Vaccines – Red or Black? Spanners.

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Coronavirus Cases 22/9/20 World 31,354,745

Deaths 969,565 

“If you want to be a bank, follow the bank rules. If Goldman Sachs and the others want to do proprietary trading, then they shouldn’t be banks.”

Paul Volker, 2011.

After a rocky trading day in the casinos yesterday, the Fedster’s market manipulators, aka the Plunge Protection Team, rode boldly into the close to save the stock market indexes from decisive losses.

Even so, to misquote someone famous, it was a close run thing. The PPT doesn’t seem to have quite the same clout it once did in yester year.

Not to worry or fret though, Reuters reports that the fate of the casino gamblers now rides solely on the outcome of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine announcements due out next month and in November. Do they bet red or black?

“An approved, broadly distributed and accepted vaccine could result in a gain of about 300 points to the S&P 500, or more than 8% at the index’s current level, according to Keith Parker, head of U.S. and global equity strategy at UBS.”

Well maybe. While it’s a “no brainer,” all the punters are betting on black, I think there just might be a few other spanners in the works.

While successful vaccine news will certainly help boost casino confidence, especially if it promises a major G-7 rollout in 2021 – 2022, I think the outcome of President Trump’s Supreme Court battle, the outcome of the US elections themselves, what happens next in Covid-19 as flu season arrives, and what happens next in the US economy as many the of the unemployment assistance relief programs end, will likely be as or more important.

By my back of the envelop rough calculations, the ending of the Fed’s extra $600 a week unemployment supplement at the end of July, sucked out of US consumer spending, about 33 billion a month. Not a lot in a 22 trillion economy, but it was going to those in most desperate need to spend it. And cumulatively it does come to about 400 billion a year.

Asian equity markets track Wall Street’s retreat as investors fret over coronavirus pandemic’s continuing economic toll

Published: Sept. 22, 2020 at 1:00 a.m. ET

Shares slipped Tuesday in Asia after markets tumbled worldwide on worries about the pandemic’s economic pain.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng HSI, -0.26%  lost 0.3% to 23,894.72 and the Kospi 180721, -1.89%  in South Korea sank 1.7% to 2,348.24. The S&P/ASX 200 XJO, -0.60%  in Australia lost 0.6% to 5,787.00 and the Shanghai Composite index SHCOMP, -0.12%  edged 0.1% lower to 3,312.88.

Tokyo’s markets were closed for a national holiday.

The specter of tougher restrictions to stem rising coronavirus counts has added to jitters over the pandemic and its impact on the economy.

The S&P 500 SPX, -1.15%  fell 1.2% on Monday to 3,281.06 for its fourth session of losses, the longest losing streak since stocks were selling off in February on coronavirus and recession worries. But a last-hour recovery helped the index more than halve its loss of 2.7% from earlier in the day.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.84%  fell 1.8% to 27,147.70 while the Nasdaq Composite COMP, -0.13%  slipped 0.1% to 10,778.80, after recovering from a 2.5% drop.

----Wall Street has been shaky this month, and the S&P 500 has dropped 8.4% since hitting a record Sept. 2 amid a long list of worries for investors.

Chief among them is fear that stocks got too expensive when coronavirus counts are still worsening, Congress is unable to deliver more aid for the economy, U.S.-China tensions are rising and a contentious U.S. election is approaching.

Bank stocks took sharp losses after a report alleged that several continue to profit from illicit dealings with criminal networks despite U.S. crackdowns on money laundering.

Shares of electric and hydrogen-powered truck startup Nikola plunged 19.3% after its founder resigned as executive chairman and left its board amid allegations of fraud. The company has called the allegations false and misleading.

The Ratings Game:Here’s what Wall Street is saying about Nikola founder’s ‘shocking’ departure

General Motors GM, -4.76%, which recently signed a partnership deal where it would take an ownership stake in Nikola NKLA, -19.33%, fell 4.8%.

The likelihood that Congress may soon deliver more aid to the economy is diminishing. Many investors call such support crucial after extra weekly unemployment benefits and other stimulus expired. But partisan disagreements have held up any renewal of what’s known as the CARES Act.

More

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/asian-equity-markets-track-wall-streets-retreat-as-investors-fret-over-coronavirus-pandemics-continuing-economic-toll-2020-09-22?mod=mw_latestnews

COVID-19 vaccine verdicts loom as next big market risk

September 22, 20206:04 AM

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Optimism that vaccines are on the way to end the coronavirus pandemic has been a major factor in this year’s U.S. stock resurgence. That will face a critical test in coming weeks, as investors await clinical data on whether they actually work.

A UBS analysis found that about 40% of the market’s gains since May can be pegged to hopes for vaccines to protect against COVID-19, which has killed over 960,000 worldwide and rocked the global economy.

Global efforts to develop a vaccine are coming to a head, with late-stage data on trials by companies such as Pfizer Inc PFE.N and Moderna Inc MRNA.O possible as soon as October or November. Disappointing results could further shake markets that have recently grown turbulent on worries over fiscal stimulus delays and uncertainty around the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election.

“The anticipation is that this stuff is going to work,” said Walter Todd, chief investment officer at Greenwood Capital in South Carolina. “So any news to the contrary could be a risk to the market.”

The number of vaccines in development could blunt the negative market impact of any single setback. More than a half-dozen vaccines globally are in late-stage trials out of over 30 currently being tested in humans, according to the World Health Organization.

“We are setting ourselves up for success in the sense of if you throw enough spaghetti at the wall, hopefully at least one noodle sticks,” said Liz Young, director of market strategy at BNY Mellon Investment Management.

That could explain why stocks overall barely reacted earlier this month, when AstraZeneca Plc AZN.L and partner Oxford University paused global trials of one of the leading vaccine candidates after a participant in its U.K. trial became seriously ill. The trials have resumed in Britain, Brazil and South Africa, but remain on hold in the United States.

Some forecasts on vaccine availability have grown less optimistic. Good Judgment, a company whose forecasters make predictions based on publicly available evidence, put the chances that a vaccine will be widely distributed in the United States by the end of March at 54%. That is up from an estimate of less than 20% in early July, but down from above 70% earlier this month.

Pfizer and Moderna could report initial efficacy results in October or November based on an early read of data, followed by data from companies such as AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson JNJ.N and Novavax Inc NVAX.O.

---- Even if a vaccine is approved, questions persist about how easily and quickly it can be distributed. President Trump and his health officials have issued conflicting predictions about when the general public could have access.

“The potential for market disappointment will likely come from the realization that manufacturing and broad distribution will take longer,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities.

An approved, broadly distributed and accepted vaccine could result in a gain of about 300 points to the S&P 500, or more than 8% at the index’s current level, according to Keith Parker, head of U.S. and global equity strategy at UBS.

If a vaccine is widely distributed in the first quarter, BofA Global Research projects global gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 6.3% in 2021, compared with 5.6% if that does not occur until the third quarter.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-stocks-vaccine-analysis/covid-19-vaccine-verdicts-loom-as-next-big-market-risk-idUKKCN26D0FS?il=0

In longer term news, if the Congressional Budget Office is correct the “U.S. government’s debt will swell over the next 30 years to almost double the size of the economy, raising the risk of a fiscal crisis or a drop in the value of Treasuries.”

Happily for us, the CBO is rarely correct in its figures.

Unhappily for us, the CBO is usually over optimistic in its assumptions, and badly under estimates the actual result.

CBO Sees U.S. Federal Debt Almost Double Economy’s Size in 2050

By Scott Lanman

September 21, 2020, 7:00 PM GMT+1

The U.S. government’s debt will swell over the next 30 years to almost double the size of the economy, raising the risk of a fiscal crisis or a drop in the value of Treasuries, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday.

The nonpartisan agency, in its long-term budget outlook, projected debt will reach 195% of gross domestic product in 2050, up from 98% this year and 79% in 2019. That compares with the prior 2050 forecast of 180% from January, before the coronavirus pandemic struck the nation and spurred Congress to pass about $3 trillion of stimulus.

While low interest rates “indicate that the debt is manageable for now and that fiscal policy could be used to address national priorities,” the budget path is unsustainable over the coming decades and borrowing costs will eventually become an issue, CBO Director Phillip Swagel said in a statement.

Some scholars are increasingly taking issue with such views in recent years. The school of Modern Monetary Theory argues that countries like the U.S., which borrow in their own currency, don’t need to worry about boosting debt to support growth, so long as inflation remains under control.

More

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-21/cbo-sees-u-s-federal-debt-almost-double-economy-s-size-in-2050?cmpid=BBD092120_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=200921&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily

Finally, forget about Russia or China interfering in US elections, look no further than the EU’s Hungary.

Hungary PM Orban endorses Trump in November U.S. election

September 21, 20206:41 AM

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Monday endorsed Donald Trump’s reelection bid for the U.S. presidency, saying his rival Democrats have forced a “moral imperialism” on the world that illiberal leaders like himself reject.

“We root for Donald Trump’s victory, because we know well American Democratic governments’ diplomacy, built on moral imperialism. We have been forced to sample it before, we did not like it, we do not want seconds,” Orban wrote in an essay.

Nationalist Orban faces a steep challenge to his decade-long rule in parliamentary elections due in early 2022 as Hungary braces for the economic and social impact of a second wave of coronavirus infections.

The vote would be decisive as the international liberal elite was out to destroy Christian conservatives in Europe, he wrote in the pro-government daily Magyar Nemzet.

“They prepare for a decisive battle in 2022, backed by the international media, Brussels bureaucrats, and NGOs disguised as civil organisations,” Orban said. “It is time for us to line up too.”

Hungary and other central European countries would place economic efficiency over European Union policies such as “climate goals elevated to absurdity, a social Europe, a common tax code and a multicultural society”, he said.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hungary-orban-trump/hungary-pm-orban-endorses-trump-in-november-u-s-election-idUKKCN26C0GA?il=0

“What’s critical, of course, is that any change [to the Volker Rule,] protect the core principle: ‘Thou shalt not gamble with the public’s money.’”

“Keeping At It: The Quest for Sound Money and Good Government,” by Paul Volcker and Christine Harper, 2018.

Covid-19 Corner                       

This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.

India New Cases Slow; H.K. Disneyland to Re-Open: Virus Update

Bloomberg News

September 21, 2020, 11:40 PM GMT+1 Updated on September 22, 2020, 6:02 AM GMT+1

India posted the lowest daily case increase in two weeks while South Korean infections increased by less than 100 for a third day, the first such streak since mid-August.

Hong Kong Disneyland plans to re-open on Friday with reduced capacity and a reservation system for visitors while the city has extended its social distancing rules another week. Thailand said all five new infections it reported Tuesday were imported and found in state quarantine.

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to announce new restrictions on bars and restaurants while the U.S. is approaching 200,000 deaths from Covid-19.

Key Developments:

·  Global Tracker: Cases top 31 million; deaths exceed 962,000

·  Colleges become reservoirs of Covid ready to spill over

·  Broke millenials turn to day trading to make money in Korea

·  Fewer people are dying of Covid as doctors gain practice, drugs improve

·  India may have a vaccine next year, but rollout is a challenge

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-21/global-vaccine-pact-grows-u-k-plans-new-curbs-virus-update?srnd=coronavirus

Why Covid-19 Patients Are Suffering From Distorted and Phantom Smells

An increasing number of patients are reporting awful scents that aren’t present

September 21, 2020 8:00AM

On a perfect August night, Carol Pitz, a career consultant from Chanhassen, Minnesota, was looking forward to her 25th wedding anniversary dinner, especially because she and her family had spent much of the spring isolating after exhibiting symptoms of Covid-19. She woke up one morning in March, and couldn't smell or taste anything, then developed a mild cough and fatigue. Not sick enough to be tested at the time, she and her family later tested positive for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2.

Months later, Pitz and her husband were seated at a table overlooking the lake at her favorite restaurant. She ordered the special sea bass and Brussel sprouts, and the dish looked lovely when it arrived. But after a few bites, Pitz had to stop eating. Instead of smelling her food, she was overcome by a foul, and hard-to-describe scent. “It's a unique smell,” she says. “I don't even know what it is. It's like a combination of burnt toast, and something just icky enough to make me sick to my stomach.”

What happened to Pitz is not unique. Of more than 4,000 respondents to a multilingual, international study of people with recent smell loss published in Chemical Senses in June, 7 percent reported parosmia, or odor distortion. Facebook support groups dedicated to parosmia and phantosmia, the clinical names for specific smell disorders, have grown drastically in the past few months. Instead of a scentless world, an increasing number of people who lost their sense of smell because of Covid-19 are complaining that things just don’t smell right.

They no longer wake up and can’t smell the coffee; because of parosmia, their coffee smells like burning rubber or sewage. Parosmia is most often an unpleasant smell, a distortion of an actual odor, making many foods smell and taste revolting. Phantosmia is more random, occurring without a scent trigger, uninvited and unwanted. Phantosmias, which can be fleeting or linger, are also usually foul smells, often cigarette smoke or burning wood—or for one poster on Reddit, “everything smells like a more disgusting version of Spaghetti O’s.”

----Researchers worldwide have been working at warp speed to unravel the mysteries of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a flurry of preprints and shared data, with a spotlight on the chemical senses, a niche and often overlooked area of study. Early in the pandemic, researchers found that the virus needs to latch on to two proteins, ACE2 and TMPRSS2, found in many parts of the body, including the nose. This suggested that the virus could damage the olfactory neurons which relay aroma information from nose to brain. This July in Science Advances, researchers from Harvard Medical School reported that through bulk sequencing of mouse, non-human primate and human olfactory cells, they located a source of these proteins on the sustentacular cells, which support the olfactory receptor neurons and help transport odor information through the nasal mucus.

“SARS-CoV-2 binds to ACE receptors, which are present in the basal cells, supporting cells and perivascular cells around the neurons in the olfactory epithelium,” says Patel. “So although the neuron itself is not damaged, all the support structure around it is.”

“Those cells that support the regenerative capacity are the ones that suffer,” she says. “We also know that nerves do not function very well within an inflammatory environment. So because of all those reasons, it is not surprising this virus causes smell dysfunction.”

The good news, says Nancy Rawson, vice president and associate director at Monell Chemical Senses Center, a non-profit interdisciplinary research institute in Philadelphia, is that cells in the olfactory epithelium can regenerate after they have been damaged. But that regeneration can take time—up to two years, or more. “If it's affecting mature neurons, then the immature neurons need to mature fully and connect to the olfactory bulb,” she says. “Then the next wave of neurons needs to be generated to continue that process.”

More

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-covid-19-patients-are-suffering-distorted-and-phantom-smells-180975826/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20200921-daily-responsive&spMailingID=43513731&spUserID=NjUwNDIzNTUzNDE0S0&spJobID=1841806104&spReportId=MTg0MTgwNjEwNAS2

Covid Grows Less Deadly as Doctors Gain Practice, Drugs Improve

Olivia Raimonde  September 19, 2020, 7:00 AM EDT

·  Remdesivir, steroids, blood thinner use is aiding prognosis

Covid-19 continues to kill close to 1,000 Americans a day. But for those who develop dangerous cases of the infection, advances in medical care and the growing experience of doctors are improving the chances of survival.

Since the first case arrived in the U.S. at the start of the year, medical professionals have gone from fumbling in the dark to better understanding which drugs work -- such as steroids and blood thinners, and the antiviral medicine remdesivir. Allocation of intensive medical resources have improved. And doctors have learned to hold off on the use of ventilators for some patients, unlike with many other severe respiratory illnesses.

Doctors and experts say that improved medical tactics and earlier treatment are helping improve the outcomes for very sick patients, said Andrew Badley, head of Mayo Clinic’s Covid Research Task Force.

“Health-care preparedness today is much better than it was in February and March,” Badley said in an interview. “We have better and more rapid access to diagnosis. We have more knowledge about what drugs to use and what drugs not to use. We have more experimental treatments available. All of those contribute to possible improvements in the mortality rate.”

One study looked at 4,689 Covid-19 hospitalizations from March to June in New York, adjusting patients’ mortality rate for factors such as age, race, obesity and any underlying illnesses they might have had. In the first half of March, the mortality rate for hospitalized patients was 23%. By June, it had fallen to 8%. The research hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed, a process through which other experts examine the work.

More

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-19/covid-grows-less-deadly-as-doctors-gain-practice-drugs-improve

Next, some vaccine links kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada. The links come from a most informative update from Stanford Hospital in California.

World Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines

 

NY Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html

Stanford Website. https://racetoacure.stanford.edu/clinical-trials/132

 

Regulatory Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker. https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker

 

Some useful Covid links.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Rt Covid-19

https://rt.live/

Covid19info.live

https://wuflu.live/

 

Technology Update.

With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section. Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC energy mankind’s future from the 21^st century onwards.

'Floating' graphene on a bed of calcium atoms

Date: September 17, 2020

Source: ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies

Summary: Adding calcium to graphene creates an extremely-promising superconductor, but where does the calcium go? In a new study, a Monash-led team has for the first time confirmed what actually happens to those calcium atoms. Surprising everyone, the calcium goes underneath both the upper graphene sheet and a lower 'buffer' sheet, 'floating' the graphene on a bed of calcium atoms.

Adding calcium to graphene creates an extremely-promising superconductor, but where does the calcium go?

Adding calcium to a composite graphene-substrate structure creates a high transition-temperature (Tc) superconductor.

In a new study, an Australian-led team has for the first time confirmed what actually happens to those calcium atoms: surprising everyone, the calcium goes underneath both the upper graphene sheet and a lower 'buffer' sheet, 'floating' the graphene on a bed of calcium atoms.

Superconducting calcium-injected graphene holds great promise for energy-efficient electronics and transparent electronics.

Graphene's properties can be fine-tuned by injection of another material (a process known as 'intercalation') either underneath the graphene, or between two graphene sheets.

This injection of foreign atoms or molecules alters the electronic properties of the graphene by either increasing its conductance, decreasing interactions with the substrate, or both.

Injecting calcium into graphite creates a composite material (calcium-intercalated graphite, CaC6) with a relatively 'high' superconducting transition temperature (Tc). In this case, the calcium atoms ultimately reside between graphene sheets.

Injecting calcium into graphene on a silicon-carbide substrate also creates a high-Tc superconductor, and we always thought we knew where the calcium went in this case too...

Graphene on silicon-carbide has two layers of carbon atoms: one graphene layer on top of another 'buffer layer': a carbon layer (graphene-like in structure) that forms between the graphene and the silicon-carbide substrate during synthesis, and is non-conducting due to being partially bonded to the substrate surface.

"Imagine the silicon carbide is like a mattress with a fitted sheet (the buffer layer bonded to it) and a flat sheet (the graphene)," explains lead author Jimmy Kotsakidis.

Conventional wisdom held that calcium should inject between the two carbon layers (between two sheets), similar to injection between the graphene layers in graphite. Surprisingly, the Monash University-led team found that when injected, the calcium atoms' final destination location instead lies between buffer layer and the underlying silicon-carbide substrate (between the fitted sheet and the mattress!).

"It was quite a surprise to us when we realised that the calcium was bonding to the silicon surface of the substrate, it really went against what we thought would happen," explains Kotsakidis.

Upon injection, the calcium breaks the bonds between the buffer layer and substrate surface, thus, causing the buffer layer to 'float' above the substrate, creating a new, quasi-freestanding bilayer graphene structure (Ca-QFSBLG).

This result was unanticipated, with extensive previous studies not considering calcium intercalation underneath the buffer layer. The study thus resolves long-standing confusion and controversy regarding the position of the intercalated calcium.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200917105343.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Fgraphene+%28Graphene+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

US Politics Betting Odds

https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics

“The central issue is we’re developing into a plutocracy. We’ve got an enormous number of enormously rich people that have convinced themselves that they’re rich because they’re smart and constructive. And they don’t like government and they don’t like to pay taxes.”

Paul Volker, New York Times interview, 2018.