Markets have got it about right on Omicron so far | Larry Elliott

Time is needed for informed economic judgments on new Covid development

Amateur virology is all the rage in the City. Analysts who would normally be more at home inputting some seasonally adjusted labour market data into a spreadsheet now find they can't explain what is likely to happen to the economy without understanding how viruses spread.

When news emerged of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 last week it was the signal for financial markets everywhere to take a tumble. That was an entirely rational response: stock markets were not prepared for a potentially dangerous new strain of the virus and the sensible thing to do was to mark down share prices.