Covid is starting to have economic effects, without government lockdowns or border closures

Over the past 2 years (and it is nearly 2 years since the first case of Covid-19 was identified outside of China on January 14, 2020 in Thailand), the economic impact of the virus spreading has been caused almost entirely by governments acting to limit the spread – lockdowns, restrictions and border closures.

Now, the latest variant of Covid, Omicron, is showing that, despite its lower lethality, it has the capacity to affect economies without any human intervention.

The situation in the US, UK, some European countries and Argentina, specifically, has not been replicated, yet, in most of Asia. More about that later.

Tell the thousands of airline staff, hospital workers and workers, in hundreds of workplaces across the US, that “it’s just a mild cold”. Whilst that is the case for most cases, the sheer volume of new infections is producing enough cases of people needing to…