The Guardian is an embarrassment outside the realm of writings...

The Guardian is an embarrassment outside the realm of writings purely on culture + entertainment and the last place an intelligent person should be going for financial understanding.

What your 3 articles actually reflect is pure ideological disposition. I'd also emphasise a university educated layperson can analyse the Omicron situation on their own at this point, Hotcopper can be a cesspool at times but even the average poster here is able to distinguish case numbers to hospitalisations, death rates, vaccine rates and do so amongst various populations. Every one here is able to through basic Google searches see pipeline treatments like the new Pfizer pill.

If you're still scratching your head on the severity of Omicron or its potential for disruption, you ought to be checking your pulse. We are well past the point where severe government intervention would be required historically in terms of how low the death rates and hospitalisations are. If you don't believe that, you should also be advocating for the banning of cars.

Its certainly possible that government through absurd testing and quarantine requirements cause sustained uncertainty and damage, but again anyone reasonably intelligent can look at the rate of spread and see that in a few months virtually the entire population is going to contract the disease, we are going to achieve broad herd immunity in the ideal position of 90%+ vax rates. Cases will peak and fall rapidly, we already saw this from South Africa and will see it in the UK in a number of weeks.

Functionally, the pandemic is over. What we are waiting for at this point is an end to government restrictions, which are already increasingly unpopular and visibly untenable. Give it three months and the Omicron wave will be over and the death rates will be similar to those of flu season. Omicron was the best case scenario and an economic nothingburger. Are governments still going to be engaging in mandated quarantines and testing in even six months time under flu-tier death rates? I personally don't believe it and I think governments risk more serious (and deserved) protests if they do, even in the current moment its undeniably fascistic.

To be succint, covid is not a risk at this point but fascist and pseudo-scientific government restrictions are. But its also incredibly unlikely those restrictions last another 3 months, or past the Omicron wave.

If there is some kind of economic black swan coming, it is unrelated to covid. The China situation for example is much harder to read.