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Omicron will be home for Christmas
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Happy Monday, and yeah, I think I'm still talking to you about the pandemic. I was hoping I would be talking a lot less about the pandemic these days, but we are in the midst of very significant learning on the omicron variant, and I thought I would share what we know and what we really don't know, because the headlines obscure that.
What we know: Big news is that the vaccines don't work very well at all to prevent spread. And that's even true for the mRNA vaccines, the best vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, that if you've taken two shots, which means that you're considered fully vaccinated and you've got your app, or you've got your vaccine passport, you really aren't protected from getting infected from omicron. Pfizer showing after two vaccine jabs something like 23% effectiveness, which is not effective at all. And the non-mRNA vaccines look like they're even worse, which means that a very, very transmissible strain is not being prevented by the vaccines. That's the bad news, and it's bad news.
Having said that, we know that they work really well to prevent hospitalization and death. And that's not just true for the mRNA vaccines. It's true for other vaccines too. And by the away, it's true even before you get a booster shot. In other words, if you've just gotten two shots from Pfizer, two shots from Moderna, you're really not going to get hospitalized or die from COVID. It's very, very unlikely indeed, but you are quite likely to be able to contract it and spread it, and that's a problem.
Now, we've seen a lot of headlines that say that Omicron is milder as a variant. And the reality is, we don't know that. What we know is that a lot more people are vaccinated, and we also know that the vaccinated people are particularly among those that are most vulnerable. The oldest, the people that have preexisting conditions. That is a population that is very significantly vaccinated, in some countries close to 100%, which means that the outcomes are milder than they would have been from delta, simply because omicron is hitting populations that are more protected against hospitalization and death. And that the people that aren't vaccinated are primarily people that aren't likely to get sick from COVID. Younger, healthier populations. But we don't yet have any conclusions around to what extent you are equally or more or less likely to get seriously sick if you are unvaccinated, even if you're unvaccinated and you already got COVID, than from delta. And that uncertainty is something we probably won't have real data on for at least another week or two.
And I will tell you that the epidemiologists that I've been talking to tell me that if they were to guess, they'd guess that so far, educated guess, that it's probably about the same or maybe a little milder, but not much, than delta, and that most of the change is from the change in population, as opposed to the impact of the disease.
Okay. We also know that omicron is spreading really, really fast. That it's going to be dominant in the United Kingdom and very shortly as a variant. It's already in 30 states that we know of in the US. That means it's really in every US state, and it will be the dominant spread in the United States within a few weeks. So yes, omicron will be home for Christmas. And also some good news is that vaccinations are getting pushed up. We're seeing people more quickly get vaccinated, get their boosters as a consequence of the news around omicron.
Having said all of that, the staggering level of spread even among vaccinated populations mean that hospitals could easily get overwhelmed again as a consequence of this. In the next week in the United Kingdom, that's absolutely possible. In Denmark, that's absolutely possible. And in the United States over the coming month, that's absolutely possible as well. So we are not out of the woods, and that means in terms of travel, in terms of vaccine passports, you're going to see a lot of changes.
Increasingly, if you've got two vaccines, that's not going to be seen as enough to travel internationally, which is annoying to a lot of people, because you kind of assumed that it would even a week or two ago. Now, no, not so much. And what if you've been boosted? Well, you're probably going to need another booster in six months' time. Again, in all of the apps and the vaccine passports and the papers that are allowing you to go to restaurants, and shows, and travel, in those places where those regulations exist are likely to get updated to require a booster shot, and then eventually another booster shot, too.
Madness. When does it all end? Well, it is a problem because the nature of the vaccines and the relationship with the disease make this much harder to politically respond to. In other words, the argument for getting your booster shot is not about whether or not you're going to get sick. The argument about getting the booster shot and another booster shot is about protecting people that are unvaccinated, protecting those that are immunocompromised, even if they have been vaccinated, and that's a harder argument to make. It's a harder argument for politicians to be effective at. It's a harder argument to push mandates upon a population.
And having said that, you look at the last few months, and Kaiser Family Foundation just put out a study in the United States where we're still seeing 1,000 deaths on an average day from COVID. 163,000 people did not have to die from COVID if we had gotten full vaccination rates. In other words, the science was there, the vaccines were there, and just the effectiveness of those vaccines on populations that are not immunocompromised, 163,000 people would be alive today that are not from COVID because we couldn't get our act together in getting vaccines rolled out, getting people to be willing to take them.
And that is the problem going forward. I'm not going to die from COVID. If you've been vaccinated, you're not going to die from COVID, but a lot of people will. And they will from this omicron variant, because we are unable to ramp out boosters fast enough, and second boosters fast enough, which a lot of people are sick of, a lot of people aren't going to feel comfortable with. We don't have the regulatory capacity to get it done, and that means the non-vaccinated population is going to be incredibly vulnerable and exposed. And it also means that economic impact of all of that will continue to grow, and that's around the world. That's not just the United States, that's everywhere, and that's particularly older and vulnerable populations.
So that's what we're looking at. Merry Christmas to everybody. I'm sorry. I wish I had better news on that front. I'm still hoping that over the next week or two, we get more information that will allow us to say that omicron is actually somewhat milder in form than delta is, but right now we don't have that information. The information we have is not so happy. So that's it, and I hope everyone is doing okay, and I will talk to you all real soon.
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Omicron variant unlikely to lead to lockdowns by governments
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week with a look at the omicron variant, the Honduras presidential election, and the pros and cons of getting stuck in a UK pub for three days in a snowstorm.
As the omicron variant emerges, is a return to lockdown next?
The answer is, only in a few play places, because people are exhausted from lockdowns. They're angry with their governments from doing it. Governments are going to be very reluctant to have the economic hit as a consequence, especially when they know they can't pay out the relief money that they've been paying over the last couple of years, and they're not yet sure about just how much of a danger omicron is. I think all sorts of travel restrictions, but unless and until you see that the spread starts leading to significant lethality, hospitalizations, and once again, the potential for ICUs to be overwhelmed, I do not expect many significant lockdowns that are countrywide at this point. Not least in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the populations are very young and as a consequence, you can have a lot of spread and they're not paying attention to it, frankly.
Will the Honduras presidential election have wider regional implications?
Just had this election. It looks like the first female president ever they're going to see win, Xiomara Castro, who is up by some 20 points. They are still saying, fake news, and they're challenging, they're contesting it. The big issue is what happens with immigration, and will this government be willing to work more closely with the Mexicans, with the Biden administration? Because after Mexico, the largest number of illegal immigrants picked up going across the wall, coming from Honduras to the United States. That's a big issue. Of all the countries in the region, El Salvador has been a disaster to work with. Guatemala has been a little easier. Honduras has been in between. Really, really tough to get enough support on the ground that you can try to limit what is enormously dangerous country and people just trying to get the hell out.
A snowstorm left dozens stuck in a pub for three days in the UK. Good time or great time?
Well, I don't know. I mean, most people I know in the UK would say getting stuck in a pub for a few days is an awesome time in the snow. You're not going to do anything anyway. It's not like you're working. You can work digitally, I know everybody's got their phones, so if they need to, they can, right? Who knows if they actually had streaming services at the pub. Apparently it was this Oasis tribute band. What could be better than that? Your wonderwall of snow. I don't know. I'm glad it wasn't me.
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Don’t jump out the omicron window
With cases, and fears, of the new omicron variant spreading rapidly around the world, we sat down with Eurasia Group’s top public health expert, Scott Rosenstein, for a little perspective on what to worry about, what not to, and whether the pandemic will ever actually end.
Scott, we appear to be in the age of omicron now. On the scale of mild concern to apocalyptic jump-out-the-window panic, how worried should we really be?
Go over to the window, open it, and repeat the following: WE DON’T KNOW YET, BUT VIGILANCE IS WARRANTED. The current signals, which are still early and vague, suggest this variant may be highly transmissable, and that it has mutations that could potentially reduce – but not eliminate – the protection offered by current vaccines. In principle that means we have a variant that could cause a spike in cases and add to healthcare strains in places that thought the worst was behind them.
But don’t forget that the delta variant is still formidable – other variants have come and gone over the last year, unable to out-compete it. That still could happen here, for virological or immunological reasons we don’t yet know. So, the standard public health advice still applies: try to strike a balance between panic and complacency.
Talk a little more about delta. Are we better positioned to deal with omicron than we were when delta first showed up?
This time around it feels like we’re in a better position to understand and manage the threat, in part because Botswana and South Africa have an excellent, proactive genomic surveillance infrastructure that was built up in response to HIV/AIDS, and also because we have gleaned a lot of knowledge from previous variants. Add better treatment, prevalent rapid tests, and much higher vaccination rates, and there are a lot of reasons we aren’t going back to square one because of omicron.
Ok, but it feels like there’s a caveat coming here...
Well, on the other side of the equation is pandemic fatigue, worsening political polarization about the pandemic, and an information environment dominated by some of the dumbest takes imaginable (I’m looking at you, Covid immunity parties). So in addition to possibly more formidable mutations, there are still plenty of obstacles to a sensible, society-wide response.
Looking ahead, are we going to be trapped in an endless Groundhog's Day of new variants? Is there ever really going to be a "post-COVID" world?
I know this is unsatisfying, but yes and no. This virus is going to be with us for the foreseeable future and new variants are inevitable. But repeated exposure to this virus, through vaccination and/or infection, will mean that most people will be at considerably lower risk as time goes on. When exactly? Unclear. All of the herd immunity hot takes from 2020 have proven woefully inaccurate, so speculating with any specificity is probably a fool’s errand.
But many people have already transitioned to “living with the virus” in a kind of “pre-post-Covid” world. For communities, the main question remains: when will this virus stop wreaking havoc on healthcare systems and causing disastrous spikes in mortality? We’re clearly not there yet. And we aren’t going to simply wake up one day and be there. The most likely scenario is that we gradually transition away from an emergency to a long-term disease management posture, with most of us living with the virus most of the time, occasionally having to adjust our behavior during spikes (i.e. boosters, masks, rapid testing, etc) while recognizing the threat to more vulnerable populations.
Anything else that you think is important about this story that isn’t being covered properly?
Public health policy is about tradeoffs. There is rarely a purely good option on the table, it’s almost always a question of making the least bad choice in a highly uncertain and fluid information environment. Omicron is a perfect example of this. We will learn more in the coming weeks. As we do, we’ll need to figure out the best approach to vaccination, travel, indoor congregation, etc., while recognizing that all of these decisions will have some adverse outcomes.
Societies will need to have difficult conversations about tradeoffs, whether they like it or not. Communities and leaders who recognize the challenges of a complex and uncertain environment will do best: they’ll have the fewest number of people either jumping out the window in panic, or otherwise listening to their uncle’s 5G shaman on 48-Chan telling them that snorting bath salts is actually the best COVID protection.
Again, it’s about tradeoffs.
Ok, noted on the bath salts, thanks Scott.Scott Rosenstein is Special Advisor at Eurasia Group on global health.
Who’s politically vulnerable to omicron?
The new COVID variant, omicron, has already spread around the world. Though there are more questions than answers about its characteristics, omicron is already spooking global leaders who had hoped that the era of snap lockdowns and travel bans was a thing of the past.
After almost two years of disruptions to lives and economies, the stakes for world leaders are very high. So, who’s vulnerable to the political fallout from new cases and costly precautions?
Italian PM Mario Draghi
Italy suffered one of the worst early outbreaks of COVID in 2020, but since coming to power 10 months ago, Mario Draghi has ushered in a rare period of stability in a country long plagued by big political swings. Draghi, a banker, cobbled together a stable coalition, fending off a general election that might have been a boon for far-right factions.
Known as "Super Mario" for helping to save the Eurozone as European Central Bank chief during the EU sovereign debt crisis, Draghi has won praise across the political divide for his political competence in helping steer the country’s pandemic recovery, giving him a 60 percent approval rating.
Indeed, Draghi has made economic recovery a cornerstone of his prime ministership, and it’s working: Italy’s economy is set to grow more than 6 percent this year, while the number of new COVID cases remains low. But Draghi has recently come under fire for enforcing some of the strictest vaccine mandates in Europe, which has given rise to a whole lot of negative sentiment domestically. In January, Italian MPs will vote for a new president to replace Sergio Mattarella. Draghi has been floated as a choice to replace Mattarella or could stay on as PM, but his honeymoon period could be derailed if further lockdowns or disruptions send the economy into a nose-dive.
US President Joe Biden
Rising inflation and supply-chain chaos have become massive headaches for the Biden administration in recent months, just as next November’s midterm elections come into focus. Now, uncertainty over the new variant threatens to make things even dicier for Biden, whose approval rating has slumped in recent months thanks partly to a wobbly economy and a shambolic departure of US troops from Afghanistan. Most starkly, Biden has taken a hit in the polls over his handling of the pandemic, which was once the category that inspired a lot of voter confidence in his leadership.
It seems very unlikely that Biden will take any risks that could inflict further harm on the US economy – and give Republicans more ammunition on the campaign trail. But if omicron does prove more transmissible and more vaccine-resistant than past variants, Biden might have to contend with another deadly wave of infection that could disrupt the economy anyway.
For now, the Biden administration has banned flights from southern African nations – a low stakes political move – using this perilous moment to push for vaccine uptake. But if some 60 million eligible Americans weren’t swayed when the delta variant emerged earlier this year, is omicron really going to move the needle on vaccines? With a disapproval rating of more than 51 percent, Biden can’t afford to put a pinky toe wrong.
British PM Boris Johnson
The stakes are very high for Boris, too, who is in a more vulnerable spot politically than at any other time since the pandemic began.
For months, dozens of Tory MPs have rallied against further COVID restrictions, and Johnson might be disinclined to impose new restrictions on movement since he is already facing a party backlash for a series of blunders in recent months, as well as his perceived failure to address Brexit-related shortages that spiraled out of control.
So far, Johnson has banned flights from southern African nations and reinforced mask-wearing mandates and new testing rules for travelers. Even though Johnson has expressed concern over the new variant, it seems very unlikely that he will take drastic measures that could further imperil the economy and his polling numbers (he currently has a net approval rating of -18 percent). After Britons spent last Christmas in isolation, the appetite for any sort of restrictions, even among the COVID cautious, is… nearly non-existent.
Chinese President Xi Jinping
President Xi doesn't have to worry about angry voters, but the omicron variant still presents a risk for the CCP as it continues to pursue an increasingly elusive zero COVID strategy. If omicron does in fact prove to be more transmissible than previous variants, China's leadership could take a big credibility hit domestically when cases slip in through the cracks.
What’s more, with China imposing even stricter restrictions at ports and on air crews to limit the virus’ spread – a move it’s taken in response to the emergence of new mutations in the past – this further complicate its efforts to meet export demands at a time when Beijing is trying to assert itself as crucial to the global recovery effort.
Key questions about the omicron variant
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Good morning everybody and I hope everyone is okay this Monday. I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving, those of you that celebrate. Of course, pretty difficult news over the weekend, and even this morning, the World Health Organization, referring to the new variant omicron of COVID as a very high global risk. And when I hear those words, obviously we get moving at Eurasia Group, a firm very much concerned about that. And indeed, this is in terms of new news about this pandemic that we've all been living with now for almost two years, this is some of the most concerning new headlines that we've seen thus far.
There are some things we know and some things we don't know, there are three things we need to know, if you want to really assess what the omicron risk represents for us and for the world: rates of infection, sickness and mortality and vaccine effectiveness. We only have strong answers about the first, which is we know that this is a lot more infectious as a variant than Delta has been, which itself was much more infectious than the original virus. And that is a very serious problem. I've spoken with a lot of the epidemiologists we know about this over the weekend, they're all extremely concerned about that.
But we certainly don't know much at all about how lethal the disease is. For example, it could be that this disease is extremely infectious and less lethal than the delta variant. And if that was the case and it became the dominant variant, it would actually not just be a non-story, it would be extremely important and good news, because it would mean a whole bunch of people would be getting infected would be developing antibodies as a consequence and wouldn't be getting very sick, especially if it turns out that also didn't mean long COVID, which again, you're not going to know for quite some time. That's the problem with dealing with a disease that we've never heard of before.
But so far, the cases that we know about are overwhelmingly from South Africa and it's a population in terms of those that have tested positive that are mostly under 30, they don't have preexisting conditions and therefore they wouldn't be likely to get sick in any case. And so you're not learning anything. Turns out most of them still have sense of smell, that's a little unusual. Most of them more exhausted, have muscle pain, that's a little unusual, but nobody that's focusing on the cases that we have information on so far have a good sense. We probably won't have a good sense for about two more weeks.
Secondarily, the people making the vaccines feel pretty confident that these vaccines will be somewhat less effective than versus delta variants, simply because this variant is so different, but how less effective, they don't know. And they won't know that again for at least a couple of weeks. That's a problem too. So what we do know though, is that there is a relatively low level of vaccination still globally. There are plenty of places that have significant anti-vax and vaccine hesitancy sentiment, including my own United States, including Russia, including most of Eastern Europe. And there are also a lot of people that are immunocompromised, which means that even if this disease isn't a risk to you as a fully vaccinated person with a booster, it's still going to lead to lots of people getting hospitalized and dying, if it turns out that this is the same level of lethality as Delta.
So we'll find that out in relatively short order. And what that means is in the near-term, you're going to have a lot more risk aversion in travel. You're going to have a significant reduction in consumer demand. That'll take inflation off in the near term, it'll reduce prices at the pump for example. What happens over the next month to three depends completely on the answer to those two questions. And if this really is a dangerous, dominant global variant, as it well could be, it's kind of like a coin flip right now, then you're going to see all sorts of additional lockdowns, you'll see problems with supply chain, which will lead to more inflation again. It will be economic contraction and all of this will particularly be felt on the backs of poorer people and lower developed countries.
A big point here is that the mRNA vaccine producers, Pfizer, Moderna, can reformulate these vaccines to respond to Omicron variant within a matter of a few weeks. They can get them approved and then roll out major distribution in the course of a few months. So by end of first quarter next year, if you're in a wealthy country, you have access to mRNA vaccines, you'll be able once again, to protect yourself, protect your loved ones.
Having said that, the mRNA vaccines are available mostly to the wealthy countries. And this is yet one more accelerant of a big gap driving wedge between wealthy countries and poor countries. It's a big problem for China, which has to maintain their zero COVID policy. Maybe they can't even hold the Olympics. This is a bad scenario, they probably can't. They are trying to develop their own indigenous mRNA capabilities. They will have them at some point over the course, probably mid 2022, and then they will start producing and rolling them out. So again, bigger economic problems for China and particularly for those countries that aren't vaccinated yet that don't have the ability to get mRNA themselves. And also don't have the money to be able to respond to the economic scarring that occurs with all of these stop, start pandemic impact on the economy, they're going to be facing the absolute worst case scenarios here. And so that's the developing world, those are the emerging markets.
One final thing I would say here is Africa, there's a lot of people that are from South Africa that are very embittered by the fact that we're putting these travel restrictions on anyone from South Africa and a number of other countries of concern that of course are countries of concern in large part because they have virtually none of their population vaccinated, very low percentages. And in the case of South Africa, they do an awful lot of testing. They're pretty good at that. And that has allowed them to find out about the spread of the Omicron variant far earlier than we otherwise would've. So yes, they are being punished.
But what's really, horribly, both ironic and sad is that of the eight African countries that the Americans have put full travel restrictions on, five of them have actually refused recent additional exports of vaccines because they are worried about their existing stockpiles expiring. Why would that happen? Number one, too much vaccine hesitancy on the ground in those countries. Number two, too many difficulties in actually distributing the vaccines across countrysides that have very, very poor infrastructure indeed. So these countries are getting hit in every which way and just sending them vaccines by itself isn't going to fix the problem. We're going to need to do much more education on vaccinations. We're going to need to improve infrastructure and distribution capacity on the ground. Heck, in South Africa you have a huge immunocompromised population because of the AIDS epidemic, which is so large still there and in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, which means even if they take the vaccines, their body is not able to produce the kind of immunity, the kind of antibodies that would allow people to respond effectively and not get sick and die from COVID.
You remember Colin Powell who had suffered cancer and as a consequence had been taking drugs that really reduced his immune system. He was fully boosted and older and died from catching COVID. And there's really nothing we can do about that kind of thing until we stop spread and you're not going to stop spread until the entire global population is effectively vaccinated up to speed with full antibodies.
So that's where we are, not great news. Really hoping, as I'm sure everyone is, that we'll have better news over the course of the next couple weeks, as we learn much more about this new variant. Everyone be safe and I'll talk to you soon.
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What We're Watching: The Omicron variant sparks panic and restrictions
The Omicron wars: Can we really afford to lock down again? In response to the new omicron variant first discovered by South African scientists, many countries have reintroduced pandemic travel restrictions that we thought were long behind us. Israel and Morocco have banned all foreign visitors, while tougher rules on quarantining and travel have also been enforced in the UK, Australia, Singapore and parts of Europe. Meanwhile, travelers from southern African countries have been banned from entering almost everywhere. Scientists say that it is still too early to say how infectious the new variant is, or how resistant it might be to vaccines. This disruption comes just as many economies were starting to reopen after more than 20-months of pandemic closures and chaos. The new restrictions are already triggering a fierce debate: some say that we are now in the endemic stage of the pandemic and that it is both unsustainable – and economically and psychologically harmful – to keep locking down every time a new variant surfaces. Others, like Israel's PM Naftali Bennett, say we are in the throes of a new "state of emergency," and that we can't afford to take any chances. What do you think?