(Reuters) -U.S. health regulators are looking at authorizing a potential fourth dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in the fall, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The Food and Drug Administration has been reviewing data to authorize a second booster dose of the messenger RNA vaccines from Pfizer Inc and partner BioNTech SE and vaccines from Moderna Inc, the report added. The agency last month cut the interval to get a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech as well as from Moderna, in a bid to provide better protection sooner against the Omicron variant. The planning is still in early stages, and authorization would depend on determinations as to whether the second booster should be authorized for all adults or particular age groups, and whether it should target the Omicron variant or be formulated differently, the report said. It added that no decision was final and that it could be necessary to make booster shots available earlier if a new variant appears. The United States reported 2,323 COVID-19 deaths on Friday, bringing the total count to 936,523. NN: It is settled business typical of these types of vaccines like the flue Jap the vaccine wears off very quickly. In the case of the covid vaccines studies show in 4 to 5 months protection drops dramatically Say you get your booster shot in March. That means your timing would be right to receive the modified to new variants that should be available in August or September. Thats when it looks like the new subvariant BA.2 starts infecting people in mass. For the record its a mistake to open things all the way. Have we not learned anything. Every time they open things up within 6 months another wave is upon us. The BA,2 variant is now dominate in South Africa, India, England and Denmark. A recent Denmark study finds its 30% more infectious than the current variant.an it infects more fully vaccinated people then any other variant. This is very early data.
Mohamed El-Erian on the market: ‘We have lost our most important anchor’
Mohamed El-Erian, president of Queens College, Cambridge University, and Allianz Chief Economic Advisor, joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss surging inflation, markets, and how the economy will react to the Fed’s decision
Oil Prices End The Week Lower As Hopes Of An Iran Deal Rise
Oil prices were down on Friday, for their first weekly decline in nine weeks, as reports intensify that an Iranian nuclear deal could be closer than ever. Early this week, WTI Crude hit $95 per barrel, and Brent Crude touched $96 on Monday amid market fears of an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine and the possibility of disruption of Russian energy supplies to Europe. On Tuesday, oil prices tanked after Russia said some of its troops were returning to bases after finishing drills, but NATO and the United States later said they have not seen troops pulling from the Ukrainian border. Despite the reports of a broken ceasefire with both sides trading accusations, oil moved lower on Thursday and early on Friday on the prospect that an Iranian deal could be imminent. Iran’s main negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, tweeted late on Wednesday: “After weeks of intensive talks, we are closer than ever to an agreement; nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, though. Our negotiating partners need to be realistic, avoid intransigence and heed lessons of past 4yrs. Time for their serious decisions.” In case a deal is reached—and the U.S. has said that the window of reaching an agreement is closing fast—Iran could return some 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) to the market within several months after the U.S. lifts sanctions on its oil exports. According to diplomats who spoke to Reuters on Thursday, a draft of an agreement being discussed would put the main sanction-lifting stage, including oil exports, at a later stage while releasing Western prisoners held in Iran and unfreezing Iranian funds would come first. The Russia-Ukraine crisis is still a factor—a bullish one—for the oil market, but the bearish prospect of a return of Iranian oil exports took over market sentiment this week, alongside a general risk-off sentiment on markets. NN: lets assume Iranian oil comes back in 3 months like the “expert” say. That at best puts 300,000 barrels a day in the market. The figure they publish is Iranian oil production at 1,300,000 barrels per day. But they forget to point out Iran is selling 1,000,000 barrels per day on the black market mostly to China.
Meet your new monster the BA.2 Omicron subvarient
https://youtu.be/PoxC0FQGqFQ
(CNN)The BA.2 virus — a subvariant of the Omicron coronavirus variant — isn’t just spreading faster than its distant cousin, it may also cause more severe disease and appears capable of thwarting some of the key weapons we have against Covid-19, new research suggests. New lab experiments from Japan show that BA.2 may have features that make it as capable of causing serious illness as older variants of Covid-19, including Delta. And like Omicron, it appears to largely escape the immunity created by vaccines. A booster shot restores protection, making illness after infection about 74% less likely. BA.2 is also resistant to some treatments, including sotrovimab, the monoclonal antibody that’s currently being used against Omicron. The findings were posted Wednesday as a preprint study on the bioRxiv server, before peer review. Normally, before a study is published in medical journal, it is scrutinized by independent experts. Preprints allow research to be shared more quickly, but they are posted before that additional layer of review.
“It might be, from a human’s perspective, a worse virus than BA.1 and might be able to transmit better and cause worse disease,” says Dr. Daniel Rhoads, section head of microbiology at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. Rhoads reviewed the study but was not involved in the research.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is keeping a close eye on BA.2, said its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
“There is no evidence that the BA.2 lineage is more severe than the BA.1 lineage. CDC continues to monitor variants that are circulating both domestically and internationally,” she said Friday. “We will continue to monitor emerging data on disease severity in humans and findings from papers like this conducted in laboratory settings.”
BA.2 is highly mutated compared with the original Covid-causing virus that emerged in Wuhan, China. It also has dozens of gene changes that are different from the original Omicron strain, making it as distinct from the most recent pandemic virus as the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants were from each other.
Kei Sato, a researcher at the University of Tokyo who conducted the study, argues that these findings prove that BA.2 should not be considered a type of Omicron and that it needs to be more closely monitored. “As you may know, BA.2 is called ‘stealth Omicron,’ ” Sato told CNN. That’s because it doesn’t show up on PCR tests as an S-gene target failure, the way Omicron does. Labs therefore have to take an extra step and sequence the virus to find this variant. “Establishing a method to detect BA.2 specifically would be the first thing” many countries need to do, he says. “It looks like we might be looking at a new Greek letter here,” agreed Deborah Fuller, a virologist at the University of Washington School of Medicine, who reviewed the study but was not part of the research.
Mixed real-world data on subvariant’s severity
BA.2 has been estimated to be about 30% more contagious than Omicron, according to the World Health Organization. It has been detected in 74 countries and 47 US states.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 4% of Americans with Covid-19 now have infections caused by BA.2, but many other parts of the world have more experience with this variant. It has become dominant in at least 10 other countries: Bangladesh, Brunei, China, Denmark, Guam, India, Montenegro, Nepal, Pakistan and the Philippines, according to World Health Organization’s weekly epidemiological report. However, there’s mixed evidence on the severity of BA.2 in the real world. Hospitalizations continue to decline in countries where BA.2 has gained a foothold, like South Africa and the UK.
But in Denmark, where BA.2 has become the leading cause of infections, hospitalizations and deaths are rising, according to WHO.
The new study found that BA.2 can copy itself in cells more quickly than BA.1, the original version of Omicron. It’s also more adept at causing cells to stick together. This allows the virus to create larger clumps of cells, called syncytia, than BA.1. That’s concerning because these clumps then become factories for churning out more copies of the virus. Delta was also good at creating syncytia, which is thought to be one reason it was so destructive to the lungs.
When the researchers infected hamsters with BA.2 and BA.1, the animals infected with BA.2 got sicker and had worse lung function. In tissues samples, the lungs of BA.2-infected hamsters had more damage than those infected by BA.1.
Similar to the original Omicron, BA.2 was capable of breaking through antibodies in the blood of people who’d been vaccinated against Covid-19. It was also resistant to the antibodies of people who’d been infected with Covid-19 early in the pandemic, including Alpha and Delta. And BA.2 was almost completely resistant to some monoclonal antibody treatments. But there was a bright spot: Antibodies in the blood of people who’d recently had Omicron also seemed to have some protection against BA.2, especially if they’d also been vaccinated. And that raises an important point, Fuller says. Even though BA.2 seems more contagious and pathogenic than Omicron, it may not wind up causing a more devastating wave of Covid-19 infections.
“One of the caveats that we have to think about as we get new variants that might seem more dangerous is the fact that there’s two sides to the story,” Fuller says. The virus matters, she says, but as its would-be hosts, so do we. “Our immune system is evolving as well. And so that’s pushing back on things,” she said. Right now, she says, we’re in a race against the virus, and the key question is, who’s in the lead? “What we will ultimately want is to have the host be ahead of the virus. In other words, our immunity, be a step ahead of the next variant that comes out, and I don’t know that we’re quite there yet,” she said. For that reason, Fuller says, she feels like it’s not quite time for communities to lift mask mandates. “Before this thing came out, we were about 10 feet away from the finish line,” she said. “Taking off the masks now is not a good idea. It’s just going to extend it. Let’s get to the finish line.” NN: we have the tools to protect ourselves. I am once again sad and outrage to see ha ha ha leadership let the peoples guard down ,,,,again. The 5th and deadliest wave will soon be upon us…. You nee to be fully vaccinated which means a booster ever 5 months, I take profrolatic doses of Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, Niclosamide and CoronaVit. Of course consult your medical professional before you undertake any of this. Click link below to see the Japineese published research
Russia to stage massive nuclear drills amid Ukraine standoff
The Russian military on Friday announced massive drills of its strategic nuclear forces, a stark reminder of the country’s nuclear might amid Western fears that Moscow might be preparing to invade Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin will personally oversee Saturday’s exercise, which will involve multiple practice launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, the Defense Ministry said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin would observe the drills from the Defense Ministry’s situation room and supervise the practice missile launches himself. The ministry said it planned the maneuvers some time ago to check the readiness of Russia’s military command and personnel, as well as the reliability of its nuclear and conventional weapons. The war games follow U.S. President Joe Biden’s warning on Thursday that Russia could invade Ukraine within days. Western fears focus on an estimated 150,000 Russian troops — including about 60% of Russia’s overall ground forces — concentrated near Ukraine’s borders. The Kremlin insists it has no plans to invade. But Moscow has demanded that the U.S. and its allies keep Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations out of NATO, not deploy weapons in Ukraine and pull back NATO forces from Eastern Europe. Washington and its allies bluntly rejected the Russian demands, and Moscow threatened to take unspecified “military-technical measures” if the West continued to stonewall. Russia holds massive drills of its strategic nuclear forces on an annual basis, but the maneuvers planned for Saturday pointedly involve the Black Sea Fleet. The fleet is based on the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The Black Sea Fleet has surface warships and submarines equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles, but its doesn’t have intercontinental ballistic missiles and didn’t take part in similar previous drills of the country’s strategic forces. In the past, Russia has held the annual strategic forces drills in the fall. U.S. officials have voiced concern that Moscow shifted the exercise to February to coincide with a possible invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin’s Peskov said Russia notified foreign partners about the maneuvers in advance, adding that the exercise shouldn’t cause worries in the West. “Practice launches of ballistic missiles are part of regular training,” he said. “They are preceded by a series of notices to other nations via different channels.” Putin met with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and invited him to watch Saturday’s maneuvers. The authoritarian Lukashenko, who has edged closer to Moscow amid Western sanctions for his crackdown on domestic protests, has offered to host Russian nuclear weapons. in Belarus, which neighbors Ukraine to the north. The strategic forces of both Russia and the United States include a nuclear triad of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-based ICBMs and nuclear-capable bombers. The exercise of Russia’s nuclear forces follows a series of sweeping drills that the Russian military held near Ukraine and in Belarus. The Russian military said it started pulling some of troops massed near Ukraine back to their permanent bases after the drills. The U.S. and its allies questioned the claim and said that Moscow has actually moved thousands of new troops closer to Ukraine. Moscow argued that the pullback takes time and rejected Western criticism, saying that it would deploy troops wherever it’s necessary to ensure national security. NN: this is known as rattling nuclear swords.
Biden: I’m convinced Putin will invade Ukraine
WASHINGTON — In remarks delivered from the White House on Friday, President Biden said he was certain that Russian President Vladimir Putin would invade Ukraine, thus plunging Europe into war.
“As of this moment, I’m convinced that he’s made the decision” to send Russia’s military forces across Ukraine’s eastern border, Biden said of Putin. “We have reason to believe that.”
The Biden administration had previously predicted an invasion on Feb. 16, but it failed to materialize. A former KGB intelligence agent, Putin is fond of trying to throw his Western adversaries off balance. “It’s hard to read his mind,” Biden conceded, even as he repeated that U.S. intelligence indicated that the Russian leader had settled on war. Putin is expected to use the contrived pretenses of a “false flag” operation to start the conflict, which is intended to reclaim land Russia believes belongs under its control. For several months, Russia has been sending military forces to its border with Ukraine, with more than 100,000 troops now surrounding the much smaller nation. In 2014 Russia invaded Ukraine, annexing the Crimean Peninsula and establishing pro-Russian separatist areas in the Donbass region. Biden did acknowledge, however, that until the shooting begins, “diplomacy is always a possibility.” Efforts by Biden and European leaders thus far, however, have failed to convince Putin to back down. The prospects of a Europe riven by war recall some of the 20th century’s darkest days. Asked about planned Russian nuclear exercises, however, Biden reassured the public that he doesn’t anticipate any chance of nuclear war. “I don’t think he is remotely contemplating using nuclear weapons,” the president said. NN: It looks to me like Putin knows how to push Biden’s go buttons. It is my sniff that a back room deal will be made and Putin will in essence neutralize NATO and get his pipeline up and running
Worst yet to come Omicron is evading vaccines
Omicron is widely known to be more contagious than previous Covid strains. Scientists believe the worst of the virus may not yet be over. In a highly secure clean room at the University of NSW’s Kirby Institute, experts studied the strain at the beginning of Australia’s Omicron wave in mid-December and found out just how adept the variant is at evading vaccines. While the Delta variant was 60 per cent better at evading antibodies than the original virus found in Wuhan – even in the bodies of the double-vaxxed, Omicron was 16.5 times better at evading immunity – 10 times more than Delta. That explains why Omicron surged so quickly when it arrived in Australia – going from 110,000 active cases nationwide on Dec. 30 to 835,000 on Jan. 17. It has since eased significantly, with numbers dropping around 80 per cent since. But while the Omicron wave is subsiding across the globe, scientists believe new variants may continue to emerge for years – particularly in winter. Research from the Kirby Institute shows exactly how much more adept Omicron is at evading immunity via two vaccines or prior infection (pictured). A booster provides more protection
Already in Europe and parts of Asia, a new subvariant of Omicron known as BA.2 is rapidly spreading with indications it could be even more contagious than its predecessor, the Omicron BA.1 strain.
Danish health officials estimate that BA.2 may be 1.5 times more transmissible than BA.1 based on preliminary data, but it likely does not cause more severe disease. The UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies on February 10 outlined four ways the end of the Covid pandemic could play out. The best case scenario, which is most likely, involved new variants no worse than what have already been seen and global immunity remaining high. But a worse case scenario involves ‘unpredictable’ new variants which could evade current immunity and move too fast for updated vaccines to keep up. There is a strong theory in scientific community that Covid will evolve to become less dangerous. The ‘law of declining virulence’ established by Dr Theobald Smith suggested viruses become less severe to ensure their own survival. This is because, in simple terms, the milder strains are more likely to be spread because people take fewer precautions to avoid them. Experts warn the new variants will appear for years especially in winter months. However, experts warn a continued easing in the potency of Covid should not be taken for granted. ‘There’s this assumption that something more transmissible becomes less virulent. I don’t think that’s the position we should take,’ Francois Balloux, a computational biologist at University College London, told scientific journal Nature. Australian National University professor Peter Collignon agreed, saying a best case scenario was most likely but ‘all of us have got to be honest and say we don’t really know’. There is work being done by several laboratories around the world on a pan-sarbecovirus vaccine – a single vaccine to protect against any current or emerging Covid variants as well as any similar viruses. ‘Additional variants may arise, and this occurs more quickly than variant-specific vaccines can be developed and deployed.’ Dr Phil Krause, the chair of the WHO Covid Vaccines Research Expert Group, said on January 28. ‘Structural similarity between sarbecoviruses should enable development of a pansarbecovirus vaccine. ‘Many approaches are highly promising and feasible. A new vaccine could replace the need for variant specific boosters. NN: Reality is we are their yet. People who do not understand why the ball is constantly moving. And the reality is the virus is mutating… Each mutation gives us new challenges. And requires us to update our counter measures….. It is a moving target
Wall St. ends as lower as Ukraine tensions mount
Wall Street’s main stock indexes ended lower on Friday as escalating tensions in Ukraine and U.S. statements of an imminent Russian invasion prompted investors to dump risky assets in the run-up to a long weekend. The Dow fell 0.7%, the S&P 500 also shed 0.7%, while the Nasdaq dropped 1.2%… dragged down by declines in high-growth stocks including Apple, Amazon and Tesla. “Why stocks are slumping for three reasons. One, the best indicator of where the market’s going to go on any given day is what it did the day before. It works more often than not. Not a good reason. Second, if you’re a trader or even an investor, you don’t really want to be long. A lot of stocks over a three day weekend when you’ve got the threat of a shooting war starting and nobody knows whether it will start or it’ll start or how far it’ll spiral. Third, there right now is something of a bear tilt to the market. You know, speculators are frightened by what the Fed may do. Investors are frightened by the possibility that Fed moves and inflation could cause a recession later this year. So you sort of got a unholy threesome of factors that are weighing on them on the market.” Intel tumbled after the chipmaker forecast its profit margin to drop this year and then be steady for several years as it invests in new technologies and factories to meet rising chip demand. Roku also slumped after the streaming platform’s disappointing quarterly revenue and first-quarter outlook. And DraftKings fell after the sports-betting company forecast a bigger-than anticipated 2022 loss. Friday marked the second straight week of declines for Wall Street’s main indexes. NN: although the swings are enormous the markets are range bound. The low was put in January 24 and has held. Till i see new lows as far as i am concerned the market is in a consultation phase.
CLO Headaches Loom With EU Ban on Caymans Over Money Laundering
(Bloomberg) — European regulators are creating trouble for managers of U.S. collateralized loan obligations that typically sell some of their bonds to investors in the region. In the coming weeks, the European Union is likely to add the Cayman Islands to its list of jurisdictions that have “strategic deficiencies” in areas including anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regimes, according to a January note from law firm Clifford Chance. That effectively blacklists them for European investors, the note said. The problem: most U.S. CLOs are issued using entities domiciled in the Cayman Islands. If the Cayman Islands are blacklisted, any U.S. CLOs that are routinely offered to EU investors in addition to the typical American audience — nearly one-third of U.S. deals, by some estimates — will need to find an alternative home to for issuing. Otherwise, managers will have to limit their deals to U.S. investors. The leading alternative jurisdictions to set up CLO special purpose vehicles are the island of Jersey, a self-governing dependency of the U.K. off the coast of France, or Bermuda. Deals are already in the works using these new locations as offshore SPVs, and will be issued soon, according to CLO lawyers. “In the coming weeks, we’ll see the first deals priced with Jersey or Bermuda-based SPVs” from managers that want to sell their deals into Europe, Nick Robinson, a partner at Allen & Overy who is focused on CLO deals, said in an interview. “A number of deals are in the launch stage. Of course, deals not marketed to Europe can stay in the Cayman Islands.” The Ministry of Financial Services & Commerce of the Cayman Islands said in a press statement in January that it was working with the EU to be removed from the list of jurisdictions viewed as being a high risk from the standpoint of money laundering activity. On Jan. 7, the European Commission adopted a draft regulation adding the Cayman Islands to its list of countries with strategic deficiencies in their AML regimes, according to the law firm Cadwalader. Article 4 of the EU Securitisation Regulation provides that securitization special purpose entities may not be established in any country on that list. “The application of Article 4 of the EU Securitisation Regulation to EU investors is unclear, but the general consensus is that EU investors should not invest in Cayman-domiciled securitization vehicles while the Cayman Islands are on the list,” Cadwalader attorneys wrote in a Jan. 27 article. In addition to new deals, refinanced CLOs that are to be sold to European investors also need to be re-domiciled, lawyers say, and the jurisdiction needs to be changed before the refinancing closes, which can lead to a time crunch. “To the extent that those CLOs sold to EU investors are refinanced, they’ll need to be moved, which increases costs and time,” said Robert Villani, structured credit partner at Clifford Chance. The British Virgin Islands, another perceived tax haven that is creditor friendly, was briefly considered as an alternative jurisdiction for CLOs, Robinson said, but was dismissed because there had been AML investigations in that country as well. One other option that has been used, especially for a few middle-market CLO deals, is to register the SPV domestically as a Delaware LLC, Robinson said, although that means the transactions would need to have somewhat simpler structures. CLOs have been one of the hottest sectors in the credit markets for several reasons, including the fact the securities are floating-rate and may protect against rising yields during a rate-hiking cycle. Investors have also become more comfortable because the product had stellar performance through the pandemic downturn. The outsized demand brought new sales of U.S. CLOs to a post-financial crisis record in 2021, with numbers close to $184 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. NN: Using offshore tax havens are asking for trouble. That is why we use Jersey trusts out of England. I am told the offshore trading bussiness is slowly moving. These places are not inherently bad. The problem is they are small places and cartels doing bad things can easily overwhelm them.
US: Russia deployed up to 190,000 troops near Ukraine
US says Russia has deployed 190,000 troops around Ukraine — almost doubling its strength in 2 weeks while claiming to withdraw
- The US thinks Russia has up to 190,000 troops near Ukraine, the US ambassador to the OSCE said Friday.
- The US estimate was 100,000 on January 30, which means the figure may have almost doubled.
Russia claimed to be withdrawing troops from the region, but the US and others have said otherwise. Russia has up to 190,000 troops “in and around” Ukraine, the US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said on Friday. It came as the US and its allies continued to warn that Russia is on the brink of an invasion. Michael Carpenter told the OSCE — a body that includes Russia, Ukraine, the US, and more than 50 other nations — that the US has assessed that Russia has between 169,000 and 190,000 personnel there. He said that number had increased recently, from around 100,000 on January 30. Carpenter did not explain what he meant by claiming that Russian troops could be “in” Ukraine. The US and international community recognizes regions that Russia has claimed as still being part of Ukraine, and Russia has long supported the estimated 30,000 separatists fighters on the ground. The UK Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, recently said that some “not conventional” advance forces were already in Ukraine. Russia also claims Crimea as its own territory after its annexation from Ukraine in 2014, and has its own forces there. Russia also offers support to the breakaway Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine’s east. Russia had said on Tuesday that it was withdrawing troops from Ukraine’s border. But Ukraine said it had not seen any evidence, and both the US and NATO said that Russia appeared to only be adding troops. The figure of 190,000 is the highest estimate the US has given so far. A senior Biden administration official told reporters on Wednesday night that there were around 160,000 troops near Ukraine’s border, NBC News reported. The official that included around 7,000 troops the official said had recently joined.