Omicron is the name of a highly transmissible variant of the Covid-19 virus and was first detected in South Africa in November 2021. Two months later it had spread around the world faster than previous variants. It arrived in the United States in the same month it was detected in South Africa. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on December 1, 2021 that “the California and San Francisco Departments of Public Health have confirmed that a recent case of COVID-19 among an individual in California was caused by the Omicron variant (B.1.1.529). The individual was a traveler who returned from South Africa on November 22, 2021. The individual had mild symptoms that are improving, is self-quarantining and has been since testing positive.” By Christmas 2021, Omicron was the world’s most dominant variant.
So where did the variant gets its name from? Omicron is one of the Greek letters of the alphabet. An article published for the South China Morning Post on 17 December 2021 explains why: “Alpha, beta, gamma, delta…[The] World Health Organization determined in May 2021 that its nomenclature for important strains in the Sars-CoV-2 variant classification would adopt Greek-letter names (as opposed to place-of-origin names, such as “Wuhan virus” or “South African variant”, the practice criticised for contributing to xenophobia and racism)” (Lim).
The new variant dashed hopes of a return to normal during the Christmas holidays and delayed return to office plans. Cases rose exponentially and schools deliberated whether to return to virtual learning. An article published on December 20, 2021 for NBC News on December 16, 2021 reports that “The omicron variant is spreading rapidly across the United States, shattering hopes of a return to relative normalcy in the final days of the year and harkening back to the anxiety of the early months of the Covid-19 crisis. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ on Sunday that the variant is “just raging through the world” (Arkin).
Omicron sounds more like the name you would give to a transformer than a Covid variant. Ironically, an anagram of the word spells “Moronic.”
The Covid-19 variant started popping up in memes and YouTube videos. Here’s a Star Trek parody of how to pronounce the word “Omicron.”
Here’s a tweet showing a parody photo of the UK gameshow Countdown with the words Omicron and its anagram Moronic.
Social Media Trends as of May 11, 2022
Facebook #omicron: 300,000 people are posting about this
Instagram #omicron: 594,110 posts
TikTok #omicron: 3.2 billion views
YouTube #omicron: 130,000 videos and 30,000 channels
Google Trends: omicron as a search term became popular during the week of November 21, 2021 and peaked around Christmas Day around the time it became the world’s most highly transmissible variant.
Sources:
Arkin, Daniel. “Omicron spreads across U.S., dashing holiday hopes, putting NHL on pause.” NBC News. December 21, 2021. URL: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/omicron-variant-spreads-us-dashing-hopes-normal-christmas-rcna9350.
“First Confirmed Case of Omicron Variant Detected in the United States.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. December 1, 2021. URL: https://www.cdc.gov/media/
releases/2021/s1201-omicron-variant.html.
FreedomPodcast1. Countdown gameshow image. Twitter. November 27, 2021. URL: https://twitter.com/FreedomPodcast1/status/1464660316697075718.
Lim, Lisa. “Language Matters – Omicron: where does the variant Covid-19 name come from?” South China Morning Post. 17 December 2021. URL: https://www.scmp.com/
magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/3159959/omicron-where-does-variant-covid-19-name-come.
Mark2k. “How to Pronounce “Omicron” the Star Trek Way.” YouTube. 2021. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GjMbMQGOpA.
prayitno. “Costume characters at Universal Studio Hollywood – Optimus Prime & Bumble Bee TRANSFORMERS THE RIDE-3D Universal Studios ~ Hollywood, California.” Wikipedia. May 20, 2012. URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Transformers#/media/File:Transformers_costume_characters_at_Universal_Studios_Hollywood.jpg.
