That seems to be the key question here, so hopefully someone with more insight can answer that.

The Delta name for the Indian variant is from the new Greek letter naming scheme.

Four out of 24 letters are in use so far:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-57308592

UPDATE: A total of 10 letters are now in use according to WHO

https://www.who.int/en/activities/tracking-SARS-CoV-2-varian...

It’s so great when natural language usage/evolution is overwritten by bureaucrats, for god knows what reason. Wonderful.

The decision might seem strange, but I think the rationale behind it is sound:

"Covid-19 variants to be given Greek alphabet names to avoid stigma" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/01/covid-19-varia...

Now the Greeks get all the stigma.

Nah we're good with it.

Apart from the stigma it was causing Indian people it was making a lot of people think it was a problem confined to India.

Were you not aware that the Indian government threatened social media platforms that allowed users to identify a variant as the 'Indian variant'?

We're gonna need a bigger alphabet

it's base 24. after going from single character alpha to omega, then you introduce the second character: alpha alpha, alpha beta, ...

Use of decimal numbers sounds better all of a sudden for naming the virus variants. :-)

seems the decimals are already currently being used for virus strains: sars-cov1, sars-cov-2...

for variants it could be minor versions such as sars-cov-2.4 but then there may be confusion about them being related sequentially and that one is an "improvement" over the other. :)

That's just differentiating nominal numbers from others [1]. The same is much too common everywhere -- zipcodes, student ID number, etc. I am still missing reason why the suggested base 24 is better. :-)

[1] https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/cardinal-ordinal-nominal....

i'm mostly joking. it's not better, at least not to me.

The said joking is/was good with me. :-)

I feel these two videos will help inform you, both interviews with evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein with different doctors/researchers:

https://youtu.be/BNyAovuUxro

https://youtu.be/Tn_b4NRTB6k

The first video explains how/why the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine (new type of vaccine method) bypasses parts of the body's innate response that normally would create a spread /variation of spike proteins/charges to basically preemptively prevent and ready itself to more quickly attack minor variations that will occur - e.g. unnecessarily, inefficiently over committing to the COVID-19 variant while losing out strength/capacity to handle variants.

Second video goes into detail as to Ivermectin, where a very credible doctor practicing on the front lines of COVID, stating that Ivermectin is 100% effective of abolishing COVID-19 and all variants with the correct dosing/proper protocol. They also discuss how difficult it's been to get this practical knowledge out there and more. Ivermectin has had 4 billion+ doses already used globally and sounds like it is completely safe - used primarily to kill parasites by adequately interrupting their replication/folding ability (from my current understanding).

Because I think having those two videos linked without the context of opposing views will potentially mislead some people, here's some push-back on the first topic/person:

https://www.deplatformdisease.com/blog/addressing-geert-vand...

https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/03/26/geert-vanden-bossche/

And the second:

https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n747

https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/05/26/bmjebm-2021-111...

I've really enjoyed Bret's podcast for the most part, so I was really disappointed after looking further into these subjects and finding that he seemingly isn't approaching them in good faith.

And so the suppression continues via injecting shallow doubt without actually referencing (not done in the articles) and refuting the research put forward by bird-group.com - nor is the representation of what for example Geert has said: cautioning that something may occur because logically it's a possibility isn't the same as the article you linked says: the article saying "going to cause a problem" isn't the same thing as cautioning that it may cause; we're really suffering an intellectual crisis.

Realize too this high intellectual level of introducing doubt could either laziness and incompetence/bad science and review, or it could be more malicious and could be the industrial complex wanting their vaccines as the only treatment and therefore only thing sold; there can easily be intelligent people hired to write hit pieces on anything to add doubt, to go along with the insanity of platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube agreeing to be complicit in censoring legitimate questioning and criticism; did you actually watch the full 2nd video I linked, and do you really think he'd - a front line worker with incredible experience in this domain - be lying?

Here's a simpler, less complex example of how people think they know what they're talking about and then regurgitate the conclusion (because they believe they're more competent than they are):

(Going to edit to add re: poorly done Ivermectic research concluding no statistical significance between Ivermectin being used as part of treatment, no experimental structure to it to determine a protocol, short length use compared to full 14 day treatment period, and inadequate dosing)

How is the fact that he is a "front line worker" relevant? (asking as someone who has also spent time on the COVID "front lines")

Watch the video and write down all presented as building his credibility and then let us all know what kind of person, with what kind of experience, you'd trust if not someone like him.

The person should be irrelevant, yet you keep pushing the "front line worker" thing. Why does that matter? If anything, it makes someone less credible, as it makes it more likely that they are influenced by personal anecdotes.

Thanks, I started watching the first video and the claims smelled, so it's good to have the counterargument.

That you're not understanding everything or didn't spend the time to watch the whole thing to have been painted a fuller picture doesn't make it smell funny, one's an evolutionary biologist and the other is a virologist. The article he linked above makes a false statement within the first paragraph - trying ton discredit and plant doubt: Geert in the video didn't say "it's going to cause a problem" - it's a caution that it may, and logically it's a possibility.

I'd recommend watching the second video too - that front line research doctor is very credible as well - you'll have to decide for yourself what narratives you start believing or being open to vs. shutting them down - which will all depend on how you orient yourself in the world which depends on how much time and attention you put to go deeply into a topic to determine for yourself vs. being sidetracked and just agreeing with some other internet stranger's "opposition" which then prevents you from digging into the original presented sources (where the bird-group.com also links to the related research done if you truly want to do a deep dive - but the 2nd video is a where what's in the research is shared in easily consumable video format).

Thanks, but I think we're saying the same thing: I seem to recall research that indicated that you still get sufficient immunity against variants even though you have fewer antibodies, just because the vaccine gives you way more antibodies than you need.

Well, defining sufficient may be important, likewise sufficient so long as there aren't more variants that are successfully generated and escape - though those odds reduce as numbers go down. And in comparison it sounds like Ivermectin is the reasonable non-politicized option which instead of just being sufficient, it abolishes.