When Eurasia Group, our parent company, released its Top Risks report for 2022 on Monday, readers might have been surprised to see COVID at the very top of the list.

Yes, omicron has sent case and hospitalization numbers surging once again in dozens of countries, but the prevailing mood among many analysts has been positive. After all, this latest variant is thought to be less dangerous than previous COVID variants, and much of the developed world has been vaccinated (and boosted) with remarkably effective vaccines. Some have speculated that “Omicron is the beginning of the end” of the pandemic.

Unfortunately, optimism in the US and Europe stands on shakier ground in other regions. China, in particular, may be facing an especially rough year.

Poorer countries will continue to be hit hardest, in part because omicron increased demand for booster shots in the US and Europe will further delay the day when the most effective vaccines are widely available elsewhere. To date, just 8 percent of people in developing countries have received even one vaccine dose.

There will also be further economic damage as poorer governments take on more debt to spur recovery and political fallout as people lash out at their governments.

But the most provocative part of this 2022 COVID story – and the entire report – is Eurasia Group’s surprisingly dark view of what’s about to happen in China.

Beijing’s “zero-COVID” policy was a major public health success story in 2020. As Americans, Europeans, Indians, and others struggled with surging numbers of deaths, overwhelmed hospitals, and political fury, the ability of China’s leaders to lock down millions of people and use cutting-edge surveillance technology like track-and-trace apps to enforce its restrictions sharply limited the numbers of infections and deaths. In 2021, China was forced to impose and enforce many more quarantines, but the policy held up relatively well.

But in 2022, argues Eurasia Group, China will face highly transmissible omicron with apparently less effective vaccines and far fewer people protected by antibodies created by previous infections. This year’s COVID outbreaks in China may not set records for deaths, but they will be larger, and “zero-COVID” lockdowns will be more severe and involve tens of millions more people. This crisis will continue until China can roll out domestically developed mRNA shots and boosters for its 1.4 billion people, which still appears at least a year away.

That, according to Eurasia Group, will mean a lot more economic disruption and maybe rising public anger – at a time when President Xi Jinping wants to formally extend his time as leader and roll out more reforms designed to maintain and extend the state’s reach into daily life across the country.

Eurasia Group’s call will be controversial – and might well be proven wrong. After all, there’s still uncertainty about omicron and the ability of China’s existing vaccines to prevent serious illness. The government might try to relax the zero-COVID policy and effectively hide the fallout. More to the point, China has proven for decades that its authoritarian political system creates a degree of political control we don’t see in other major countries, either democracies or other authoritarian states. As China becomes much more technologically innovative, its government and public security have ever-more-effective tools to maintain that control.

But if China really is in for a rough ride, outsiders should resist any temptation to gloat. After all, China is still the world’s primary engine for global growth, and shuttered factories, more global supply chain disruptions, canceled flights, and lower demand for the rest of the world’s exports will be bad news just about everywhere.

Let's be clear: the US and China are not in a new Cold War. For some time, China hawks in the Trump and Biden administrations, along with members of Congress, have been pushing for the US economy to "decouple" from China, especially on tech. They have failed in many sectors. Despite political pressure in Washington, an ongoing trade war, and both countries preoccupied with domestic crises, the reality is that over the past two years the world's two largest economies have become more integrated — especially on global supply chains. We take a look at US-China annual trade levels since 2015.

Fourth time’s the charm in Israel. As the COVID omicron variant sweeps the globe, Israel has become the first country to roll out a fourth vaccine shot for health care workers, immunocompromised residents, and people over the age of 60. (The eligibility criteria will likely be broadened in the weeks ahead.) Pushing back against those who say that more research is required to gauge the effectiveness of a fourth shot, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that omicron is “a new ballgame altogether.” This comes as Israel's health ministry said recently that the country could soon reach herd immunity due to a combination of vaccination rates (64 percent of the population is fully vaccinated) and mounting infections (Bennett warned Sunday that daily infections could soon reach 50,000, up from the current daily caseload of 6,500). Israeli health officials say that although omicron’s spread is inevitable, the aim is to keep deaths and hospitalizations as low as possible by keeping inoculation rates sky-high. Will other countries follow suit?

As Biden tries to reassure Kyiv, Nordics get jittery. Days after Joe Biden held a tense two-hour call with Vladimir Putin over Moscow’s increasing encroachment on the Ukrainian border, the US president spoke to his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky. Biden told the Ukrainian president that America and its allies will “respond decisively” if Russia tries to invade Ukraine. (In recent months, Moscow has amassed 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s eastern border.) The Kremlin, for its parts, wants reassurances that NATO won't expand further in Europe, and recently warned that relations with Washington could be severed entirely if its “red lines” aren't respected. But Washington’s attempts at shuttle diplomacy — coupled with strongly-worded threats — don’t seem to be making European states any less jittery: a debate not seen since Russia's 2014 invasion of Crimea has recently erupted in Finland over whether the state should apply to join NATO, after Moscow threatened to respond militarily if both Finland and Sweden join the alliance.

Eurasia Group has a lot of juicy stuff in this year's Top Risks.

For one thing, Ian Bremmer says the US midterms in November could be the most important election of our lifetimes. Why? Because if the outcome is the expected one, the 2024 presidential election will unleash a political crisis in America.

Then, of course, there's the pandemic.

Ian predicts that within weeks, life will feel much more normal than it has in two years in some developed nations. But not in China, whose zero-COVID strategy will bite Beijing in the derrière. That's a massive problem for Xi Jinping in 2022, which was supposed to be his big year.

Meanwhile, pay attention to Russia's antics in Ukraine. Germany's Olaf Scholz says he wants to meet Vladimir Putin on his own, which could put Joe Biden in a tough spot.

Watch Ian's full Quick Take here.

2: On the second anniversary of the US assassination of top Iranian general Qassim Suleimani in Baghdad, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi vowed to avenge his death unless former president Donald Trump and other American officials are tried in court. At the time, Tehran hit back by attacking US military bases in Iraq.

32: China reopened over the weekend its embassy in Managua, which had been shuttered since the Nicaraguan government decided to recognize Taiwan almost 32 years ago. Nicaragua is the latest country to establish ties with Beijing, which has been pushing hard to increase its economic and political clout — and diminish Taipei’s — across Latin America.

700: About 700 goats and sheep were assembled in Schneverdingen, south of Hamburg, in the form of a syringe to encourage Germans to get vaccinated. If you're interested in crazy vax incentives around the world, take our quiz here.