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We did skip a COVID variant Greek letter to appease the dictator though
by savant_penguin 5y ago
We did skip a COVID variant Greek letter to appease the dictator though
- addicted 5y agoThat’s not even close to true. There’s tens of millions of people with that name. The WHO did not want to stigmatize all of them which is why they skipped the letter. It had little to do with Xi Jinping alone. The WHO moved to Greek lettering to avoid stigmatization faced by people who were being associated with different variants. It wouldn’t make much sense to do the same when you can avoid it by just skipping a letter.
- eloisius 5y agoMu is a more common surname than Xi, but they weren't so worried about stigmatizing that name. I have no doubt that they _would_ have avoided it, had anyone brought it to their attention, but they didn't. Yet somehow they avoided Xi.
- herendin 5y agoChinese surnames pronounced 'Mu' are similarly common to 'Xi'. There is a Mu variant of Covid[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Mu_variant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Mu_variant