Inside Out | Will Covid-19 go? Will Carrie Lam stay? Predictions for 2022
- From US-China tensions and decoupling rhetoric to the property and equity market bubbles, it appears that little will change
- It is a time for clear thinking and serious international cooperation. Sadly, both are in short supply
The great value of hindsight is to make all of us in the forecasting business deeply modest. Notwithstanding that warning, and in all modesty, here is a stab at answering some of the questions likely to preoccupy us in the coming year.
First, will the pandemic be behind us? Sadly, no. The death toll is likely to fall, but heaven knows what letters of the Greek alphabet will follow Delta and Omicron.
With a tidal wave of transmission ahead, negligible vaccine protection in most poor countries, and a still-abysmal failure of international collaboration to bring the pandemic under control, the toll will rise. The International Monetary Fund warned last October that the “great vaccination divide” could cost the global economy US$5.3 trillion up to 2026; who am I to argue?
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