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Omicron & the undoing of China's COVID strategy
Omicron is here. The bad news is that it's more contagious. The good news is that mRNA vaccines work against death and hospitalization. COVID may soon become endemic in some parts of the world.
Not in China, where Xi Jinping's zero-COVID approach faces its toughest test to date with omicron. Why? Because China lacks mRNA jabs, and so few Chinese people have gotten COVID that overall protection is very low.
Get ready for a wave of lockdowns that'll severely disrupt the world's second-largest economy — just a month out from the Beijing Winter Olympics.
That could spell disaster for Beijing, Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, tells Ian Bremmer on this week's episode of GZERO World.
Still, he says zero COVID remains popular with most Chinese people.
If things get really bad, though, Huang believes China will pivot to living with the virus, especially as the cost of keeping zero COVID in the age of omicron becomes too high. He thinks that's the right move for Xi.
Indeed, Huang expects China to start reversing course soon after the Games, and when the pandemic becomes endemic in other parts of the world. Beijing will throw in the towel on zero tolerance in 1-2 years, max.
Also, a look at vaccine incentives around the world. Do prizes like cows and brothel visits actually convince holdouts to get the jab?
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Social media sites overwhelmed by misinformation about Trump's condition
Nicholas Thompson, editor-in-chief of WIRED, shares his perspective on technology news in Tech In 60 Seconds:
With Trump testing positive for corona, how are social media sites combating the mountains of misinformation?
Well, the same way they always do, demoting some content, labeling some false content, but mostly getting overwhelmed. And the reason they'll get particularly overwhelmed now is that there could be no topic more ripe for misinformation than this one. The White House will be opaque. People will spread every rumor imaginable. And just the nature of the Internet combining coronavirus and Trump, you can get a misinformation orgy.
New York City released a contact tracing app. How does it work and will other cities adopt it?
Well, it's a new app you download it onto your phone. What it does is it will alert you if you have been in close contact with someone who tests positive for corona. Or if you test positive, you enter into the app and it will alert people whose phones have been near yours receiving Bluetooth signals anonymously. That's a very good thing. I've installed it. I hope everybody does, keep everybody safe. See you next week.
Ask an epidemiologist: Harvard's Marc Lipsitch answers your COVID questions
Do masks really protect us? Are children less vulnerable to COVID-19? And why do scientists hope you avoid indoor bars? This week, GZERO World is taking all of our burning questions about the latest in the pandemic to a Harvard epidemiologist. Marc Lipsitch is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. So, he knows his stuff!
Viktor Orban's authority in Hungary; uptake of contact-tracing apps
Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden, with the view from Europe:
Will Hungary's move to end "rule by decree" minimize Viktor Orban's authority?
Well, the answer to that one is no. They have evidently felt the need for some facelift on the nature of what is going on in Hungary. They've done that. But it doesn't change anything of the substance. He's ruling in an increasingly authoritarian manner in his country.
How is the use of Covid-19 contact tracing apps being received by Europeans?
Very different in different countries. It requires a very substantial uptake of users in order to have any effect. We haven't really seen that in any European country. There have been some problems with privacy and other issues. Notably in Norway, where they had to go back on it. So, the answer to that question, the jury very much out.
Technological Revolution & Surveillance in the COVID-19 Era
Are we in the middle of a technological revolution?
Yes? I feel like a technological revolution should feel more empowering and exciting. It should feel like something good as opposed to something catastrophic. But if you define it as a moment when there's a lot of technological change that will last for years or decades, yes. Think about the way that health, education, working from home are going to change. There are lots of inventions right now because of coronavirus that will stick with us.
With the need for increased surveillance, will microchipping become a thing?
Microchipping is where you put a little microchip inside your body and you can use it to scan yourself in, you can embed data in it, you can use near-field identification. But no, it's not going to become a thing because you can do all that in your phone. Put the microchip in your phone. Carry the phone in your pocket or put it in your watch. Putting it in your skin is unnecessary and kind of gross.
Ian Bremmer: US response to COVID-19 is mediocre
I continue to see incredible polarization: the United States is a hot mess, a disaster, vs no, best response ever, depending on what side of the political agenda you're on. I think that the US response so far, continues to be mediocre.
The big story: people dying. Trump should not have been a cheerleader. He said less than 100,000 would be great. Now, even the most conservative model the US government is using is now expecting 147,000 deaths by August. Well over 150,000 by election day. Trump will say, if I had done nothing, we would have 2.2 million deaths, framing for advertising. But it's hard to sell that.
On the messaging front, the US is a hot mess. On Twitter, the American president is more divisive than anyone in developed world, though less so than Bolsonaro in Brazil. But actual per capita deaths in the United States compared to all of Europe - slightly better than average. Worse than Germany, which is best of the large economies. But considerably better than Spain, Italy and France. We should be looking at per capita death, not overall. Given the size of your population, how many people are suffering? Especially as you're thinking about opening the economy and how quickly. Spain opening earlier, their numbers are going up. That shows what we can expect in parts of the US with similar caseload. If you look just at New York, we look a lot worse. If you look only at cities that are the worst hit, they look a lot worse than the United States.
I wish we could have Merkel type response; I'm glad we don't have Macron or Boris Johnson response. What's in between? On the economic front, the United States so far has been strong. Why? We have a federal government that functions. The Europeans don't. As a consequence, you've got talk about lawsuits between the German High Court and Europeans. Von der Leyen from the European Union saying this won't stand. The fiscal environment is incredibly contentious in Europe. So far early days, US bipartisan support for the economy has been strong. Same from the Fed. That's one of the reasons the American markets are performing well, right now.
Concern that I have with an election coming up in November is that we're not going to be able to sustain that. Most Senators that I talk to are worried about that, even though the Senate is pretty moderate and there's good connections between Republicans and Democrats. Not everyone is like Rand Paul, disruptive, irresponsible. But they're worried that we're not going to be able to get the trillions necessary to keep the unemployed and underemployed afloat. To keep businesses from going bankrupt. And to keep large companies that don't have a profitability model, like in hospitality, entertainment, airlines, other companies that get hit the worst on the back of this crisis. This is going to get a lot more problematic and the US economic response, which earns an A-minus so far, probably looking like a B, a C or even a D, as we get closer. Bill Gates famously gave Trump a D-minus for his response. I think Bill is focusing mostly on the lack of health care coordination side early, plus the communications.
Short of a vaccine, almost everything on treatments so far doesn't look like it changes how quickly we can reopen economies. It's more about how comfortable you feel about caseload and tracing. And contact tracing, even though we do have apps that are coming online - wonderful to see Google and Apple working together, but if you're going to need 60-70% minimum compliance for populations for that to work effectively - Facebook has 70% penetration. There is no way you get that voluntarily from Americans, major European populations. Even in Singapore, which is a tiny population, very wealthy, and doesn't care as much about democracy, only had 15-20% compliance with their contact tracing app.
Contact tracing works, but you need to have data in one place and share it. People doing the work, making phone calls, contact tracers, millions of people across the developed world. We are nowhere close.
A vaccine needs to not only be developed but proven and manufactured at scale, distributed with education. That process, start to finish, is three years. That's why I continue to think that the economic implications of this are going to be much worse than we've seen.
How Contact Tracing Apps Work; Trading Bitcoin & Digital Currency
What will digital contact tracing apps look like and how will they work?
Well, the basic idea is that if you opt in to one of these apps, your phone will use Bluetooth, it will scan, look for other devices that are also being used by people who have opted in. If one of you test positive for coronavirus, the other will get a notification and can then take corrective action. There are a lot of different ways these are being built, but that's the idea.
Where is Bitcoin? Has digital currency grown as a result of this pandemic?
Bitcoin plummeted down to about $5,000 when all the markets were crashing in mid-March and since then, moved back up to about just under $10,000. Why is that? Maybe it's because the whole theory of bitcoin is correct? It is the currency people will turn to at moments of uncertainty when they don't trust their governments. Or, it could just be speculation. I have learned at this point, never to predict the price of bitcoin.