“My question is, ‘Can the world come out of the COVID roller coaster?’ Because it looks like we’re going to get the whole Greek alphabet’s worth with this virus,” says Gill.
While many have hoped for an easing of the supply chain problems plaguing the global economy, he argues that those issues are probably not as fleeting as many would like to admit. Suppliers in Asia and Europe are implementing COVID-zero policies every few months, he says, noting that China is holding off on getting ready to host the Winter Olympics. The free trade policies and offshoring agenda adopted by the West over the past 70 years have made much of the Western world extremely vulnerable to such disruptions.
He admits that initially, he was among those who hoped that the development of COVID vaccines would lead to an economic recovery. But in the face of new forms and success cases, Gill argues that the only way to solve supply shortages in the US and the rest of the Western world is to move to post-COVID policies that focus more on protecting the most vulnerable and getting back We do. Some form of normalcy.
Preliminary research on the Omicron variant indicates that it is more transmitted than previous strains of COVID-19; those who catch it are also less likely to be hospitalized. For Gill, this suggests that the virus is mutating to become more infectious and less lethal, with the evolutionary incentive of the virus to spread and sustain itself.
“From my point of view, that can be seen as a good thing. But other governments around the world are committed to the idea that they can protect all their citizens from exposure to pathogens, and I think that It is just unrealistic,” he says. “I don’t think governments have ever had the capacity to stop the spread of the virus.”
