Judy Woodruff of the PBS Newshour went the NIH and discussed Omicron and other related topics with Francis Collins.
Watch the video (It’s about 7 minutes long.)
Collins reminds us, “We are not powerless to determine the outcome of this.”
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Watching it now, recorded on DVR. 
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This makes a lot of sense, since many of the 50 mutations haven’t been before in human cases:
Kristian Andersen was pushing the reverse zoonosis hypothesis during the big viral surveillance call on Wednesday but he wasn’t getting much enthusiastic support. Most think an immune-compromised human host is the more likely scenario. (Not that Kristian necessarily believes it himself. As he noted, he’s suggested it before for other variants of concern and was very likely wrong.)
I don’t find the hypothesis of an isolated human population likely either: it doesn’t explain why it has so many mutations, more than one would expect from normal human-to-human transmission.
I gotta say, so far most things we’ve learned about Omicron have been bad news. This is one tricky virus.
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