Behaving like Covid’s over: today’s news

Party time in the West, HK recovers, more evidence that Covid was in Europe in October, and governments must introduce digital currencies

[Transcript 2m23s]

Morning! I’m here with today’s papers as usual. Revellers returned to nightclubs at one minute past midnight to celebrate freedom day in the UK, the FT reports. There’s a nice picture there of people partying. [image]

We find the same thing pretty much in New York: New York parties like there’s no covid. Boy! [image]

I must say that Westerners are good at partying. My idea of a wild night on a Friday is board games I guess. [gifs]

In the South China Morning Oost, we see the exact same surge towards reclaiming normal life. SCMP reports that joblessness declined across all the major industries in Hong Kong. This includes restaurants, bars and shops. [image]

But there is a difference, of course. Hong Kong has had no local covid cases at all for a month but everyone still wears masks all the time.

Also in the FT we find a tiny little report on the inside page here. [image] Basically it says that new information from scientists reinforces the theory that Covid was circulating in Italy as early as October of 2019.

That would make it three months before being Dr. Zhang Jixian reported it to her local CDC in China which was December 27 of 2019.

Important article on finance in the FT: money must adapt to new technology. It’s time to embrace central bank digital currencies. [image]

There are now 8000 crypto currencies and governments “must now introduce digital currencies of their own.”

It’s interesting because Chinese economists have been working on exactly that for six years, and the rest of the world is playing catch-up. They’ve been testing the so-called “electric renminbi” by beaming free samples into people’s bank accounts and seeing how they spend it. [gif]

I’m still waiting, guys, I’ve not had any free samples in my bank account but hope springs eternal, right?

Goodbye.