From what I've read, the existing vaccines have a very good chance of conferring immunity to the new variants.
Say, though, that we got a new variant that the existing vaccines do not protect against. My guess is that the first vaccine roll out has been such a goat rodeo that we might be able to make a vaccine against a new variant in just a week (as we did the first time around) and actually get it into arms in 4-6 months this time. There are two reasons for this: first, the vaccine companies now have one iteration of, and therefore an existence proof of, much faster deployment, and heads are now in the game that this is possible and reasonable. Second, so much political capital having been squandered by the FDA / CDC class, they might be eager to avoid a second withdrawl of the same magnitude, and be more willing to rubber stamp and delegate to Pfizer / Amazon.
Yes, I'm cautiously optimistic that at a minimum we'd be able to develop and deploy a new vaccine faster, and _possibly_ that the general pace of vaccine development has accelerated, and that there will be more treatments for other diseases in the coming years.
RE: Do the newer, faster-spreading variants of Covid-19 have a reasonable chance of causing some of the worst-case scenarios people contemplated in March? Compound interest remains easy to underestimate, although the pace of vaccinations has picked up.
My guess is that the new variants will turbo-charge the "V-shaped recovery for me, L-shaped recovery for thee" dynamic.
There seems to be a reasonable chance that (seemingly) unevenly distributed chunks of people and businesses and investment firms are going to be caught by surprise in a negative way.
Late March, early April needs for severe lockdowns in certain key metro areas could wrongfoot some companies and individuals, while others may be fine thanks to trillions of fiscal stimulus flowing into the system. Which villages will the tsunami be most destructive in? Often it's a question of preparedness but sometimes it's bad luck.
I'm unnerved that there seems to be this slo-motion delay in people's updating their mental models. Many people seem stuck on how the original variant behaved. In the next few weeks there may be a shift that ripples out.
I think the overwhelmingly Democrat-leaning nature of the employee base of the big tech companies will push them over to the Democrats over time, and may even lead to a takeover of the Democratic party.
On the Big Tech point - I don't see what incentives within the U.S either party has to play nice. Bringing CEO of company x in front of your committee can be interpreted as an indirect quid quo pro - take action against perceived transgression against opposing political party, and we'll leave you alone. In cases where there's an adversarial relationship, politicians have something to gain - when they're playing nice, the company gains tax breaks, positive PR, little regulation, etc. I don't really see what the politicians gain, at least nowadays.
Something I've been thinking about - if there was real international mobility for a tech company, the equation would completely flip. If a company was sufficiently decentralized and remote-first, it could in theory move it's HQ to a different country and take some chunk of its tax revenue and employment with it. It would incentivize the relevant government to actually be accommodating. I'm sure in practice it's almost impossible, but maybe in the future.
Without that mobility though, I can only see politicians getting more involved with tech companies, which are only getting more powerful as well. There's definitely regulation which needs to occur, but in a hyper-partisan time, political party x may be more concerned with its own prospects, rather than the publics interest at large.
That's an interesting possibility. My guess is that if a big tech company decamped to another country, the US would respond with pretty strong protectionist measures. (And where could they go? UK would be hard, because the government wouldn't want to antagonize the US; same for China; other places don't have the language—except maybe Singapore. Which Saverin chose!)
In a way several have already been doing this through their tax structures.
The hurdle to actually relocating though would seem to be talent. Basically nowhere else has the density of English speaking tech talent you get in SF (and to progressively lesser extents Seattle, NYC, etc).
From what I've read, the existing vaccines have a very good chance of conferring immunity to the new variants.
Say, though, that we got a new variant that the existing vaccines do not protect against. My guess is that the first vaccine roll out has been such a goat rodeo that we might be able to make a vaccine against a new variant in just a week (as we did the first time around) and actually get it into arms in 4-6 months this time. There are two reasons for this: first, the vaccine companies now have one iteration of, and therefore an existence proof of, much faster deployment, and heads are now in the game that this is possible and reasonable. Second, so much political capital having been squandered by the FDA / CDC class, they might be eager to avoid a second withdrawl of the same magnitude, and be more willing to rubber stamp and delegate to Pfizer / Amazon.
Yes, I'm cautiously optimistic that at a minimum we'd be able to develop and deploy a new vaccine faster, and _possibly_ that the general pace of vaccine development has accelerated, and that there will be more treatments for other diseases in the coming years.
RE: Do the newer, faster-spreading variants of Covid-19 have a reasonable chance of causing some of the worst-case scenarios people contemplated in March? Compound interest remains easy to underestimate, although the pace of vaccinations has picked up.
My guess is that the new variants will turbo-charge the "V-shaped recovery for me, L-shaped recovery for thee" dynamic.
There seems to be a reasonable chance that (seemingly) unevenly distributed chunks of people and businesses and investment firms are going to be caught by surprise in a negative way.
Late March, early April needs for severe lockdowns in certain key metro areas could wrongfoot some companies and individuals, while others may be fine thanks to trillions of fiscal stimulus flowing into the system. Which villages will the tsunami be most destructive in? Often it's a question of preparedness but sometimes it's bad luck.
I'm unnerved that there seems to be this slo-motion delay in people's updating their mental models. Many people seem stuck on how the original variant behaved. In the next few weeks there may be a shift that ripples out.
I think the overwhelmingly Democrat-leaning nature of the employee base of the big tech companies will push them over to the Democrats over time, and may even lead to a takeover of the Democratic party.
On the Big Tech point - I don't see what incentives within the U.S either party has to play nice. Bringing CEO of company x in front of your committee can be interpreted as an indirect quid quo pro - take action against perceived transgression against opposing political party, and we'll leave you alone. In cases where there's an adversarial relationship, politicians have something to gain - when they're playing nice, the company gains tax breaks, positive PR, little regulation, etc. I don't really see what the politicians gain, at least nowadays.
Something I've been thinking about - if there was real international mobility for a tech company, the equation would completely flip. If a company was sufficiently decentralized and remote-first, it could in theory move it's HQ to a different country and take some chunk of its tax revenue and employment with it. It would incentivize the relevant government to actually be accommodating. I'm sure in practice it's almost impossible, but maybe in the future.
Without that mobility though, I can only see politicians getting more involved with tech companies, which are only getting more powerful as well. There's definitely regulation which needs to occur, but in a hyper-partisan time, political party x may be more concerned with its own prospects, rather than the publics interest at large.
That's an interesting possibility. My guess is that if a big tech company decamped to another country, the US would respond with pretty strong protectionist measures. (And where could they go? UK would be hard, because the government wouldn't want to antagonize the US; same for China; other places don't have the language—except maybe Singapore. Which Saverin chose!)
In a way several have already been doing this through their tax structures.
The hurdle to actually relocating though would seem to be talent. Basically nowhere else has the density of English speaking tech talent you get in SF (and to progressively lesser extents Seattle, NYC, etc).
The closest might be London.