imagine what it would be like to be the South African biohacker walking into a metro station to smash a vial of your homebrew variant, knowing that even if it works you might as well die there, never telling a soul that you just ended the pandemic with a harmless bioweapon

— Will Manidis (@WillManidis) December 23, 2021

I’ve been wondering about this; omicron doesn’t appear closely related to anything else. I’m about half-convinced now that omicron was either the above or some nation or org “harmlessly” testing its bioweapons research program opportunistically.