Episode 4.29: Determinism again and Does Nature Make Jumps?

There is an old saw “natura non facit saltum”, nature does not make jumps. But nature does: the Omicron covid variant arose from a jump occasioned by 43 nucleotides being mistranscribed during replication. Something new emerged that was only explicable in terms of its predecessors once we invoke and add this random element of error. Neither explicable in total nor predictable beforehand, so what exactly is it that determinism claims?