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Comment by beebmam | Hacker News Reader

Many people got Delta and then Omicron even 1 month later. Kai Ryssdal from NPR for example, and one of my friends did too.

So this isn't crazy; it literally happens to many respiratory viruses. Viruses mutate

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Yup. But like you said many respiratory viruses do that. Does that make the flu virus many of us catch every year novel? How about the common cold? Is each specific virus also novel?

Why did we decide to throw out everything we knew about viruses for SARS-CoV-2? It's like society discovered "OMG I could catch a virus and die!". Not realizing that virtually nothing was new about SARS-CoV-2. It's just a respiratory virus like any other we've had passed through millions of generations of living beings. Oddly enough the "broader human species" managed to survive and thrive through all of them.

I always wondered how people claim that. Did they have two pcr tests or something else telling them what variant they had?

I had delta in late October and omicron in early December. I was PCR positive for delta, although I had a mild case. I wasn't allowed to take a PCR test for the December infection, because it was too soon after my delta test and my symptoms were very mild. I did test positive multiple times on LFT, my symptoms matched the 'ultramild' omicron (scratchy throat, slight cough, lower back pain). The day I tested positive for omicron was 4 days after my friends had gathered in a pub, of the 30 of us in attendance 27 tested positive on the same day. The group chat was wild. Some of those that got PCR's were informed they had omicron.

Most PCR tests will discriminate between (B.1) Omicron and things which are not B.1 Omicron, so it's feasible to know this. I mean, strictly speaking all you'd know is that you had B.1 Omicron plus something else, but if you had the non-B.1 Omicron one in October, then in most parts of the world you'd be pretty safe in assuming that was Delta.

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