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Representation of Ethereum, with its native cryptocurrency ether.
Hard Numbers: Crypto upgrade, Angolan inauguration, Iran’s SCO bid, soaring US mortgage rates, enthusiasm for omicron boosters
99: Ethereum, the world's no. 2 cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, successfully completed a long-awaited software upgrade that will reduce carbon emissions linked to its mining by 99%. Crypto fans hope “the merge” will help get environmentalists off their backs and end the crypto price slump they’ve suffered since May.
2: Following an unusually competitive election, João Lourenço was inaugurated on Thursday for his second term as Angola’s president. What should we expect? Protests from the opposition, which contested the result as rigged.
9: Iran just inched a step closer to becoming the ninth member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization by signing a memo to join the Central Asian security bloc. Increasingly isolated on the global stage, Tehran needs all the friends it can get — it also recently applied to join BRICS.
6: Thirty-year fixed mortgages, the most common home loan in America, surpassed 6% for the first time since 2008, double what it was nine months ago. This comes as the consumer price index released this week showed the cost of housing remains stubbornly high despite rising interest rates.
72: Around 72% of Americans say they would get a new COVID booster shot, the first vaccine developed to match developing Omicron variants, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Still, this comes amid growing criticism that the public awareness campaign around the new shots has been sluggish.
The end of the affair (COVID edition)
Experts say that the omicron wave may be what ends the acute phase of the pandemic. But one couple isn't ready to let go just yet.
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How China decides to handle omicron will have global implications – Yanzhong Huang
The arrival of omicron could be disastrous for China, Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, tells Ian Bremmer in a GZERO World interview.
Xi Jinping's zero-COVID approach faces its toughest test to date; the country lacks mRNA jabs which are more effective against the new variant, and so few Chinese people have gotten COVID that overall protection is very low.
Until it develops an mRNA vaccine of its own, China can expect larger outbreaks because of omicron, leading to more severe lockdowns and, in turn, greater economic disruption.
This will have implications not just for China but for the global economy as well.
Zero COVID currently remains popular with most Chinese people, but if things get really bad, Huang believes China will pivot to living with the virus, especially as the cost of keeping zero COVID in the age of omicron becomes too high.
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Russia's actions towards Ukraine are strengthening NATO
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on Russian escalation of Ukraine strengthening NATO, omicron and the end of COVID-19, and on the most recent military coup in West Africa — Burkina Faso:
How will Russian escalation of Ukraine strengthen NATO?
Well, NATO over the last 10, 20 years even was increasingly beset by problems. You had the US unilateralism focused more on Asia. You had the old mission of defending against the Russians less relevant. The French wanting strategic autonomy. Macron leaning into that. Now, of course, Merkel's gone, too. But the proximate reality in danger of the Russians invading Ukraine, actually, as much as the Europeans are more dependent on the Russians for their economy and their gas, they're also more concerned about Russia in terms of national security. That has driven a lot of coordination, including announcements of a lot more troops and material from being sent by NATO states to Ukraine and also to defend NATO borders, like in the Baltic states as well as Bulgaria and Romania. I would argue that what Putin's been doing so far has had no impact greater than bolstering NATO, and it's one of the reasons why I'm skeptical that a full-on invasion is something that Putin has in the cards because that would frankly do more than anything else out there to make NATO, focused on Russia, a serious and going concern.
Is omicron the end of the COVID-19 nightmare?
If you put it that way, I guess I would say yes. I think it's the end of the nightmare, because the people that have been living with the nightmare, primarily in the developed world, so many are going to be getting omicron and that's going to create a lot more natural immunity, plus most of those populations are already vaccinated. A lot of them are boosted and we've got all these therapeutics. I think that going forward, after omicron is done in relatively short order, this just feels like a very different virus for most of the countries that have been back and forth, back and forth with lockdowns. With the poorest countries in the world, very young populations, they've been living with the virus from day one. They don't have the vaccines in most. They've had to deal with it. In the case of China, that's the big question everyone knows I've been focusing on, but they're going to continue with these lockdowns, and so it hasn't been a nightmare per se, but it is going to be an economically very significant issue this year. But it's a little different than the way the question was phrased, so that's how I'll answer it.
Another coup is happening in West Africa. What's happening in Burkina Faso and in the region?
Yeah, it's the third coup in the region that we've seen in Mali and Guinea and now in Burkina Faso. It's this new organization that no one's heard of until yesterday that basically said it's military, the government in Burkina Faso was not doing a great job of maintaining stability and security in the country, and there've been growing attacks and influence of local Islamist extremists. That's a problem in all the countries that we've seen these military coups in recent months and, as a consequence, the Democratic elected government is no more. Former French colony, United States not doing an awful lot about it, China does most of the trade with them, but they're not engaged particularly either. So, as a consequence, it makes news and it moves on, and that's where we are.
Should China learn to live with COVID?
If omicron makes cases explode in China, the country's leaders will have to choose between weathering short-term or long-term pain.
Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, predicts that sticking to the zero-COVID approach at all costs will hurt the Chinese and global economy. In his view, learning to live with the virus is the way to go.
China can continue zero COVID until the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics, but after the Games the best move for Xi Jinping is to change direction. But even then, Huang says, it won't be a major shift.
“They're just going to quietly abandon it, or replace it with a new policy.”
Watch his interview with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World: Omicron & the undoing of China's COVID strategy.
China vs COVID in 2022
Omicron has arrived. It's more contagious, but less severe. Some parts of the world are even looking forward to the pandemic becoming endemic.
Not China. Xi Jinping's zero-COVID strategy has worked wonders until now, but it's unlikely to survive omicron, explains Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Why? China's vaccines are not as effective against the new COVID variant as mRNA jabs, and the Chinese population has no protection from previous infection.
Without a homegrown mRNA vaccine, China is vulnerable to local omicron outbreaks, which will lead to severe lockdowns and, in turn, greater economic disruption.
That's the last thing Xi wants less than a month out from the Winter Olympics, and later this year, when he hopes to get an unprecedented third term in office as China's leader.
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: Omicron and the undoing of China’s COVID strategy
COVID at the Beijing Winter Olympics
China's zero-COVID strategy will be put to its biggest test to date with the Beijing Winter Olympics approach.
Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, says Chinese officials think they are taking the safest approach, but that may not be enough against the more transmissible omicron variant.
That's a big risk for Xi Jinping, who hasn't left the country in almost two years — but doesn't want to become isolated on the global stage.
“When other countries learn to live with the virus, and the pandemic's becoming an endemic,” Huang says. “China will find that zero-tolerance strategy unsustainable."
China, he predicts may be able to sustain zero COVID for another year, but not much longer.
Watch his interview with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World: Omicron & the undoing of China's COVID strategy
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COVID immunity gap could spell disaster for China — global health expert
China’s homegrown COVID vaccines were once crucial — but they're not as effective against omicron as mRNA jabs.
What's more, with with local cases near zero for the better part of the pandemic, most Chinese have no natural immunity. That could spell disaster for Beijing as omicron surges.
Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, warns that the highly transmissible new variant will make zero COVID harder and harder to sustain.
If China’s current strategy fails, it’s likely that Xi Jinping will have to pivot to one that favors living with the virus.
Watch Huang’s interview with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World: Omicron & the undoing of China's COVID strategy