THE OMICRON VARIANT AND THE PROLONGED PANDEMIC

Adrian Kendry

The hope thatChristmas 2021would providea pre-Pandemicholidaycomparableto 2019 isbeing cruellyundermined. Asense of foreboding stalks many European and other countries as the Omicron variant takes hold. The emergence and exceptional transmissibility of the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron, is adding further severe stresses to public health systems and hospitals in the United States, South America, Europe, the Indian sub-continent and parts of the Middle East. Fears are mounting that there will be a demoralizing new wave of COVID-19 infections.

Even though the previous dominant Delta pathogen continues to infect many thousands of people across the globe (with China and South Korea being notable and impressive exceptions), the scientific development and implementation of vaccines in 2021 have substantially slowed the fatality rate and the scale of hospitalizations in many countries.

Many developed economies and societies, greatly supported by government fiscal expansion and COVID-19 support programmes, have been able to return to some pre-Pandemic normality.

In tightening its borders, China has taken vital steps to maintain its very low coronavirus infection rate and effectiveness of its mass vaccination programme. For example, cases have been on the rise in Vietnam, historically successful in suppressing the Coronavirus pandemic with escalating infections and deaths.

The Omicron Threats

The optimism engendered by vaccination regimes comprising two injections (administeredmonths apart), with a boosterjab designed to counteractthe declining efficacy of thevaccine, has been underminedby the highly transmissible and immunity evading Omicronvariant (with as yet uncertainmorbidity and mortality).

Omicron is more than threetimes as infectious as the Deltavariant, paving the way for ahuge surge in COVID-19 cases.The spread of this variant willseriously destabilize economies, societies, political and publichealth systems in 2022. Thepandemic will continue untilscientists and public healthsystems have developed vaccines that will neutralize the Omicronvariant and other mutationsof the SARS-CoV-2 (geneticallyrelated but different to the SARSviral outbreak in 2003). However,such vaccines will not containthe virus and its mutants unlessall countries and populations arefully vaccinated.

International inequalitycaused by vaccine hoardingamong richer countries,together with production andsupply chain disruptions in theavailability of syringes and phialsaccompanied by insufficientplanning, creating bottlenecks inthe rollout, will deepen the crisisand physical and psychologicaldistress, especially if theCoronavirus continues to mutatesuccessfully.

The lessons from thenotorious great pandemicinfluenza (inappropriatelynamed “Spanish Flu”) of 1918 to at least 1920 remain relevant to the present pandemic. More than 50 million people died during the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu pandemic, the most lethal pandemic since the 14th Century Black Death plague. Arriving in three (and perhaps four) waves, lethal new strains from the original H1N1 virus evolved to generate flu pandemics in 1957 (H2N2), 1968 (H3N2), each killing a million people with the 2009 swine flu pandemic killing half a million.

In the case of the United Kingdom, the 2021 vaccination programme had kept the viral reproduction rate (R) close to 1 during the Autumn months with daily cases relatively flat at around 40,000 per week. Recent estimation however has placed the R-value for Omicron at a disturbing 3.47.

Dysfunctional International Cooperation and the Myopia of the Developed Nations

The huge disparity between the percentage of the population vaccinated in the industrial countries and the developing nations perpetuates not only vaccine inequality but adds to the folly of sustaining the virus by leaving large segments of populations vulnerable to existing and new variants (many countries in Africa have fewer than 10 percent of the population vaccinated. The expected 1 billion vaccines arriving in the next few months will need to overcome the global shortage of vaccine delivery equipment and logistical problems with supply chains).

As noted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), G20 nations have spent some US$10 trillion in emergency financial support since the onset of the pandemic in February 2020. By comparison, it would cost US$50 billion to vaccinate the whole world.

Assuming that the Omicron variant is both more transmissible and resistant to vaccines, the OECD forecasts further economic disruption and instability reflected in additional strains on supply chains and accelerating inflation.

Contraction in demand across many sectors will once more necessitate fiscal support and stimulus. The slowdown in global GDP growth in G20 countries will spill over into weaker economic recovery and more poverty in undervaccinated, poorer countries intensifying global economic inequality.

Behavioral Science, Nudging and the Perils of Enforcement

The consequences of the rapid spread of the Omicron variant in Europe and the United States are being reflected in large protests objecting to the tightening of measures (increasingly mandatory wearing of masks in commercial establishments, workplaces, hospitality venues, and public transport, and the return to working from home where possible). Such measures are designed to avoid the disastrous spread of infections into hospitals, care homes and to mitigate the further growing pressure on all branches of public health care and treatment encompassing hospital admissions and elderly care homes.

The trade-off between public health measures and economic sustainability will become much clearer by the end of 2021 when the virulence, serious illnesses and deaths from Omicron will become apparent in the time lag after infection to hospitalizations and deaths. The battle for supremacy between the Delta and Omicron variants may produce further highly contagious mutations.

In November, Austria became the first Western European country to reimpose a lockdown for vaccinated people. This has now ended but restrictions will be maintained for the unvaccinated. The government says nobody will be vaccinated by force but those who refuse the jab will receive fines of up to €3,600 (US$4,000). Devising more effective and successful communication strategies (the United Nations has experimented with utilizing TikTok specialists to reduce vaccine hesitancy) will play a vital role in persuading younger generations to be vaccinated.

If the lethality of Omicron proves to be less dangerous than previous variants, the implementation of new restrictions will provoke further protests against authorities, and the measures they have introduced.

The pandemic has for so long generated fear and uncertainty that public compliance with additional economically and socially restrictive measures will increasingly diminish. If such measures are accompanied by a substantial loss of trust in the decision-making of the authorities (as currently evidenced in the United Kingdom), a fatalistic resignation among the public will further maintain the grip of the Omicron and further mutations of the Coronavirus pandemic.