The whole world is now watching out for more details about the new "Omicron" COVID variant that has been spreading in different countries but was recently discovered in Africa.
But while details about the variant's transmission and fatality rates remain unknown at the moment, one thing is sure- it was named that way due to political reasons.
The Post Millennial reported that according to Paul Nuki, the Global Health Security Editor for The Telegraph, an anonymous source inside the WHO has confirmed that the letters "Nu" and "Xi" were entirely skipped for two different reasons. This is why the variant before Omicron was named "Mu." Per Nuki,
A WHO source confirmed the letters Nu and Xi of the Greek alphabet had been deliberately avoided. Nu had been skipped to avoid confusion with the word "new" and Xi had been skipped to "avoid stigmatising a region", they said.
All pandemics inherently political!— Paul Nuki (@PaulNuki) November 26, 2021
While the decision to avoid calling the newly-discovered variant "Nu" meant avoiding potential ridicule from it being called the "new Nu variant," the decision to avoid calling it the "Xi" variant has elicited a lot of ridicule from netizens.
The Post Millennial noted how the WHO has "cowered to China" several times already. The current director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, previously downplayed COVID and even avoided defended China's "gross mismanagement of the highly contagious disease," The Hill said.
The WHO, under Ghebreyesus, also took a lot of time before calling the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, despite the viral outbreak meeting the criteria: transmission rates, fatality rates, and the range that it has already spread across the globe.
More recently, the WHO also tried to clear China over its involvement in the creation of COVID-19, particularly the epicenter, Wuhan. Reports, however, reveal that the WHO wasn't thorough in its investigation- investigators from the WHO, which included the controversial Peter Daszak, didn't really get all the information they needed as Chinese authorities controlled what info they can acquire.
Due to this, The Post Millennial noted that the WHO is a "compromised organization" that isn't really independent and impartial in its decisions. Per the news outlet,
"To summarize, the World Health Organization is a compromised organization, beholden to an authoritarian dictator who is absolutely petty enough to cancel the letter "Xi" to protect himself from any blame for the virus. This is the same man who banned Winnie the Pooh because people said they looked alike."
Avoiding responsibility
It's worth noting that this is not the first time efforts were taken to avoid blaming the COVID-19 pandemic on China, particularly the Chinese Communist Party and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Chinese state media, for example, have published outrageous pieces blaming any and everyone else for the virus that caused massive lockdowns around the globe. They blamed different places in America without any proof.
Recently, U.S. President Joe Biden, known for his connections to China and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, banned the use of "China Virus" or "Wuhan Virus" in federal communications. This ban, however, cannot deny the fact that the virus first spread in Wuhan and Hubei province months before the WHO declared it a pandemic.
It's also important to note that while the WHO claims that it wants to avoid "stigmatization," the fact that the CCP has already stigmatized itself by committing massive abuses against Christians, Uyghurs, and Chinese people from different walks of life during the pandemic cannot be erased with the mere skip of a letter from the Greek alphabet.
