It was looking so good. Demand was exceeding supply, (good) inflation signified a strong recovery with global economic growth rates estimated to be 5.6 per cent (source: OECD) and the vaccine seemed to have won the war. Omicron has seemingly changed all this.

In The Godfather Part III, there is a scene when Michael Corleone says: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in” and right now that’s what it feels like to watch Omicron wreck havoc with business confidence all over Europe. 

The irony of it all is that Omicron is actually less deadly but more infectious, which indicates that the phasing from pandemic to endemic is speeding up. Yet that’s not how the mainstream press/media have been portraying Omicron. 

In Europe, for example, we have governments rushing into partial lockdowns of sorts, border closures and reintroducing a host of public health restrictions, before the science confirms/negates the type of threat Omicron actually is. 

The UK, meanwhile, tore up the COVID rule book and made it mandatory for all travellers to take pre-travel tests irrespective if they were vaccinated or unvaccinated. To my mind, this is a game changer of sorts which recognises that transmission of the virus occurs irrespective of vaccine status but it also injects a huge dose of uncertainty in the travel industry and entices EU counter measures. 

Illogically, medical priorities remain superior to economic or financial priorities. It is as if governments all over Europe believe that the public health threat post-vaccine is more dangerous than a world economic recession and that a ‘balanced approach’ to the problem is taboo. It is also as if governments were printing money without a care in the world and that they can spend and borrow their way out of the COVID-19 chasm.

The hard reality is that we really can’t afford to go back to more restrictions since this will destroy business confidence and kill the economic recovery. However, if the press/media continue to push a doom-and-gloom Omicron narrative, the people will remain scared and the politicians will lack the courage to lead our democracies and economies into a post-pandemic recovery.

To my mind, the business community needs to take the lead here and lobby politicians to adopt more of a ‘balanced approach’ (balancing economic well-being with public health) and properly manage expectations (going back to normal is ok). Only with such clarity, can we restore business and consumer confidence and the economic recovery take proper hold.

Failure to do so will mean a start-stop-start-stop, anaemic type of recovery which will plunge most governments into more debt and possibly start to experience stagflation (a toxic cocktail of high inflation + weak economic growth + high unemployment).

European governments are undermining business with all this uncertainty and instability, and should stagflation set in, we are looking at a decade of economic hardship

Granted, as soon as WHO described Omicron as ‘a variant of concern’, this triggered panic decisions all over the world. Yet mainstream press/media only reported the headline and failed to also report that WHO advised the following as a response:

• To enhance surveillance and sequencing efforts;

• To submit complete genome sequences and associated metadata to a publicly available database, such as GISAID;

• To report initial cases/clusters associated with VOC infection to WHO;

• Where capacity exists and in coordination with the international community, perform field investigations and laboratory assessments to improve understanding of the potential impacts of the VOC on COVID-19 epidemiology, severity, effectiveness of public health and social measures, diagnostic methods, immune responses, antibody neutralisation or other relevant characteristics.

Yet WHO did not advise governments to close borders, to make vaccination mandatory or rush in lockdowns and aggressive public health restrictions including pre-travel tests for both the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Yet this is how some EU governments and the UK have responded and this is precisely what fuels uncertainty and instability in our economies. 

My point is that European governments are undermining business with all this uncertainty and instability, and should stagflation set in, we are looking at a decade of economic hardship.

The good news is that we are still in time to save the day (just about). I think we have as a society done more than enough to protect the old and vulnerable and vaccination has been available to everyone for enough time now.

Furthermore, while the virus is becoming more infectious, it is also becoming less deadly. Therefore, we can now start to prioritise our economic recovery and the only way to do this is to reframe the public health debate (virus is more contagious but less deadly), remanage expectations (from pandemic to endemic) and emphasise the importance of restoring economic health.