While we were eating turkey

[Dave Grubb]

...the world was being gripped by another round of COVID fears.

The NYSE began to react with a plumet on Wed, today is piling on

Stocks around the world tumbled on Friday, along with oil prices, after evidence of a new coronavirus variant detected in South Africa prompted some countries to reinstate travel restrictions, reigniting concerns about the economic toll the pandemic could impose after months of recovery.

The S&P 500 dropped 1.3 percent and European markets fell 3 to 4 percent.

Futures of West Texas Intermediate oil, the U.S. crude benchmark, fell more than 6 percent to $73.39 a barrel.

Demand for the relative safety of government bonds jumped, pushing their prices up and their yields down. The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury plunged as much as 13 basis points, or 0.13 percentage point, to 1.50 percent, the most since Nov. 4, 2020, the day after the U.S. presidential election. But by market open in the U.S., the drop had eased and yields traded at about 1.53 percent. The yield on Germany’s bund, Europe’s benchmark bond, fell 7 basis points to minus 0.32 percent.

The number of mutations in this new variant has raised fears that it could be especially contagious, and caused concern about the effectiveness of current vaccines. But scientists haven’t come to any conclusions yet.

“As long as markets are faced with a familiar virus situation that can be overcome with a sufficiently crafted and executed vaccination strategy, the reactions will be muted,” analysts at Royal Bank of Canada wrote in a note to clients. “This new variant, however, creates a potential threat to the known responses and thus creates a more lasting market response.”

U.S. stock markets were closed on Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday and will close early on Friday afternoon. Thin trading in markets because of the holidays can exacerbate the swings.

[Honda]

...the world was being gripped by another round of COVID fears.

The NYSE began to react with a plumet on Wed, today is piling on

Good news for the neo socialist.......

[UTAH]

We should be seeing in the next few quarters whether or not the government's investments are paying off. For, there's always the risk the current recession becomes a depression. Now, I don't think that'll happen, the stimulus monies should ramp up construction nationwide. We may have to tolerate stagflation, which could sink the Biden administration.

Hunter

[Dave Grubb]

This morning's update:

1. A new coronavirus variant has the world on edge: Omicron.

Countries around the world are scrambling to stop the spread after the W.H.O. described Omicron as a “variant of concern,” its most serious category. The W.H.O. said the variant, first detected in southern Africa, carries a number of genetic mutations that might allow it to spread quickly, perhaps even among those who are vaccinated. But scientists say vaccines seem likely to work against it.

Omicron has already been spotted in Hong Kong and Belgium and may well be in other countries outside of Africa. Germany, Italy and Britain reported cases yesterday. African officials lashed out at new travel bans, saying that the continent was again bearing the brunt of panicked policies from Western countries and that vaccine hoarding helped pave the way to this crisis.

European nations did not find the variant until after South Africa alerted them to it, demonstrating the gaps in their own surveillance efforts.

The response has been scattershot. Britain reimposed a mask-wearing order for stores and public transportation. Chaos ensued in Amsterdam for passengers traveling from South Africa. New York State declared a state of emergency in anticipation of a new surge in cases.

And from this morning's WSJ:

TEL AVIV—Israel’s government Sunday banned all foreign nationals from entering the country and reinstated a controversial contact-tracing surveillance program as part of efforts to prevent the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant in its borders.

Meanwhile, Australia and Austria reported their first cases of the variant, joining a group of countries including the U.K., Germany, Belgium, Israel and Italy that have detected a strain that authorities say could pose a greater risk of people falling ill with Covid-19 a second time and could be more transmissible than other variants.

Dutch health authorities said Sunday that they had confirmed 13 cases of the new variant among 61 positive Covid-19 tests from passengers on two flights that arrived in the Netherlands from South Africa on Friday. It was possible that further sequencing would find more cases of Omicron, they said.

The emergence of Omicron raises the question of whether a more contagious new variant will worsen an already severe winter Covid-19 wave in some Western countries, presenting policy makers with choices that are politically and socially difficult.

My SIL was scheduled to go to Zurich Thanksgiving night but the flight was cancelled.

[UTAH]

My guess is some countries will have a knee-jerk reaction. Whether or not that ties to actual data remains to be seen. Frankly, I'd be surprised to see multiple states follow the Fed's lead on this. Americans seem to have lost the will to fight the virus at this point.

Hunter

[mgrist]

Americans seem to have lost the will to fight the virus at this point.

Hunter

That is so strange to read, especially knowing it's the truth. We are so spoiled and arrogant as a nation that we think we've become invincible, and the saddest part is that it's going to hurt those that know better.

[Dave Grubb]

An update from this morning's NYT:

David Leonhardt
By David Leonhardt
Nov. 29, 2021, 6:28 a.m. ET
The public reaction to new Covid-19 variants has followed a familiar cycle. People tend to assume the worst about two different questions — whether the variant leads to faster transmission of the Covid virus and whether it causes more severe illness among infected people.

The first of those worries came true with the Alpha and Delta variants: Alpha was more contagious than the original version of the virus, and Delta was even more contagious than Alpha. But the second of the worries has largely not been borne out: With both Alpha and Delta, the percentage of Covid cases that led to hospitalization or death held fairly steady.

This pattern isn’t surprising, scientists say. Viruses often evolve in ways that help them flourish. Becoming more contagious allows a virus to do so; becoming more severe has the potential to do the opposite, because more of a virus’s hosts can die before they infect others.

It is too soon to know whether the Omicron variant will fit the pattern. But the very early evidence suggests that it may. Unfortunately, Omicron seems likely to be more contagious than Delta, including among vaccinated people. Fortunately, the evidence so far does not indicate that Omicron is causing more severe illness:

Barry Schoub, a South African virologist who advises the government there, has said that Omicron cases have tended to be “mild to moderate.” Schoub added: “That’s a good sign. But let me stress it is early days.”

Dr. Rudo Mathivha, the head of the intensive care unit at a hospital in Soweto, South Africa, said that severe cases have been concentrated among people who were not fully vaccinated.

Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, a top health official in Israel, emphasized yesterday that when vaccinated people were infected, they became only slightly ill, according to the publication Haaretz.

As The Times’s Carl Zimmer wrote, “For now, there’s no evidence that Omicron causes more severe disease than previous variants.”

In the initial days after a new variant is discovered, I know that many people focus on worst-case scenarios. The alarming headlines can make it seem as if the pandemic may be about to start all over again, with vaccines powerless to stop the variant.

To be clear, there is genuine uncertainty about Omicron. Maybe it will prove to be worse than the very early signs suggest and cause more severe illness than Delta. But assuming the worst about each worrisome new variant is not a science-based, rational response. And alarmism has its own costs, especially to mental health, notes Dr. Raghib Ali, an epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge.

“Of course we should take it seriously,” Ali wrote on Twitter, “but there is no plausible scenario that this variant is going to take us back to square one (i.e. the situation pre-vaccines).”

Absent new evidence, the rational assumption is that Covid is likely to remain overwhelmingly mild among the vaccinated (unless their health is already precarious). For most vaccinated people, Covid probably presents less risk than some everyday activities.

[UTAH]

"Covid probably presents less risk than some everyday activities."
- David Leonhard

Mr. Leonhard describes our members. For, all of us are vaccinated. A few have been infected (looks at Ben as an example) and are doing well.

Hunter