They keep calling them new variants, which made me think: How are viruses classified and what counts as a variant as opposed to a new species? According to Wikipedia: >In July 2013, the ICTV definition of species changed to state: "A species is a monophyletic group of viruses whose properties can be distinguished from those of other species by multiple criteria."[3] These criteria include the structure of the capsid, the existence of an envelope, the gene expression program for its proteins, host range, pathogenicity, and most importantly genetic sequence similarity and phylogenetic relationship.[4] One could argue that since Omicron has a different structure, is genetically different, has different pathogenicity, and can infect different hosts (mice), it should be classified as a whole different species of a virus than the original SARS-Cov-2. Of course they keep calling them new variants because if they called it a new species it would be obvious even to the NPCs how insane it is to vaccinate against a virus using a vaccine made for a different virus.