Juggling Dynamite

Never before have prospective vaccines for a pathogen entered final-stage clinical trials as rapidly as candidates for Covid-19.  Hopes and stakes are incredibly high.

For an excellent update on the most technologically enabled race for a vaccine in human history read ‘A huge experiment’: How the world made so much progress on a COVID-19 vaccine so fast.  Still, even best-case scenarios require realism:

A vaccine that prevents even 50% of infections would be a massive lifeline. But experts worry there’s a disconnect between a public expecting vaccines to instantly reset their lives and what the first vaccines may actually allow. Successful vaccines will likely be restricted to frontline workers and vulnerable populations at first. It could take some time for enough vaccine to be made for everyone who wants a shot. Some vaccines might require two doses to confer protection.

“It might not be some magic bullet that’s going to stop the pandemic in its tracks, and people need to be prepared for that possibility,” said Columbia University virologist Angela Rasmussen about the first vaccines that reach people. “I really hate the term vaccine race. Because that implies there’s going to be a medal ceremony, and the pandemic is over.”

The shift of production back to North America and Europe is a macro theme with legs.  First, came trade disputes and rising protectionism along with steadily rising emission restrictions and carbon taxes that make international shipping more expensive.  Next, COVID-19 showed the west its vulnerability in having essential equipment, supplies and medicines made far from home in places like China. Now, record flooding is compounding risks to current supply chains.  The world’s second-largest and most highly-indebted economy has swooned in 2020–and the hits keep coming.

The worst flooding in six decades in China is displacing millions and straining the Three Gorges Dam. WSJ’s Jonathan Cheng explains how the natural disaster is hampering the country’s efforts to restart an economy already battered by the coronavirus pandemic.  Here is a direct video link.

The mammoth Three Gorges Dam has long been rumoured to have been poorly constructed and vulnerable to disaster (see Three Gorges Dam could collapse).

As in the most populated areas of Canada, uneconomically high property prices and rents in Australia were only made possible by unsustainable domestic debt levels.  COVID-19 is proving a mean-reversion catalyst.

Sydney’s rental market has changed rapidly since the start of the pandemic. Thousands of homes across the city are sitting empty and rents have been heavily discounted. Commercial rents are taking a dive too as shops go out of business and companies rethink the need for expensive office space.  Here is a direct video link.