> Your comments might prove rather prescient. John Campbell on YouTube is presenting information that the milder Omicron is supplanting Delta in the UK and providing immunity to Delta. Too soon for a definite conclusion? And of course another mutation will be along in a minute.
It is certainly possible that omicron may be the last major wave (or may end the delta wave), in the sense it will be hard for any remaining anti-vaxxers to avoid developing antibodies this time around. Omicron is ridiculously easily spread.
On the other hand:
- The first 2 years generated, say, 1-2 billion human infections + an unknown number of animal infections. These 1-2 billion infections in 2 years resulted in the development of about 10 major strains of interest - 5 'variants of concern', 3 'variants under investigation' and 2 'signals under monitoring'. e.g. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Omicron did not pop into existence by magic.
- The 'attack rate' of omicron is far higher due to the high R, so we should expect around 4 billion+ global infections (basically, the higher the R, the more it tends to 'reach' people who would have escaped infection in previous rounds, because the effective R of a disease diminishes as more people are infected and recover - there are fewer people left to infect. Once the effective R drops below '1', the disease spread rapidly declines). Starting from such a high natural R it will take a VERY long time for omicron to reach community immunity such that the effective R is <1. Even moreso given public & political reluctance to isolate, distance, wear masks, get boosters, etc. all of which would lower effective R. Schools returning for example is going to raise the effective R by rather a lot.
- Again because of the high R, most omicron infections will occur in just 3 months (December, January, February). It is also likely to infect a vast number of animals on the planet whose ACE receptors will fit the virus, just as the other strains did (omicron appears to have possibly mutated inside a mouse, from the shape it has taken). Mathematically, we should expect 4 billion infections to generate 10 new variants of concern. And these to be noticeable by say, March-June. We saw this last year in India, where Delta arose in India among the 0.5 billion or so infections there.
- One can argue that there may be fewer new variants, because such a fast rate of spread will result in 'broader' rather than 'deeper' family trees of mutations. One might also argue that the longer we have covid around, the more it will exhaust the possibilities of its evolutionary space (i.e. it will approach a global minimum), there will be fewer ways to work past antibodies etc. Nonetheless the story of the last 2 years has been 'if you hope that this is the last strain, you are wrong'.
- On the one hand, whichever of these 10 new 'theoretically ought to exist' VoCs is most effective at bypassing antibodies and spreading, may dominate and suppress the others... so we may only see 1 or 2 in practice.
- On the other hand, if we have multiple new VoCs spreading at the same time (perhaps sharing the high R of omicron but with immune evasion vs omicron antibodies), there's a chance of recombination between new VoCs...
- Talking of recombination ... since delta and omicron are in circulation at the same time there's also a possibility of hybridisation where someone is infected with both at the same and their cells produce a mixed up version of both, perhaps with the rate of spread & immune-evasion of omicron plus the lethality of delta. We already see this in omicron where it has acquired new RNA snippets from other viruses (either the common cold or HIV). Recall that the beta strain in South Africa was poor at spreading but had high immune evasion against vaccination.
- Part of our productivity as a nation is dependent on a functioning healthcare service and we are more or less destroying that resource (by destroying the health/happiness/empathy of the staff) to service Boris's political objectives. Regardless of the immediate impact of coronavirus on patients, this shock to the economy (and our way of life) is there and continuing to worsen.
- Some people have been misled by propaganda to believe that viruses automatically mutate to become milder over time. They do not. It's easy to see examples where viruses remain deadly even over periods of thousands of years (smallpox for example) and coronaviruses would be more likely to fall in that category as they have a kind of RNA copying error-detection mechanism making them e.g. 10000x more stable between generations than e.g. the flu. The flu itself is also an example where the virus is moderately dangerous and has been around for centuries, it never became 'benign', it is a shock to the world's healthcare systems every winter even today. Many viruses do develop a milder version that supplants the original, but when you have a virus that A) can be spread asymptomatically B) does most of its spread before the patient becomes very sick (or dead), there's practically no 'selection pressure' to favour a milder strain (well, maybe politics?... a mild strain might be allowed to 'let it rip' as we see in the UK and Australia whereas a tougher strain might result in lockdowns to limit infections).
- There is also the issue of long covid - fatigue, blood clots, memory impairment, cognitive impairment, etc. I don't see how it can be good for an economy if 10% of the population suddenly get plagued by serious, chronic ailments.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, it would be nice if this is the beginning of the end for covid, but it's also possible that it's the end of the beginning. At some point, the economy may begin to stagger under the number of punches it is taking from covid, or some other black swan/crisis will emerge alongside covid and it will exceed the economy's capacity for shocks. A major war - perhaps Russia invades Ukraine, and China seizes the opportunity to try for Taiwan while the world is distracted. Some other new disease arising. Perhaps a major earthquake in Japan or America destroying production capacity or messing up logistics. Political revolution in China or America (we almost saw that last year on January 6th!).
This market is priced for perfection; it seems unlikely that we'll see perfection this year. I find it very annoying because although there are a few stocks still priced somewhat reasonably, with so much potential for a major correction or crash, I feel stupid to buy them. I appreciate there is an argument to just buy them anyway and ignore the market; if the margarine is cheap, why worry that the butter is expensive? Still, I prefer to buy with a high degree of confidence that I'll win.
then again, what can I say? I'm a bear. I can always find a reason not to invest