One thing Black people know how to do is laugh through the pain — and that’s exactly what we are doing with the newest COVID-19 variant that has been discovered in South Africa.
As REVOLT previously reported, the World Health Organization (WHO) named the newest strain of the deadly virus the Omicron variant and labeled it as a “variant of concern” rather than a “variant of interest” due to its amount of mutations. Health officials are concerned about the newest strain, especially for those who are unvaccinated.
Although the Omicron variant has not been found in the United States yet, cases of it have been found in Africa and several other places. President Joe Biden recently restricted travel from these areas, but he said that the U.S. will not fight the new strain with shutdowns or lockdowns.
Even though the virus is serious — like really serious — Black people have been purposely replacing the word Omicron for the word Omarion on Twitter — and the jokes have been hilarious.
“They say in order to keep the Omarion Variant away, you have to do this routine 3 times in the mirror,” tweeted @aura_of_gold, alongside a video of the former B2K lead singer doing the infamous “Omarion Challenge.”
Twitter user @Ebonie_QT tweeted, “Finding humor in this pandemonium is what’s helped me get through this thing. Cus the way I been chuckling at y’all calling it the damn Omarion Variant?!”
“The fact that y’all just started calling that variant the Omarion variant lmao, Black people gon make jokes til the very end,” wrote @OkSoMik.
Social media user @Kamifaine tweeted a clip from O’s “Touch” video with the caption, “Not the Omarion variant and the booster having a lil tussle.”
“This omarion variant really has me stalled from going home,” tweeted @djbrig. “Had to move my flight to tomorrow for time for a pcr test to enter my own damn country. And now I gotta do a whole ass day in moscow tomorrow and fly home Wednesday.”
Check out more Twitter reactions about the Omarion variant below.