Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Timeline of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Opinion seems relatively evenly divided on whether this should exist as a separate article. It is possible that time will tell whether that is necessary, or whether a merge into another article is a better option. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:45, 10 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Timeline of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant[edit]

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Timeline of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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I'm not sure why we have a timeline article for this variant, whose seriousness is still being evaluated by professionals, when we don't have timeline articles for Alpha and Delta, variants that definitely took the world by storm when they first emerged. All of the other timeline articles for the COVID-19 pandemic should adequately cover Omicron and then some. Love of Corey (talk) 04:10, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Very Strong Keep Omicron deserves a timeline because of a) the number of its mutations and b) the number, severity, and immediacy of travel bans and restrictions. Neither Alpha nor Delta took the world by storm. Emergency meetings were not called; draconian travel restrictions globally were not promulgated within days; the economic impact was not severe. kencf0618 (talk) 12:17, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Variants don't need their own timelines separate from Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's an unnecessary WP:CONTENTFORK. Qwaiiplayer (talk) 14:05, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    Omicron has 50 mutations, of which 30 of which are on the proteins spikes alone -the spikes which the three American vaccines target. Delta has nine mutations overall. [1] The immediate and intense global reaction to this variant indubitably meets the criteria of WP: Notability kencf0618 (talk) 14:19, 30 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very Strong Delete As per comments by @XOR'easter and @Qwaiiplayer. COVID-19 Variants don't currently have their own timeline; if we were to decide to keep this, the Delta variant should also get its own timeline page. JMonkey2006 (talk) 09:18, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    You have it backwards. The variants prior were not notable enough to require their own timelines, whereas the global reactions to Omicron are similar in scale to the start of the pandemic itself. Keeping it all in prose makes for article-bloat; a timeline is a necessary auxiliary. And have you noticed that it's getting 3.5K page views daily...?
    https://pageviews.toolforge.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&range=latest-20&pages=Timeline_of_the_SARS-CoV-2_Omicron_variant
    kencf0618 (talk)
    I haven't made any comment yet. XOR'easter (talk) 17:16, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Omicron's mutations should be documented in the timeline. I don't know if we can merge this timeline with any other variant, but if we do, the constant amount of genetic changes is probably going to overtake the entire thing. I think we should keep the timeline because of its potential (rather than deleting it and then having to resuscitate it later). Beansohgod (talk) 17:59, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment There's already coverage of the Omicron variant in the timeline articles for COVID-19, namely the November and (I expect in the future) December timelines. There's no need to maintain multiple timelines as they should cover the same information. Qwaiiplayer (talk) 18:25, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
      • I see, good point. The articles for September through December don't exist, however, so until those are set up, I don't think we should move to delete yet. Good point though. Beansohgod (talk) 18:45, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Actually wait no, those articles exist. Beansohgod (talk) 18:59, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. As a test whether the omicron variant timeline is more notable than the delta variant timeline, I did Google searches like '"delta variant" covid "the first"' using various time-related or sequence-related phrases such as "the first" and using delta or omicron, to see which got more hits. I thought delta might have more hits because it's been around longer, but of five time-related words or phrases I tried, four had more hits for omicron than for delta ("the first", "after", "before" and "until"); for example "the first" had about 28.6 million hits for delta and about 39.3 million for omicron; only one phrase, "within days", had more hits for delta (about 1.7 million) than for omicron (about 0.2 million). The four with more hits for omicron had tens of millions of hits for each variant. ("after": delta 29.1m, omicron 37.4m; "before": delta 37.9m, omicron 50.6m; "until": delta 11.4m, omicron 37.4m.) I interpret this as showing that an omicron timeline is more notable than a delta one. This is a comment on the current AfD and is not intended as opposing creating a delta timeline article. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 21:47, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep A timeline for Omicron makes sense and while it may (inadvertently) fork some content, it's clearly a notable ongoing worldwide current event that any encyclopedia should address. Please keep the timeline for now, you can always it delete it later... Additionally, I would say that Delta probably deserves one as well and a nice objective criterion might be if the variant gets >X% (50? 90?, etc.) of market share of say GISAID sequences. (Although, Omicron would not yet meet that criterion, but is still clearly notable regardless). Fishermansworf (talk) 21:56, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as unnecessary fork, with selective merge of the most notable content into the existing (monthly) timeline articles. — soupvector (talk) 22:45, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep per kencf0618 this particular variant has a lot of mutations that set it apart from the prior variants. It's certainly notable enough that if that content were to be folded back in to the Omicron variant article at some point it would likely reach WP:SPLIT if it's not already there. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:00, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep for now. The Omicron variant is still emerging, but I would say a timeline is necessitated for this variant. Since this variant is in particular, concerning (it has more than 30 mutations),[2] and the world reacted very quickly (also in the above source), this would, in particular, provide a reason to keep it (also per kencf0618). To add, per Fishermansworf, if Omicron does happen to be a not so worrisome variant, we can always merge this article into Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic (suggested by soupvector). Feel free to comment on this. Thank you. — 3PPYB6 — TALK — CONTRIBS — SANDBOXES — LOGS — 23:16, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's my thinking too. Even relying on the omnibus timeline (which I began the day they shut Wuhan down) which be too much of a muchness. kencf0618 (talk) 23:17, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge into Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic or Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in November 2021. Not seperate enough to justify a standalone timeline. Zoozaz1 (talk) 23:38, 1 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. This variant is more notable than others therefore this article shouldn't be deleted. This article is needed because it's redirected from the main page and that's where readers get the information about this variant. A timeline dedicated to this variant will tremendously help readers to follow through as all information are within the main page. Regards. KRtau16 (talk) 02:14, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep for now, then possibly merge later in a few month's time once everything has settled down and we know what is significant and what isn't. -- The Anome (talk) 12:34, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep Having been involved with the initial formation of both the Delta and Gamma variant pages, this feels very different. The sequence of events with Omicron are far more accelerated than, for example, they were with Delta. I think this quotation from Euronews.com sums it up: "It took around two months for Delta to be labeled 'of concern' by WHO. Omicron, on the other hand, received this classification within 72 hours of detection."[3] Also, I feel that the sequence of events will be clearer on a dedicated page because the main Omicron article is already heavily slanted toward the scientific and chronological details could easily be eclipsed or made difficult to discern. SpookiePuppy (talk) 18:12, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. It just hits different. Remember Swine Flu? We were shipping out body bags and vaccines for that one (FEMA transshipment point in Idaho). A trial run, it made a deep impression on me. I contributed heavily to its timeline, and you can just feel the slow build, the dawning comprehension. I began the COVID-19 timeline the day they shut Wuhan down. And here we are, not even a week in... kencf0618 (talk) 20:47, 2 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep for now, then possibly merge later. I posit that merging all of the variants' histories into a single timeline was a mistake which makes the information less useful in a practical sense. Traversing the history of a single variant makes for a clearer picture in one's mind, and makes trends easier to pick out. In the combined timeline, the cognitive overhead of filtering out and/or compartmentalizing different variants distracts from forming that picture. In this light, making a separate timeline for Omicron represents an incorporation of lessons learned. On the other hand, if Omicron fizzles, there is little to be lost in merging it with the main timeline, though in an ideal world the main timeline would get broken out into different variant-specific timelines. TTK (talk) 21:01, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Yep. Timelines have their uses. You're dealing with segmented paragraphs, not walls of text (and the usual flood of information). It's trenchant and monotonous, and not boring, chronological abstract. I can't find the specific article immediately, but whereas WHO designated Delta as a VoC in weeks it designated Omicron as such within days. So yes, lessons learned. Lastly, Delta didn't have a timeline because practically speaking it became the pandemic itself, and stayed that way for quite a while. kencf0618 (talk) 12:55, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Yeah, I think we can keep this for now, since this is an event- not just Omicron, but the whole of the pandemic- that kind of represents a sort of growth for our species as a whole. I'd also suggest putting the current events template on it, just to accentuate that point. Perhaps in the future, we can merge the article with the original Covid timeline if we find that, in retrospect, this article doesn't warrant its own page.
  • Merge. While I appreciate the effort that went into writing this article, much of the material could be integrated into the various Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic articles. Most health authorities and epidemiologists seem to be treating it as part of the wider COVID-19 pandemic. Andykatib 09:05, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's an important phase of the pandemic, given the reaction to it -border closings and so on- but I won't belabor the point. kencf0618 (talk) 17:04, 6 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ https://theconversation.com/will-omicron-the-new-coronavirus-variant-of-concern-be-more-contagious-than-delta-a-virus-expert-explains-what-researchers-know-and-what-they-dont-169020
  2. ^ "Why scientists — and much of the world — reacted so quickly to the omicron variant". NBC News. Retrieved 2021-12-01.
  3. ^ Hurst, Luke; Bateman, Tom (30 November 2021). "Omicron: What do we know about the new COVID 'variant of concern'". Euronews. Retrieved 2 December 2021.
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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