Bill Owens: Confounding And Confusing Events 7/26/21

Some interesting statistics from Advent Health regarding COVID-19 and the Delta variant. Advent Health reports 97% of roughly 12,700 COVID patients treated this year were unvaccinated or partially vaccinated, while vaccinated people account for less than 1% of its COVID-19 patients.

This is compounded by the fact that hospitals are busier than they were during the COVID crisis because people feel more comfortable to go to the hospital for elective procedures and other healthcare treatments.  Nationally, we are recording 27,930 average new cases a day, and about 3,000 admissions which is an increase of 36% from the previous week, with deaths also climbing to an average of 238 a day.  In North Carolina, 99% of the cases and more than 98% of hospitalizations since May were among people who weren’t fully vaccinated.  Other states report similar statistics.  If I were unvaccinated, I might abandon my “constitutional rights” in order to live by the way the numbers of cases and deaths are increasing.

On the economic front, and as we reported last week, at the end of the second quarter we had substantial growth in the economy, but as the boost from the fiscal stimulus and re-openings begin to wane, there is not likely to be the continued such robust growth, although most economists believe that there will continue to be positive growth in the economy at least for the next year.

On the world economic front, OPEC and its allies agreed to boost oil output even as oil prices have declined in recent days.  The increase in oil production will occur gradually with monthly increases through the latter end of 2022.  This, of course, will likely have the effect of reducing oil prices with BRENT (the international benchmark) and West Texas Intermediate, both falling about 5% on the announcement.  This is generally good news for the economy, although maybe not the best news for the oil patch.

It appears Canada will open the northern US border on August the 9^th to fully vaccinated individuals, while the US government announced a continuation of the closure until August 21, 2021.  In all the articles that I have read there still is not a clear statement of how you will prove you are fully vaccinated.

The Tampa Bay Times reported that the Tampa Airport is to resume international flights with Air Canada service.  One of the unique scenarios that has existed since the onset of COVID has been the ability of Canadians to fly into the United States and not be subject to quarantine or questions about vaccination, but rather simply have to comply with whatever rules existed in the jurisdiction in which they landed.  The reciprocal was not true for US citizens wishing to fly into Canada unless they were essential, otherwise they were excluded, and even if essential had to quarantine for 14 days in a government-controlled hotel.  The latter obviously limited the number of people willing to take a trip to Canada.  The fact that the Tampa Airport is going to exploit this loophole certainly is beneficial in the sense that people will be able to, under the new regime announced on July the 19^th, to fly to Canada as long as they have been fully vaccinated (the question is noted above is – how do you prove that?). 

The owner of Ben and Jerry’s, Unilever, was warned by the Prime Minister of Israel that their decision to cease selling their ice cream in Israeli occupied territories would make them subject to severe consequences without spelling same out.  Clearly, this action by Unilever is interpreted by the Israeli government as being critical of Israeli occupation, and hits a real sore spot.  As an ice cream lover politicizing ice cream, either way, is very troubling.

Boris Johnson announced that he wants to renegotiate parts of the Brexit Agreement dealing with Northern Ireland.  The issue revolves around the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and whether or not that would have formal border crossing requirements in place, which the Brexit Agreement allowed to be bypassed. These requirements remained in effect between Northern Ireland and the remainder of the UK, through what is known as a protocol, that provided for Customs and regulatory checks on goods, including farm products to ensure that British products do not move into EU commerce through the relaxed border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.  This has significant impacts relative to the Good Friday accords, which have brought relative peace to Northern Ireland, should this agreement be disturbed in any way. 

The bipartisan infrastructure deal took a stumble this past week when Republicans blocked an effort to begin debate while at the same time they struggle to ensure that they had the 10 votes necessary to bring the bill to the floor and avoid a filibuster.  The issue is Republicans did not want to begin debate until the full bill was available, while Democrats feel that Republicans are dragging their feet and wanted to force the issue.  This is standard parliamentary skullduggery for the Senate.  We all hope that the infrastructure bill does get passed on a compromised basis. 

Locally, Representative Stefanik finally, after an editorial by the Press Republican urged her constituents to get vaccinated.  Her position on this has been unclear as she has allowed the debate to rage without comment for many months, and of course, as a strong Trump supporter and now far right Republican, it was assumed by many that she was anti-vaxxer, even if she got the vaccination herself. 

Last week, 419,000 people applied for unemployment insurance, which is normally viewed as a proxy for layoffs.  Given the millions of jobs that are available, this seems like a somewhat confusing statistic, although there are reports particularly in the fast food and restaurant business that many are “quitting”, but those job losses should not result in unemployment insurance payments.

The US Government announced that it was going to assist 35,000 Afghans who helped us during the war, and would be housing them in Qatar and Kuwait.  This is the fulfillment of General Milley’s statement several weeks ago that this was a moral obligation, and displays President Biden’s capacity to stand up and do the right thing.  This will go a long way to quelling concerns of our allies as to whether or not America can be relied upon to do the right thing. 

Forest fires are burning all over the world as seen by satellite footage demonstrating that the severe drought and extraordinary heat which are clearly the effect of climate change are having a devastating impact, not only on the forests in the sense of their destruction, but also the smoke, ash and other bi-products, if you will, that are being pushed into the atmosphere and spread literally throughout the world.  New York City is seeing the effects of wildfires on the west coast, a drift of more than 3,000 miles.  The extreme heat in the northwest and flooding in Europe are all examples of how climate change is affecting our environment, yet, our friends on the other side of the aisle continue to deny it even exists. 

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