We have now entered the new year and also have carried forward a new variant of the covid virus. It appears that the virus is playing a relay game—one over (delta minimised) and a new one (Omicron) appeared! There were interesting dialogue about the name conferred by WHO on the new variant: Delta is followed by two other alphabets but both of them—Nu and Xi may be misconstrued to their nationality and hence were dropped. I wonder how many more variants are waiting to come and how WHO plans to name them anyway! Luckily it does not appear to be a very blood sucking variant almost like a gentleman virus with minimal invasion but the global numbers are spiralling just the same way as other earlier variants and this has caused an economic set back to global community as they were all hoping to have come out of long drawn downslide for all economies—a new restriction is now in place but due to selective vaccine availability, the world is seeing a lopsided up turn in numbers and rich nations are stocking up the available shots while one nation even is planning to have a fourth doze.

The age of dinasaurs have now been pushed back by a few million years due to the discovery of some fossils in unlikely places and thus reopening the pandora box of animal succession, extinction and evolution. Climate in the meantime continues to change with devastating unusual floods. In December southern Indian states due to the inability of weather pundits to predict monsoon behaviour with a greater precision which is required for minimising management related approach, bore the heavy brunt of the weather Gods!

Have a happy reading!