This might come across at first as a political post. While I have made my thoughts on several issues on this board, I legitimately think this question can best be answered here.

We now have at least 6 cases of omicron in the USA. 1 in cali and 6 in NYC. How do they know they were omicron? I believe there are two possible explanations: 1. someone popped positive and was concerned that they had just returned from SA or was in contact with someone who had and it was concluded omicron (or did a one-off test at a lab); or 2. There is already a test for omicron distributed across the nation.

I don't think they are testing nationwide already for omicron. It would be logistically impossible in such a short period. So how did they find these cases to report it? Anyone have any idea?

No, and they never have been. But do you think it's not a standard part of the safety surveillance? Why do we know that delta has been dominant?

All records have ids that can be traced back.

Fitch said:

---

My guess would be the public health agencies only sequence a couple of samples per thousand. No chance every sample that's sent off to a lab is sequenced to ID strain.

Given statistics is what it is, a pretty damn close to accurate picture of the large population can be drawn from a (relatively) very limited sample set.

The half dozen-ish cases ID'd are just the first reported. As we've seen time and again, by the time these new strains are identified they're already present on every continent.

---

You're absolutely right. I was thinking about it. I was assuming that they knew who the individuals were and the persons also knew they had omicron. My bad.

I think I understand that it's a marker that there is an omicron case in that population.

Gordo14 said:

---

94chem said:

---

In other words, at least hundreds of cases all over the country of a highly contagious virus that produces mostly mild symptoms. In a post-vaccine world, the madness of shutting things down is incomprehensible.

---

What's shutting down? What has shut down in almost a year?

---

World >> America. hth