5 ms·
Omicron? Was not it Nu like few hours ago? I like the longer name better. Our ministry of finance has already made a typo in a Facebook post calling it Mu (like
by vletal 5y ago
Omicron? Was not it Nu like few hours ago?
I like the longer name better. Our ministry of finance has already made a typo in a Facebook post calling it Mu (like the sound cows make).
- f38zf5vdt 5y agoThey skipped nu because it sounds too much like mu, and they skipped xi because it sounds like Winnie-the-Poo.
- polskibus 5y agoWait, what happened to epsilon?
- f38zf5vdt 5y agoThat one dates back to July, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Epsilon_variant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Epsilon_variant
- koheripbal 5y agoWait... Why did they really skip xi?
- lovecg 5y agoA conference room at WHO headquarters, November 2021 A: “… Ok so we agree - ‘Nu’ creates all sorts of confusion so we will skip this letter” B: “Sounds good. What do we have next in the alphabet - ‘Xi’. Oh.” Pause. Exchange of glances. A: “So that’s probably no good either right?” B: “Yeah looks like it” A: “Because it will be hard to pronounce?” B: “Right. Yup.” A: “Alright, ‘Omicron’ it is then.” B: “Done.”
- spacelamb 5y agoThe current official W.H.O. rationale, reported by the NYTimes [0]: "Some other variants with Greek letters do not reach those classification levels, and the W.H.O. also skipped two letters just before Omicron — “Nu” and “Xi” — leading to speculation about whether “Xi” was avoided in deference to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. "“‘Nu’ is too easily confounded with ‘new,’” Tarik Jasarevic, a W.H.O. spokesman, said on Saturday. “And ‘Xi’ was not used because it is a common last name.” "He added that the agency’s best practices for naming diseases suggest avoiding “causing offense to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups.”" [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/27/world/africa/omicron-covid-greek-alphabet.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/27/world/africa/omicron-covi...
- ehsankia 5y agoWouldn't be because it sounds too much like "new"? the "new variant" can be misleading.
- ryankupyn 5y ago"Omicron" also has the advantage of being easier to hear and understand in english - "Nu" can cause confusion because it sounds so much like "New".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]