The world’s richest nations are making a huge Covid mistake

Covid Will Keep Spawning Variants Till the World Is Immune — David FicklingThere’s a grim inevitability to the fact that the latest concerni [Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( [Covid Will Keep Spawning Variants Till the World Is Immune]( — David Fickling There’s a grim inevitability to the fact that the latest concerning strain of the Covid-19 virus — known as B.1.1.529, and now nicknamed the Omicron variant — should have been first identified in South Africa. So far, SARS-CoV-2’s most devastating impacts have been in developed countries. The U.S., U.K. and European Union have accounted for about a third of deaths, compared to their roughly 10% share of the world’s population. However, it’s been in the BRICS grouping of [fast-growing middle-income nations]( where an outsized share of new variants of concern have been isolated and analyzed for the first time. From the original strain in China, to the Delta lineage picked up in India, the Gamma variety isolated in Brazil, and now the Beta and Omicron strains from South Africa, only the U.K.-related Alpha variant has emerged outside these countries. In part, that’s just a reflection of the fact that 2 out of 5 people on the planet live in one of the BRICS nations. At this point, though, the crucial factor may be the fact that richer countries are now mostly so heavily vaccinated that the opportunities for the virus to cook up new mutations are increasingly limited. The nations with the largest populations of unvaccinated and susceptible citizens are those where the odds are greatest that SARS-CoV-2 will find a new way of breaking through the barriers we’ve placed in its path. Read the [whole thing](. [For Best Buy, the Worst Is Yet to Come]( — Tae Kim [Even in a Labor Shortage, You Can’t ‘Just Go Get a Job’]( — Erin Lowry [China Is Closing Another Major Bridge to Taiwan]( — Tim Culpan [Are You Rich Yet? That’s a Ridiculous Question.]( — Allison Schrager [China’s Tennis Mess Is an Unforced Soft Power Error]( — Clara Ferreira Marques [Alibaba's Index of Pain Is a Lesson in Timing]( — Matthew Brooker [Biden’s Inflation Pitch Doesn’t Pass the Laugh Test]( — Ramesh Ponnuru [Credit Markets Are Full of Alarms and No One Cares]( — Brian Chappatta [Be Careful With Volcano Bonds]( — Matt Levine This is the Weekend Edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a roundup of the most popular stories Bloomberg Opinion published this week based on web readership. Like Bloomberg Opinion Today? [Subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more](. You’ll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Bloomberg Opinion Today newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Bloomberg.com]( | [Contact Us]( [Ads Powered By Liveintent]( | [Ad Choices]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022