Axios reports, as it has been noted by many other news outlets, that with ‘regular COVID’ now on the sunset, there is arising a new threat, that of ‘mutant COVID’ that is deadlier and may require the further imposition of masks and other protective measures.
Mutated versions of the coronavirus threaten to prolong the pandemic, perhaps for years — killing more people and deepening the global economic crisis in the process.
The big picture: The U.S. and the world are in a race to control the virus before these variants can gain a bigger foothold. But many experts say they already expect things to get worse before they get better. And that also means an end to the pandemic may be getting further away.
“It may take four to five years before we finally see the end of the pandemic and the start of a post-COVID normal,” Singapore’s education minister said last week, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Where it stands: “There are essentially two separate COVID-19 epidemics,” Dutch officials said recently, referring to the original strain of COVID-19 and the burgeoning threat from mutated versions of the virus.There’s light at the end of the tunnel for the first epidemic. Although the virus is still spreading uncontrolled across the U.S. and much of the world, cases and hospitalizations are down from their peak, and vaccinations are steadily increasing.
But the next iteration, fueled by variants of the virus, is already taking hold.
What’s next: A British variant of the coronavirus will likely become the dominant strain within the U.S. pretty soon, experts say. It’s significantly more contagious than the virus we’ve been dealing with so far, and some researchers believe it may also be about 30% more deadly.“That hurricane’s coming,” Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota and Biden transition adviser, said Sunday on “Meet the Press.”
A more contagious and more lethal strain of the virus could easily send cases, hospitalizations and deaths soaring right back to record levels, even as vaccinations continue to ramp up.
“We are going to see something like we have not seen yet in this country,” Osterholm said.It’s already happening in the U.K., where skyrocketing hospitalizations prompted another round of lockdown measures — and pushback against those restrictions.
Vaccines work against the British variant, and they will help control its spread, just as they’ll help control the pandemic overall. (source)
This is where things are going to get interesting, because the prolonged effects that COVID will have on the economy will have very negative impacts for the whole world.
A main country to watch in this is Germany, since the pandemic is global, and she is going to be affected. Recall the words of Niklas Frank in 2017, that if Germany had ‘five to ten years of heavy economic problems’, it would create the conditions for the return of another Hitler, at which the BBC news interviewer practically scoffed at him.
Niklas Frank is no fool. His father was Hans Frank,the National Socialist governor of Poland, and so he is very qualified to speak about the dangers of the past and how certain things may come to repeat again.
Economic problems in Germany already showed signs as early as the migrant crisis, so in 2017, but they fully exploded, just like in the US, with the COVID pandemic in 2020.
So by Frank’s count, we have one year so far of heavy economic problems, and what has it brought? More nationalism, more anger, more economic problems, more business closures, and more people demanding an answer.
We are in the second year of this pandemic, and many economists have said that if something is not done immediately to get the economies at least stabilized, millions of people will suffer more than those who have already and continue to suffer.
It appears that such will be the future, of suffering compounding suffering, for both the people and the businesses, and if Frank’s assessment is correct, to set the stage for the continued trend of rising nationalism and eventually, the end where it always goes, which is to war in the name of empire.
But it is not just Germany. Japan and the US too are rearming, and so are the Russians. China is re-arming, but she has her own economic problems, and because she holds the burden of US debt, she is also tied to the US’ problems no matter how much she may want to think to the contrary. If the US cannot buy, China cannot sell, and cannot service her own obligations, and if she demands the US pay her, the US prints money, pays China back in devalued dollars, then blames her for ‘destroying’ US currency and thus creates a causus belli for the US.
What is happening with COVID is what I noted was likely to happen on Shoebat.com, which is that the effects of the virus would long outlast the virus itself, and it would be used to usher in ever more and deadlier political situations for the future.
Comments are closed.