Give us an 'E'
Back when Chongvirus Delta emerged from the fetid sewers of India, the WHO introduced a handy-dandy, easy-to-use, no-blame-no-shame naming system, based on the Greek alphabet. The WHO presumably consulted with the Greeks and, just as presumably, they're fine with this.
At the present time, this expert group convened by WHO has recommended using letters of the Greek Alphabet, i.e., Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta which will be easier and more practical to be discussed by non-scientific audiences.
World Health Organization, Tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants
Anyhow, the latest variant of concern since Delta has been identified, and it's named…Omicron.
I'm fully aware of my linguistic limitations, but even I know that delta is followed by epsilon in the Greek alphabet. Omicron is the fifteenth letter. So the jolly boys 'n' girls at the WHO expert panel have wasted a full ten letters!*
Still, if they run out, they can always use the Chinese alphabet. It's much larger than the Greek one, so should accommodate the WHO's largesse. It will also be a fitting recognition of the filthy cesspit where this whole thing originated.
* Actually, no, they haven't. But if you only follow the major news outlets, you'd be forgiven for thinking this to be the case. The intervening characters have been used for variants of interest, in which the mainstream media shows no interest—hahaha!—hence the apparent gap between Delta and Omicron variants.
Back when the naming convention was introduced, the list of variants of interest was epsilon through to kappa. Currently, it stands at lambda and mu. Presumably the other characters were also lost in the meantime, along with any interest in their variants.
It appears that the WHO dropped nu and xi from the naming convention. The first, because it sounds too much like new
. The second, so as not to offend people named Xi; such as Winnie the Pooh's alter ego, Xi Jinping. (thinking)
According to Donald Trump Jr: the original will always be the Xi variant.
Well played, sir!