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> As far as I know, the latter was extinct in the wild by the time the former emerged. Omicron isn't a descendant of Delta. It has an odd lineage that couldn'
by Izkata 4y ago
> As far as I know, the latter was extinct in the wild by the time the former emerged.
Omicron isn't a descendant of Delta. It has an odd lineage that couldn't be explained and (unless new info has come up since I last looked) it was likely a descendant of either Wuhan or Alpha that mutated hidden from most of the world - one of the theories was that Wuhan/Alpha jumped to rats, then back to humans after becoming Omicron.
- tripletao 4y agoI agree, but I don't think that's relevant? So I think my terminology was unclear. By "omicron/delta" I meant a recombinant of the omicron spike with the delta backbone, the one that apparently happened naturally and Derek Lowe describes as the XD strain. By "omicron/Wuhan" I meant a recombinant of the omicron spike with the Wuhan backbone, which these researchers created in their lab (and I don't believe had any opportunity to occur naturally, since the two lineages never existed simultaneously).
- Izkata 4y ago> since the two lineages never existed simultaneously Some version of it would likely have existed in the rat-origin theory of Omicron as an intermediate stage, is what I meant.
- tripletao 4y agoAh, got it now. Then I guess the rats (or other cryptic hosts in which omicron evolved) might have been exposed to the omicron/Wuhan recombinant, but not humans.