Raphael Stevens

Many countries now have few or no Covid-related restrictions remaining, as surging case numbers are weighed against vaccination rates.
There is a consensus among many that the highly transmissible omicron variant is so infectious, everybody will eventually contract Covid.
Public health officials have also warned about the risk of “long Covid.”

A sign reminding riders to wear a face mask to prevent the spread of Covid-19 appears on a bus on First Street outside the U.S. Capitol on Monday, January 10, 2022.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

Infectious disease experts have warned that it’s too soon for the public to stop taking steps to avoid Covid-19 infection, despite health officials claiming it’s inevitable most people will catch the seemingly milder omicron variant.
Many countries now have few or no Covid-related restrictions remaining, as surging case numbers are weighed against vaccination rates. The leaders of some European countries have called for the coronavirus crisis to begin its shift from pandemic to endemic, and be treated like the seasonal flu.

In the U.K., where new cases are beginning to ease from record-high levels after a December surge, the government is reportedly drawing up plans to completely scrap its emergency Covid laws, including self-isolation requirements, according to The Telegraph.
Official data published on Monday showed that around 98% of the U.K. population now has antibody protection against the virus, either through vaccination or infection. Just over 80% of the country’s population has received two doses of a Covid vaccine.
There is a consensus among many that the highly transmissible omicron variant is so infectious, everybody will eventually contract Covid. White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci predicted the strain will “find just about everybody,” CNN reported last week.
However, many scientists are still urging the public to do what they can to avoid infection.
Professor Liam Smeeth, a physician and director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told CNBC that while omicron appears inherently milder, scientific knowledge is still “not as complete as we’d like” on how the heavily mutated variant will impact vulnerable individuals.

“If the vulnerable do become quite unwell with omicron — and some of them will — if that all happens at once, if we just let it rip through society, then any health system in the world would get overwhelmed,” he said in a phone call.
“And that is a very, very grim thought — so grim as to be quite terrifying. It’s clear that most people don’t get very unwell with omicron, but we don’t have clear evidence that that’s true of everyone.”

Smeeth added that omicron’s increased transmissibility meant it still posed big risks, despite appearing to cause milder symptoms.
“Because it’s so infectious, it literally could be millions of very unwell people all at the same time, which no health system could cope with,” he explained.
“You’ve also got the fact that people are going to be off sick — it doesn’t cause serious illness, but it does cause enough that people need to stay at home [to recover]. And if that happens across the whole of society all at once, even in the space of a few weeks, that means the police are going to struggle, supermarkets aren’t going to open, the health system’s not going to function — there would be pretty big social disruption going on.”
“So even if it’s reasonably mild, there are reasons to want it to happen more gradually,” he said.
Public health officials have also warned about the risk of “long Covid.” The WHO has previously estimated that between 10% to 20% of Covid patients experience lingering symptoms for months following infection. These prolonged symptoms can include persistent fatigue, breathlessness, brain fog and depression.
In the U.K., where Covid isolation times were cut down to five days on Monday, Smeeth said he believed the government was implementing a “pretty sensible, gradual stepping down.”
Meanwhile, Philip Anyanwu, a lecturer in public health at Cardiff University’s School of Medicine, noted a perception that the omicron variant is making Covid less of a threat was becoming more common among the general population.
“Regardless of it [causing milder symptoms], I think we still need to keep those measures that helped us get through, especially wearing face masks, social distancing and frequently washing our hands,” he said via telephone.
He argued it was too soon for the public to stop trying to reduce Covid-related risks, particularly in the winter — the “most crucial period in terms of infectious disease burden.”
Deepti Gurdasani, senior lecturer in epidemiology at Queen Mary University of London, said via Twitter on Sunday that living with the virus “doesn’t mean doing nothing and letting ‘mostly the old and vulnerable die.'”
“People wearing high-grade masks and good ventilation aren’t restrictive but save a lot of lives,” she said.
“Are we seriously saying we won’t even lift a finger to save lives of people who are ‘old and vulnerable?'”

Risk of Covid ‘Armageddon’

Smeeth warned that although there was reason to be cautiously optimistic, it was still too early to completely rule out further surprises.
“Everything in history would tell you that this variant is so mutated, that there are only a few more mutations it can do, and the history of coronaviruses is that they tend to mutate into a milder form on their way out to becoming either endemic in society or just disappearing altogether,” he said. “That does seem to be where [omicron] is going. It’s very infectious, so it’s going be quite hard to replace.”
However, Smeeth added that Covid “behaves quite differently to other coronaviruses,” warning that it would be foolish to rule out another new, more severe variant.
“It could well come up with another variant that causes more severe illness and is more infectious — it really could be Armageddon, it really could be the stuff of science fiction, just like we saw last year.”
Anyanwu agreed that it was still too early to completely relax.

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“We know that omicron is more transmissive but not as serious as other variants — but there is no guarantee of what the next variant is going to be,” he said.
“One of the reasons omicron spread so widely is because when it came into the U.K. population, a lot of public health measures had been reduced. We were playing more of a reactive approach to controlling it rather than being proactive.”
He added that the world was still in the midst of the pandemic and it was too soon for a return to complete normality.
“Getting rid of all measures puts us at risk if there’s any new variant that comes in,” he warned. “It might be less transmissive or more transmissive, it might be more serious in terms of outcomes like death and hospitalization.”
“It’s reasonable for individuals to stick to some measures, even when we have a lot of the government’s rules being relaxed,” Anyanwu cautioned.
“Regardless of whether government restrictions remain or are taken away, individuals can still make decisions on how they go about their daily activities.”

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi revels in his image as a strong and decisive leader. But the premier was forced to make a stunning reversal in November to abandon controversial farm laws after year-long protests.  
This was one of Modi’s biggest policy reversals since assuming power in 2014.
He learned that there are drawbacks to to his strongman approach, but is seen as unlikely to moderate his hardline style in the run-up to the state elections.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses a public meeting at Jerenga Pathar in the Sivasagar district of India’s Assam state on Jan. 23, 2021.
Biju Boro | AFP | Getty Images

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi revels in his image as a strong and decisive leader. But the premier was forced to make a stunning U-turn recently and abandoned controversial farm laws after year-long protests — a move one analyst called a “public policy failure.”
“While apologizing to the countrymen, today I want to say sincerely that perhaps there must have been some deficiency … that we could not explain the truth like the light of the lamp to the farmer brothers,” Modi said in a national televised address in November last year.

“I want to tell you, the entire country, that we have decided to repeal all three agricultural laws,” he announced. 
India’s parliament passed those laws in September 2020 triggering months of protests, which saw tens of thousands of farmers take to the streets. The reforms would have removed state protections that have shielded India’s farmers for decades, and subject them to unfettered free-market mechanisms where competition would be high.
This was one of Modi’s biggest policy reversals since assuming power in 2014. The rare apology was a humbling moment for the prime minister, who learned there are drawbacks to his strongman approach.
“This is not Modi’s first public policy failure, though certainly it was the most public reversal,” said Akhil Bery, director of South Asia Initiatives at the Asia Society Policy Institute. The political cave in on the agriculture reforms “did show that there are limitations to his power,” he told CNBC.
A hallmark of Modi’s governing style has been the use of executive power, with little public debate for “big bang” reforms or policy declarations, said Neelanjan Sircar, a senior visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi.

When the government is unable to stanch protest and criticism, it dents Modi’s image and he must look to change course.

Neelanjan Sircar
Centre for Policy Research

“Yet, when we look at some of the notable attempts to use executive power in this manner, we do not find a lot of successes,” he added.
“Whether [it’s] land use changes, modifications to India’s citizenship rules or agricultural reforms, the government has been forced to either stall or reverse its proposed policies,” Sircar said. “When the government is unable to stanch protest and criticism, it dents Modi’s image and he must look to change course.”

High-stakes state polls

These policy missteps couldn’t come at a worse time for the prime minister as India heads to the polls in several key states in February and March.
Local elections in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur will be a crucial indicator of public sentiment ahead of the 2024 general elections. Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) controls four of the five states.
“The upcoming elections in Uttar Pradesh will be a key test for his popularity — whether or not people are growing disenchanted with his governing style,” said Bery.
“In some parts of the state, yes, he will be a drag — especially in western [Uttar Pradesh] where there is a strong farming constituency. These farmers are fairly opposed to the government due to the farm laws,” he added.

Still, Modi remains India’s most popular leader. According to the data intelligence agency Morning Consult, his popularity is still the highest among the world leaders they track, and he maintains a strong base of support in India.

Criticism over Covid handling

But the prime minister’s popularity was eroded last year as India battled a deadly second Covid-19 wave.
According to India Today’s “Mood of the Nation” survey released in August, only 24% of respondents felt Modi was the best choice for the next prime minister at that time. It was a sharp decline from 38% in January 2021.
A key reason for the drop in ratings was the way he handled the Covid crisis and related economic concerns, such as surging inflation and rising unemployment.
Modi was widely criticized for his extensive campaigns and for holding large rallies while India was in the middle of the delta outbreak, which took a devastating toll on its public health system.

Undoubtedly, he can make a comeback. From 2001 to date, Modi has constantly reinvented himself…

Milan Vaishnav
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Carefully crafted persona

Despite his current political problems, Modi is a highly skillful politician who is good at reinventing himself to protect his carefully crafted persona, said Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow and director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“Undoubtedly, he can make a comeback. From 2001 to date, Modi has constantly reinvented himself — from Hindu strongman to CEO prime minister. One does not necessarily know what his next avatar is. But he has stayed a step ahead of the opposition at every turn,” Vaishnav noted.
Another factor working to Modi’s advantage is India’s divided opposition, which has failed to capitalize on the prime minister’s political stumbles.
“The Congress party certainly seems to be in the doldrums at a national level,” said Sircar from the Centre for Policy Research. “The rise of ‘third parties’ in India on the national scene … is a symptom of the problem. It is unclear whether the opposition can put up much of a fight in electoral terms, whether unified or not.”

Hardline tone will remain

One thing seems clear, however. Modi is unlikely to moderate his hardline approach in the run-up to the state elections. This is evident in the current tone and tenor of the campaign so far, political analysts say.  
“The governance style Modi has adopted in Delhi has been honed after a dozen years in Gujarat and seems intrinsic to who he is as a person and a leader. Coalition-building and diffusing power are simply not compatible with his style,” Vaishav said.

What recent events in India show is that political leaders in India can be defeated, even if they are personally very popular.

Neelanjan Sircar
Centre for Policy Research

The one thing “we’ve learned from Indian politics is that political actors — whether Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi or Mamata Banerjee, rarely change their governing and organizational tactics,” said Sircar, adding the prime minister will not abandon his hardline tactics in order to limit the political damage to his image.
This is mainly because, he argued, Modi’s populist persona isn’t built on his ability to enact policy, saying his record is “poor” on that front. Rather, it stems from projecting “an image of a person in whom the population places its faith,” said Sircar.
“What recent events in India show is that political leaders in India can be defeated, even if they are personally very popular,” he added.

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CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Tuesday he believes Airbnb will be a successful long-term investment, making the stock’s recent weakness a potential buying opportunity for fellow company bulls.
“I think this is one of those infants that’s been thrown out with the growth-stock bathwater,” the “Mad Money” host said.
He recommended interested investors buy the stock at set intervals, with bigger purchases the further shares fall.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Tuesday he believes Airbnb will be a successful long-term investment, making the stock’s recent weakness a potential buying opportunity for fellow company bulls.
“I think this is one of those infants that’s been thrown out with the growth-stock bathwater,” the “Mad Money” host said, referring to Airbnb’s steep decline since mid-November as many high-growth technology stocks fell out of favor on Wall Street.

“While Airbnb gets grouped with the recent IPOs because it came public 13 months ago … this thing is actually profitable. That makes a huge difference in a market that suddenly cares about earnings at all costs,” Cramer said.
Still, Airbnb shares are down about 27% from their highs, Cramer acknowledged.
“Maybe it goes down 30%. Hey, maybe it goes down 40%. Stage your buys, get bigger as it goes down like we do in the [CNBC Investing Club],” he said. “I think this is a fabulous long-term winner that can beat Wall Street’s earnings estimates, and as they deliver those better-than-expected numbers, the stock should be able to make a major comeback.”
The coronavirus pandemic has challenged many companies in the travel industry and did once again with the spread of the Covid omicron variant. Cramer said he expects Covid cases in the U.S. to decline soon, providing a boon for Airbnb and the entire travel complex.
“But even if I’m wrong and we keep getting hit with worse variants, I still feel pretty good about Airbnb’s prospects,” Cramer said, contending that some people view Airbnb as a safer way to travel during Covid since they can stay in a rented house that’s completely theirs. “That’s why I’m not particularly worried about omicron crushing Airbnb’s numbers right now.”

Plus, Cramer said he thinks that many people who turned to Airbnb for the first time during the Covid crisis will keep using the home-rental platform for future trips. The rise of remote work is another tailwind for the company, he said.
“Look, you don’t know when a growth stock will stop going down, but if it’s profitable like Airbnb then it gets cheaper as it goes lower, which means you can justify buying it on the way down,” Cramer said.
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It’s that time again! “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer rings the lightning round bell, which means he’s giving his answers to callers’ stock questions at rapid speed.

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Covetrus: “I want you to do that. I actually think this group is so oversold. You know we had Zoetis on last week. I think animal health is here to stay. I don’t know if you saw Petco, how bad it’s doing. But that that’s got a bad balance sheet. I like your company because I like prescription management and pets.”

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Veeva Systems: “They have decided that Veeva has never done anything right, and yet it’s consistently done things right. But it is at 56 times earnings. You’re going to have to give it some berth. That means it’s going to be able to still go down a little before it gets cheap, and we want cheap.”

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T-Mobile: “I think [CEO] Mike Sievert is a winner. If I had to start a position in T-Mobile, I probably would start some right here. It does sell at a high multiple, but it’s making a ton of money.”

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Wheels Up: “I like [CEO] Kenny Dichter very much, but I am not recommending SPACs unless they’re making money. Last I looked that one is not making a lot of money, and that’s the problem.”
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Enrollment in Obamacare health insurance plans has hit a record high this season, a clear policy victory for President Joe Biden in his first full year in office.
Open enrollment ended Saturday on Healthcare.gov — the federal government insurance plan marketplace that serves 33 states — and on most of the other states’ Affordable Care Act government-run exchanges.
The official final enrollment number has yet to be tallied. But federal health officials noted that even before the deadline, a whopping 14.2 million people nationally had signed up for coverage.

Many poorer states, especially in the South, have always had higher rates of obesity and smoking than states in the Northeast and on the West Coast. Here, a doctor listens to a patient’s heartbeat in Jackson, Kentucky.
Luke Sharrett | The Washington Post | Getty Images

What a difference a new president makes.
Enrollment in Obamacare health insurance plans has hit a record high this season, a clear, if rare, policy victory for President Joe Biden in his first full year in office.

The big surge came amid boosted financial assistance for enrollments, a wider window for sign-ups, the continuing health effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has claimed the lives of more than 850,000 Americans, and the touting of the health-care reform law by the president.
The good news for Biden comes after the president has seen plummeting approval ratings, the stalling of his $1.75 trillion Build Back Better bill in Congress, and a loss at the Supreme Court for his Covid vaccine mandate for large employers.
Open enrollment ended Saturday on Healthcare.gov — the federal government insurance plan marketplace that serves 33 states — and on most of the other states’ Affordable Care Act government-run exchanges.
The official final enrollment number has yet to be tallied. But on Thursday, federal health officials noted that even before the deadline, a whopping 14.2 million people nationally had signed up for coverage in the private insurance plans sold on the government-run Obamacare exchanges.
That tally represents an enrollment increase of well more than 20% from the same period last year.

It blew away the previous record for enrollment, more than 12.6 million, which occurred in 2016, the last full year President Barack Obama was in office. Obama won passage of the Affordable Care Act by Congress early in his first term and embraced the nickname Obamacare, which its detractors long have used with derision.
“People across America can buy high quality health insurance for historically low prices, thanks to the American Rescue Plan and the Affordable Care Act,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said Thursday in a statement touting the high enrollment levels.
“The Biden-Harris Administration will continue to build on the success of these important laws to ensure health care is accessible to everyone who needs it,” Becerra said.
Charles Gaba, who operates the Obamacare enrollment news site ACASignups.net, said the enrollment tally is “definitely a win for Biden.”
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s a very big deal,” Gaba said. “You have millions more people who have coverage, and a good 10 million or so that have it much more affordable for them.”
Gaba also said that a number of health insurance carriers have returned to offering individual plans on Obamacare exchanges after some of them pulled back their offerings during the administration of President Donald Trump.
Experts chalk up the dramatic upswing in enrollment to several key factors, all but one of which directly stem from Biden defeating Trump more than a year ago.
“The federal government’s posture toward the ACA shifted seismically with the 2020 election,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leading health-care research nonprofit organization.
Trump early in his term had pushed for the then-Republican-led Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
His administration also took steps to undercut outreach efforts that had boosted enrollment in past years and shortened the time people had to sign up for coverage.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., dramatically blocked the repeal of the ACA with a thumbs-down gesture on the floor of the Senate that continues to anger Trump years after McCain’s death.
Enrollment in plans sold on the ACA exchanges never fell below 11 million, even as Trump continued bad-mouthing the program.
“ACA enrollment declined under Trump, but the program hardly collapsed,” Levitt said. “The ACA defied every effort by the Trump administration to kill it — the Trump administration and Congress.”
Levitt also said that although Obamacare was “weakened” under Trump, Biden nonetheless had a “platform to build on it” due to the millions of people who had continued signing up for health coverage through the program.
Biden, who was Obama’s vice president when the ACA became law, won the 2020 presidential election while promising to reverse the damage he said Trump had done to it.
Levitt said that Obamacare enrollment under Biden grew in part because “finally you have a president who is trumpeting the ACA rather than trashing it.”
Biden wasn’t just touting the program, though. He reversed cuts Trump made to the ACA “navigator” program, which helps potential enrollees evaluate often-complicated insurance options given their health needs and finances, Levitt noted.
The Biden administration also worked to make it more financially attractive to would-be enrollees.
Biden’s Covid relief bill, the American Rescue Plan, “dramatically expands the financial subsidies” available to help Obamacare enrollees purchase private insurance plans on ACA exchanges “both in terms of those eligible and how much they receive,” Gaba noted.
An estimated 2 million more people became eligible to purchase Obamacare plans at low cost because of the ARP.
The law also eliminated the cap that zeroed out subsidies for Obamacare plans for households that earned more than four times the federal poverty level.
The financial aid available under the ARP will expire at the end of this year. But the aid could continue if Congress passes it as part of Biden’s Build Back Better Act or as stand-alone legislation.
Gaba and Levitt cited another step taken by Biden that has bolstered enrollment this year: the opening of a special enrollment period for Obamacare plans from last Feb. 15 through last May 15, in recognition of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Gaba noted that there were “2.8 million additional sign-ups for that” last year, “during what would normally be the off-season.”
“So right out of the game, there was already a big chunk of people who had been baked into the system with additional enrollment” when the open enrollment season for 2022 coverage began this fall, Gaba said.
And this season, the Biden administration “bumped out their final deadline” for open enrollment “by an additional month,” making it more likely that people will sign up, he said.
Gaba expects a total of 14.5 million people to be signed up for 2022 Obamacare plans by the final deadlines for open enrollment.
And he noted that that tally will not include the more than 1 million people who will have insurance coverage under so-called Basic Health Plans that effectively mirror ACA coverage.
Another big factor Gaba cited as boosting enrollment is one that was out of Biden’s control.

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“You’ve got Covid. You’ve got this ongoing pandemic, which has made a lot of people aware of, ‘Oh, yeah, health care,'” Gaba said.
Although Healthcare.gov, the federal marketplace, ended open enrollment on Saturday, eight states and the District of Columbia are continuing to enroll people in plans through their own exchanges.
Five of those states, which include the larger ones of California and New York, close enrollment at the end of January. Colorado’s enrollment for people who are not currently covered is extended through March 15.
Levitt, of KFF, said the coronavirus pandemic also played a big role in driving enrollment in Medicaid, the program jointly administered by federal and state governments to provide health coverage to predominantly low-income people.
The Obamacare law, while often drawing attention for its expansion of private insurance coverage to Americans, also expanded the number of people eligible for Medicaid. All but 12 states have accepted federal funding to expand their Medicaid programs to more people under the ACA.
“Medicaid enrollment is up dramatically” since the pandemic began in early 2020 and has continued rising under the Biden administration, Levitt noted.
Medicaid enrollment, the stronger-than-ever enrollment in private insurance plans sold on Obamacare exchanges, and Covid could make it even more difficult for Republicans to get rid of the ACA the next time they control the White House or Congress.
“I think the more people who depend on the ACA, the more people are focused on health care as a result of the pandemic … makes it even harder to consider repealing” Obamacare, Levitt said. “I think Republicans were burned by their effort to repeal the ACA. I think many of them don’t have a taste for retrying.”

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CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Tuesday he feels Wall Street’s reaction to Goldman Sachs’ fourth-quarter earnings miss was overblown.
“Right now you can get this stock for $70 less than where it was two and a half months ago. I think it’s a steal,” the “Mad Money” host said.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Tuesday he feels Wall Street’s reaction to Goldman Sachs’ fourth-quarter earnings miss was overblown, creating a buying opportunity for investors.
“Go ahead, wait until Morgan Stanley disappoints tomorrow. … or, I don’t know, the Bailey Building and Loan; wait until that collapses,” the “Mad Money” host said, referring to the bank in the fictional movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

“Or, you could take my approach and consider that Goldman Sachs is a place where it’s almost impossible to get a job, a place that offers terrific proprietary advice that corporations have always paid a premium for … and right now you can get this stock for $70 less than where it was two and a half months ago,” Cramer continued. “I think it’s a steal.”
Shares of Goldman Sachs fell 7% on Tuesday, closing at $354.40 apiece. It notched an all-time high of $426.16 on Nov. 2.
While the investment bank faced a jump in operating expenses and a slowdown in equities trading revenue in its Q4, Cramer said Goldman Sachs had record full-year results for a number of metrics including net revenue and earnings. It also saw record consumer and wealth management revenues, noted Cramer, who began his Wall Street career at Goldman Sachs about four decades ago.

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“If you regard investing as owning companies, then right now what you’re seeing is Goldman Sachs, the premier investment bank, selling at a little less than six times last year’s earnings, because it allegedly can’t repeat the great year it just reported,” Cramer said.
However, Cramer said he disagrees with that skepticism because “that’s what the bears say every year and and they could be wrong again.”

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