It’s Time to Start Living Again

Tomas Pueyo: “After the Omicron wave, we’ll be in a world where most people will have some sort of immunity, either through natural infections, vaccines, or both. We now know how to get vaccines fast (we should approve them faster for new variants), and we have treatments too. The value of time for learning has dropped: we know most of what we need to know about it. So the benefits of social measures to stop Covid are much lower.”

“Meanwhile, the costs of stopping Covid are much higher, because Omicron escapes immunity and is extremely transmissible. It’s much, much harder to stop a Covid wave now than it was two years ago. Look at how China is desperately trying to stop the virus but can’t without drastic lockdowns.”

“Lower benefits, higher costs: the ROI (return on investment) of tackling Covid with social measures has reversed. And from now on, it’s not going to get any better… If the benefits of social measures are as low as they’ll ever be, and their costs as high as they’ll ever be, the cost/benefit of fighting Covid won’t change much anymore in the next few years.”