Tag: variant

Categories
Pandemic Virus

Before Times

There was a time in the not so distant past where Covid-19 and Coronavirus weren’t even words. The pandemic, lockdowns and viral escape mutants were the imagination of script writers for dystopian movies. These were the “Before Times,” a nostalgic expression referring to the way things used to be. A time when you could travel on a plane without wearing a mask and be served a meal. A time when you didn’t have to stand “six feet apart” from the person in front of you at the grocery checkout. It was a time when people could freely go to bars, pubs, parties and sporting events without having to worry about catching the ‘Rona and thinking about contact tracing.

Dictionary.com defines Before Times as follows:

Before Times is generally used in discussions that contrast the lasting and far-reaching effects (especially negative effects) of the pandemic to the way things were before it. It’s typically used in a way that’s intended to be at least somewhat (darkly) humorous, perhaps likening the world after the start of the pandemic to a postapocalyptic dystopia.

Example: I’ve been in my house hiding from Covid for so long that I can’t even remember what it was like in the Before Times.

The term Before Times was popularized by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was used in reference to the prepandemic world from the very beginning of the pandemic in early 2020, but its origins are unrelated -and much earlier. The initial spread of the phrase and variations of it is often attributed to the science fiction TV show Star Trek, which used a version of the term in a 1966 episode [Miri]. In the episode, a group of children use the term before time to refer to life before a plague killed most of their planet’s population.

“Before Times” has appeared in a few online news articles. A recent piece written for Fortune magazine that discusses remote working says “while coming into work at all is tepidly popular, coming in on Fridays borders on the unthinkable…the flexibility of our remote-work era might have made the Before Times summer Friday perk redundant, mused Fortune’s Trey Williams. ‘When your boss isn’t sitting in the same room as you, who’s to know if you start happy hour a little earlier on a Friday?” he wrote'” (Thier).

As recently as July 29, 2022 the term appeared in the online SFist newsletter: “If you had told me in the Before Times that San Francisco hotels would be clamoring to let homeless people crash in their rooms on someone else’s dime, I would have asked where I could score some of that Grandpappy Kush you’ve been smoking” (Kukura).

YouTube channel Stuck in the Middle produced a video in October 2021 discussing CNN’s use of the term Before Times. Make of it what you will.

Social Media Trends as of July 24, 2022

Facebook #beforetimes: people are posting about this
Instagram #beforetimes: 7,941 posts
TikTok #beforetimes: 1.8 million views

Google Trends: “before times” appeared in late December 2019 and the search popularity increased after lockdown began in March 2020.

before times search term

Sources:

“Before Times.” Dictionary.com. March 3, 2022. URL: https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/the-before-times/#:~:text=Before%20Times%20is%20an%20informal,as%20in%20the%20Before%20Times..

Kukura, Joe. “As Shelter-In-Place Hotel Program Winds Down, Residents and Managers Look Back on Whether it Actually Worked.” SFist.com. July 29, 2022. URL: https://sfist.com/2022/07/29/as-shelter-in-place-hotel-program-winds-down-residents-and-managers-look-back-on-whether-it-actually-worked/.

Stuck in the Middle channel. “CNN Uses Phrase “Before Times” with no explanation or definition.” YouTube. October 11, 2021. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORqWYfozXZ4.

Thier, Jane. “It’s Friday: The day you’re not in the office and probably never will be again.” Fortune.com. July 15, 2022. URL: https://fortune.com/2022/07/15/empty-office-fridays-nearly-extinct-remote-work/.

Categories
Pandemic Virus

Deltacron

Deltacron was identified in January 2022 by a lab in Cyprus and is a portmanteau of Delta and Omicron and contains genetic material from both Covid-19 variants making this new variant a recombinant one but some medical experts doubt Deltacron exists.

The new variant has an entry in Dictionary.com describing it as “the name given to a supposed combination of the Delta and Omicron variants of the COVID-19 virus; however, many scientific experts have concluded that it does not exist. A number of virologists have said that the appearance of a combined strain was simply the result of contamination of the samples in which it was thought to have been detected. Deltacron is, in fact, not a variant, but a broad nickname describing variants that contain a mixture of mutations found in Delta and Omicron.”

An article titled “What Is Deltacron? A New Coronavirus Variant Or Lab Error?” reports that the lab responsible for discovering the new variant said “on 7 January [that the] team had discovered Deltacron in 25 patients [and the] variant appeared to be a mix of the delta and omicron variants” (Majumder).

Because there are so few cases the World Health Organization has not classified it as a variant of concern. Epidemiologist William Hanage of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health said “It’s only a variant if it produces a large number of cases…if it’s not causing lots of cases, people don’t need to be concerned” (Ellis).

Social Media Trends as of May 20, 2022

Facebook #deltacron: 11,000 people are posting about this
Instagram #deltacron: 6,960 posts
TikTok #deltacron: 24.9 million views
YouTube #deltacron: 1,100 videos and 525 channels

Google Trends: deltacron appeared on January 8, 2022 and peaked during the second week of that month before fading into obscurity by the beginning of April 2022.

deltacron search term
Juan

Sources:

“Deltacron.” Dictionary.com. January 18, 2022. URL: https://www.dictionary.com/e/
tech-science/deltacron/.

Ellis, Ralph. “Scientists Identify New COVID Variant Called ‘Deltacron’” WebMD. March 11, 2022. URL: https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220311/new-covid-variant-deltacron.

Guha Majumder, Bhaswati. “What Is Deltacron? A New Coronavirus Variant Or Lab Error?” Swarajyamag.com. January 10, 2022. URL: https://swarajyamag.com/news-brief/what-is-deltacron-a-new-coronavirus-variant-or-lab-error.

Juan. “Lexicon images. “Researcher with blood sample of New Variant of the Covid-19 DELTACRON and generic data of covid-19 Coronavirus Mutations. Doctor in analysis lab holding sample of new strain of covid DELTACRON” image. Adobe.com. File no: 479256877.


Categories
Pandemic Virus

Omicron

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.”

Omicron is the name you might give to a transformer (Wikipedia)

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.

omicron search term

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.