Vaccinations
The UK’s booster campaign has rolled out with impressive speed since it was announced in September. But there have been suggestions that we will need to do annual Covid jabs, as we do for flu. So I predict it is likely (65%) that we will offer fourth jabs to healthy British adults before the end of 2022.
Not that I think we should do this. I think the vaccines we’ve already had will probably protect people very effectively against severe disease and death even once the measurable antibodies have declined, and I think each new jab will do lots more good in the arms of unvaccinated people in lower-income countries than they will in the arm of a triple-jabbed pensioner in Reading. But given that governments have a duty to look after their own citizens, and, more pressingly, a need to curry favour with those citizens to avoid being voted out, I think it’s pretty likely that we’ll do it. Metaculus forecasters think it’s likely in the US, as well.
The important thing will be whether we vaccinate the world, and especially the poorest countries. It should be said that despite a widespread and understandable feeling that the West has hoarded all the vaccines, almost 60% of the world’s population has received at least one jab, and even lower-middle income countries (which include places like Bangladesh and Egypt) have vaccinated more than 50%.
But the truly poor countries – places like Afghanistan, Sudan, North Korea and many sub-Saharan nations – are lagging badly behind, at only about 8.5% coverage. It’s been speeding up, and in richer countries vaccinations have followed an S-shaped curve – slowly, then quicker and quicker, then slowing down again. But looking at the curve on the Our World in Data page, it looks like the low-income countries are taking off at about a quarter the speed that the rich ones did.
It took rich nations about six months to get to 50% coverage: the world makes vaccines faster now, but also there are still huge logistical and incentive problems for getting those vaccines to poorer countries. I’d guess that between 30% and 60% of inhabitants of the world’s poorest countries will have had at least one jab by 2022. I think it’s also pretty likely (75%) that at least one country will still have fewer than 10% vaccine coverage, just because there are a lot of poor countries, some of which have basically no working health infrastructure.
Predictions:
The UK will authorise fourth doses of Covid vaccines for healthy adults in 2022 (65%)
What percentage of people in low-income countries will have had at least one dose of a vaccine by 2023? – between 30% and 60%
At least one nation will have less than 10% of its population vaccinated with at least one dose by 2023 (75%)
Climate
The world will continue to warm, on average, over the next few years. There’s too much carbon in the atmosphere already for that to change.
But there’s a lot of variability from year to year. Most years are somewhat hotter than the one before, but not always: of the 20 years leading up to 2020, 13 have been hotter than the previous year, and seven have been cooler, according to the Met Office. So the base rate is that it’s about 65% likely that 2022 will be warmer than 2021.
That said, 2021 has been a relatively cool year, due to La Niña, an atmospheric and oceanic phenomenon that brings cold water to the surface of the oceans. La Niña finished some months ago, so it shouldn’t affect 2022. I think it’s therefore very likely (85%) that 2022 will be hotter than 2021, when the data eventually comes in.
Prediction:
The global average surface temperature in 2022 will be higher than it was in 2021 (85%)
Energy
There’s a cruel joke that goes to the effect that “fusion energy is 30 years away and always will be”. That said, in the last few years, there’s been a lot more excitement about it, and several new companies have started up, with nearly two billion dollars of funding backing them.
It’s very unlikely that fusion energy will reach any of its milestones – “ignition” or “breakeven” or profitability or anything – this year, and pretty unlikely that they’ll do it this decade. But I do think that the excitement will carry on building. According to a survey by the Fusion Industry Association, there are “at least 35” fusion companies around the world, most of which have been founded in the last 10 years. I think it’s likely (65%) that number will go up in 2022, as the technical questions continue to be answered, and as investors and entrepreneurs get more excited about the possibility of a viable, profitable industry.
Also, the cost of solar energy has plummeted over the past decades. It will almost certainly continue to do so, but since it is already cheaper than any form of fossil fuel, cost is no longer the sticking point. Now, the bottleneck for renewable energy is making it available when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing – having loads of sunshine in August is no good for heating your house in December.
There are various ways of doing that, such as installing cables between countries, so the UK’s offshore wind can supply Spain when it’s windy, and Spain’s solar can supply the UK when it’s sunny. But the most obvious is storage, and the most obvious form of electricity storage is batteries.
The cost of electricity storage has also dropped enormously – according to Bloomberg, it’s gone from a global average of about $300 per megawatt-hour in 2018 to $138 in 2021, mainly driven by the electric car industry. Despite supply chain issues and increased cost of various raw materials, mainly metals, I think that’s probably going to carry on – I think it’s 80% likely that the next Bloomberg report will find that the global average drops in 2022.
We’ll still rely on fossil fuels for some years to come. But I think in 2022 we’ll see some of the pieces of the zero-carbon future start to come together.
Predictions:
There will be more fusion companies at the end of 2022 than there were at the end of 2021 (65%)
The cost of battery storage will be lower per megawatt-hour at the end of 2022 than it was at the end of 2021(80%)
Medicine
The biggest thing in medicine this year has been the Covid vaccines. And they’re pretty astonishing things. Remember that at the start of 2020, there were zero approved mRNA vaccines in the world: now billions of people have been given one, and millions of lives have been saved.
You can use mRNA vaccines for pretty much any disease, and in the next few years we’ll doubtless see them for all sorts of things. One that really interests me is cancer. Cancer “vaccines” aren’t like vaccines for measles or Covid – they’re treatments, given to people who have already been diagnosed with the disease, rather than prophylactics given to people at risk of contracting them. As I understand it, it involves presenting the immune system with the RNA sequence for a protein specific to that patient’s cancer, which will help the body fight that cancer. It’s a sort of personalised advance on existing immunotherapy, which has already turned various previously fatal cancers into largely manageable chronic illnesses. So this could be a really big deal in coming years.
Lots of drug companies have plans to make cancer mRNA vaccines. For instance, BioNTech has four ongoing Phase II trials. I think it’s pretty likely that we’ll hear good news from at least one of them, and that a Phase III trial with thousands of participants will be announced. Let’s say 55%.
Prediction:
A Phase III trial of at least one of BioNTech’s cancer mRNA vaccines will be announced in 2022(55%).
Football
Until a week or so ago Liverpool were one point off the lead and looking good: then they drew with Spurs, lost bizarrely to Leicester after missing a penalty, and then drawing with Chelsea despite being two-nil up after half an hour. And Man City should have lost to Arsenal but Arsenal decided to be Arsenal and gave away a penalty and had a man sent off within 10 minutes and threw it away.
So now Liverpool are 11 points off the top (albeit with a game in hand) and let’s face it the title race is over in January. I reckon only about a 10% chance of turning it around. Still, there’s always the Champions League.
Prediction: Liverpool will win the league this year (10%)
Conclusion
I wanted to add another couple of questions, but they’re hard to do good data on. For instance, I bet that global extreme poverty will be lower in 2022 than it was in 2021, as it has been almost every year for the last 40. But we won’t get good data for a few years. I also bet that even though the world will get better on most metrics, such as life expectancy, wealth, etc, an increasing share of people will still think that it’s getting worse, because that’s how we work. But that’s hard to get into a straightforward question, and again, even if we could, the data for 2022 won’t be around until 2025 or something anyway. Still, I think those things are probably true.
My final prediction is that these predictions will not be very accurate. I’d love it if you would have a go and see if you can do better.
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SubscribeMore than 20,000 deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test in Britain in 2022.
More than 20,000 deaths within 28 days of crossing the road in Britain in 2022.
both statistics are worthless
Yes, scratching my head on that. Makes no sense and is repeated with no explanation.
If 2022 is not hotter than 2021, Tom, then I predict 2021 will have to get colder.
Just had the coldest Antarctic winter ever recorded but the Arctic has been warmer. If the world is getting marginally warmer in the Northern hemisphere then bring it on for here in N Scotland.
By the way, I was born in 1947 and the world population was 2.5 billion. Today, the world population is 7.5 billion. During the 1960s and 70s, there was real concern about the world being unable to feed itself yet we have a trebling of popluation in the last 74 years and we have continued to feed the world. Why and how? It is because of increased CO2 which is required to grow food so the whole Net Zero policy is complete rubbish.
And fertilizers made from that gosh awful nasty oil!
Precisely why our soil health is in decline from industrialised agriculture. Fossil fuel discovery has facilitated the Great Acceleration. Great Acceleration – Wikipedia. We continue to fuel both ecocide and our own extinction with our love of GDP. The apocalypse is already here but we prefer to pretend and continue concreting over our previously green and pleasant land. People still think that planning a child is to be celebrated, even though children everywhere have no future.
You are clearly unaware that many people die of starvation every year. It may not be the case in the UK as yet but there are predictions of imminent bread-basket failure in Europe. All that growth in population was driven by GDP, to make money that entails environmental degradation. We are now seeing extinction rates running at 1000 times higher than at any time in the history of humanity, and in 2021 there scientific research predicting ecological collapse (Bradshaw et.al.), financial collapse (Herrington), population collapse (Bystroff), both financial and population collapse (Seibert and Rees), all the are referenced in this brief explanation of ecological overshoot Ecological overshoot – Wikipedia
I can correct you on one thing if I may Barbara – growth is not driven by GDP and money “made” like it used to be. We are in a world of global debt and unlimited currency printing out of thin air so you don’t have to wait for someone to use carbon to make something valuable anymore, the government central bank can just add some digital 0’s to the computerised account. Better?
Usual leftwing alarmist hogwash.
Someone knows about reconstructed data sets!
“Also, the cost of solar energy has plummeted over the past decades. It will almost certainly continue to do so, but since it is already cheaper than any form of fossil fuel, cost is no longer the sticking point. Now, the bottleneck for renewable energy is making it available when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing – having loads of sunshine in August is no good for heating your house in December.”
Solar energy in temperate regions is still considerably more expensive than fossil fuels once you include the low output compared with the sort of regions more suited to it, and of course the colossal logistical costs of balancing the network with the storage requirements. Not including this is about as plausible as claiming that a nuclear power station on the moon produces cheaper energy as long as we ignore the problem of getting the energy to Earth.
The notion that we can or should decarbonise the world’s energy systems by replacing them with diffuse-energy harvesting systems like wind and solar is going to become regarded by future generations as the chief insanity of this age. That’s my prediction, and the only comfort for me here today is that I won’t live long enough to be proved wrong – in the unlikely event that I actually am, of course.
The falsehood that solar is cheaper than Natural gas has been circulating for about a year. The problem is, unlike gas, the calculations don’t include the price of creating solar farms. Land, environmental mitigation, panels, or obsolescence and replacement costs, then dispose of all of those panels. A barrel of oil has production costs baked in.
Where to begin…? With 1200-1600 deaths a day from all causes and the ludicrous over testing in the UK I suspect this prediction will definitely come true.
Those countries would do well to keep well away from any COVID vaccines. Sudan for instance has a life expectancy of about 55, very low pop. density, probably zero obesity and very low diabetes etc (kept away from awful Western diets), abundant sun, high intake of antivirals and anti malarial etc, so have nothing whatsoever to fear from SARS CoV 2.
Prediction is a mug’s game: The only thing more difficult than predicting the future is predicting the past. Oh, and there is never a normal to return to.
If you have not seen this 3 hour video by Joe Rogan and Doctor Malone – likely the world’s most impressive Virus Doctor/Researcher. He was the guy who was inventor of mmR vaccines. Now kicked off all the social media. Md, PhD, Harvard Researcher, and is the expert called on by CDC, Fauci, and everyone else for virus vaccines. Now he is very anti this vax, has been since the beginning, as they are too dangerous and do not really do anything much. – The higher the vax rate, the more cases (Gibraltar, Israel, Ireland, Iceland, UK….)
My Prediction – when the MSM gets the nerve to report on the truth of 2020 and 2021 there will be the biggest scandal ever, and a Nuremberg Trial will begin over the Lockdowns and Vax agenda destroying the world
(*which means 20% chance the world Elites, Davos, WEF, IMF, will manage to keep a lid on it, and we continue on our path to Modern Day Serfdom)
But watch it – it is great fun, and the expert is very impressive, in credentials, and in his details and story. Watch before you vax..,… https://odysee.com/@BannedYouTubeVideos:4/JOE-ROGAN-AND-DR-ROBERT-MALONE:c
“My final prediction is that these predictions will not be very accurate.” You didn’t give a % confidence score for this one!
Interesting set of predictions. If covid deaths drop to somewhere in the range of 20k to 45k for 2022 in the UK, as suggested by Tom Chivers, that would put them in the same ballpark as deaths from flu-related illness. I would assume the UK is willing to resume something approaching normal life if covid becomes no more deadly than flu and affects the same demographic. In fact the total deaths from the two viruses probably wouldn’t be additive because they both primarily affect the same cohort of highly susceptible people.
Tom didn’t touch economic issues. Perhaps he didn’t have enough space in this article. I was interested to know the Metaculus community’s view of the possibility of a severe global recession/depression within the next year or so.
I didn’t find exactly the question I was looking for but the folks at Metaculus give a 6% probability that the next US recession will turn into a depression (https://www.metaculus.com/questions/4013/will-the-next-us-recession-turn-into-a-depression/).
Metaculus also estimates the next great financial crisis in the US will occur in January, 2027 (https://www.metaculus.com/questions/7467/next-great-financial-crisis-in-the-us/).
There are other economic predictions (the severity of the next US depression will be about one third that of the Great Depression) and all seem fairly optimistic. I must admit I’m pessimistic about the global economy and feel it might be headed for a very severe recession, but perhaps I’m too pessimistic or, as I prefer to say, too radically realistic.
Time will tell.
“…Metaculus also estimates the next great financial crisis in the US will occur in January, 2027…”
That’s very precise of them. January is odd though – financial crises have a record of picking late summer/early autumn for themselves. My guess is fairly conventional, and therefore guaranteed to be wrong. I too think a great crash, followed by a decades long, low-intensity depression, is coming, but much earlier, more like 2024. But first two or three years with rampaging growth (but not in all countries), rising wages (but slower), severe global top-end skills shortages, multiple supply-side crunches globally. I also think policy makers especially in the US and China will accelerate the crash by overreaching, because they have forgotten how to react to ramping inflation – and also they have run out of policy instruments with which to react. On the back of covid debts, they have no more road. I also think the next financial crisis will stem from China not the US, heralding the passing of the baton, of who is the most influential nation on earth. Also indicated by the fact that several European countries will become Chinese client states on the back of the crisis.
Inflation is definitely here, and starting to filter through. In my industry (food) a 12.5% price rise for cleaning chemicals just yesterday.
Unlike in a downturn, you can’t react by the various methods of printing money, QE etc. In fact printing money would simply magnify asset inflation.
Every attempt to raise rates risks triggering business defaults if businesses are heavily leveraged – and many buyouts are mechanically structured that way because most of the debt used to acquire a business in the first place, goes back on the books of the business – CF what the Glaziers did with Manchester United. If interest rates go from 0.25% to 1% a four-fold increase, the debt costs and would be impossible to service for many businesses. Also, the costs of servicing national debts would quickly balloon, so raising rates has a hard stop. Also, since the 2008 crash, every time central banks taper QE, the stock markets react by heading downwards – to instantly reverse upwards as authorities panic and the taps are turned on again (BTFD).
There is also a hard limit to how much wages can rise in reaction to inflation, before the business equation of ‘increase the workforce’ vs. ‘outsource to cheaper labour’ vs. ‘spend big to automate’, heads decisively towards automation. Provoking such an event will create K shaped societies, where the high skills strata would command outsize remuneration, while many many others end up without a livelihood.
I see no easy way for central banks to unmount the tiger they are riding.
Prices rise to what the market will bear. When we start burning the furniture to keep warm and cook, demand falls and with it prices and the goods and services providers themselves go out of business.
To date, throughout history, it has been possible to revert backwards to simpler (and less expensive) modes of living to survive hard times and attempt to recover.
I’m no longer convinced this is possible any longer, because of dependence on technology – even the poorest in the advanced economies are dependent on quite expensive technologies to pay for things (physical money disappearing quickly) buy things cheaper (requires devices to get online) look for work and information (again dependent on devices). Without access to technology you fall off the edge of the world. Unless you are lucky enough to have savings, had your house paid off etc, but most people won’t be in that privileged position.
And the policies being pushed by the environmental lobby would make us totally dependent on constant electricity. When I lived in Sussex in 1987 the “hurricane” put our power supply out of action for two weeks. If we hadn’t had access to fossil fuels life would have been very problematic. In the north of England recently the same happened, and this time in sub-zero temperatures. We’re descending into madness.
“I see no easy way for central banks to unmount the tiger they are riding.”
Agreed and that’s what worries me. Politico recently had an article about a former Fed governor, Thomas Hoening, who was the only holdout against Bernanke’s quantitative easing strategy. His reasoning was quite straightforward; he believed extended QE would transfer wealth to the rich (which, of course, has happened) and create runaway inflation. He described the paradox you mentioned of being unable to ease QE without destabilizing the economy.
Ultimately Hoenig suggested there would be a repeat of the late 1970s/early 80s when Fed chairman Paul Volcker ramped up interest rates as the only way to control inflation. That strategy worked but, as you suggest, it caused huge unemployment, business and bank failures, etc. My guess is at some point the Fed will have no choice but to repeat Volcker’s strategy.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/12/28/inflation-interest-rates-thomas-hoenig-federal-reserve-526177
Thanks for the link, salutary article.
No, no Volker today – instead it will be ‘PRICE CONTROLS’ they will try as all falls apart, like Venezuela and so on, and then when rock bottom is hit it will be worse than any in history.
For entertainment try youtube and Rebel Capitalist.
Thanks for those links. I also thought a crash prediction would have been the most interesting and, like Prashant, think it will come relatively soon.
I’d be interested to see if the Black Swan guy(Taleb?) has made any predictions. Anti fragile is quite a frightening book when you consider just how much extreme tail risk is now hardwired into global systems.
Up to the end of the year deaths attributed to the Virus were 15,000 from the beginning of the winter season (week 40) according to the ONS. The outcome over the full winter will be of the order of Influenza.
The Pandemic phase ended at the beginning of June 2020. At that point, it became a question of health care management country by country the latter of which has been woeful in the UK.
What has already happened is we have returned to the tradition of recent winters where the health care service cannot cope with the winter respiratory illness volume.
Most people who have had the Virus are unconcerned about getting it and much more concerned about the disruption surrounding it.
Those that are concerned are in the main always concerned about the health because they are older with challanges.
Then why the F do you call them ‘vaccines’? Or has the definition been adjusted again? When will opioids be called ‘vaccines’?
medical marijuana is now to be called, ‘Inhalation Vaccines’, saline IV Drips to be Dehydration vaccines, Vitamin D, C, K, B, to be nutrient vaccines. Why not – the covid ‘Vaccines’ already changes what vaccine means totally.
My predictions are
(a) that the UK government will realise that Russia is not a threat to our security and so diplomatic relations will be more cordial and trade will resume
(b) Ditto with China
(c) That we will no longer be given daily statistics of those suffering from Covid which bear no reality to illness being suffered.
Perhaps these are not predictions, only hopes!.
Hope springs eternal
China is the world’s biggest threat, thus governments will do all they can to help them in conquering the world – as the Governments are tools of the Global Elite, 95% likelihood.
AIl rubbish about a ‘Global Elite’ should be denounced for the nonsense it is. It is just as false, and dangerous, as the ‘Jewish World Conspiracy’ aka Protocols of Zion, the ‘Illuminati’ or Icke’s drivel about control by giant lizards. There are bad actors – too many of them – but the idea of some concerted, centrally guided malign conspiracy is fantasy. Evidence there is none.
When some people are frightened they will believe anything. Sometimes they will do – or countenance – dreadful things as a result of their fears. It starts with deluded morons attacking their own nation’s parliamentary buildings. It ends in Auschwitz-Birkenau. There is plenty of evidence for that.
Goya got it right: ‘Imagination not accompanied by reason produces impossible monsters.’ Be specific Mr Tavas, and others, or be quiet and reflect on the harm you do.
I hope your first two happen!
Interesting article, but minor correction.
There is virtually zero Carbon in the air. There are trace amounts of CO2 of course (otherwise we’d all die) – a completely different component. CO2 is as different from Carbon as Hydrochloric Acid is from Hydrogen (even more so actually). You’ve fallen into the climate activist’s trap of misusing language to hype project fear (ie create images of nasty black Carbon soot – when CO2 is transparent, odourless, plant food which we exhale at 40,000 ppm every breath). Just as global warming (not experienced for 9 years now) became global heating and ocean “acidification” scaremongering (oceans are alkaline and will stay that way).
On fusion energy, the main technical problem is completely impossible to solve in a terrestrial setting. Why?
Because fusion is hot fusion. Energy is produced only when the temperatures required are at sun-like levels. These fusion sun-plasmas most be contained within a vacuum, for if they touch material – walls of anything – they will destroy them. Furthermore suns are so spectacularly powerful and essential to life, not just because of the heat and light (radiation/photons) they produce, but because of their always-on regularity and stability. It has always struck me as a fools game to divert significant resources to try to create, maintain and contain mini-suns here on earth. It is as economically practical as turning non-gold into gold. Fusion energy is contemporary alchemy.
Sounds like the same frame of mind of folks prior to the1900’s as to whether folks would be able to fly from one place to another, or be on a spaceship, or have parts of the eye or heart replace, etc., etc.
No “hot” fusion is different. The physics of stable flight in air or space was always valid, just waiting the invention to exploit it.
Solar panels do not rely wholly on blue skies sunshine. Cloudy days cut it down. It’s not how much sun but how many panels to achieve x amount of electricity. Obviously sunny places need less. Musk’s PV tiles are attractive and allow for a bigger roof surface area.
Zorro! Don’t know who has given you all those down-ticks but you have my up-tic. Perhaps some people dislike Elon’s tiles. When I checked my boat at noon today a 100A panel was charging my engine start battery at 250mA (0.25A). The panel is laid horozontally on the saloon table, completely out of direct sunlit all day at this time of year. My house battery (4 x 100Ah FLAs) were doing slightly better off an external panel angled 15 degrees towards the South. Some of the difference there could, of course, be attributable to the difference in ambient temps inside and outside the boat. Hot places are not always the best places to site Solar Panels – mine are proven to be more efficient in the summer than similar set-ups in Spain and Greece.
Good article, thanks.
Interesting way of making a set of predictions measurable, though the mixed bag of percentages are just too varied, I’d say, to make a meaningful calculation possible.
Not much in there for me as I do not give a s*** about covid or global warming, but I do despise the tedious bores who obsess about it!
I predict that no predictors will revisit their January 2022 predictions in January 2023…. Cheers!
Assessing the natural frequencies of elevated uselessness, Tom, maybe predicting growth of the Therapy and search for Sacred Authority industries is worth a punt?
There will be other predictions. I predict you will see other predictions until you find a prediction that predicts your biased predictions. I am NEVER wrong. There is a word for my prediction: a marketplace (ideas, predictions, hogs, markets, etc.).
http://bit.ly/predictions_2022
Well, props for making measurable predictions and being early to the prediction market train, at least. They all look fairly good.
One quibble: “vaccines have saved millions of lives”. Please go to OWID and plot cumulative COVID deaths for the world so far. You will observe that it’s a more or less straight line up and to the right. There is no visible inflection point and there have “only” been millions of deaths in total since the start, so it’s impossible for vaccines to have saved millions of lives. This talking point is nonsense that people are spreading to try and hide the truth.
Just was sent a good joke: a bunch of cows, chickens and sheep looking at a group of confused people with masks: the caption above the animals reads: (after porcine pest, chicken influenza and foot and mouth): shall we not better destroy the whole herd….
ha wonder if the preposition choice here was intentional.
Here’s my prediction then: much more pessimistic:
I predict 50/50 that mRNA vaccines will be withdrawn by the end of 2022 by most countries regulatory authorities due to the sheer scale of human damage they are causing, ,much of which has so far been covered up or lost in the chaff.
Dear Tom, I predict that on Thursday afternoon you will meet a lady with a wooden leg from Basingstoke.
Journalists have a responsibility to report accurately and the choice of words is important. People do not die ‘from’ covid, they die ‘with’ covid.
If covid and global warming despatch more of those petrified by it…. then stack up the deal boxes and get digging in the bone garden… HOORAY!!!!!
Predictions are inherently unlikely to be right. Those based on right-think–the Covid narrative, global warming, etc.–are almost certainly be wrong. As soon as I find out how, I will likely unsubscribe from Unherd. Your true colors have emerged; you are almost certainly a herd thinker.
A science editor who knows no science. A replacement is required.