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Corona replay

The World Health Organization is now tracking a new COVID-19 variant, named “Pirola.”

Credit: Yaakov (DryBones) Kirschen.
Credit: Yaakov (DryBones) Kirschen.

A new COVID-19 variant, BA.2.86, has been discovered.

The World Health Organization is now tracking it and calling it “Pirola.”

Outside of Israel, it has been detected (so far) in at least seven different countries, namely the United States (where First Lady Jill Biden tested positive), the United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal and South Africa.

Scientists predict that this “outbreak” will be less severe than that of the Alpha, Delta or Omicron variants, because most people on Earth have now been vaccinated and/or infected by the virus.

It feels like somebody is playing with us.

Political cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., made aliyah to Israel in 1971 and began drawing “Dry Bones” in January 1973. The internationally syndicated, award-winning cartoons ran in The Jerusalem Post for 50 years. They were reprinted in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, TIME and other mainstream media publications. The “Dry Bones” story has been covered by CBS, CNN and Forbes, among other outlets. He was a member of America’s National Cartoonists Society and the Israeli Cartoonists Society. Kirschen died at 87 on April 14, 2025.
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