Table Of ContentThe struggle for chip supremacy
Alexei Navalny’s courage
Virus v jab: the vaccination race
A special report on Chinese youth
JANUARY23RD–29TH2021
Morning after
in America
Contents The EconomistJanuary23rd2021 3
The world this week United States
5 Asummary of political 19 Schools and covid-19
andbusinessnews
20 Education and race
21 Avaccine success story
Leaders
22 Pennsylvania politics
7 The Biden presidency
22 The bankrupt NRA
Morning after in America
23 The executions bump
8 Technology
Betting all the chips 24 LexingtonJoe Biden’s
foreignpolicy
9 Vaccination
Amarathon ahead
The Americas
9 Russia
PresentingPutin’spalace 25 Canada’s care-home crisis
10 Ethiopia’scivilwar 26 Misery in Manaus
On the cover
Thehungerweapon
The 46th president takes office
at a grim time. Things could
Letters
soon look up: leader,page 7.
14 Onvaccination,
Joe Biden sets out to restore
primaries,bannock,
American leadership with an
malaria,Malawi, Asia
old team in a new world:
conversation,potatoes 27 Asia’s vaccine drive
Lexington, page 24. What does
the new president hope to 28 Afghan assassinations
Briefing
achieve?Briefing,page15 29 Vietnam’s party congress
15 The46thpresidency
•The struggle for chip 29 An anime smash hit
Goodluck,Joe
supremacyGeopolitical rivalry
30 Banyan Mongolia and
in semiconductors enters a new
covid-19
Specialreport:
and dangerous phase: leader,
Chineseyouth
page 8. The global chip industry
China
is becoming at once more Childrenofthe
diverse and more concentrated, revolution 31 Calling it “genocide”
page 49 Afterpage38 32 Twitter tames the wolves
33 ChaguanMixed signals
•Virus v jabAs governments
from a century-old party
sprint to get people vaccinated,
they need to keep an eye on
what comes next: leader,page 9.
How quickly can jabs make a
difference? Israel has some Middle East & Africa
answers, page 62. History 34 Hunger in Ethiopia
suggests inoculation is hard:
35 Congo’s coltan smugglers
graphic detail, page 73. Why
36 Equatorial Guinea
Boris Johnson needs a successful
vaccination drive, page 44. Asian 36 Qatar’s and Turkey’s bond
governments are hampering 37 Not-so-Shia Iran
their efforts with extraneous
38 Anger erupts in Tunisia
agenda, page 27
38 Sexy cupcakes in Egypt
BartlebyThe secrets
of successful listening,
page 51
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1 Contents continues overleaf
4 Contents The EconomistJanuary23rd2021
Europe Finance & economics
39 Alexei Navalny returns 55 Will America overheat?
40 Armin Laschet, CDU chief 56 Bottlenecks and inflation
41 Closed Skies 57 Earnings on Wall Street
42 The Dutch welfare state 57 China’s north-south gap
42 Poland’s clever clams 58 Cross-border crime
43 CharlemagneEurope’s 60 Buttonwood Property
vaccinerace investment
61 Free exchange
Britain Downturnsandpolitics
44 Vaccination politics
45 The spread of sheds Science & technology
46 BagehotThe politics of 62 Vaccines roll out
the ordinary 63 Chinese covid-19 vaccines
64 Godzilla the rotifer
65 Making oxygen
65 Town and country mice
International
47 Messaging services
Books & arts
66 China’s hidden crisis
67 America and Iran
68 Protest art in Paris
69 Patricia Highsmith at 100
Business
49 Chipmaking’s architecture
51 Bartleby How to listen Economic & financial indicators
52 Tesla bulls… 72 Statisticson42economies
52 …and bears
Graphic detail
53 The MBA class of covid-19
73 Abriefhistoryofvaccination
54 Schumpeter Sberbank’s
second pirouette
Obituary
74 Katharine Whitehorn and Mahinder Watsa, pre-eminent
dispensers of common sense
Volume438 Number9229
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The world this week Politics The EconomistJanuary23rd2021 5
in Xinjiang. It is highly unusu- lockdown to stop the spread of
al for the State Department to covid-19. Some of those in- Coronavirusbriefs
use that word about atrocities volved threw petrol bombs and To 6am GMT January 21st 2021
that do not involve mass kill- looted shops. More than 600
Weekly confirmed deaths by area, ’000
ing. China dismissed his “out- people were arrested.
rageous lies” and called on the 30
new administration to be Yoweri Museveni was declared Western Other
Europe
“cool-minded”. Mr Pompeo’s the winner of a presidential 20
successor, Antony Blinken, election in Uganda. He has US
10
said he agreed with Mr Pom- been president since 1986. Bobi
Latin
peo’s assessment. Wine, the main opposition
America
0
candidate, is under house
2020 2021
Joe Bidenwas inaugurated as Alexei Navalny, Russia’smost arrest. Security forces shot and
Vaccinationdoses
the 46th president of the prominent opposition leader, killed scores of people after
Total Per100
United States. Despite the returned to Moscow after protests in November. This week, ’000 ’000 people
small crowds, limited in size spending five months in Ger- Israel 651 2,937 33.93
because of covid-19, the event many recovering from an Aid workers warned of mass UAE 757 2,161 21.85
marked a sea change in politi- attempt on his life using Novi- starvation in Ethiopia’snorth- Bahrain 45 144 8.44
Britain 1,744 5,070 7.47
cal tone. Mr Biden stressed chok, a nerve agent. He was ern region of Tigray. Little food
Seychelles 4 7 7.12
“unity” in his speech, a stark immediately arrested and has been allowed in since
United States 5,641 15,708 4.75
contrast to Donald Trump’s jailed. His team released a fighting broke out in Novem-
Malta 7 14 3.23
“America First” theme four video showing viewers around ber between the federal gov-
Denmark 52 182 3.14
years ago. Mr Biden’s first a vast secret palace that he says ernment and forces loyal to a
Lithuania 26 60 2.22
official orders overturned President Vladimir Putin regional party. Some say the Spain 480 1,026 2.19
many of his predecessor’s acquired with the “world’s government is trying to starve
Sources: Johns Hopkins University CSSE;
edicts, such as the ban on largest bribe”. Mr Navalny the rebels into submission.
Our World in Data; The Economist
travel from some Muslim called for countrywide protests
countries, and committed on January 23rd. A former civil servant in Thai- Theglobaldeathtollfrom
America to rejoin the Paris landwas sentenced to 43 years covid-19 passed 2m, three
accord on climate change. Armin Laschet, the premier of in prison for sharing material months after it hit 1m.
North Rhine-Westphalia, the critical of the monarchy on-
In his final hours as president most populous German state, line. The sentence would have The Indiangovernment
Donald Trumpissued a flurry was chosen by a party congress been 87 years, but was halved launched a vaccination drive
of pardons. Among those on to become the new leader of because she pleaded guilty. with the aim of giving 300m
the list were Steve Bannon, a Germany’sChristian Demo- people an injection by August.
nationalist former adviser, and crats. This puts him in pole An earthquake struck the Most Indians are hesitant
Anthony Levandowski, who position to succeed Angela island of Sulawesi in Indone- about getting the jab.
had been convicted of stealing Merkel as chancellor later this sia. More than 80 people were
trade secrets from Google’s year, though there are many killed and 40,000 displaced. The Netherlandssought to
self-driving car project. Mitch obstacles ahead. introduce a curfew, its first
McConnell, the top Republican InGuatemalasoldiers and since the second world war. It
in the Senate, shifted his earli- Italy’sgovernment was cast police blocked 7,000 people was complicated by the resig-
er position and said that Mr into confusion after the prime trying to head from Honduras nation of the entire cabinet
Trump had “provoked” the minister, Giuseppe Conte, to America. Security forces over a scandal involving
mob that stormed Congress narrowly won a key vote that used tear gas and truncheons parents falsely accused of
recently, leaving five people demonstrated he no longer has to stop the caravan, the first welfare fraud.
dead. Mr Trump still faces an a majority in the Senate. He large one to form since January
impeachment trial in the will hope to avoid an election, last year. A few migrants man- Joe Biden decided to keep a
Senate. If convicted, he may be and will try to carry on leading aged to reach Guatemala’s travel banon most countries
barred from running for presi- a minority government. border with Mexico. in the euand Britain in place,
dent again. after Donald Trump tried to
The Palestinianpresident, Mexico’sgovernment dropped loosen the rules as one of his
The National Rifle Associa- Mahmoud Abbas, announced its investigation of Salvador last acts as president.
tion, America’s powerful that parliamentary and presi- Cienfuegos, a former defence
pro-gun group, declared bank- dential elections would be held minister. America arrested Mr Britainwas one of several
ruptcy and said it would move in May and July. It has been 15 Cienfuegos in Los Angeles in countries to tighten border
its non-profit base from New years since the Palestinians October but sent him home on restrictions, suspending all
York to Texas. At an initial voted in a national election. the understanding that Mexico travel corridors with coun-
bankruptcy-court hearing, Some see the move as an effort would investigate allegations tries with which it had recip-
New York state’s attorney- by Mr Abbas to lift his standing that he had links to a drug- rocal entry arrangements.
general said the nrawas trying with the Biden administration. trafficking gang. Mexico’s
to derail a fraud investigation. president, Andrés Manuel
Police and protesters clashed López Obrador, claimed that For our latest coverage of the
The outgoing secretary of state, in several Tunisiancities, as the American government had virus please visit economist.com/
Mike Pompeo, said China was frustration over a poor econ- “fabricated” the case. Ameri- coronavirus or download the
committing “genocide” against omy boiled over. The unrest ca’s Department of Justice said Economist app.
the ethnic-Uyghur population came amid a four-day national it was “deeply disappointed”.
6 The world this week Business The EconomistJanuary23rd2021
Janet Yellen, Joe Biden’s pick as conglomerate’s plan to re- numbershaveplummetedby mous-car startup, will be
treasury secretary, urged sena- organise its business, which is 95%sinceMarch.TheBritish plugged in to Microsoft’s Azure
tors to pass the new president’s expected to include selling off governmentsolditsstakein cloud-computing platform.
$1.9trn stimuluspackage, non-core divisions to raise 2015.Eurostarismajority
saying there should be no cash so that the Lee family can ownedbysncf,theFrench Netflixadded another 8.5m
compromise in helping people pay a $10bn tax bill. state-ownedrailwaycompany. subscribers in the final months
who are struggling through the of last year, taking the total to
pandemic. The measures have almost 204m. The video-
run into stiff opposition from China’s GDP Cash-strapped, not cashless streaming service said it no
% increase on a year earlier
Republicans, even among London’s transport longer required external
moderates, who balk at adding 8 authority,tfl, abandoned financing to fund day-to-day
more stimulus to December’s 6 plans to make payments on the operations and was looking at
$935bn package. Mr Biden’s network completely cashless, buying back stock. Its share
4
plan should easily clear the after an experiment prompted price soared by 17%.
House. The Democrats also 2 by covid concerns last summer
control the Senate, but may was criticised by the official
0
have to deploy a legislative watchdog. Covid is causing After a period of reflection…
2014 15 16 17 18 19 20
tactic to get the bill through. problems in other ways. tfl’s Jack Masurfaced in public for
Source:HaverAnalytics
finances are floundering as the first time since Chinese
Filling out his nominees to China’seconomyroaredback passengers avoid travel, and regulators scotched the ipoof
head America’s regulatory in the last three months of the mayor is reluctant to in- his Ant Group and announced
agencies, Mr Biden chose 2020, growing by 6.5% com- crease fares. Despite securing a an antitrust investigation that
Rohit Choprato be director of pared with the same quarter of £1.8bn ($2.5bn) bail-out last in effect targets his business
the Consumer Financial Pro- 2019. For the year as a whole, year, tfl’s financial plans interests. According to state-
tection Bureau. Mr Chopra is a gdpexpanded by 2.3%. Few recently submitted to the backedtv, the founder of
staunch ally of Senator Eliza- other economies are expected government forecast more Alibaba said that after “study-
beth Warren, who helped set to register positive growth. The than £3bn in shortfalls in each ing and thinking” he and his
up the cfpbin the wake of the fourth-quarter revival was of the next two years. colleagues are “more deter-
financial crisis a decade ago. helped by a surge in exports mined to devote ourselves to
Along with other Biden ap- and state-backed industrial United Airlinessaid it would education and public welfare”.
pointments, the nomination of production. China recorded its need to make further cost-
Mr Chopra suggests that Wall biggest-ever trade surplus in cutting measures, after the rate After a failed attempt last May,
Street will face tougher scruti- December. at which it was burning cash to Virgin Orbitat last put its first
ny in the new administration. keep flying during the pan- satellites in space. The com-
Supported by a group of British demic rose sharply. Its annual pany launched the payload on
One of Mr Biden’s first orders business leaders, Eurostar loss last year was $7.1bn. a rocket that is carried under
as president was to kill the reiterated its request to the the wing of an old Virgin
Keystonexloil pipeline, a British government for a bail- General Motorsannounced a Atlantic 747 plane, making it
project to carry crude from out. Operating trains through partnership with Microsoftin theoretically possible to send
Canada to Nebraska that has the tunnel linking Britain and which vehicles being devel- satellites into space from
been delayed for years because France, Eurostar’s passenger oped by Cruise, its autono- anywhere in the world.
of opposition from greens and
Native Americans. The
decision is a blow to Alberta’s
oil industry, which will lose
thousands of jobs as a result.
Seemingly unfazed by the
pandemic, America’s big
banksreported another solid
round of earnings. JPMorgan
Chase posted its highest ever
quarterly net profit, $12.1bn.
Like its peers, the bank benefit-
ed from trading in booming
stockmarkets. Morgan Stan-
ley’s fourth-quarter profit of
$3.4bn was a record for the
bank. Profit at Goldman Sachs
for the quarter came in at
$4.5bn, up 135% year on year.
Lee Jae-yong, the boss of Sam-
sung, was sent back to prison
following his retrial for brib-
ery. Mr Lee’s incarceration
complicates the South Korean
Leaders Leaders 7
Morning after in America
The 46th president takes office at a grim time. Things could soon look up
Joe bidenhas been dreamingofmovingintotheWhiteHouse for the rule of law and racial equality—which at another time
since at least 1987, when he first ran for president. How those might have sounded like platitudes.
dreams must have differed from the reality this week. The offi- This will help lower the temperature of American politics,
cial toll of American deaths from covid-19 has passed 400,000. which could open other possibilities. By working with Republi-
By the end of his first 100 days it may have passed 500,000. Mil- cans eager for Congress to get things done, Mr Biden may yet be
lions of Americans have lost their jobs. Instead of observing the able to pass an infrastructure bill and something on climate
triumph of democracy in eastern Europe from the Oval Office, as change, as well as his covid-19 package. In textbooks, democracy
the victor of the election in 1988 did, Mr Biden must contend with involves solving problems through compromise and managing
democratic decay at home. It is not an auspicious start. Yet, un- conflict in elections. With a president inclined to build a co-
likely as it sounds, in the next few months the view from 1600 alition, a little of that spirit might return to Washington. Voters
Pennsylvania Avenue could improve dramatically. may even prefer it to 24-hour partisan warfare.
Mending America starts with getting the virus under control. That is what needs to happen. America faces challenges that
Vaccinating the population will be a formidable operation that require the government to help, not just get out of the way. Amer-
will test the ability of federal, state and local bureaucracies to co- ica has done a worse job of keeping schools open in the past year
operate. A slick campaign of the type the federal government than any other rich country (see United States section). Enrol-
masterminded to eradicate polio would save many lives. Yet ments have fallen, suggesting that many children have dropped
even an imperfect vaccination programme will make a huge dif- out of education. Higher death rates for African-Americans and
ference by the time spring turns into summer. Warmer weather, Hispanics are a reminder that health is linked to skin colour.
and hence longer spent outdoors, will help too. Covid-19 spreads Four years of Donald Trump have hollowed out institutions and
exponentially. But once the number of people each person in- weakened constraints on malfeasance. His parting act was to
fects falls below one, it also dissipates exponentially. pardon a doctor convicted of profiting from carrying out unnec-
This in turn will help America’s economic recovery. Though essary eye treatment on hundreds of elderly patients. He re-
the labour market is about as depressed as it was when Mr Biden scinded his own executive order which would have stopped his
was sworn in as Barack Obama’s vice-president administration’s officials working as lobbyists.
in the teeth of the financial crisis, this downturn The past four years have also created a prob-
is very different. Real disposable income proba- lem for America abroad. At the back of their
bly rose at its fastest rate for two decades in minds, foreign leaders know that the forces
2020, a measure of the huge stimulus pumped which brought Mr Trump to office could return
into the economy by the federal government. with a future president, so any agreements
The banking system looks sound. And the eco- American diplomats make risk seeming tempo-
nomic pain is not widespread, but concentrated rary. Mr Biden’s foreign policy will also require a
among workers in businesses that depend on series of impossibly hard trade-offs. His team
cramming lots of people into confined spaces. Many of them will needs the co-operation of the Russian government to sign an ex-
find their services in demand again from Americans once they tension of the New starttreaty on nuclear weapons, which ex-
emerge from a year of hibernation. pires on February 5th. Yet that same government has just locked
Taking advantage of how the federal government can borrow up Russia’s most prominent opposition politician, Alexei Na-
at virtually no cost, Mr Biden’s team is set on another $1.9trn fis- valny, after first attempting to kill him (see Leader). They need
cal stimulus, bringing the total budget support since the pan- China’s co-operation on climate change, even though China is
demic hit to 27% of pre-crisis gdp. He may not be able to get that engaged in what the outgoing administration has just labelled as
past the Senate, nor is it clear the economy needs all of it (see Fi- “genocide” against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
nance & economics section). But even a trimmed-down version
of the Biden opening bid—more money for vaccine distribution, Tricky corners in the Oval Office
extending unemployment insurance and expanding child tax A lot could go wrong. Senate Republicans may oppose everything
credits—would have big effects. The tax-credit change alone Mr Biden suggests simply because he is a Democrat. The left of
could halve child poverty (see Briefing). his party may turn sour on him for trying to make deals with Re-
As for the political crisis that required 25,000 troops on the publicans. Politics has been simple during the Trump adminis-
street at Mr Biden’s inauguration, its causes will not soon fade. tration, which more often governed by inflaming partisan fights
The Republican Party that became organised around a principle than fixing America’s problems. Engaging with reality is much
of loyalty to a man who has no loyalty to anything apart from harder—especially when you are buffeted by events.
himself, a dangerous coddling of racist factions and the rise of al- To have the best chance of success, Mr Biden should stick to
ternative facts: all were decades in the making. But the fbi is his folksy brand of dogged centrism which is so well suited to the
watching threats from domestic terrorism. The former president moment. Western allies should be patient and not expect a mi-
is just a citizen who might run for office again in 2024, assuming raculous overnight transformation. The return of restraint to the
Congress does not bar him from doing so after his impeachment White House will be only the first step in a long journey, but it is a
trial. And Mr Biden at his inauguration declared his clear support necessary one for America’s renewal.7
8 Leaders The EconomistJanuary23rd2021
Technology and geopolitics
Betting all the chips
The geopolitical struggle for supremacy in chips is entering a new and dangerous phase
When microchips were invented in1958, the first signifi- it: Samsung in South Korea and tsmc in Taiwan. tsmc has just
cant market for them was inside nuclear missiles. Today announced one of the largest investment budgets of any private
about a trillion chips are made a year, or 128 for every person on firm on the planet. An array of corporate A-listers from Apple and
the planet. Ever more devices and machines contain ever more Amazon to Toyota and Tesla rely on this duo of chipmakers.
semiconductors: an electric car can have over 3,000 of them. The other big industry rupture is taking place in China. As
New types of computation are booming, including artificial in- America has lost ground in making chips, it has sought to ensure
telligence and data-crunching. Demand will soar further as more that China lags behind, too. The American tech embargo began
industrial machines are connected and fitted with sensors. as a narrow effort against Huawei over national security, but
For decades a vast network of chip firms has co-operated and bans and restrictions now affect at least 60 firms, including
competed to meet this growing demand; today they crank out many involved in chips. smic, China’s chip champion, has just
$450bn of annual sales. No other industry has the same mix of been put on a blacklist, as has Xiaomi, a smartphone firm. The
hard science, brutal capital intensity and complexity. Its broader cumulative effect of these measures is starting to bite. In the last
impact is huge, too. When the supply chain misfires, economic quarter of 2020 tsmc’s sales to Chinese clients dropped by 72%.
activity can grind to a halt. This month a temporary shortage of In response, China is shifting its state-capitalist machine
chips has stopped car production-lines around the world. into its highest gear in order to become self-sufficient in chips
And no other industry is as explosive. For several years Amer- faster. Although chips have featured in government plans since
ica has enforced an intensifying embargo on China, which im- the 1950s it is still five to ten years behind. A $100bn-plus subsidy
ports over $300bn-worth of chips a year because it lacks the kitty is being spent freely: last year over 50,000 firms registered
manufacturing capability to meet its own needs. Fresh strains in that their business was related to chips—and thus eligible. Top
the chip industry are forcing the geopolitical fault-lines further universities have beefed up their chip programmes. If the era of
apart. America is falling behind in manufacturing, production is advanced chips being made in America may be drawing to a
being concentrated in East Asia, and China is seeking self-suffi- close, the age of their manufacture in China could be beginning.
ciency (see Business section). In the 20th century the world’s big- How worried should you be? It is hard to ignore the dangers. If
gest economic choke-point involved oil being America withdraws from cutting-edge manu-
shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. Soon it facturing and China continues to hurl resources
will be silicon etched in a few technology parks at it, the White House will be tempted to tighten
in South Korea and Taiwan. the embargo further in order to stymie China’s
Start with the shifts in the industry. A surge development. That could have explosive conse-
in demand and those novel kinds of computa- quences. And the inexorable logic of scale is set
tion have led to a golden age in chip design. to lead to an alarming concentration of produc-
Nvidia, which creates chips for gaming and arti- tion. The manufacturing duopoly could start to
ficial intelligence, is now America’s most valu- use their pricing power. Already a fifth of all chip
able chip firm, worth over $320bn. The quest to create bespoke manufacturing, and perhaps half of cutting-edge capacity, is in
chips in order to eke out more performance—think less heat, or Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory and threatens to
more speed or battery life—is also drawing outsiders into the de- invade. The chip industry is poised for mutually assured disrup-
sign game. In November Apple unveiled Mac computers pow- tion, in which America and China each have the ability to short-
ered by its own chip (it already uses its own in the iPhone), and circuit the other’s economy.
Amazon is developing chips for its data centres. The design
boom has also fired up dealmaking. Nvidia, for instance, is bid- Chips and old blocs
ding $40bn for Arm, which makes design blueprints. In the fu- Some hawks in America and Europe want to respond with a sub-
ture a new open-source approach to designing chips, called sidy bonanza of their own: socialism for semiconductors. But
risc-v, could lead to more innovation. that would dampen the free-market renaissance in chip design
Contrast this effervescence with the consolidation in chip- and is, anyway, likely to fail. Instead, chip-users such as Apple
making. A gruelling 60-year struggle for supremacy is nearing its should press tsmcand Samsung to diversify where factories are.
end. Moore’s law, which holds that the cost of computer power America must urge Taiwan and South Korea to cut their soft sub-
will fall by half every 18 months to two years, is beginning to fail. sidies for chip plants, so their firms have more incentive to build
Each generation of chips is technically harder to make than the factories around the world. Last, President Joe Biden needs to
last and, owing to the surging cost of building factories, the create a predictable framework for trade with China in sensitive
stakes have got bigger. The number of manufacturers at the in- sectors, including chips, that allows it to participate in global
dustry’s cutting-edge has fallen from over 25 in 2000 to three. supply chains while safeguarding Western interests. His prede-
The most famous of that trio, Intel, is in trouble. It has fired its cessor oversaw a chaotic array of controls aimed at impeding
boss, an admission that it has fallen behind. It may retreat from China’s development, in chips as well as finance. These gave it an
making the most advanced chips, known as the three-nano- incentive to develop its own alternatives faster. The first chips
metre generation, and outsource more production, like almost may have been used in missiles, but it would be wise to avoid
everyone else. That would leave two firms with the stomach for them becoming a flashpoint in a 21st-century cold war. 7
The EconomistJanuary23rd2021 Leaders 9
Vaccination
A marathon ahead
Even as governments sprint to get vaccination done, they need to keep an eye on what comes next
It has beendescribedasaracebetweeninfectionsandinjec- Lockdownsimposeaburdenonfreedomandaheavy finan-
tions. If so, infections are still winning. About 5m new cases of cial cost. Pressure will therefore mount for vaccinated people to
covid-19 a week are being recorded around the world. As we went be able to move around freely, even if at first they will be too few
to press, some 51countries had begun to administer vaccines, ac- in number to make much difference to the economy. If govern-
cording to Our World in Data, a website; over the previous week ments ignore calls for “vaccine passports” to permit this, the vac-
17m people had been vaccinated, but the global total of doses was cinated are likely to change their behaviour regardless. Some
still below 50m. Only five countries had given the first dose to businesses may introduce informal systems.
more than 5% of its population. For vaccine passports to make practical sense, epidemiolo-
The inoculation effort is generating frustration in countries gists need to understand how well vaccination stops people
like France, which got off to a slow start, and rejoicing in Britain, spreading the disease—because it would be harmful if those who
which has so far done well (see Britain section). Both the despair were safe infected others yet to receive a jab. Early work from Is-
and the joy are premature. Plenty will happen in the months be- rael, which has inoculated a greater share of its population than
fore most countries create enough immunity to suppress the any other country, suggests that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine
spread of the virus. In the interim, much will de- does indeed slow transmission a bit, but more
pend on how successfully their governments Vaccine doses administered research is needed to inform an effective pass-
manage lockdowns. World, cumulative to Jan 19th, m port regime (see Science section).
At the moment most of their energy is going 50 Vaccine passports also raise ethical ques-
into sorting out the logistics of vaccine distribu- tions. When so much rides on having one, the
25
tion, which they can directly control. However, question of who gets a jab when will matter even
as Britain may be discovering, vaccine supply is 0 more than it does today. If groups are arbitrarily
what matters most. The good news is that more Dec 2020 Jan 2021 pushed back in the queue, programmes will be-
doses will become available, as manufacture come mired in controversy. Vaccination must
scales up and new vaccines win regulatory approval. One from be free to rich and poor alike, and allocated by efficacy and clini-
Johnson & Johnson, expected to report trial results late this cal need. That can be hard to reconcile with the requirement not
month, could inoculate 1bn people during 2021. to waste scarce supplies, which argues for convenience.
While countries wait for supplies, the central role in keeping There are complications, too. If vaccinated people can roam,
the virus at bay will be played by non-pharmaceutical interven- those with acquired immunity will clamour for the same free-
tions (npi), including masks and lockdowns. Modelling from dom: they are no more infectious, after all. Yet antibody tests are
Britain suggests vaccination’s benefits will take time to show up unreliable. It is not clear how long such immunity lasts or, in
in intensive-care wards. These are full of people in their 50s and individuals, when they actually caught the disease and the clock
60s because those older than this are often too frail for ventila- started ticking. Some fear the implications for privacy if the state
tors and other interventions. When intensive-care wards are can check on citizens’ health. In principle, vaccine passports are
full, mortality is a quarter higher than expected. If highly infec- a good idea. In practice, governments face a host of questions—
tious new variants of the virus take hold, npiregimes may even some of which can be answered only through more epidemio-
need to be tightened, as Germany’s was this week. logical research. They need to start work on it today. 7
Russia
The return
The world must not accept the jailing of Alexei Navalny
In a democracythe battle for power involves elections, media Mr Putin no doubt hoped that after all this Mr Navalny would be
skirmishes and the occasional metaphorical stab in the back. scared into permanent exile. Instead, on January 17th, five
In Russia it is literally a matter of life and death. To oppose Presi- months after falling into a coma and being evacuated to Ger-
dent Vladimir Putin requires not only charisma and clear vision many on a stretcher, Mr Navalny boarded a low-cost airline
but also physical stamina and courage. Alexei Navalny possesses called Pobeda (Victory) and flew back to Moscow.
these qualities in abundance. He was grabbed at the border, spirited off to a police station
The Kremlin has tried hard to neutralise him. Prosecutors and put on trial there at one minute’s notice. The charge was vio-
have levelled a series of trumped-up criminal charges against lating parole—while lying in a German hospital, he had been un-
him. State propagandists have amplified them, and added imagi- able to check into a police station in Russia. He was found guilty,
nary calumnies to the mix. Last year Russia’s security services of course, and sentenced to 30 days’ imprisonment. He awaits a
slipped him a nerve agent in a botched attempt to murder him. second trial scheduled for February 2nd that could see him 1
