Burl Ives was a long time subscriber he did very well for himself.. I always think of him this time of year. Tomorrow markets are closed. We will be posting stories all weekend and the party begins again Monday. Please isolate the best you can. And it looks like we will have a very nice surprise for you in the begging of the new year. Be will my friend….
Risk-on rally resumes as Omicron fears recede
* European, Asian shares gain on Omicron severity data
* Safe-haven bonds less favoured
* U.S. consumer confidence grows
By Alun John and Lawrence White
HONG KONG/LONDON, Dec 23 (Reuters) – Global shares extended a recent rally on Thursday while safe-haven bonds and currencies eased as markets welcomed signs that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 might be less severe than feared, as well as robust U.S. economic data. The STOXX index of Europe’s 600 largest shares rose 0.3%, following earlier gains in Asia. Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.57% and MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.8%. It put stock markets on course for a third successive day of gains as they recovered from a jolt on Monday when worries about the new coronavirus variant pushed investors to safe-haven assets like the greenback. “The recent health data from the UK and other places around the world indicate that the worst case is unlikely: even though (Omicron) transmission rates are reportedly higher, this variant seems less virulent and less prone to cause serious illnesses or death,” said David Chao, global market strategist Asia Pacific at Invesco. The risk of needing to stay in hospital for patients with the Omicron variant of COVID-19 is 40-45% lower than for patients with the Delta variant, according to research by London’s Imperial College published on Wednesday. European government bond yields continued to tick up as the trickle of risk sentiment flowing back into the market reduced the need for safe-haven debt. Germany’s 10-year Bund yields hit -0.284%, their highest since late November. NN: A price will be paid for the markets not taking the Omicron variant seriously.
Hospitals have run out of the only antibody treatment that works against people infected by the Omicron mutation
Strained hospitals bracing for a COVID-19 surge caused by the quickly spreading Omicron variant could face another grim possibility: preliminary experiments suggest that most of the antibody treatments for the disease are powerless against Omicron1,2,3,4. Doctors use artificial versions of natural antibodies to stave off severe COVID-19 in high-risk people who are infected with the coronavirus. But a slew of publications posted on preprint servers report laboratory evidence that Omicron is totally or partially resistant to all currently available treatments based on these monoclonal antibodies. The publications have not yet been peer reviewed, but some of the companies that manufacture antibody therapies already concede that their products have lower potency against Omicron than against other variants. The preprints report that only two antibodies show strong evidence of retaining some ability to thwart the variant: sotrovimab, developed by Vir Biotechnology in San Francisco, California, and GSK, headquartered in London; and DXP-604, which is undergoing clinical trials in China and was developed by BeiGene and Singlomics, both based in Beijing.
These findings are already affecting health-care policy. US health officials have said they will ration sotrovimab, allotting it to states on the basis of numbers of infections and hospitalizations and the prevalence of Omicron.
But many countries either can’t meet the impending demand for sotrovimab or can’t access it at all, which will increase the burden for an “already stressed health-care system”, says Rajesh Gandhi, an infectious-disease physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Some monoclonal-antibody treatments for COVID-19 consist of a single antibody; others of a cocktail of several. The details differ, but all of the monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 bind to the virus’s spike protein, preventing the virus from infecting human cells. The treatments reduce the risk of severe COVID-19 by up to 85%. But when virologists saw that Omicron has a multitude of mutations concentrated on its spike protein, they feared what it would mean for these treatments. The outcome was even worse than they anticipated, says Olivier Schwartz, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and a co-author of one of the preprints3. “We didn’t expect to see such a shift in the antibodies’ effectiveness,” he says.To test the treatments’ powers against Omicron, researchers combined either live SARS-CoV-2 or artificial ‘pseudoviruses’ that have traits of the actual pathogen with varying concentrations of each antibody treatment. They then pitted the antibody–virus combination against cells that express ACE2, the receptor that the virus uses to gain entry to human cells. Researchers then identified the concentration of each treatment that would cut viral replication in half, as measured by the number of infected cells. Most of the drugs couldn’t reach that threshold, even at an extremely high concentration. The antibodies made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in Tarrytown, New York, for example, “have diminished potency against Omicron”, the company conceded in a 16 December statement.
Sotrovimab is the best of the lot. Even so, the concentration required to halve viral replication was roughly three times higher for Omicron than for other coronavirus variants.
Although sotrovimab’s drop in potency against the new variant is significant, says Stuart Turville, a virologist at the Kirby Institute in Sydney, Australia, and a co-author of one of the preprints2, “it’s nothing like what we saw for the others”. That might be because sotrovimab targets a part of the spike protein that is unchanged across many related coronaviruses. Some of the studies found that two antibodies developed by AstraZeneca in Cambridge, UK, retained some neutralization power — although it was significantly diminished2,3,4. Schwartz adds that it’s important to complement the neutralization data with actual clinical data to confirm the findings. Scientists are racing to determine exactly how severe Omicron infections are, compared with infections caused by other variants, such as Delta.
But if the antibody arsenal is wiped out, physicians will be without a key tool to prevent severe disease. “If Omicron bites hard, it’ll be a recipe for disaster,” says Turville.
Gandhi says that this calls for an expedited review and production of oral antiviral drugs such as Paxlovid (nirmatrelvir and ritonavir) and molnupiravir, which are expected to be effective against Omicron because of their mechanism of action, and which are cheaper than antibody treatments. Paxlovid manufacturer Pfizer, based in New York City, reported on 14 December that the antiviral was 89% effective at preventing hospitalization and death in high-risk patients ( of the delta mutation) when administered soon after symptoms began. Another challenge will be to discern whether an individual is infected with Delta or Omicron, says Gandhi, because that will determine which treatments are most likely to be effective. Ideally, physicians would have access to a quick test to identify the variant. But without such a tool, he says, they will have to rely on Omicron’s prevalence in their local community to make that decision. NN: monoclonal-antibody treatments are only effects in the first few days are effective. They are what saved Trump. The problem is the only working monoclonal-antibody treatments is sotrovimab and their is none to be had…… By the way Ivermectin still works… You better stock up.
Why won’t Florida,CDC release states breakthrough COVID cases data
For more than two months, the Tampa Bay Times and other news organizations have been asking Florida for data that breaks down how many vaccinated people have been infected, hospitalized or died of COVID-19. They are called “breakthrough” cases, data that would show how effectively the vaccine has protected Floridians — and how vulnerable the unvaccinated are.
But the Florida Department of Health has continually refused those requests, citing what public health and legal experts say are misplaced privacy concerns.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also refuses to release that data, deferring to the state on whether to share it publicly. It’s information Florida residents and researchers have repeatedly asked for. Now it’s crucial to determine how vulnerable Floridians are to omicron, the highly contagious variant that quickly became the dominant strain in the U.S. “It’s the number one thing that people ask me for,” said University of South Florida epidemiologist Jason Salemi. That data may be more important than ever, he said, because it’s “especially pertinent to how omicron may or may not spread.” Breakthrough cases demonstrate how effective vaccines are and can also show how that protection changes over time. Immunity from initial vaccinations wanes 3 to 6 months later, health experts say, so boosters are crucial to fighting off the new variant. Nearly 2.6 million Floridians have contracted the coronavirus since the first vaccine was approved in December 2020, and nearly 42,000 have died from COVID-19 since then. But there is no public data that shows how many were unvaccinated. Nor is there public data that shows how many vaccinated people got breakthrough infections, and whether they had the added protection of booster shots. For example, if Florida released breakthrough data, then we would know how many of the state’s 29,568 new COVID-19 infections — a 118 percent jump from the previous week’s caseload — and 194 new deaths reported Friday were vaccinated or unvaccinated. While Florida won’t release breakthrough data, officials did reveal what some of that data shows: About 30 percent of Florida’s new COVID-19 cases found over a 30-day period were breakthrough infections in people who were vaccinated — but hadn’t received a booster shot — according to a Dec. 19 article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Salemi said that single data point doesn’t provide much insight: “One of the most common questions I receive is the extent to which receiving a full series of a COVID-19 vaccine is protecting me from infection, symptomatic illness and hospitalization. “To really answer these questions, it would be valuable to have key COVID-19 metrics reported frequently and stratified by vaccination status and prior infection status.” NN: As reported in yesterdays Radio Free Wall Street researchers are threatened constantly. Their is a organized government conspiracy to under report the severity of the Omicron mutant strain. The truth is if your last vaccine is 4 months or more old you have a great chance of getting infected and also getting severely ill. And only one monoclonal anti body works against the Omicron mutation Sotrovimab. And for the punch line hospitals have run out…. You have been warned…..
Wall Street rises on rosy economic data, encouraging Omicron update
A trader in a face mask works on the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) as the Omicron coronavirus variant continues to spread in Manhattan, New York City, U.S.,
Dec 22 (Reuters) – Wall Street’s main indexes climbed on Wednesday in a broad rally after upbeat economic data and hopeful developments about the severity of the Omicron coronavirus variant that is sweeping the world. Stocks gained for a second straight session as volatility has ratcheted up in the last month of 2021 following the arrival of Omicron and an otherwise strong year for equities. A South African study suggested reduced risks of hospitalization and severe disease in people infected with the Omicron variant versus the Delta one, but World Health Organization officials cautioned that it was too soon to draw firm conclusions. “We are still struggling for direction in the face of the Omicron outbreak, but in the past few days … more and more evidence is building that the strain is potentially less severe than prior strains, specifically Delta, which bodes well for economic momentum in 2022,” said Mike Stritch, chief investment officer at BMO Wealth Management. According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 (.SPX) gained 47.50 points, or 1.02%, to end at 4,696.73 points, while the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) gained 180.81 points, or 1.18%, to 15,521.89. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) rose 262.58 points, or 0.74%, to 35,755.28. Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) shares rose, boosting the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said in an interview he has sold “enough stock” following several weeks of share sales by the billionaire. U.S. consumer confidence improved further in December, suggesting the economy would continue to expand in 2022. The survey from the Conference Board showed more consumers planned to buy a house and big-ticket items such as motor vehicles and major household appliances as well as go on vacation over the next six months. Other reports showed U.S. home sales increased for a third straight month in November, and that gross domestic product increased at a 2.3% annualized rate in the July-September quarter, revised up from the 2.1% rate estimated last month. In another encouraging development against the pandemic, the U.S. authorized Pfizer Inc’s (PFE.N) oral antiviral COVID-19 pill for at-risk people aged 12 and above, making it the first at-home treatment for the coronavirus. The benchmark S&P 500 is now up about 24.5% so far in 2021.
We could be entering the worst part of the pandemic..Bill Gates
In a series of tweets late Tuesday, Bill Gates says he plans to cancel most of his holiday plans and warned that that the United States “could be entering the worst part of the pandemic
Asserting that the Omicron variant is spreading faster than any virus in history, the billionaire and Microsoft co-founder said the big unknown remains how sick the Omicron variant can make you.
“We need to take it seriously until we know more about it. Even if it’s only half as severe as Delta, it will be the worst surge we have seen so far because it’s so infectious,” Gates said.
Gates also expects the wave to last three months in the United States. “Those few months could be bad, but I still believe if we take the right steps, the pandemic can be over in 2022,” Gates said. Covid-19 cases in the United States are rising: The country averaged more than 148,000 new cases a day over the last week, 23% higher than a week ago and back to levels last seen in mid-September, according to Johns Hopkins University data. More than 69,700 Covid-19 patients were in US hospitals on Wednesday — a number that’s been trending up since it dipped to around 45,000 on November 8, according to Health and Human Services Department data. The US averaged 1,324 Covid-19 deaths a day over the last week, 11% higher than a week prior, according to Johns Hopkins. Through the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, Bill Gates has been trying to close the vaccine gap, noting that far fewer people in low-income countries have received a Covid-19 vaccines. He said in a CNN opinion story in October that the gap will get harder to close, because the world’s richer governments are buying up extra doses to serve as booster shots. “People are right to be upset about the inequity here,” Gates wrote. “Vaccines make Covid-19 a largely preventable disease — and a survivable one in all but the rarest cases — and it is heartbreaking to know that people are dying of a disease not because it can’t be stopped but because they live in a low-income country.” NN: I have made my position clear on all this. See today’s Radio Free Wall Street stream. Heed my warning!
‘Significant increase’ in protection vs Omicron from mRNA boosters, study says
The study, which is not yet peer-reviewed, investigated the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines that use so-called mRNA technology against the Delta variant and the new, more infectious Omicron variant.
“Our study contributes to emerging evidence that BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) or mRNA-1273 (Moderna) primary vaccine protection against Omicron decreases quickly over time, with booster vaccination offering a significant increase in protection,” the authors wrote in the study.
The study was conducted by researchers at Denmark’s top infectious disease authority, Statens Serum Institut (SSI). It analysed data from three million Danes gathered between Nov. 20 and Dec. 12.
Among those who recently had their second vaccine dose, effectiveness against Omicron was measured at 55.2% for Pfizer-BioNTech and 36.7% for Moderna, compared to unvaccinated people.
But that protection quickly waned over the course of five months, the researchers said.
“We see that the protection is lower and decreases faster against Omicron than against the Delta variant after a primary vaccination course,” study author Palle Valentiner-Branth said.
However, a third dose of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine restored protection to 54.6% in people aged 60 or more who had been inoculated 14 to 44 days earlier, compared to those with only two doses.
The study confirms the findings of a recent British study, which also showed a rapid decline in protection against Omicron over time and an increase following a booster with Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine.
“In light of the exponential rise in Omicron cases, these findings highlight the need for massive rollout of vaccinations and booster vaccinations,” the researchers said.
Fourth COVID-19 shot needed, says German health minister
BERLIN, Dec 22 (Reuters) – German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Wednesday that a fourth vaccination will be necessary in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic due to the more contagious Omicron variant. He said that Germany has ordered 80 million doses of a vaccine made by Biontech specifically targeting Omicron and should arrive in April or May. Germany has also ordered four million doses of the newly approved vaccine Novavax – seen as more acceptable to vaccine sceptics – and 11 million doses of the new Valneva shot, which is waiting for marketing authorisation, Lauterbach said. The Novavax shots will arrive in the country in January, Lauterbach told a news conference. “An offensive booster campaign is our most important building block in the fight against Omicron,” the health minister said. Lauterbach threw his support behind a general vaccine mandate, saying that without one, it would not be possible to manage coming waves of infection over the long term. According to Lothar Wieler, president of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases, Omicron will be responsible for most coronavirus infections in Germany within three weeks. “Christmas should not become the spark that starts the Omicron blaze,” RKI chief Lothar Wieler told the same news conference, adding people should limit contacts to an absolute minimum. (Reporting by Zuzanna Szymanska and Miranda Murray Editing by Madeline Chambers.NN: I find it interesting 70% of the US eligible population has not gotten vaccinated at all or they have not gotten their 3rd shot. Meanwhile i am preparing to get my 4th. What is the problem here? I got my first two shots In January. My booster 6 months later in June. My 3rd booster in the beginning of September. And i expect to get my 4th in January. So we are on a 4 to 6 month schedule. The science shows a 4 to 6 month booster program. I can do this and you should to.
Weak winds worsened Europe’s power crunch; utilities need better storage
OSLO/COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Wind speeds were milder than usual in Europe this year, so windmills across the bloc generated less electricity which worsened a crunch that sent power prices to record highs as utilities had to buy more coal and scarce, costly, natural gas. The situation illustrated a challenge facing the European Union as it tries to boost renewable power and meet its climate targets: Power prices can soar when the wind dies down, so generators need ways to store some of the excess power when winds are strong.
“If we had high winds or just reasonable winds over that period, we wouldn’t have seen these price spikes,” said Rory McCarthy, principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie.
Less wind power increased demand at thermal power plants, but tight natural gas supplies raised their costs. The worldwide spike in gas prices drove up energy bills for businesses and consumers. Some heavy industry had to cut supplies and some power suppliers went out of business.Europe’s largest wind producers Britain, Germany and Denmark harnessed just 14% of installed capacity, in the third quarter, when gas prices hit record highs, compared with an average of 20-26% seen in previous years, according to Refinitiv data. In Germany, Europe’s largest economy with the continent’s highest wind power capacity, combined output from both on and offshore wind farms fell around 16% this year-to-date, Bruno Burger, an analyst at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute, told Reuters. (Graphic: Full Load Hours German Wind Turbines, Wind power generation has low operating costs, offering cheaper wholesale power than thermal plants that must pay for fuel, along with costs associated with carbon emissions. This makes wholesale electricity prices lower at times of high wind, leading to lower consumer bills. Weaker wind periods, which are not uncommon, cause prices to rise and more thermal plants are needed. Anna Borg, chief executive of Swedish utility Vattenfall sees two lessons. First, “the market will be more volatile going forward and that the market needs to adapt to that,” she told Reuters. Also, “there is an evident need and also a value in flexibility services and storage. … I think we are only at the beginning of the development of that kind of business model.” Utilities across Europe are starting to invest in storage systems including large batteries or smart charging solutions for electric cars. Several countries are also seeking to reward flexible consumer behaviour such as industrial customers curbing demand at certain hours. Better matching supply and demand can help maintain grid stability. Europe currently invests 40 billion euros a year on power grids, according to lobby group WindEurope which estimates that annual investments need to double over the next thirty years to 66-80 billion euros a year. Both the European Commission and International Energy Agency (IEA) said recent record energy prices should not slow the effort to meet climate targets under the Paris agreement by moving away from fossil fuels. Instead, governments should help boost capacity of wind and other renewable power sources, ensuring more overall output and avoiding the need for reliance on fossil fuels as backup. “The more renewable energy we can build, the more electricity will come from those sources and the less coal and gas is needed for electricity production,” Christian Rynning-Toennesen, head of Norwegian utility Statkraft, told Reuters. “So we think the trend (for renewable energy growth) will continue and be strengthened by these electricity prices, rather than slowed down,” he said.
But some believe the energy transition may already be getting ahead of itself. Sindre Knutsson, vice president markets at consultancy Rystad Energy told Reuters Europe is turning away from fossil fuels too quickly.
Knutsson noted that more coal-fired plants capable of stable power generation are being decommissioned together with nuclear. “It’s no secret that we will use renewables to generate electricity in the future. But at the moment, we’re still relying on fossil fuels,” he said. Low or zero-emissions back-up capacity for periods of low wind or solar supply such as batteries, hydrogen or carbon capture and storage are still more than a decade away from being available at scale, agreed Matthew Jones, lead analyst for EU Power at ICIS. “So for the moment thermal capacity is required,” he told Reuters. Earnings at several European wind power generators were hit by this year’s wind lulls, but the companies remain committed to increasing capacity. The world’s biggest developer of offshore wind farms, Orsted said the lower wind speeds had a negative 2.5 billion crowns ($379.20 million) impact for the first nine months of the year compared to 2020. Germany’s RWE said weaker winds caused profits at its wind and solar units to fall by 38% in the first nine months of the year. There was nothing to suggest that climate change itself played a role in the lower wind speeds, companies in the sector said. “We follow it on a daily basis, but we see nothing which indicate that there is a long-term change coming,” Orsted’s head of Continental Europe, Rasmus Errboe, told Reuters. Statkraft also regularly measures wind speeds and conditions but had not seen any extraordinary adjustments to its data, according to its CEO. “To my knowledge, there’s not any pattern that we can see,” Rynning-Toennesen said. More renewables will make prices more volatile in the short to mid term, as weather will largely dictate prices, the heads of two power trading firms agreed. “It will become common for the electricity market in Europe to have a very high degree of volatility because that will just be the nature of the assets that we are bringing online and the nature of the assets that we are taking offline,” said chief executive at trading firm InCommodities, Jesper Johanson. Power traders, who typically profit from gyrating conditions, say the market can handle the higher volatility, and price spikes provide investors with an incentive to fund back-up solutions. “In order to get commercial investments going into different kind of storage, like batteries, the market needs to give that price signal. There needs to be volatility and the stronger that price signal is, the more investments we will see,” Johanson added. (Graphic: Next-Day Power Prices. High prices should favour construction of more renewable energy, agreed Anders Bauditz, chief executive of trading firm Norlys Energy Trading. “Hopefully, the politicians have seen these price extremes over the last few months and will do the tally and then realize that probably we need to push for even more green energy and then figure out how we solve the problem with the intermittency,” he told Reuters. NN: We have had extreme climate change on earth long before a few million humans discovered fire. Yes their is climate change. Their always has been. I am not so sure its driven by human activities. But lets not quibble. It benefits man kind to stop burning wood and coal and heavy oil from a pollution stand point. I would not be to quick to abandoned nuclear and nature gas while we wait for the technology to develop
Omicron milder than Delta in UK – report…… Another study finds Omicron MAY NOT be milder than Delta: UK Study
he Omicron coronavirus variant seems to be causing milder COVID-19 symptoms compared to the Delta strain, according to conclusions set to be published by British government scientists. People living in the United Kingdom are less likely to become ill, Politico reported on Wednesday citing the study, noting high vaccination percentage as one of the main reasons driving high protection against COVID-19. Furthermore, the research is set to show that people who have been vaccinated with a booster dose have a significantly reduced chance of ending up in a hospital due to COVID-19. The report comes as the UK registers more than 90,000 new infections a day over the past week – the highest number since the start of the pandemic.
Omicron may not be milder than Delta: UK Study
A recently published study conducted by the Imperial College in London. Link below:
https://english.madhyamam.com/india/omicron-may-not-milder-delta-study-897286
has raised doubts surrounding the speculation that the Omicron variant. may be milder than its predecessor, Delta. According to researchers, there is no evidence (as of yet) that Omicron is less severe or lethal than Delta and that it is difficult to compare two strains of the same virus. Two doses of AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccines only afforded 20% protection against the highly mutated strain, the non-peer reviewed study concluded. This was in line with natural immunity;
a third dose however increased protection up to 55-80% in symptomatic cases making booster doses of the vaccine an important factor in combating the virus
“Risk of reinfection with the Omicron variant is 5.4 times greater than that of the Delta variant. This implies that the protection against reinfection by Omicron afforded by past infection may be as low as 19%,” the Imperial College said in a statement. Such This level of immune evasion means that Omicron poses a major, imminent threat to public health, British epidemiologist Professor Neil Ferguson was quoted as saying. The Imperial College London team analyzed all the PCR tests of confirmed Covid cases in England between November 29 and December 11, making it one of the most expansive examinations yet on Omicron’s potential to evade the body’s defences. The study looked at growth, population distribution and immune escape of the variant in England. The results were based on the proportion of people testing positive who had symptoms or went to the hospital. Just how severe Omicron cases will be remains unclear, adding it is too soon to say how hospitalisations will play out in the UK.
The statement from the Imperial College quoted Professor Azra Ghani from Imperial College London, who said that more data was required to model the virus’ trajectory to aid healthcare system. “Quantifying reinfection risk and vaccine effectiveness against Omicron is essential for modelling the likely future trajectory of the Omicron wave and the potential impact of vaccination and other public health interventions,” said Professor Ghani. NN: Reality is we just do not really know much about this new monster. I urge you to error on the side of caution till we know more/