The Economist on Year Three of the Pandemic

(Note: this was written and scheduled for posting before the world found out about Omicron. I have not changed a single word, except for the two sentences in these brackets)

‘Tis that time of the year, and we will soon be inundated with reflections on the year gone by, and the year to come. The Economist has come up with its list, and today, we will be focusing on one from among this series: What To Expect in Year Three of the Pandemic.

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1. The key takeaway is that the world as a whole will be better off because of the vaccines that become widely available in 2021, but…
2. Vaccine inequity, already unfortunately visible, will become starker still. And this will have obvious ramifications on health (that much is obvious), but also on economic outcomes.
   “A disparity of outcomes between rich and poor countries will emerge. The Gates Foundation, one of the world’s largest charities, predicts that average incomes will return to their pre-pandemic levels in 90% of advanced economies, compared with only a third of low- and middle-income economies.”
3. Distribution difficulties and vaccine hesitancy will also play (unfortunate) roles in the continuing saga, and a glut (imagine!) is not impossible to imagine in late 2022
4. This is a chart well worth staring at. I encourage you to stare at it:
   

5. Vaccines will become better, more broad based, and supply chains will ease out in part because of technological advancements, such as freeze-dried mRNA vaccines.

6. But the larger point that I personally take away from the article is this: it’s going to be better, the article says than both 2020 and 2021, but it won’t be over in 2022. Variants will emerge, hesitancy will remain, and inequity will persist.
There will be, in other words, progress, but not as much as one would have liked, not as fast as one would have liked, and with complications that are bound to emerge, but impossible to currently specify.
Better, in short, but not by much, and with real risks to boost.

7. But all that being said, given the year that went by, I suppose we should take what we get.