Washington, Denver The Room for Milly cocktail bar in downtown Denver is trying to cover up the problem in a friendly way: “We look forward to welcoming you again from January 6th,” says the pink sign in large red letters. No word why the hip bar is closing now, at one of the most important times of the year.
But everyone knows the reason: Omikron, the highly contagious variant of Covid, has the city firmly under control. The situation is particularly bitter for owner Fiona Arnold. In the summer she was still desperately looking for a bartender to make up for the losses after the lockdown in the spring. Even starting bonuses of $ 2,500 were not enough to even be shortlisted for candidates.
Now she decided to forego sales for two weeks after there had been Covid cases among the employees. “The health of our employees and our customers has priority,” it said by way of explanation.
Arnold is by no means the only entrepreneur who has to take a forced break. Public life in many US cities is severely restricted these days – once again. In New York, America’s most populous metropolis, three subway lines had to stop operating because there were too many failures at the MTA transport authority.
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The railways rarely ran on other routes, which led to even fuller wagons. Broadway plays had to be canceled, libraries had to close, and the Apple stores were also closed. “New York is currently only driving at half speed,” attested the New York Times.
Omikron spreads in the USA
On Wednesday, the US reported a record with around 490,000 new Covid cases. That is almost twice as high as on the worst day last winter. And epidemiologists warn that the worst is yet to come for the country.
“Omikron is really everywhere,” Megan Ranney, professor of emergency medicine in Providence, Rhode Island, USA, told CNN. It assumes that a much larger part of the economy will be paralyzed in the coming months. “Not because there is a government order, but because so many of us will be sick.”
In view of the serious situation, US President Joe Biden has to rethink his Covid strategy. So far, the United States has been concerned primarily with preventing severe disease and avoiding overcrowded hospitals. With the Omikron variant, which is even more contagious than Delta, but causes less severe progression, this strategy no longer seems to work. Washington is currently the city with the highest incidence.
The picture is similar in many parts of the country: hospitals are overcrowded. Texas governor Greg Abbott, who had positioned himself as a tough opponent of mandatory vaccination, called for help from Washington over the weekend to cope with the huge demand for Covid tests. The stocks of important drugs are also used up in the fight against the pandemic.
In Ohio, the National Guard is supposed to help keep hospitals running. So many firefighters are sick in Cincinnati that the mayor is concerned about the safety of his city. On Saturday, almost 3,000 flights were canceled, the airline Jetblue cut its flight schedule by mid-January because it has long been clear that regular air traffic will not be possible until further notice.
Mayors, governors and the White House wanted to prevent new lockdowns by all possible means. But the fact is that many parts of the US are already in a kind of involuntary partial lockdown.
Increasing case numbers also in Great Britain
Great Britain also posted new Covid records in the past few days. Prime Minister Boris Johnson still refuses to impose new restrictions on a national level. They should only be used as an “absolute last resort,” said Health Minister Sajit Javid. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, on the other hand, have already closed clubs and introduced distance rules in pubs. However, these restrictions do not apply to England, where 80 percent of the UK population lives.
One area where Omikron is particularly noticeable are daycare centers: Children under five years of age are not allowed to be vaccinated in the USA either, so they are particularly susceptible to infection. There are actually strict rules, even two-year-olds are PCR tested once a week in childcare facilities and wear a mask.
But Omikron seems to be stronger than the precautionary measures. Daycare centers are currently sending a series of “health alerts” via SMS and email and have to temporarily close due to outbreaks. Mayor Muriel Bowser is trying to counteract this: Before daycare and school children are allowed to return to their classes in January, they have to present a negative PCR test and a rapid test. Many facilities introduced compulsory vaccination for their staff in the summer.
The pandemic could last a long time
Biden tries to show strength. He has announced that he will quickly resolve the embarrassing lack of tests. Around a thousand medics from the US military are to strengthen hospitals. At the same time, the White House is increasingly confronted with the reality that the pandemic could last a long time – even though Biden only proclaimed a “summer of freedom” in June. Many people are exhausted, and resistance from vaccination opponents in parts of the country persists.
Biden is therefore trying to decentralize crisis management. He recently phoned the 50 state governors and urged them to cooperate more closely. Washington had previously distributed a lot of money through emergency packages, but largely left the states a free hand as to which Covid regulations they enact – now Biden is aggressively asking the countries for help.
At the national level, Biden’s room for maneuver is limited. This week, the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court, deals with a nationwide vaccination requirement for larger companies. The project is being challenged legally in many countries.
The bottom line is that confidence in Biden’s crisis management has fallen during the pandemic. Surveys confirmed that he was more than 60 percent supportive when he took office; it is now less than 45 percent. The president faces a difficult election year, and his party, the US Democrats, could lose its majority in Congress in the fall.
Most recently, he admitted that his government had underestimated the power of new variants. “It’s not enough, it’s clearly not enough,” he said of the sluggish progress in vaccination and the record number of infections.
At the same time, the CDC epidemic authority comes under fire. A few days ago, director Rachelle Walensky recommended reducing the isolation time for people who tested positive from ten to five days as long as they no longer show symptoms. The move was received with relief in parts of the economy because it made it easier for those freshly recovered to return to work.
Other groups, such as flight attendant associations, reacted indignantly. Many flight attendants felt under pressure to come back to work after five days, even if they had not yet fully recovered, said Sara Nelson of the flight attendants’ association. “And that although after two years of pandemic many have always been exposed to high risks and sometimes aggressive passengers and are simply at the end of their tether,” she said on the US stock exchange broadcaster CNBC.
There was also resistance from one of the country’s most respected epidemiologists, Eric Topol. Sick people would have to present a negative test after five days before going back to work. Everything else “is frankly inconsiderate”.
Against the recommendation of experts, the city allowed a stripped-down New Year’s party in Times Square, at which the new mayor was also introduced.
(Photo: Reuters)
Economists warn of the economic consequences of the new Covid wave. “As doctors’ offices and clinics fill up, companies close and other restrictions are tightened. All of that slows the economy down, ”said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s.
A number of large corporations have meanwhile postponed the return to the office planned for early 2022. Others ask their employees to be boosted. The investment banks Goldman Sachs and Jefferies give their employees until the end of January.
“We assume that the health authorities will soon only see boosted people as ‘fully vaccinated'”, Jefferies CEO Richard Handler wrote to his employees. Handler fell ill with Covid himself a few weeks ago. The bank recently sent all employees back to the home office after a number of Covid cases in the office.
This wave hits New York particularly hard. The number of infections is as high as at the beginning of the pandemic, even if the proportion of intensive care patients is lower. Economically, the city had hoped that the pandemic would long ago be over and that tourists and office workers would bring money back to the “Big Apple”. Against the recommendation of its own health experts, the city allowed a slimmed-down New Year’s party in Times Square, at which the new mayor Eric Adams was introduced.
Adams, a former police officer, was combative. “Our resolution for this year is: We will not let our lives be dictated by crises,” he emphasized. But reality looks different.
More: Omikron could paralyze the industry – should infected people return to work earlier because of this?