from Hacker News

Why WHO skipped 2 Greek letters to name new variant ‘Omicron’

by woranl on 11/28/21, 4:11 PM with 94 comments

• by _djo_ on 11/28/21, 5:00 PM

  Even if it was to avoid the association with Xi Jinping, so what? The entire point is to have neutral names for variants that don’t malign specific countries and regions and let’s us discuss them without political baggage. Same with skipping Nu, it avoids confusion and ambiguity.

  There’s no previously hard and fast rule or principle being broken here, nor is the world worse off because the Greek alphabet is merely being used as a source of neutral names rather than being followed exactly linearly.

  I feel that anyone saying it’s a bad thing that Xi was skipped is probably doing so because they feel it would be edgy & funny or something China deserves, and not for any actual scientific credibility perspective.

• by pkulak on 11/28/21, 4:51 PM

  The 12th paragraph of the article:

  "'Nu’ is too easily confounded with `new,’ and `Xi’ was not used because it is a common last name”, the WHO said, adding that the agency’s “best practices for naming disease suggest avoiding `causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups’".

• by jawns on 11/28/21, 5:13 PM

  If you think it would be confusing to have a nu variant, just wait until there's a variant that's newer than nu:

  "Hey, are you worried about the nu variant?"

  "No, I'm worried about the new variant."

  "I knew you knew about the nu one, but about the new one I didn't know you knew."

  "Yeah, the nu one is not the new one. I'm also concerned about any that are newer than the new one."

  "I knew the new one was newer than the nu one, but is there one that's newer than the new one?"

  "Wish I knew. Guess ioata find out."

• by jlund-molfese on 11/28/21, 4:44 PM

  Seems reasonable to me—imagine being a child in grade school with the same last name as a covid variant.

• by DemocracyFTW on 11/28/21, 4:54 PM

  I'm sure this has nothing to do with the name of one particularly popular person.

• by geoah on 11/28/21, 4:46 PM

  The Greek letter “n” in Greek is actually called more something like “nee” and not how I understand English speakers pronounce it “nu” (“new”). Same with “m” that is pronounced as “mee”.

  I assume this is because ancient Greeks spell the phonetic version of the letter as “νῦ”. The second of those letters is “υ” (upsilon) which in Greek sounds like “e” when put after a consonant.

  WHO should have used Chinese characters, would have been more fun.

• by dehrmann on 11/28/21, 4:55 PM

  The two things that should have been obvious when they chose Greek letters is there wouldn't be enough, and there'd be awkwardness around Xi.

• by BrandoElFollito on 11/28/21, 6:30 PM

  It would have been so much simpler using latin letters (since the basic name is already using latin letters) and have covid-19-a, covid-19-b etc.

  Or numbers -v1, -v2 etc. Or semver (1.3, 1.4, 2, ...).

  The current naming is not even pronounced currently (at least in France), omicron is prononced with o.n at the end (the English way) instead of the french way (on being a single sound). I have no idea why, given that everyone here loses their shit evertime English is nibbling on French.

• by throwawaysea on 11/28/21, 5:17 PM

  This type of pandering to Xi and China is exactly what helped them escape accountability. I feel the virus should have continued to be referred to as the “Wuhan virus” or “China virus” alongside other names because the virus’s origin DOES bear relevance. I feel the reason these phrases were banned was simply to attack Trump as xenophobic and use it as a political tool in a contentious election year. But by black holing the location on the grounds it might offend or stigmatize, news media and the general public have turned a blind eye to China not reporting the outbreak to the rest of the world, not shutting down their ports, arresting journalists who reported on it, preventing a site visit for over a year, deleting data/records of their research, not upholding safety standards at WIV, and more.

  Lastly, this notion that things that offend must not be spoken even if there is a rational reason for them (like just being the next in the alphabet) is a dangerous precedent. The political left will probably welcome it, because much of their social justice causes are built on this type of sentiment. But seeing trusted institutions practice the same ideology is creepy and a dystopian distortion of reality.

• by softwaredoug on 11/28/21, 4:50 PM

  "Omicron" does sound fairly ominous. I wonder if that was part of the calculation? To make it sound like something scary that you should take seriously.

• by rhinokungfoo on 11/28/21, 4:48 PM

  Given the gravity of the situation, maybe they should have also skipped the one that is an anagram of "moronic".

• by DemocracyFTW on 11/28/21, 4:57 PM

  While we are at it, Corona is a common brand name and Kovid is a (given?) name, too.

• by AndrewThrowaway on 11/28/21, 6:27 PM

  It looks like the will use all of "Alphabet" eventually.

• by fny on 11/28/21, 5:08 PM

  I've been hearing rumors elsewhere on line that this policy was develop in response to COVID.

  Just want to snuff that out: https://www.who.int/news/item/08-05-2015-who-issues-best-pra...

• by ystad on 11/28/21, 5:13 PM

  Should have just stuck with numbering. Numbers are neutral. I think they're going to run out of Greek alphabets

• by kgwxd on 11/28/21, 4:53 PM

  I didn't realize they were going in order. Where the others after delta not a big deal?

• by gargalatas on 11/28/21, 9:05 PM

  Just to mention that the right Greek letters are 'mi' and 'ni' like 'xi'. 'mu' and 'nu' are not in the Greek alphabet.

• by aswanson on 11/28/21, 4:54 PM

  The name evokes a Neal Stephenson cyberpunk type disease vibe.

• by swiley on 11/28/21, 5:09 PM

  They're more a PR organization than one driven by science at this point.