Covid-2019

In Recommended Reading, our friend Reuven Brenner sends a link to a Globe and Mail commentary putting the vaccines in a sensible context -- considering costs and benefits, and thinking of them as part of a diversified portfolio of public health solutions.

In Recommended Reading, a woman is hospitalized with mysterious symptoms after being involved in a road accident with a truckful of monkeys from a bio-lab. Sounds a lot like the events recounted in "The Hot Zone," the original virus fear-porn from the 1990s -- and it shows how easily "lab leaks" can happen.

Elite opinion continues to turn, with the New York Times highlighting statements by WHO officials confirming the new official view -- that the arrival of less-lethal Omicron means the pandemic is over (it's now endemic). That said, the politics is just too good to let go of this quickly. In what may be its most bumblingly obvious story yet, the Times headlines the horror that "Sarah Palin, who is unvaccinated, recently dined indoors in New York City before testing positive." The evidence presented is a photograph of a restaurant empty except for two waiters. Palin was outed by a journalist who later say, "My mom thought she was Tina Fey." Oh, and just by the way, Palin was in New York pursuing a libel suit against the New York Times.

In Recommended Reading, a remarkable commentary in the fear-mongering medical publication The Lancet -- "the end is near." They've been saying that for two years, the classic cry of the doomsayer. But now they mean something different: the end of the pandemic is near. Investors should be cautious when permabears turn bullish, but this is nevertheless an important influence on elite opinion, in a good direction for a change.