-Anthony Fauci, a man who's had it up to here with Ted Cruz

New COVID variant of concern just dropped, and while the world is thoroughly spooked, it’s not at all clear whether this one is more dangerous than its predecessors. Here’s everything we (mostly don’t) know about Omicron:
 

• South African scientists announced their discovery of a variant with a high number of mutations within the virus’s spike protein on Thursday, and the WHO designated it a variant of concern on Friday, naming it Omicron. Those spike protein mutations could make Omicron more transmissible, and if it turns out to cause more severe disease and/or evade vaccines, it would be very bad news—but there’s no definitive evidence of any of that yet. “The variant is a cause for concern, not a cause for panic,” President Biden said on Monday.
   
• The U.S. was among several Concerned But Not Panicking Nations to swiftly ban travel from southern African countries, although Omicron didn’t necessarily originate there, and both African leaders and the WHO have cried foul. Japan, Israel, and Morocco have closed their borders to foreign travelers altogether. Travel bans can only slow down the inevitable: Canadian officials have already confirmed at least three cases of the variant in North America, and Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) has declared a preemptive state of emergency.
   
• It will take scientists weeks to gather enough data to know whether and how forcefully we should be wetting ourselves. South African officials identified Omicron amid a spike in new infections and hospitalizations, but aren’t sure whether the new variant drove that wave. The vast majority of South Africa’s hospital admissions were still of the unvaccinated persuasion, a hopeful piece of early evidence that Omicron doesn’t render the vaccines totally ineffective. Drug companies are racing to bang out Omicron-specific versions of their vaccines, just in case.

Not to complicate your doom-scrolling, but there’s even a scenario in which a highly transmissible new COVID strain could be, counterintuitively, good news.
 

• Hear us out. The South African doctor who alerted officials about the Omicron variant said she had noticed patients coming in with “extremely mild” symptoms, which tipped her off that she wasn’t looking at Delta. The only data is anecdotal, but if Omicron ultimately turned out to be both more transmissible and significantly less virulent than Delta, its global domination would save untold lives. That’s roughly how the Spanish flu pandemic fizzled out, and it’s a nice potential outcome to contemplate until 2021 rolls up to give us another wedgie!
   
• The few clear (if repetitive) takeaways are that the world can best protect itself from new variants by sharing vaccines with poorer countries, and that Americans can best protect themselves from existing ones by getting vaxxed and boosted. None of that would hurt Joe Biden, though, so Republicans are more focused on trying to extend unemployment benefits to the unvaccinated in an effort to undermine Biden’s vaccine mandates and wring more votes out of the anti-vaxxers that manage to survive their leadership. 

Nobody yet knows how transmissible Omicron is, how well it can evade vaccine immunity, or whether it causes more severe disease—and we won’t know for at least a couple of weeks. We do have enough data to know that the GOP will continue to root for and cultivate the deadliest possible outcome, with the help of whatever variant they can get.

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Congressional redistricting may be the sexiest of the map-drawing processes, but Republicans have also been gerrymandering themselves into unshakeable control of legislatures in key swing states. In Texas and Georgia, GOP lawmakers have largely eliminated competitive districts to create safe majorities for themselves over the next decade. In Ohio and North Carolina, Republicans have approved maps that would preserve or give them supermajorities capable of overriding a Democratic governor’s veto. If the courts don’t strike those maps down (which could take years) and Democrats in Congress fail to pass federal redistricting reforms in the next 15 minutes or so, virtually no level of Democratic voter turnout will be able to flip control of those legislatures for ten long abortion-banning, gun-proliferating, voter-suppressing years.

• Jack Dorsey will step down as CEO of Twitter, which may or may not have to do with GOP mega-donor Paul Singer’s effort to force him out. Dorsey's replacement is Twitter’s chief technology officer, Parag Agrawal, whom Republicans are already smearing as part of their campaign to bully Twitter into hosting more right-wing disinformation.
   
• Justice Department prosecutors have accused Steve Bannon of trying to turn his criminal case into a media circus, asking a judge to limit what documents he can release publicly. In other uncooperative dipshits, the January 6 committee will vote Wednesday to hold former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark in criminal contempt of Congress.
   
• Some January 6 organizers reportedly used burner phones to communicate with the White House and Trump family members, almost like they all knew they were doing crimes and tried to hide it.
   
• Opening statements in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial began on Monday, with prosecutors describing how Maxwell recruited vulnerable young girls for Jeffrey Epstein to abuse.
   
• Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has sued the Pentagon, claiming that it’s improperly blocking portions of his memoir from publication.
   
• Matthew McConaughey has decided that he won’t run for governor, in a rare moment of relief for the beleaguered residents of Texas.
   
• Jared Kushner’s trying to raise money in the Middle East for his new investment firm, from officials he dealt with on behalf of the government just months ago.
   
• QAnon Idol Michael Flynn privately called QAnon “total nonsense” (hahaha), and also a disinformation campaign created by the CIA and/or the left (oh). 
   
• Musical theater legend Stephen Sondheim died on Friday at 91, leaving behind an appropriately legendary obituary correction.

Spanish-language misinformation campaigns are on the rise and social-media platforms aren’t prepared to address them, in today’s edition of Gonna Be A Cool Midterms!!! Latino voters were flooded with ads and content calling President Biden a communist ahead of the 2020 election, and the false Spanish-language claims have continued to explode online, with fake headlines about Biden ordering an arrest during a school-board meeting emerging in the homestretch of Virginia’s gubernatorial election. As pitiful as Facebook is about cleaning up misinformation in English, it’s way, way worse at doing it in other languages: An analysis last year by Avaaz found that Facebook failed to flag 70 percent of Spanish-language COVID misinformation, compared to 29 percent of that content in English.

In 2021 mental health is finally a thing, especially as people are not feeling like their normal selves. Let’s support one another and talk openly. Whether or not therapy is your thing, knowing it’s available and affordable is important, for you or perhaps a loved one.  

Millions of people are trying and loving online therapy. It doesn’t have to be sitting around just talking about your feelings.

So, what is therapy, exactly? It’s whatever you want it to be.

You can privately talk to someone if your stress is too much to manage, you’re battling a temper, having relationship issues, anxiety, depression, etc… Whatever you need, there’s no more shame in these normal human struggles. We take care of our bodies, why not our minds, too? Without a healthy mind, being truly happy and at peace is HARD.

BetterHelp is customized online therapy that offers video, phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist, so you don’t have to see anyone on camera if you don’t want to. It’s much more affordable than in-person therapy and you can start communicating with your therapist in under 48 hours.

It’s always a good time to invest in yourself, because you are your greatest asset. See if online therapy is for you by heading to BetterHelp.com/crooked for 10% off your first month.

Brian Shelton may be the first person cured of Type 1 diabetes, thanks to a promising new stem cell treatment. 

A U.K.-based company will soon start clinical trials of a skin patch COVID vaccine that could provide longer-lasting immunity.

Bar coding, a method of tracking every cell in an organism, could eventually lead researchers to more effective cancer treatments.

The Interior Department has approved the U.S.’s second major offshore wind farm.