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Editor's Note: Below is a note written by Hedgeye editor Eric Wallerstein and junior Macro analyst Ryan Ricci. For more insights like this, sign up for our free Weekend Reading newsletter. |
Covid is rolling over. Omicron's virility spread like wildfire, but it's running out of trees to burn. And now politicians and policymakers are ending restrictions, worldwide.
Global daily new cases are down -13% week-over-week (as of 2/6/2022), versus the prior week's -1%.
- The U.S. is leading the charge in the decline in new cases, dropping -43% WoW verus last week's -30%.
- Switzerland had a nice flip-flop from rising to declining case counts, dropping to -7.2% WoW, from the previous +18%.
While case counts are picking up in some regions, there's a broad-based deceleration. In other words, the rate at which case counts are rising is slowing (negative second derivative).
- China New Cases: +26% WoW vs. prior +42%
- As a caveat, China is reporting around 1,300 new cases on a monthly basis (vs. the U.S. reporting 2 million new cases), which is obviously B.S.
- Japan New Cases: +26% WoW vs. prior +71%
- Europe New Cases: +1.6% WoW vs. prior +13%
Here's a solid visualization of how Omicron is behaving.
As New Cases rollover, so do hospitalizations and deaths (on a short lag). The charts below show how New York City (with one of the highest testing rates in the world) followed South Africa's Covid path on a lag, as the virus made its way to the states.
And as cases roll over, so do restrictions. Some of the heaviest enforcers of lockdowns are easing up as case counts drop and economies need support.
- California Governor Gavin Newsom is dropping CA's mask mandate, citing a decline in cases and leveling off in hospitalizations (per Twitter).
- Sweden is joining Denmark & Norway in ending gathering limits, work from home mandates, and easing travel restrictions (per NYT).
- Germany just announced they'll be looking to relax Covid rules in the near future (per The Local).
By no means are we conjecturing as to the vaccine & lockdown vs. natural immunity argument, the possibility of a new variant and accompanying lockdowns, or anything really.
We're simply looking at the data and policy responses... as one should.
