Despite hopes that the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines would facilitate a quick return to normality, and some in the gaming industry scheduling in-person international conferences for the coming months, the crisis appears to be deepening again. 

Lockdowns return and borders close

In Asia, Hong Kong has cancelled plans to reopen its border with Macau, meaning more pain for the region’s casinos. Meanwhile the Philippines has again closed its borders to foreigners, and even most Philippine nationals, after a surge in infections and the detection of worrying new variants. Cambodia has also banned outgoing travel and Japan has introduced stricter quarantine rules. 

In Europe, all Italian regions except for Sardinia, are moving back into ‘red zone’ status, while Poland has announced a new national lockdown, and the gaming hub of Malta also recently re-entered lockdown after record infections, driven again by new variants. Elsewhere, France, Germany and other countries are seeing a new wave of infections, though so far have resisted draconian new measures. 

Although the UK is seeing infection rates fall dramatically, attributing it to the vaccination program may be premature. Indeed, it is more likely that the lockdown measures, natural wave dynamics, and fact that schools have been closed, is what caused infections to drop. 

In South America, Brazil is buckling under the pressure of a massive new wave, driven by the variant that has devastated the Amazonian city of Manaus. 

This shows how available space in ICUs across Brazil has rapidly collapsed over the past few months. Right now all but one Brazilian state is at or above 80 percent ICU capacity. A true crisis and it’s getting worse. https://t.co/Qy5GMJyFns

— Matt Rivers (@MattRiversCNN) March 17, 2021

Don’t count on vaccines solving this

Though early studies suggested the current crop of vaccines would offer decent protection against the so-called UK, South African, and Brazilian variants, more recent studies indicate the vaccines will provide little to no protection against the Brazilian variant after just a few months. 

More ominously, several experts, including Geert Vanden Bossche DVM, PhD, (GSK Biologicals, Novartis Vaccines, Solvay Biologicals, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Discovery Team, Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, German Center for Infection Research), are desperately warning that the current combination of restrictions and mass vaccination is risking ‘viral immune escape’, which is likely to result in the rapid emergence of severe variants, to which most people, especially the vaccinated and those who have recovered from infections, will have no defence. 

Very bluntly, Bossche and others are categorically saying that the misguided attempts to contain the original pandemic have made it very likely that we will turn a relatively mild virus into a truly apocalyptic monster that could kill a significant part of the world’s population. 

While at this point we can only hope these dire warnings are overblown paranoia, the way the pandemic is playing out on the ground, with new variants being discovered almost daily (including one recently found in Brittany, France, which evades all common tests), does suggest Bossche and co. could be correct. 

VACCINE ESCAPE OF VARIANTS vs Pfizer-BioNTech & NIH-Moderna: Troubling new peer-reviewed paper shows even 2-dose recipients have serious trouble neutralizing the #B1351 🇿🇦 variant—as little as vs old SARS & bat coronavirus. #P1 is poor too. 1-dose worse. Lots of graphs🧵 #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/glXBOqMU4l

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) March 14, 2021

So, what happens next?

However the crisis pans out from this point, several things are now very clear. First, the measures taken so far have categorically failed to prevent the spread of the virus. Second, we are now effectively dealing with multiple pandemics of increasingly divergent variants. Third, the longer this goes on, the more chance of a truly horrific variant evolving. Given these facts, it is extremely naive to assume that the current vaccination program, no matter how logistically impressive it has been in places like the UK and Israel, will provide a long term solution. Indeed, it may well be making things considerably worse in the long-term. 

The idea that new vaccine versions can address these issues is, frankly, ludicrous. At the current rate, the 70-80% vaccination rate, widely believed to be required to achieve so-called ‘herd immunity’ will not be reached in most developed countries, let alone poorer countries, until the end of summer. By that time, the versions the vaccines were designed to counter will probably be all but gone anyway. And this is with countries basically on unsustainable war footings, devoting huge proportions of their resources to the vaccination campaign. There is simply no realistic way vaccinations campaigns can ever even hope to keep up with the virus, let alone get ahead of the curve. 

Obviously, this situation means that, no matter how advanced the technology is, the much vaunted ‘COVID passports’ or vaccination certificates, will be of no help. Because someone has been vaccinated against one variant does not mean they won’t catch or be unknowingly spreading another variant. Simply put, if mass travel is allowed to restart, we will all be back to square one, except this time, we won’t be starting with one relatively mild virus, but with multiple much more dangerous versions. No matter how much countries like Malta and Greece clamour for the restart of mass tourism, to do so now will be catastrophic for the entire world. 

Right now, despite the overly optimistic reports on mainstream news, we are probably at the most dangerous point of the pandemic. As we’ve said before, 2021 will be another digital year, and though there are sure to be spluttery experiments in opening things up in various countries, there will not be a sustained return to mass travel, tourism, large scale international sporting events, industry shows and exhibitions etc. for the foreseeable future. 

Plan accordingly. 

Disclaimer: This article features the opinion of the author only, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

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