In Idaho, we had our first detected Omicron case, but that doesn't mean it's only one. The person was said to have traveled, and the person lives in my county. The person was vaccinated, too. But our county is backed up by like weeks from doing the genetic testing in order to determine the variant type, so it doesn't always reach the State's health department's online website for Coronavirus. The sharing of the information is all over the place in our country, so there's variations on data collection. Also, some of the antivaxxers, antimaskers, and hesitants refuse to get tested, since they don't want the government to record them or something. They are super paranoid about a lot of things, including some conspiracy theory about something in the vaccines. Because of that, they either wind up just treating Covid-19 like a "cold" or "flu" and go about their day without masks, without vaccines, and spreading their droplets everywhere. I've already encountered neighbors and passerby coughing when they see me, a masked person in the room trying to pick up packages in my apartment building or trying to walk down the street or trying to walk on the VA campus. I don't know if they are coughing on purpose because they can see that I'm Asian and/or masked (when they are not), or whether they are coughing for real because they just can't help themselves. They have no qualms here about coughing without even covering their mouths. And when I look at them, I just try to go away from them as fast as possible. It doesn't matter how far away you are though; if they are in the same room, it spreads fast in the air and for long distances when they cough (as opposed to just regular breathing or talking).

Anyways, one case detected means hundreds of cases are already here. It's just backlogged until they tally all the genomes of the positive test cases.