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The name has the ring of something out of a science fiction novel — a secret government military conspiracy, or an artificial intelligence program designed to infiltrate and assimilate society.

XBB.1.5.

What it’s called might seem indecipherable, but what it is has already made its presence felt in Jackson County and across the country.

XBB.1.5 is the latest variant on that uninvited guest that has chosen not to leave … COVID-19.

Make that a subvariant, actually; for, in truth, the latest manifestation of the disease which sent the world into a pandemic that we are still recovering from — physically, economically and politically — is a variant of Omicron, until now the most virulent of COVID-19’s stepchildren.

We don’t blame you if you thought we were done with this. We certainly thought it was over a year ago this month, when President Biden declared “the pandemic is over” in an interview with “60 Minutes.”

And though that wound up being premature, the lifting of the final mask mandates across Oregon in April certainly felt as though we’d awakened from this particular long, national nightmare.

The pandemic’s scars, of course, are still being felt. Tracking figures say 1,141,782 have died from COVID and/or related illnesses since 2020 — with about 9,300 of those deaths in Oregon, including more than 500 in Jackson County.

As we all have become painfully aware, countless other people believe the entire COVID-19 emergency was at least overblown and at most a politically motivated hoax.

We don’t blame you if you thought we were done with that, either.

Now, however, because of XBB.1.5, such divisive wounds are likely to be opened again as a new round of shots are being recommended by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Already, we have seen that one presidential candidate — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — has warned his state’s residents against getting the vaccination, arguing that there’s not enough evidence that their benefit would outweigh unnamed risks.

Another presidential candidate, political scion Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — supporters of whom rallied in August on the Ashland Plaza — has a documented history of opposing COVID vaccines, invoking at one point a comparison to the Holocaust for which he has since apologized.

A national poll conducted earlier this month by POLITICO and Morning Consult reached a split decision on the latest COVID threat.

While it found that 57% of respondents definitely plan to get the new shots, the political gulf remains large — 79% of Democrats say they will, while 52% of independent voters and 61% of Republicans say they “probably or definitely” will not.

Some likely won’t because they and their families never felt the effects of COVID. Others will follow the lead of those they follow politically.

And, for one segment of anti-vaxxers, they won’t get the shots because they might actually believe that XBB.1.5 is really a secret government military conspiracy, or an artificial intelligence program designed to infiltrate and assimilate society.

We wish this, too, were over — that seeds of doubt, whether politically motivated or through misinformation manipulation, would not be rooted so deep that they fracture the trust we place in the medical community.

Talk to your doctors and close yourself off from all the other noise. And then, if you choose not to get the booster shot, hope that you don’t get sick.