There is also the wise, benevolent, learned centaur.

However, Greek mythology knows these mixed creatures of horse and man primarily as uncontrolled, wildly determined warriors and - Latinized "Centaurus" - as a conspicuous constellation in the southern sky with the star closest to our sun in the double star system Alpha Centauri.

"Xabier Ostale" could do something with that.

"It sounded good," the Twitter user of this name noted on the social platform a few days ago after he had been celebrated for almost two weeks for his creation of the name "Centaurus" - and some virologists had also tackled it harshly.

In any case, under the rubrum Centaurus and circumventing all official nomenclature rules, the new coronavirus subvariant BA.2.

75 made its way into some gazettes and from there back to the wild short-message Kurdistan of Corona activists and deniers.

Suddenly SARS-CoV-2 had a nickname that didn't exist yet, and what kind of one.

Joachim Müller-Jung

Editor in the feuilleton, responsible for the "Nature and Science" department.

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As aggressive as the centaurs, the @xabitron1 account, Ostale's official Twitter name, is aggressive.

You don't know much about him.

One thing is certain: he is one of the toughest no-Covid advocates, one who now foresees the "great annihilation" and categorically rules out "living with the virus": "We must declare war on Sars2, on all fronts."

A new beast that needs a name?

However, the front on which the centaurian hybrids are currently up to mischief is much smaller than the media storm of Centaurus suggests.

A few hundred virus genomes from BA.2.75 in almost a dozen countries have been decoded so far, three quarters of them in India.

But also in the USA, Great Britain - and in Germany, this unusual virus variant had been identified days ago in two places in southern Germany.

Infection numbers higher than a few hundred are therefore likely.

However, the authorities are still not making a fuss about Centaurus.

The World Health Organization is monitoring the subvariant, said its lead scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, yet there is no reason for alarmism.

The wait-and-see attitude of the officials - that also pisses off Xabier Ostale.

Many equated Omicron with a supposedly mild course, with the all-clear.

"Numbers and Greek letters mean nothing to people, pictures are needed," writes Ostale, which is also why he gave the new "Beast" a striking name label.

Relying on previous infections is negligent

Virologically, BA.2.75 is presumably a further development - a "second generation" - of the omicron subvariant BA.2, which, together with BA.1, had dominated the global pandemic until spring.

There are now dozens of subvariants of omicron, and new ones are added to the gene database every week.

What is striking about the Omicron series is how quickly and how radically this virus variant, first discovered in southern Africa, accumulates new genetic changes, mutations.

The BA.5 subvariant, which was discovered in April of this year, is currently on the rise worldwide.

It has become a summer wave variant, and it is not only in Germany that it is driving the average incidence many hundred times above the values ​​of the previous year, despite the warm season.

The extremely rapid spread of the virus is possible

because infectivity and immune escape have increased significantly compared to the supposedly "mild" BA.1 and BA.2.

Anyone who was infected with the first Omikron variants in winter can hardly count on the immune protection built up in this way lasting longer than a few weeks.

It depends very much on how severe the course of Covid-19 was and how well the immune system was activated with it and, above all, how well your own immunity was activated by vaccinations – at least three doses.