Not Great

 There are two bad Covid stories running neck and neck right now.

The first is an expected surge as people move indoors due to cold weather. Again, hospitalizations is the key metric here, and those are rising. How many of them are unvaccinated is unclear, and I doubt they will publish the data, because there will be a sizeable portion of vaccinated people hospitalized, simply because a majority of Americans are vaccinated, not to mention the need for boosters.

The second and even scarier story is the Omicron variant, which has appeared in Africa. Europe has banned travel from southern Africa and frankly the rest of the world should follow suit. The sad reality is that China is central to the world economy in ways that Africa is not. At the moment, there are not many people sick with the Omicron variant, but that is why it's essential to quarantine the area. As we have seen recently, the world is simply sick of being sick. Masking measures provoke protests in Europe as well as America, vaccine uptake is not where we would hope and might not be effective against this variant.

If anything, Covid has taught us how woefully unprepared we are for global pandemics and how high the costs can be. Quarantining southern Africa is extreme, yes, but we need to finally take the measures necessary to keep new outbreaks under control.