely a dissenter other than myself.* Most of my family and coworkers rushed to get “the jab” and are now lining up for the one-time, er, semiannual, er, monthly booster, and I can’t go anywhere without seeing people wearing (useless) masks while walking or driving by themselves.
Other parts of the nation may be less insane. I have doubts that it’ll be enough.
* I try not to give business owners or managers a hard time because they’ll be fined or closed if they don’t enforce mask orders, whether or not they think masks do any good or whether or not they think the orders have any legal standing.