From the Jan. 6 insurrection to the omicron variant of COVID-19, 2021 has been a wild ride, with its share of unanticipated developments. So what are the top risks to worry about in 2022? The short answer is, 2022 will be a bit like 2021, only more volatile, as many problems brewing this year may come to a boiling point.
The COVID-19 crisis: COVID not only tops the list; it intensifies many other risks. It is not just the obvious risk of the omicron variant spreading across the U.S. like a storm of locusts. Low vaccination rates in much of the developing world – under 10 percent of people in Africa are vaccinated – risk spawning still more new mutating variants, possibly more contagious or even vaccine-resistant.
Global instability: A cluster of other risks – driven or worsened by COVID-19 – may imperil global financial and political stability. Many developing nations took big economic hits from COVID-19, facing worsening debt crises, global middle classes slipping back into poverty and food insecurity.
The World Food Programme has warned that 45 million people are on the brink of famine across 43 countries. Such realities may foster political instability, and turn some fragile states – Haiti, South Sudan, Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar and, at the top of the list, Afghanistan – into failing states. There is a high risk of state failure, with humanitarian catastrophe, regional instability and massive refugee flows all possible results in Afghanistan. The...
A newly unsealed whistleblower lawsuit accuses Novartis and Genentech of being at the center of a decades-long kickback scheme to promote their immunology med Xolair across dozens of states. Whist...