No, it’s not another conspiracy. Omicron is the 14th letter of the Greek alphabet, and the different variants of the COVID virus are now being named with Greek letters, in the same way that hurricanes are named alphabetically. (2021 hurricane list of names: Ana, Bill, Claudette, Danny, Elsa, etc).
Why the Greek alphabet? Why were Nu and Xi skipped? The Greek alphabet was selected because it is neutral, it doesn’t carry the emotional or political baggage of destination names (examples “China Virus or Spanish Flu”) or animal names (examples “Swine flu or Monkey pox).
The Greek letter Nu was skipped because it would be confusing with everyone talking about the “New Nu virus.”
The letter Xi (pronounced “Ki,” like “Hi”) was skipped because Xi (when mis-pronounced as “Shee”) is an extremely common name in China, and it would be like calling it the “Garcia Virus,” which would be damaging and would defeat the purpose of using alphabetical names to reduce bias.
We got all the way down to Omicron because the eight variants that were named Epsilon, Digamma, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Lota, Kappa, and Lambda weren’t dangerous or contagious enough to be reported on the news, so that’s why you didn’t hear about them.
The problem with naming viruses after animals and places is that those names are often inaccurate and they can inspire dangerous behavior in uninformed people. For example, the “Spanish Flu” that claimed millions of lives in 1918 wasn’t from Spain at all – it was called the Spanish Flu because the newspapers in Spain were the only ones that reported it (the newspapers of the combatant countries of WWI were censored, and didn’t mention the flu because they didn’t want the enemy to know that they were sick). The Spanish Flu actually started on an Army base in Kansas (Camp Funston).
When viruses are named after animals it often encourages mass slaughter of the named animal by ill-informed and panicked people, even though it may be discovered that those animals weren’t the actual source of the disease. A classic example was the mass slaughter of cats and dogs during the Bubonic Plagues because they were thought to be spreading the disease. This actually increased the spread, because when the dogs and cats were gone, the rat population exploded, and infected rats carried infected fleas into houses where the disease spread to humans. This has happened in recent years to bats (which don’t carry rabies any more than any other mammal does), monkeys (which have been hunted almost to extinction), and ferrets.
So, what’s the bottom line here? If you have questions, look for answers in reliable places – no, not Facebook, or Reddit, or Twitter, or the Blaze – all of whose stories are designed to upset you (not inform you) so that you see their paid advertisements. If the story upsets you is outrageous, or blames a group of people (Liberals! Antifa! MAGA! Immigrants!) it’s probably false and is designed to manipulate you and expose you to advertising and more outrageous content.
Be smart. Look in the boring, unemotional places for answers: talk to the PA (CPT Doyle) or the Surgeon (LTC Fish) or your own doctor, or look it up in Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Brittanica or the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Don’t be manipulated by conspiracy spreaders.