taylor: let's look at how equities performed. you can look at this both ways. at one point we were looking at the worst three-day day losses since may. you did see an improvement toward the closing bell. if you change up the board, interesting dynamic that perhaps isn't happening here. 10 year yields are falling, but technology is starting to fall as well. typically the reverse happens. that is something we will keep our eyes on going forward. "what did you miss" starts now.

caroline: today our focus is the impact of omicron around the world. countries and companies imposing stricter measures to fight the latest variant and delta. some firms are telling employees to work from home to close the year. we dig into what these restrictions mean for the global recovery and for investors. we are seeing rising covid cases across the board. >> we are, but look how different it is across the board. tougher restrictions in europe, with reason. you are seeing the u.s. have a rise since thanksgiving, about five new cases for every 1000, including -- according to the 14 day total. the u.k. is almost three times as much.

more than 14 for -- per thousand people. we have also seen a large spike when it comes to french. germany has seen a relative spike, but in recent days a decline. taylor: this is where you bring in the global perspective. we want to do a global perspective with the executive director of the international vaccine access center. give us your broader look at where we are with cases rising. hospitalizations and deaths usually come on a lag. how are you thinking right now about perhaps the rising cases and the severity of this new variant? >> thank you for having me. we are seeing rising cases in the united states, but in many countries around the world, it is not evenly. some countries are seeing

earlier and more severe spikes. some countries are taking more drastic measures in response. the netherlands with locking down or banning certain public gatherings. what we need to see is whether we are going to see a concurrent increase in hospitalizations and deaths. we know our health care system is stressed, particularly in some states. the rising cases due to both delta and omicron are going to increase that. i hope our tools will dissociate the number of cases from the number of hospitalizations and deaths. caroline: talk to me about those tools. i got off the plane from the u.k. last night. i felt relatively at ease because i had to take a test 24 hours beforehand. i am interested in testing levels.

in the u.k., they are handing out lateral flow tests in libraries, pharmacies, free, you can pick them up on the street. i don't see that in the u.s. i see queues going for miles. >> testing is an important tool, but has to be accompanied by isolation are those who are test positive and quarantine for those who are exposed. there is no doubt that the demand in the united states is vastly ahead of the supply for these rapid at-home tests. even getting tests in laboratories, exactly as you said, we are seeing long lines, hearing about certain parts of the country where people cannot access testing. caroline: why? is it a lack of supply? has the government not ordered enough? >> it is a lack of supply.

i don't think we anticipated the great demand for testing just prior to the holidays because of the omicron variant, which is driving a lot of this demand for testing. people who may not otherwise have considered getting testing want to get tested now so they can visit their family and relatives. it was unanticipated, the amount. i know the biden administration does have plans to increase testing. i think we will see increased availability of tests in the coming weeks, but not soon enough in this preholiday rush. taylor: schools closing across the united states, events being canceled at corporations. is this enough to start slowing the spread of the virus as we see it right now? >> i think we need multiple tools, and we know what to do in many ways to prevent severe

disease hospitalizations and death, but hopefully to slow the spread of the delta and omicron variants. part of this is masking, shutting down, or closing off large public gatherings. large indoor public gatherings are a risk for spreading of these variants. also the push for booster doses. we know that booster doses increase the levels of neutralizing antibodies. they provide some protection, not 100%. we are seeing breakthrough infections even in individuals who are fully vaccinated and boosted, but that's going to help. we need to take this seriously. we don't need to panic, but take this seriously and do our collective efforts to slow the spread of sars-cov-2. caroline: at the beginning of this, maybe summer 2020, herd

immunity was something. we were talking about. that has dropped. to get your thought on whether that is a real thing. with omicron, we are all under the assumption we are going to get it, it is just a matter of how severe it is. is herd immunity something we start discussing? >> that is an important question, because we develop immunity through both vaccination and naturally acquired infection. should omicron turn out to be very mild, perhaps that's not such a bad thing. we don't know quite yet the severity of disease, particularly in the most vulnerable. herd immunity is a real thing but can come at a big cost. caroline: dr. william moss, executive director of the international vaccine access center at the johns hopkins school of public health.

sources say these school of public health is supported by michael r. bloomberg, owner of bloomberg lp and this tv station. next, we talk about the economic impact of all of this. are we factoring in the fact that people are going to be staying home, perhaps spending more online than on the high street? here is a look at the past year on peer-to-peer conversations, a fantastic show with david rubenstein. he has been asking global leaders about how the pandemic has transformed their businesses. >> the pandemic and the ability for this technology to be used overnight to fight this nasty virus, that we did not imagine. >> accenture has been building capabilities in the digital cloud of security. at the time of covid, we became relevant and critical for all the leading companies. >> crises bring out the worst

and the best in people. when we entered -- we entered the covid crisis as a coherent, powerful team, we emerged even stronger. >> against something as negative as covid, we were forced to look at and reset the business model. >> it has been a challenge for us on staffing at the restaurants and has put pressure on wages, which you see in anticapitalist system. employers like mcdonald's are having to pay more on wages. the biggest issue we have is getting labor back into hotels broadly, but particularly certain roles, like housekeeping and culinary areas. well we have seen some easing over the last few months, we still have a ways to go. ♪

>> today we have been focused on obstacles caused by the omicron variant. they return to the office seemed around the corner for many. rising cases putting that on hold for some businesses. caroline, sort of an interesting discussion. we have been in the office the whole time. you start to see wall street try to get back and over the weekend, some of those plans very stalled. caroline: completely upending the hopes we had for a return to the office. people are trying to date the

return, the apples, the tech companies, then decided there would be no end in sight. we have a steady, slow climb. you do still feel we are recovered from march 2020, but not much. almost half of where it was in march 2020. that is a sobering chart to see how many people are still cautious about returning. on the back of that, who hurts? the local cafés, the restaurants, people who are used to serving, the people we used to know and love and spend our hard earned money on our lunches. >> the ones i went to, all out of business by now. the question about the dip, is this a holiday bump off or is it a longer trend? caroline: people are worried about their families and getting together. taylor: let's ask one of the

experts, the bloomberg news senior editor for health, drew armstrong. a lot could be said that maybe people are just working from home until mid-january to get through this season. what does that mean for some family gatherings as people are seeing a rise in cases. you always do such a good job putting this into perspective for us. drew: i wish this was my office at work, but this is my study. part of the reason i am at home is because i have family coming for the holidays and we are trying to minimize travel and potential disruption around that. one of the things that has been so frustrating about the pandemic is every time we have a new variant, we go through this period of uncertainty, the couple weeks or months it takes to figure out how it behaves, what the risks are, what the right decisions are. corporate entities tend to be

more conservative about that, especially at a time when a lot of them have gotten very good at working from home. this is not a difficult shift for them to make. there is a lot of momentum in terms of staying in that more conservative posture. every time you toss in a new variable, people say, maybe not quite yet. that caution seems to be an overriding concern that keeps people from going back in numbers. here we are in the winter, we know this is a tough time. caroline: it feels like in hindsight it was so obvious, and yet we were talking to our previous guest about how the u.s. does not have the supplies to test as many people as we should be, when we are about to be with our elderly relatives who are more vulnerable. how much data do we need to understand, a week, a month?

drew: i think we will get a lot more information in the coming weeks. you need to know, what does the risk of this current variant pose in the population around your community? so you can make risk based decisions for the group you are in. if this is something that for vaccinated people is really mild and you can deal with effectively, that is a different proposition than something that has a huge amount of immune escape that puts people in the hospital. for unvaccinated communities, a totally different picture where this is still a dangerous virus, as we have seen in the places suffering through significant outbreaks where we have high hospitalization numbers. taylor: the economic impact is where we can go next.

stephen stanley is going to do that. i was looking at the atlanta fed gdp indicator. fourth quarter still looks really strong. what risks do you see, if any, on the horizon? >> i would say the delta wave gives us a blueprint on how the economy might respond to another wave. delta was bad from a public health perspective. we saw big spikes in cases and hospitalizations peaked at 200,000. it was a couple of month story. the economy slowed for a couple of months and bounce back later in the year. i won't call it a worst-case, because you can come up with some bad situations, but maybe it is a worst-case from a realistic perspective, depending on how bad omicron proves to be. even if it does prove to be formidable -- a formidable

variant that leads to more hospitalizations, it seems like it is going to be pretty quick to make its way through the economy. we are going to see impacts. reservations -- restaurant reservations are down. but most people want to get on with things. where the outbreaks are severe -- new york city would be where the variant is most active -- you are going to see a marginal decline or moderation in activity. in other parts of the country, things are still proceeding normally. >> so many moving parts with how covid can impact the economy. i am wondering at what point consumer confidence, at what point does that start to get impacted enough to hurt this recovery? >> it's interesting. we really didn't see that during delta. we have had some pretty lackluster consumer confidence numbers over the last several

hs, not so much because of the pandemic or worries about growth, it has been more about inflation. that makes this situation kind of sticky. this was certainly the case early in the pandemic. if you thought you were going to get a worsening of the virus, you were thinking in terms of economic weakness. now the fed has to think not only about that scenario, but also the possibility if we do get an chrome wave, it could impact the supply chain and we could have supply chain pressures. it is a more complicated story than it might seem at first blush. caroline: what hurts so much for many is the timing. if this is happening in january, it is a deep frustration, but we were not all about together with our families, make restaurant bookings and go out and give

thanks and spend money and put it back into the economy. does the fact it is happening at a festive period hurt the economy more? >> it is really tough, especially given that it looks like the peak in new york city happens around the holidays. the timing seems to vary around the country. it hits some early and some later. the areas that are seeing big pickups -- new york is the headliner -- the timing couldn't be worse because it is coming around the holidays. for others, maybe they do see a lag and it comes later in the year. from a seasonal perspective, it looks like covid is kind of seasonal. it picks up in the winter. you are dealing with the flu as well. that also makes it difficult for the health care system, dealing with multiple things at the same time.

taylor: you mentioned inflation and the inflationary effects we felt during the pandemic. senator joe manchin today said inflation is the biggest risk to this economy. everything else from an economic standpoint feels secondary. do you agree and are you seeing that in the economics, that inflation could be the worry? >> i would agree with that. as i said before, if we get a growth affect from an upcoming wave, and any future wave of the pandemic, it will have an impact, but it will be temporary. if you are a fed policy maker you have to be wary of what omicron can do to growth, but it is likely to be a fleeting impact. the inflation story has transformed over the last quarter from what the fed was labeling as transitory to

something that feels like it has deeper roots. shelter costs are not likely to debate -- to abate anytime soon. the shipping situation and logistics costs are being passed through and those do not look like they are going to abate anytime soon. from the fed's perspective, if inflation starts to take root, people come to expect it and it feeds on itself. it is incumbent on the fed to get that in control as soon as they can. taylor: stephen stanley, chief economist at amherst pierpont securities. sort of a wide range of thought as we try to recap the economics with the variants, unknown, inflation. it all comes down to the pandemic. final thoughts are next. this is bloomberg. ♪

kind of an -- caroline: kind of an extraordinary discussion i think everyone is having at a watercooler in their own home. we are lucky enough to be in the office together. everyone has their tale to tell about their worries about family gatherings. goldman sachs is more worried about inflation then the growing variant. taylor: time just takes time. we just have to live through it. sonali: is the u.k. a cautionary tale? so many businesses having to shut down, pressure on the government. caroline: shut down myself.

people are staying at home. what does that mean for the economy? that does it for "what'd you miss" stay well as we build to the holiday season. we are going to be discussing retail tomorrow and the supply chain headache. this is bloomberg. ♪

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>> from the heart of where innovation, money and power collide, in silicon valley and beyond, this is bloomberg technology with emily chang. emily: i'm emily chang in san francisco. this is bloomberg technology. senator joe manchin shocked democrats and the white house with his opposition to biden's $1.75 trillion economic plan, sending the future of build back at her into limb