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).
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.”
"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-covi...