Five in Ten 12/17/21: The Friday Five - Good Omicron News

New study from Hong Kong found omicron variant of SARS-2 multiplies 70x faster than delta in bronchial tissue but 10 times slower than the original virus in lung tissue. This means omicron, while being more infectious, is less severe. NOTE: Five in Ten will be on holiday break until January 3, 2022! 5) NFL, NBA teams struggle with COVID outbreaks among fully-vaccinated players; 4) Russia and China working on new financial system to bypass US dollar; 3) Another Amazon Web Services outage creates headaches across country; 2) Hurricane-force winds sweep across Great Plains and Upper Midwest just days after deadly Quad-State Tornado; 1) Philadelphia Cream Cheese offers to pay customers to buy other holiday desserts to alleviate national shortage of cream cheese. Also: How you can get the limited edition Defender Family Bible!