Goldman with the note:
1. The early medical news on Omicron looks broadly consistent with the “downside” scenario we laid outa week ago, but better than the “severe downside” scenario. On the negative side, the effective rate of spread in South Africa is much higher forOmicron than for Delta, which suggests greater inherent transmissibility and/or significant erosion of immunity acquired from prior infection. On the more reassuring side, the concentration of recent infections among younger and less vaccinated groups suggests at least some vaccine immunity against infections. More importantly, most experts anticipate significant vaccine protection against hospitalization, especially after boosters, while disease severity conditional on vaccination status looks either similar to Delta or more benign (it’s hard to be sure given the younger demographic and relatively recent outbreak).
2. If these trends hold up, our analysis suggests a moderate negative impact on global growth of ¼-½pp in 2022 as a whole, with a hit early in the year followed by are bound in H2 as well as significant dispersion across economies. The most vulnerable countries are those with large tourism sectors, cold temperatures incoming months, low vaccination rates, and high Covid risk aversion (with “zero Covid” economies particularly exposed). This suggests relatively large risks in East Asia, Northern Europe, and Canada, somewhat smaller risks in the US, and much smaller risks in Latin America and Africa.
