‘Omni is everywhere’: why do so many people struggle to say Omicron?

The error is to be expected, say linguists, as we don't often have cause to introduce novel words to our vernacular as adults

Rupert Murdoch's New York Post criticized Joe Biden and his chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, for both mispronouncing the new Covid variant as Omnicron" rather than Omicron".

Biden's detractors have seized on the mispronunciation as evidence of some sort of cognitive decline, but the president is far from alone. Daily Beast media reporter Justin Baragona confessed he can relate" to Biden's mispronunciation, and he's not the only one: various digital news outlet URLs include the misspelling, suggesting that the mistake was in an early draft and only corrected after the article was published.