Game Over?

Good news/Bad news.

1. Where are we with the pandemic? Tomas Pueyo asserts: “It’s time to start living again.” You can read the full post by clicking on this link. Summary:

• Between Omicron, vaccines, and treatments, the risk of COVID is down by 10x to 1000x.

• This Omicron wave is likely to be the last we should be cautious around. As a result, we should officially end the pandemic soon, probably in a month or so, unless some new, pretty unlikely new information appears.

• The biggest risk is that you don’t internalize this and keep as usual (sic) instead of realizing we’ve entered the end state of COVID. The next few months will be like the next few years. Act accordingly.

• This is especially true for governments. They need to know when to stop. (Source: unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com)

2. As the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc, an expert panel at the World Economic Forum delivered a mix of good news and bad news on Monday: More variants will emerge, but vaccine production is accelerating and research is progressing toward a combined shot that may be able to attack these different variants. On one hand, the world needs to prepare for newer strains that could be more vexing, or the “worst case scenario,” said Annelies Wilder-Smith, a professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “Omicron will not be the last variant. There’s a high probability we will have another variant coming up. The question is when and will it be less dangerous?” Her sobering reminder was made as part of a discussion about the path the coronavirus is taking and the outlook for its transition from pandemic to an endemic threat. For that to happen, the world has to take control in ways that still are not happening, which makes it difficult to predict that such a transformation can occur this year, according to Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Biden. (Source: statnews.com)

3. China had already barred foreign spectators from attending the Winter Games that begin in Beijing in less than a month. On Monday, it announced that most Chinese people won’t be able to attend either. Citing the evolving threat from the coronavirus pandemic, the Beijing 2022 organizing committee announced that it was ending ticket sales to the events “to ensure the safety of all participants and spectators.” The decision came less than two days after health authorities reported Beijing’s first case of the Omicron variant and ordered an immediate lockdown and mass testing in one of the capital’s neighborhoods. (Source: nytimes.com, et alia)

4. China’s zero tolerance approach to Covid has idled Toyota Motor and Volkswagen factories the past week, a troubling sign for global carmakers as the omicron variant begins to spread in the world’s biggest auto production hub.  The two top-selling carmakers’ factories in Tianjin, 108 kilometers (67 miles) southeast of Beijing, have been halted since Jan. 10 as the local government carries out multiple rounds of mass testing for the city’s 14 million residents. (Source: bloomberg.com)

5. China’s property sector shrank at a faster pace in the final three months of last year as the country’s housing slump continues to take its toll on the economy. Output in the real-estate sector shrank 2.9% in the fourth quarter after a 1.6% contraction in the previous three months, the National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday in a supplemental report on gross domestic product. That was the first consecutive quarterly decline since 2008. The construction sector also saw its output decline by 2.1% during the same period. Those two sectors combined were 13.8% of national output in 2021, according to Bloomberg calculations, lower than the 14.5% in 2020. (Source: bloomberg.com)