The global spread of the mutant Delta strain of the novel coronavirus has accelerated over the past week. Against this backdrop, some countries in Europe and the United States are still deluding themselves when assessing the impact of the epidemic and are vague about how to strengthen epidemic prevention, which is causing serious problems for economic recovery.
On July 30, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the number of new COVID-19 cases in the world in the past week was close to 4 million, and if the trend continues, the cumulative number of confirmed cases in the next two weeks will exceed 200 million. According to the report, the rapid rise in the number of cases is largely caused by the highly contagious Delta strain. On July 31, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 100,000 new cases nationwide on July 30, the largest one-day increase since February 7. At present, the Delta virus strain has been found in at least 132 countries and regions, and the outbreak has returned to the americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania and many other countries and regions.
But in the economic assessments of some countries in Europe and the US, the global delta strain seems to matter little.
For example, ING said recently that the situation of major European economies has improved with the gradual easing of epidemic prevention and control measures. It expects The European economy to maintain its growth momentum in the third quarter of this year, despite the continued spread of the mutant Delta strain of the novel coronavirus and continuing risks to the European economy from supply chain strains. With the Netherlands recently announcing a tightening of quarantine measures and France considering reintroducing curfews and other measures, the virus is spreading rapidly across many European countries and the impact on economic recovery is far from fading.
Americans have a bigger heart than Europeans. On July 29, Commerce Department data showed that real GROSS domestic product grew at an annualised rate of 6.5 per cent in the second quarter, well below consensus forecasts of between 8 and 10 per cent. Data on July 30 showed that the core personal consumption expenditure (PCE) price index rose 3.5 percent in June from a year earlier, the biggest year-on-year increase in nearly 20 years. Some analysts point out that despite the continuous easing of ultra-loose policies, the US economy is slowing down and inflation is high, which is mainly due to the continuous disturbance of US economic activities caused by the pandemic. But for Fed policymakers, the pandemic never seemed to be an issue. After its rate-setting meeting on July 28, the Fed again attributed the rise in inflation to "transitory" factors brought on by the pandemic. But this "temporary" factor has been plaguing the US for more than a year.
It should be noted that the "man-made" factor in the current pandemic of Delta virus strain in Europe, the United States and even the whole world cannot be ignored: since the outbreak of the epidemic, some countries in Europe and the United States have not taken the prevention and control of the epidemic seriously. Masks and vaccinations, for example, have proven to be effective ways of containing the Novel coronavirus, but in the United States they have been deeply political, and have gone back and forth between enforcement and non-enforcement, leading to a new wave of widespread transmission of the Delta strain. For another example, the theory of "herd immunity" has not been successful in the process of epidemic prevention and control, but some people in the UK regard it as an ideal, and rush to test it on the national people, regardless of the basic morality of human life.
A year ago, a number of US economists who were consulted by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress agreed that the top priority for curing the US economy was to contain the spread of the epidemic. As a result, the recommendations went unheeded by the previous administration and have been delayed by the current one. In retrospect, more than a year later, the epidemic cannot be controlled and the economy cannot rise. This is true.
