This Monday finds the world without any major war, natural disaster or particularly newsworthy item, except maybe Omicron, the latest COVID-19 virus of concern: It is the 13th variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Thus we should be up to the 13th Greek letter to name this strain. But the World Health Organization skipped #13 Nu and #14 Xi...why? Nu sounds like new, which could confuse people, they say.  But it is new, so why not? Xi sounds like Xi Jinping, and the UN is afraid of the Chinese president.   Or maybe it was to not stigmatize a region. If you're wondering why you never read or heard about Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda and Mu, they were definitely variants, but never reached the level of concern.  Actually, though, Lambda  (Peru ) and Mu ( Columbia ) remain variants of interest. Best as I can tell, you can pronounce OMICRON any way you want.  However, if you had to pick one, say  oh-MY-cron : Oh-muh-cron. “The correct pronunciation is “oh-my-cron”, with the e