The 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

The 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...