in a dike. china s vaccines do not appear to be very effective at preventing breakthrough omicron infections. add to this, the fact that according to official reports few of china s 1.4 billion people have tested positive for covid, meaning so-called natural or virus-induced immunity is relatively low. every january the eurasia group announces a list of the top ten global risks. this year china s zero covid policy was the number one risk. there is a broader cost to china s covid policy, it has cut the country off from the world. for the last two years china s president and many of its senior officials have not traveled abroad. few diplomats and businesspeople go to the middle kingdom anymore. tourists have basically been banned. this is a major reversal of decades in which china reached out to the world and tried to integrate itself into global
nightmare. omicron spreads so easily and fast that pursuing a zero covid policy is like putting a finger in a dike. china s vaccines do not appear to be very effective at preventing breakthrough omicron infections. add to this, the fact that according to official reports few of china s 1.4 billion people have tested positive for covid, meaning so-called natural or virus-induced immunity is relatively low. every january the eurasia group announces a list of the top ten global risks. this year china s zero covid policy was the number one risk. there is a broader cost to china s covid policy, it has cut the country off from the world. for the last two years china s president and many of its senior officials have not traveled abroad .
depressing christmas eve and christmas in many parts of the country. the reason is because that omicron variant is so highly tras miscible. that s what you re seeing in the nfl and nba and college sports. it s highly disruptive because so many people are getting infected. and we still don t know about that question of whether it s really mild illness or not. i would park that for now. i think the third part, alex, that we re not talking about enough is with that high transmissibility, you re going to see lots and lots of health care workers getting breakthrough omicron infection. especially if they only got two doses, even some who are a few months out of their third dose. in the case of those who health care workers who have gotten boosted, they re not going to be very sick in the hospital, but sick enough to be staying home. and that s going to deplete an already stressed out depleted health care work force. and that s the danger point. that s the danger part of all of this, there ri