This is exchanges at Goldman Sachs and I'm Allison Nathan, senior strategist in Goldman Sachs research and creator and editor of the firm's Top of my report.

In this episode, we're again focusing on the topic that's unfortunately been on everyone's mind for the past two years,

SARS-Cobe 2.

The lightning spread of the Amacron variant

has led to a record surge in cases globally.

But it's more transmissible but intrinsically milder nature has also raised the question of

whether it's ushering in a more manageable endemic phase of the virus in 2022 and the

market for its part already seems to be moving on from worrying about the virus

to worrying that it's now time to pay the Piper for the massive pandemic era stimulus and the inflation

surge it's induced.

But is an endemic phase of the virus actually upon us, given the

important economic and market consequences if that is and isn't the case, the

answer to that question is top of mind. We first speak to Jeffrey Schaman,

director of the Climate and Health Program at Columbia University's

Mailman School of Public Health, for some context on what makes the

Omicron variant more transmissible but less severe.

The heightened transmissibility is hard to pin down why it is.

However, early studies have indicated that the amacron variant replicates in human lung tissue even faster than delta does.

Now if it replicates faster, that means people get to a high viral tighter in their body that is contagious earlier.

If you do that, you shorten the latency period,

which is the time from infection acquisition

to the point at which you're contagious.

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