Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

The suggestion that video games are addictive is as old as video games themselves.

Now, the World Health Organization recognizes the addiction as a mental disorder.

We look into how the business models of modern gaming may be feeding that need.

And 50 years ago, the new nation of Bangladesh was born from East Pakistan, after a grueling nine-month war.

Little has been known about the earliest stages of that conflict, but revealing images by one daring photographer have just come to light.

First up, though, for the second year now, the coronavirus pandemic has made its mark on the holiday season.

The Omicron variant is pushing out all others all over the world,

from America to Western Europe to Southern Africa.

Case numbers just keep hitting new records.

Yesterday, more than 2,400 flights were cancelled.

As with so many industries, there are just too many staff unable to work.

But a smaller fraction of all those millions of global cases

are resulting in hospitalizations or deaths. And that may mean it hopefully means that the world is

entering a new, more manageable phase of the pandemic. What we know so far about Omicron is that

it spreads incredibly rapidly, that it's very clear from all countries where the variant has already been found.

You see this almost vertical increase in the number of new cases very quickly.

Slovenia Jancova is our healthcare correspondent.

However, the good news is that it appears to be much milder.

It causes severe disease less frequently than Delta or any previous variants.

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