Omicron: Do You Need to Freak Out?

Science Vs

Spotify Studios

Education, Science, Health & Fitness

4.4 • 12.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2021

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welp, the pandemic has served up yet another poop sandwich, and it’s called omicron. This variant is popping up in dozens of countries across the world, and scientists are racing to get a handle on it. So how bad could this be? And could it sneak past our vaccines? To find out, we talk to virologist and immunologist Professor Ann Sheehy, Prof. Art Wallace, epidemiologist Dr. Barbara Cohn, immunologist Dr. Ali Ellebedy and virologist Dr. John Tembo. UPDATE 12/6/21: A previous version of this episode incorrectly said that genes tell our bodies how to make amino acids -- it’s been corrected to say that genes tell our bodies how to string together amino acids. Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/31rpKit This episode was produced by Wendy Zukerman, Rose Rimler, Meryl Horn, Michelle Dang, and Ekedi Fausther-Keeys. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Nick DelRose. Mix and sound design by Bumi Hidaka. Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Peter Leonard, Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. Thanks to the researchers we got in touch with for this episode, including Prof. Paul Bieniasz, Katarina Grande, and Prof. David O'Connor. Special thanks to Mia Malan, Musa Malaza, Hunter, Jack Weinstein, the Zukerman family Rachel Ward and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet.
0:04.0	This is the show where we pit facts against FI.
0:09.0	Dudes out, it's one of the last letters of the Greek alphabet, and I hope we never have
0:14.2	to learn anything more about it.
0:16.0	Because this week, we were introduced to Omacron.
0:25.0	WHO has now named this variant Omacron, they are rushing to learn more.
0:31.0	It was spotted in southern Africa in samples from a few weeks ago, and it's now been found
0:35.7	in dozens of countries.
0:36.7	It has now spread across Europe, to Australia and Hong Kong.
0:41.0	San Francisco resident has the first known US case.
0:45.0	Nations are shutting borders, mostly to places in southern Africa, and the World Health
0:49.2	Organization jumped on this variant basically right away.
0:53.4	It started freaking out about it.
0:54.4	It's likely to pose a very high global risk that's the warning from the red flag.
0:59.4	Now, things are just moving so quickly here.
1:02.4	There's so much confusion that we don't even know how to pronounce this thing.
1:07.4	It's new Omacron variant.
1:10.4	Is it Omacron? Omacron? It's called the Omnicron.
1:13.4	Omacron.
1:16.4	So on today's show, do we really need to be that worried about Omacron?
1:24.4	And if we do need to be freaking out here, what can we do about it?
1:29.4	After months of Fistie Cuffs around where their healthy adults need booster shots at all,
	...

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