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Why WHO skipped 2 Greek letters to name new variant ‘Omicron’
- gargalatas 5y agoJust to mention that the right Greek letters are 'mi' and 'ni' like 'xi'. 'mu' and 'nu' are not in the Greek alphabet.
- vibrato2 5y agoThey’re owned by China, can’t insult Xi “Pooh” Jinping
- securitEEE 5y agotoo many ads, here's the important parts: > Many people had expected the agency to label the latest variant nu, which comes after mu, a variant designated on Aug. 30. > Instead, the WHO skipped over nu as well as xi, the next Greek letter in line — a move that many users on social media pointed out, while some questioned whether it was to avoid offending Chinese leader Xi Jinping. > In a statement provided to the AP, the WHO said it skipped nu for clarity and xi to avoid causing offense generally. > “`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.”’
- yepthatsreality 5y ago[flagged]
- dang 5y agoPlease don't call names or post shallow dismissals to HN. It degrades discussion and we're trying for the opposite here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- clairity 5y agofrankly, this topic has already been discussed in half a dozen threads (in other posts), and those have overwhelmingly been stupid & obvious memes and anti-china insinuations. the whole thing should just be flagged instead.
- jlund-molfese 5y agoSeems reasonable to me—imagine being a child in grade school with the same last name as a covid variant.
- thepangolino 5y agoWe all know that child is way too old to still be in school.
- brigandish 5y agoThey didn't skip Eta, which is a common enough name if Xi is, especially given that Xi is pronounced ksʌɪ and, if we're focusing on Chinese (does it exist as a name elsewhere?) it's not going to be romanised and a child in grade school won't be aware anyway.
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoThe popularity of the name Katrina was relatively stable in the 200-300 most popular range until Hurricane Katrina hit, at which point it declined into the 900s.
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoI think they would survive. If a kid gets picked on for their last name sounding the same as a Covid variant, they were probably going to get picked on for something anyway. Bending over backwards to avoid offending people isn't good policy, because it just lowers the bar for what makes people offended.
- themitigating 5y agoHow is skipping two names bending over backwards
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoHow is it not?
- jlund-molfese 5y ago
- geoah 5y agoThe 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.
- rhinokungfoo 5y agoGiven the gravity of the situation, maybe they should have also skipped the one that is an anagram of "moronic".
- melling 5y agoNah, I’ve already seen the joke used a dozen times. People who want to complain will always find something. It’s better that people learn some Greek letters.
- softwaredoug 5y ago"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.
- _djo_ 5y agoNo, it was just the next letter in the alphabet after Nu (not used because of its similarity with Mu and the ‘Nu/New’ thing) and Xi (not used to avoid making the discussion about a political controversy rather than the variant.
- HPsquared 5y agoIn Greek it means "little O" (o-mikron), compared to Omega ("big O", o-mega).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pkulak 5y agoThe 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’".
- et-al 5y agoXi/席/奚/习 doesn't even fall under the 200 most common surnames in Mainland China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_Chinese_surnames#Mainland_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_Chinese_surname...
- freemint 5y agoXie is number 23
- jhgb 5y agoXie is not Xi which in turn is not the 'xi' consonant.
- jjk166 5y agoBut it's significantly more common as a last name than any of the other greek letters. 席 is number 213. For context, Armstrong is the 213th most common surname in America. There are still many tens of thousands of people with that surname, it is clearly recognizable as common a surname, and you have definitely heard of at least one Armstrong.
- jhgb 5y ago> But it's significantly more common as a last name than any of the other greek letters. Mu (https://forebears.io/surnames?q=mu https://forebears.io/surnames?q=mu) is more common than Xi (https://forebears.io/surnames?q=xi https://forebears.io/surnames?q=xi).
- sneak 5y ago
- kgwxd 5y agoI didn't realize they were going in order. Where the others after delta not a big deal?
- _djo_ 5y agoThey were Variants of Interest, which didn’t see substantial spread, rather then Variants of Concern. Both VOIs and VOCs get Greek letter names.
- aswanson 5y agoThe name evokes a Neal Stephenson cyberpunk type disease vibe.
- DemocracyFTW 5y agoI'm sure this has nothing to do with the name of one particularly popular person.
- woutr_be 5y agoI kind of hate people stating it like this, because when you point out as to why it would be fairly obvious not to use Xi, they'll call you out for pandering towards the CCP. But Xi is a pretty common surname in China, and the virus has already caused enough hatred towards Asians in general, there's no point in fueling it even more.
- option 5y agosame arguments/sentiments are a huge impediment in investigating pandemic’s true origin
- willcipriano 5y agoFrom this act alone and I am on board with your explanation, but with this[0] interview from last year I'm leaning in the direction of pandering. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM
- freemint 5y agoThe WHO doesn't decide what it can call country that is done by the united nations, mostly lead by the USA which follows the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-China_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-China_policy .
- willcipriano 5y agoIt would've been a lot less suspicious if that explanation was provided. I don't think he's allowed to even say that.
- beervirus 5y ago[flagged]
- dehrmann 5y agoThe 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.
- DemocracyFTW 5y agoWhile we are at it, Corona is a common brand name and Kovid is a (given?) name, too.
- _djo_ 5y agoEven 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.
- booleandilemma 5y agoI agree, I wouldn’t want a variant with my name in it either. They’re just being nice, as far as I’m concerned. This isn’t about China controlling or influencing the WHO.
- jhbadger 5y agoAnd yet they didn't skip Delta despite the confusion with one of the US' major airlines. Given that people fear getting Covid from flying, there was a lot of potential for confusion that the airline had to combat.
- xg15 5y agoThey have rather clear guidelines on names: > adding that the agency’s “best practices for naming disease suggest avoiding `causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups.”’ The list does not include brands. Also, there are different measures of confusion: "Nu" being confused with "new" is on a phonetic level and could make actual communication difficult. "Delta (the virus)" vs "Delta (the airline)" is semantic confusion and most people are quite capable of distinguishing those unless they deliberately want to be confused.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago> "Delta (the virus)" vs "Delta (the airline)" is semantic confusion and most people are quite capable of distinguishing those unless they deliberately want to be confused. While I agree, it still boggles my mind how the Corona beer (and other Coronas, like the game SDK) have been stigmatized just by sharing the same name.
- fny 5y agoI'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-practices-for-naming-new-human-infectious-diseases https://www.who.int/news/item/08-05-2015-who-issues-best-pra...
- swiley 5y agoThey're more a PR organization than one driven by science at this point.
- freemint 5y agoIt was never a science organization, it mostly a coordination and standardization organization that organizes medical responses. If a Xi variant wouldn't be called Xi variant in China that would just cause confusion. Better have a name everybody uses then sticking to the order of an ancient alphabete.
- jawns 5y agoIf 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."
- ystad 5y agoShould have just stuck with numbering. Numbers are neutral. I think they're going to run out of Greek alphabets
- throwawaysea 5y agoThis 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.
- AndrewThrowaway 5y agoIt looks like the will use all of "Alphabet" eventually.
- BrandoElFollito 5y agoIt 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]