At 7.30 a.m. on Wednesday, Kristian Andersen, an infectious disease researcher at Scripps Research in San Diego, received a message on Slack: “This variant is completely insane.” Andrew Rambaut of the University of Edinburgh was reacting to a new SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence found in three samples collected in Botswana on 11 November and one picked up a week later in a traveler from South Africa to Hong Kong.

Andersen looked at the data and then replied: “Holy shit—that is quite something. The length of that branch…” A few minutes later he added: “Just had a look at the list of mutations—so nuts.”

They were talking about what is now called Omicron, a new variant of concern, and the long branch Andersen noticed refers to its distance to every other known virus on SARS-CoV-2’s evolutionary tree. The variant seemed to have picked up dozens of mutations, many of them known to be important in evading immunity or increasing transmissibility, with no intermediate sequences in the database of millions of viral genomes. On Tuesday, after spotting the odd sequences in a global database, Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, had already posted his own verdict on GitHub: “This could be of real concern.”

Now, once again, the world is watching as researchers work nights and weekends to learn what a new variant has in store for humanity. Is Omicron more infectious? More deadly? Is it better at re-infecting recovered people? How well does it evade vaccine-induced immunity? And where did it come from? Finding out will take time, warns Jeremy Farrar, the head of the Wellcome Trust: “I’m afraid patience is crucial.”

Read it all.

Comprehensive article on Omicron's emergence. "Based on a comparison of different Omicron genomes, Andersen estimates that the virus emerged sometime around late September or early October, which suggests it might be spreading more slowly than it appears." https://t.co/Bb8kieNJyl

— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) November 28, 2021

Almighty God,
give us grace to cast away the works of darkness
and to put on the armour of light,
now in the time of this mortal life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
that on the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

Good morning, Maine. pic.twitter.com/hOsX9vv3yh

— Jonathan Milne 🌎🇺🇸🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿☕️⛵️ (@_Saving_Nature_) November 28, 2021

But as to the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves know well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When people say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as travail comes upon a woman with child, and there will be no escape. But you are not in darkness, brethren, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But, since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we wake or sleep we might live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.

–1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. From today's reading, Jeremiah 33.15: ‘In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land.'

Image: Tree of Jesse from the Vaux Psalter MS233 f.15r. pic.twitter.com/wvjv68Ezpz

— LambethPalaceLibrary (@lampallib) November 28, 2021