Americans, in particular the anti-science, anti-masker, anti-vaxxer crowd, are fond of saying that they are done with Covid-19, they are going to live their life as normal.
Even more responsible Americans, those who have had both shots of their Covid-19 vaccination and the booster shot, also are saying that they are done with Covid-19, they are going to live their life as normal.
Ah yes, magical thinking. Always a dangerous thing.
You may be done with Covid, but Covid isn’t done with you. To borrow a phrase from the Shingrix ad, “Covid doesn’t care.”
Even the fully vaxed and boosted can get infected with the new BA.2 variant of Covid. You may not suffer serious illness or death (with rare exceptions), but you can get Covid. It’s Not Over: COVID-19 Cases Are on the Rise Again in US:
Yet again, the U.S. is trudging into what could be another COVID-19 surge, with cases rising nationally and in most states after a two-month decline.
One big unknown? “We don’t know how high that mountain’s gonna grow,” said Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University.
No one expects a peak nearly as high as the last one, when the contagious omicron version of the coronavirus ripped through the population.
But experts warn that the coming wave – caused by a mutant called BA.2 that’s thought to be about 30% more contagious – will wash across the nation. They worry that hospitalizations, which are already ticking up in some parts of the Northeast, will rise in a growing number of states in the coming weeks. And the case wave will be bigger than it looks, they say, because reported numbers are vast undercounts as more people test at home without reporting their infections or skip testing altogether.
At the height of the previous omicron surge, reported daily cases reached into the hundreds of thousands. As of Thursday, the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases rose to 39,521, up from 30,724 two weeks earlier, according to data from Johns Hopkins collected by The Associated Press.
Dr. Eric Topol, head of Scripps Research Translational Institute, said the numbers will likely keep growing until the surge reaches about a quarter the height of the last “monstrous” one. BA.2 may well have the same effect in the U.S. as it did in Israel, where it created a “bump” in the chart measuring cases, he said.
Keeping the surge somewhat in check, experts said, is a higher level of immunity in the U.S. from vaccination or past infection compared with early winter.
But Ray said the U.S. could wind up looking like Europe, where the BA.2 surge was “substantial” in some places that had comparable levels of immunity. “We could have a substantial surge here,” he said.
So there’s that.
But Covid-19 is a global pandemic, and has effects on parts of the world that have effects on the U.S. economy as well, which is fuly integrated into a global economy.
The Omicron variant is not yet done with the world either. China is experiencing a major Omicron variant outbreak, and China’s “zero-Covid” policy of shutting down the country is having a major impact on supply chain disruptions, with resulting inflation from manufacturers, suppliers, and freight shippers of goods to the United States.
Note: China’s “zero-Covid” policy has nothing to do with President Biden or Democratic policies in Washington. Nothing. This inflation is caused by (1) Chinese government policy, and (2) the decades-long globalization of manufacturing by global corporations and its on-time delivery (OTD) practices, which discourages inventory sitting around in warehouses.
NBC Nightly News on Sunday night aired a simplified report on what China’s “zero-Covid” policy is doing to China, and its impact on global supply chains.
CNBC did a somewhat more detailed report on the effect of China’s “zero-Covid” policy on global supply chains and inflation. To its credit, CNBC reported profiteering and price gouging by freight shippers (but did not actually use those terms in describing what freight shippers are doing, of course).
The German DW News adds more detail on the effects of China’s “zero-Covid” policy on China, and the impact on global supply chains and inflation.
So now when you see those idiotic TV ads from Republicans aimed at low-information voters who are proudly militantly ignorant in the GQP primary base (i.e., the ad from Karrin Taylor Robson I saw during the news last night), blaming President Biden and Democrats for the inconvenience of supply-chain disruptions and for inflation, you are now an informed voter who knows better, and knows that these simpleton politicians and their fascist propagandists in the right-wing media are full of shit.
Republicans have no economic policy answers to any of this – the Republican Party is admittedly a post-policy party – and all it does is engage in trolling propaganda “to own the libs” in their information bubble media. They only revel in their hatred for their political opponents, and for American democracy.
If you foolishly put Republicans in charge, you will really be fucked.
China may cause a global recession. “China’s economy is sputtering”, https://www.axios.com/china-economy-covid-lockdowns-6baf86ed-1a84-4a54-ba44-184e16e28972.html
The largest single driver of global economic growth — China — is stalling as its “zero COVID” policy collides with a massive virus outbreak and large-scale lockdowns.
[T]he path of the world economy and global financial markets this year largely hinges on China’s economic and public health.
A slew of Chinese economic data out Monday confirmed that the world’s second-largest economy has sputtered as the government combats the worst outbreak of COVID so far on the mainland.
China’s economy grew 4.8% year-on-year, according to first-quarter economic data released Monday.
That’s pretty good, but most of the growth occurred in January and February. It slowed in March, as the impact of China’s strict lockdowns was felt.
Last week, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang called for a “sense of urgency” and said that “downward economic pressure has further mounted.”
“The pandemic has to be the biggest source of risk for China’s growth this year,” Zhennan Li, chief China economist at AllianceBernstein, told the Wall Street Journal.
China’s woes will quickly become the world’s problem.
As it remains an export giant and a crucial cog in global supply chains, Chinese factory shutdowns and logistical disruptions will amplify the already-problematic global price pressures.
What we’re watching: The International Monetary Fund’s update on the outlook for the global economy — due to be released Tuesday morning — could spell out how much China’s economy will drag on the global growth.