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WHO Appears to Make Massive Move for China in Naming Newest Variant: 'If the WHO Is This Scared of the Chinese Communist Party ...'

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The World Health Organization on Friday skipped over two letters of the Greek alphabet when it named the latest COVID variant.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas promptly reminded his Twitter followers that the international health body with close ties to the communist Chinese government should be eyed with suspicion.

The omicron variant was announced this week by the WHO as having been discovered in South Africa.

The variant initially was called B.1.1.529, but the WHO now has given it a name from the Greek alphabet, as has happened throughout the coronavirus pandemic. The WHO says the variant has the potential to evade COVID antibodies.

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Two letters were skipped to name the variant, however, and one of them was suspicious for people who view the WHO as being loyal to China’s authoritarian regime.

Sequentially, the next two Greek letters available were passed on.

Do you think the new variant was named so as to not offend China?

“Nu” was not chosen as a name for the South African variant, as it sounds too much like “new” in English. No explanation was offered as to why the next available letter was not chosen.

Instead of calling B.1.1.529 the “xi variant,” omicron — the next letter in the Greek alphabet — was picked.

Xi is part of the name of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who has unilaterally run China and its military since 2013.

Paul Nuki, an editor with The Telegraph, pointed out the odd inconsistency of variant naming on Twitter.

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“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,’” Nuki tweeted. “All pandemics inherently political!”

Cruz shared the tweet with a comment of his own.

“If the WHO is this scared of the Chinese Communist Party, how can they be trusted to call them out the next time they’re trying to cover up a catastrophic global pandemic?” he asked his followers.

Omicron becomes the fifth variant to be designated an area of concern by the World Health Organization, according to the New York Post. The other designations are alpha, beta, gamma and delta.

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Johnathan Jones has worked as a reporter, an editor, and producer in radio, television and digital media.
Johnathan "Kipp" Jones has worked as an editor and producer in radio and television. He is a proud husband and father.




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