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Covid Variants: What’s In a Name?

Plenty, it turns out. The WHO has decided to change country-of-origin names for Covid variants to letters of the Greek alphabet. This is a great idea!

By Hamish AlexanderPublished 3 years ago 5 min read
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Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixbay

Little more than 15 months ago I exchanged emails halfway round the world with a Facebook friend who’s a renowned geneticist. He had moved from a (reasonably) comfortable life in the mainland US to a small island somewhere in Indonesia, an island nation of 17,508 islands, of which roughly 6,000 are inhabited.

Covid, he explained. He was going to ride out the pandemic on a remote tropical beach.

Isn’t that a bit extreme, I asked him.

Remember these days, he said. These are the good days.

Science is remarkable, I told him — as if a world-renowned geneticist needs to be told science is remarkable. There will be vaccines, I told him, perhaps faster than anyone expects.

He sent me a laughter emoji, followed by a single, cryptic word: variants.

He then tweeted, not just to me but to his many thousands of followers: “Americans have no idea how bad it’s going to get.”

Okay, you’re thinking to yourself, this guy sounds like a bit of a sourpuss. The kind of guy a former US Secretary of Defense would call a “nattering nabob of negativity.”

Except that … while the US has had it nowhere as bad as some countries, my friend hasn’t been been far wrong in the small details. The worldwide vaccination program has worked beyond expectations, at least in the developed world, especially so in the US. At least count — at least according to the figures reported in the media — 60% of US citizens have been vaccinated, this in a country of more than 300 million people.

The variants, though, are proving to be a problem in other parts of the world, especially the Big Four: Kent (UK), the Amazon (Brazil), South Africa and, more recently and most troublingly, India.

The national government in India recently asked that it stop be referred to as “the India variant.” Covid itself was famously dubbed “the China virus” by a certain recent US President, prompting widespread incidents of anti-Asian hate crime.

Anti-Asian hate crime has risen as a result of the pandemic and associations between Covid and the site of its first outbreak in Wuhan, China.

It turns out that what we choose to name something can have ramifications beyond simply giving something an easy to remember, catch-all name.

Quick grammar note: The difference between a variant and a variation is that a variant is a version of something that differs in some respect from the original form of the same thing; a variation is a change or slight difference in condition, level or amount of the original form of the same thing. A variant of Covid, in other words, is still Covid, but in a new form. Viruses, once loose in the world, are constantly replicating themselves, probing for weaknesses in the autoimmune system in order to survive. These replications are called variants. In theory, one day — again probably sooner rather than later — there will be vaccines that will defeat any and all variants, but they will take time to develop. In the meantime, we work with what we have, and hope the next coronavirus won’t land on us too soon.

Image by Fernando Zhiminaicela from Pixabay

As far as names go, Covid itself got its name the scientific way: ‘CO’ stands for corona, ‘VI’ for virus, and ‘D’ for Disease. (Yes, I use the Oxford comma.) The ’19’ in Covid-19 is the year the virus was officially identified, in 2019. COVID-19 is linked to the same family of viruses as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, and some types of common cold. And you know what they say about the common cold: There is no cure.

What’s new in the naming of Covid variants is that the World Health Organization will now name Covid variants after the letters of the Greek alphabet, not the country in which they were first discovered. The WHO is doing this in a move to avoid the stigma.

This is not just a cool idea — Greek letters are short and simple, and easy to remember — but it also makes sense from a practical point of view. It’s only a matter of time before more than one variant emerges from the same country, which could result in no end of confusion. India1 v. India2, India4 v. India47, and so on.

Scientists themselves don’t use such basic names, of course. Scientific names, for obvious reasons, are combinations of letters and numbers that each signify a base model. The India variant is B.167.2; the South Africa variant is B.1.351, and so on. The numbers, letters and periods convey important scientific information and are used in research, but they are much too complicated for the average person to keep in mind.

“While they have their advantages, these scientific names can be difficult to say and recall and are prone to misreporting,” the WHO said in a statement. “As a result, people often resort to calling variants by the places where they are detected, which is stigmatizing and discriminatory.

“To avoid this and to simplify public communications, [the] WHO encourages national authorities, media outlets and others to adopt these new labels.”

The WHO settled on the new naming system after months of deliberations. At one point, the WHO even considered naming variants after the Greek Gods, but perhaps that sounded a bit too much like something out of a Neil Gaiman novel: variants named after Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Hestia, Demeter and Hades, not to mention Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Athena, Hephaestus, Aphrodite and Ares.

Instead, the UK/Kent variant will be known as Alpha, the South Africa variant will be known as Beta, Brazil will be known as Gamma, and India will be known as Delta.

Good idea! Sure, college sororities and fraternities will be outraged, but better them than an entire country. Unless, of course, you factor in Greece.

My geneticist friend celebrated his birthday just the other day, from his tropical island retreat. He was typically philosophical. After all, statistics show those with the most birthdays live the longest.

Image by Dimitris Vetsikas from Pixabay

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About the Creator

Hamish Alexander

Earth community. Visual storyteller. Digital nomad. Natural history + current events. Raconteur. Cultural anthropology.

I hope that somewhere in here I will talk about a creator who will intrigue + inspire you.

Twitter: @HamishAlexande6

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