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omicron

The new Covid variant has been named omicron - and it’s reminding people of Futurama

The new Covid variant has been named omicron - and it’s reminding people of Futurama

A new coronavirus “variant of concern” first identified in South Africa is the latest strain to be given a Greek letter as its name, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) calling B.1.1.529 “omicron” for short.

While delta is the dominant Covid variant and the fourth letter in the Greek alphabet, the WHO have skipped to the 14th letter with omicron – that’s because the fifth, epsilon, was given to a variant first detected in California.

Although omicron obviously doesn’t sound threatening at all, people have since taken to Twitter to point out how it’s reminding them of a certain animated series.

Sci-fi comedy Futurama, created by Matt Groening of The Simpsons, features the antagonist Lrr – and we would like to stress that that is not a typo on our part (it’s pronounced ‘lurr’).

According to fan websites, he’s from the planet Omicron Persei 8, making him an Omicronian.

God, we miss that show and its weirdness.

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And it seems others do too, as Twitter users soon referenced the character in tweets about the new variant:

Futurama’s first episode was broadcast in 1999, before the series ended in 2013.

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