Originally published by our State Street Global Markets colleague, Marvin Loh
Source: State Street Global Markets, MKT MediaStats
Quick out of the gates: We know what we don’t know and it’s clear that we remain at the very early stages of understanding the threat that Omicron poses to global mobility and economic growth. Investors of course do not have the luxury of waiting for the final word from scientists and have traded around the initial worrying signs that Omicron may be more transmissible as well as more vaccine resistant. The uncertainty has nonetheless resulted in a rapid repricing of risk last Friday, only to have much of that initial risk-off move reverse on Monday. Of note is that Media has also aggressively picked up the Omicron story, which easily exceeds the initial coverage of the Delta variant. Using the WHO’s Virus of Concern announcement as date zero, we can see significantly higher coverage for Omicron relative to the Delta variant, which took 70 days to reach comparable intensity levels .