A new subvariant of SARS-CoV-2 is rapidly taking over in the U.S.—the most transmissible that has ever been detected. It’s called XBB.1.5, in reference to its status as a hybrid of two prior strains of Omicron, BA.2.10.1 and BA.2.75. It’s also called “Kraken.”
Not by everyone, though. The nickname Kraken was ginned up by an informal group of scientists on Twitter and has caught on at some—but only some—major news outlets. As one evolutionary virologist told The Atlantic earlier this week, the name—a reference to the folkloric sea monster—“seems obviously intended to scare the shit out of people” and serves no substantive purpose for communicating science.
Yes, Kraken is klickbait. It’s arbitrary, unofficial, and untethered to specific facts of evolution or epidemiology—a desperate play to get attention. And mazel tov for that. We should all rejoice at this stupid name’s arrival. Long live the Kraken! May XBB.1.5 sink into the sea.
Since Omicron spread around the world in the fall of 2021, we’ve been subjected to a stultifying slew of jargon from the health authorities. Miniature waves of new infections keep lapping at our shores, and the names of the Omicron subvariants that produce them slop together in a cryptic muck: XBB.1.5 has overtaken BA.5 in recent weeks, and also BF.7, as well as BQ.1 and BQ.1.1; in China, BA.5.2 is quickly spreading. One might ask, without a shred of undue panic, how worried we should be—but the naming scheme itself precludes an answer. You don’t even need to ask, it says. You’ll never fully understand.
This isn’t subtext; it’s explicit. A spokesperson for the World Health Organization told my colleague Jacob Stern that people should be grateful for the arcane pronouncements of our leading international consortia. “The public doesn’t need to distinguish between these Omicron subvariants in order to better understand their risk or the measures they need to take to protect themselves,” he said….
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