what do we need to know about the omicron variance? is it more contagious, would lead to more severe disease? your thoughts? >> those above right questions. it's early enough to be sure we know the answers. that's what a lot of us are spending our time on over the last three days. i've been on zoom calls and phone calls pretty much continuously. we know this is a variant that has a lot of mutations. like 50 of them and more than 30 of those in the spike protein which is a part of the virus that attaches to your human cells if you get infected. that is a new record in terms of the number of mutations. it does make you worry that it's a different virus that it might not respond as well to protection from the vaccine. but we don't know that. we can certainly see in south africa and a few neighboring countries and south part of africa it seems to be spreading