As predicted by covid variant tracker nerds on twitter in recent weeks, JN.1 is exploding. A 40% increase in covid cases since last week. Most sequences coming in to variant trackers are JN.1.
The biobot chart shows the last six months, if you zoom out we are at or approaching covid levels not seen since last winter, so not totally unexpected... but the CDC expects cases to peak in February. However JPWieland predicts it will peak after christmas due to the rapid growth of JN.1.
There are also outlier cities in Europe showing more covid in wastewater than ever measured during the pandemic. Canada isn't doing much better. The UK isn't doing well either.
Along with covid, flu and RSV are also hitting pretty hard at the same time, especially in the South, with a touch of mystery pneumonia in various places around the world as a treat.
Thankfully the latest vaccine helps against this variant. Unfortunatly vaccine uptake rates are abysmal now because capitalism.
I'm mainly still posting about covid out of anxiety and watching the health of friends and family who have been infected and "were fine" slowly deteriorate.
Good luck, everyone.
EDIT:
The CDC director is recommending wearing masks. So things will probably get pretty bad...
Omicron was so dominant that it pretty much outcompeted all other variants like delta and gamma and stuff. At this point nearly all variants existing are descendants of omicron in one way or another.
Omicron should have probably been called SARS-COV3 or something.
yeah they need to change it already. If not for Omicron, then for BA.2.86. Also I should've acknowledged people have been trying to bring back the cooler names, like calling BA.2.86/JN.1 "Pirola," I just feel like it hasn't caught on as much. Maybe because normal people just don't care about covid anymore, so anyone still talking about covid is a scientist/has dug into the science, and using the pango terminology is just more specific
We can appeal to the evangelicals if we stop calling it COVID at all and just pretend there's a new disease called Leviathan or Behemoth or something else biblical.