Nordea with the note. I agree with all of it except the Fed hikes. For me, it is still more likely that it is forced backwards not forwards:
Covid or rather Delta is back in the limelight as cases surge in e.g., UK and Spain, but the most interesting thing is now to follow the hospitalization data and not the case data, as it seems as if widespread vaccinations among risk groups have decoupled the relationship between cases and hospitalizations. It may be early days still, but the authors of this piece are tempted to claim that the Covid crisis is already over in countries with a decently efficient vaccination program.
The link between cases and hospitalizations, as we knew it from 2020, seems to be broken as the vaccine effectively shields against severe illness. To take an example from a country with an efficient vaccination program. Denmark has had between 0 and 1 daily fatal Covid cases since the late spring. That is around 0.33% of total daily fatalities in Denmark. It seems almost hysterical to keep focusing on lockdowns, border restrictions and the like when there is clearly no health crisis related to Covid-19 any longer from a pure data perspective. The jury is still out, but we find increasingly compelling evidence that the crisis is essentially over (in the West). Let’s move on.