Category: Breaking News

The Delta variant has dramatically changed what we once thought was true about the coronavirus. While vaccinated people continue to enjoy much greater protection from infection or serious COVID-19 illness than the unvaccinated, it’s now clear that even those who have gotten their shots can still contract and spread the virus.

“One thing is for sure: Vaccinated people can get infected, and they can transmit to other vaccinated people,” Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Thursday. “Vax-on-vax transmission has happened.”

Health officials stress the risk of that happening is much lower than transmission among the unvaccinated, and that the vaccines are effective at staving off the worst health impacts of COVID-19. Nevertheless, the ubiquity of Delta throughout California and the country should be cause for some caution, particularly heading into Labor Day weekend, officials say. Given the current pandemic landscape, vaccinated adults and teens who live with young children too young to be vaccinated will need to evaluate their relative risks. When weighing whether to attend a gathering or patronize an indoor business, a fully vaccinated parent or grandparent who lives with young children would have a number of things to consider, Ferrer said during a briefing. While fully vaccinated people “are very unlikely to get seriously ill … you want to you want to consider your own activities in light of who else you’re living with or interacting with.” By contrast, vaccinated adults in their 50s, who have no small children at home, are in relatively good health and spend time with vaccinated people may feel more comfortable with the added risk of eating at a restaurant or a movie theater, Ferrer said.

• Are there a lot of people there and is it crowded? The more people there are in a setting, the more likely some there could be infected with the Delta variant.

The medical team in a central Israeli hospital returned to the COVID ward earlier and more dramatically than expected

“Most people here are unvaccinated,” says Dr. Ilya Kagan, head of the coronavirus intensive care ward at Beilinson Hospital near Tel Aviv, standing at the bed of a man in his 50s who is sedated and on a ventilator. frustrated because this could have been prevented.” The unit has four such patients, two of whom are also hooked up to an ECMO heart-lung machine. The internal medicine ward has another 19 patients in serious condition, and in total, Beilinson has 34 COVID patients. During one 10-hour stretch in January, at the height of the third wave, the hospital was treating 74 COVID patients, with 46 of them in the same ward. “We expected to be packed by this point, but the situation has stabilized,” Kagan says. “We’re tired after a long year, and frustrated because this could have been prevented.” Even through fogged-up goggles, the elephant in the intensive care unit was clear to see – patients who didn’t get vaccinated. “It’s frustrating most of all for the patients themselves,” says Dr. Katya Orvin. “It’s hard to judge. Last week I had a patient who didn’t get vaccinated due to an allergy, and she died.” Orvin runs the cardiac intensive care unit, but she also volunteers in the COVID ward. On the day we met, she had just dropped her daughter off for her first day of school; then it was straight to the ward. “I’ve learned so much here,” she says. “The coronavirus has become a part of life.” According to Dr. Liran Stetlander, a doctor in the unit, “In early May I discharged the last patient from here. I hoped we wouldn’t be back.” The return came sooner than expected. Kagan says: “If not for the vaccines, this wave would have killed us.” “So there’s anger at this group, but empathy always wins out. When you talk to their families, when you talk to the patients, when you see them, your heart breaks. I asked one patient why he didn’t get vaccinated. And he said, ‘Because I’m stupid.’” The doctors also note an important trend. The families of unvaccinated patients, some of whom also aren’t inoculated, are rushing to get vaccinated when they see their loved ones in critical condition. “Someone who isn’t vaccinated also can’t come to visit or say goodbye,” Kagan says. “There was a patient who died while his wife was in quarantine. She couldn’t say goodbye to him. There are no words to describe what a catastrophe that is. A man in his 60s, who has a wife he has loved for decades, and he dies alone. No one deserves this.” And Stetlander adds: “The vaccine works. Even when a vaccinated person gets seriously ill, it’s not as bad. If those million people who’ve refused the vaccine were vaccinated, there wouldn’t have been a fourth wave. orin Shamir is the unit’s social worker; she liaises with family members who aren’t able to visit their loved ones. “There’s almost always a feeling of guilt – like an unvaccinated daughter who infected her father,” she says. “I’ve been here for years and I’ve seen a lot of death, but with this the family members’ thoughts after the fact makes it extremely hard. There is nothing normal about what’s happening here.” At the end of the ward lay the only patient who was conscious, Michael (not his real name). A fit and healthy 40-year-old, he didn’t get vaccinated. He couldn’t really say why. He certainly doesn’t fit the anti-vaxxer stereotype. He’s not awash in conspiracy theories and doesn’t hold firm beliefs about the supposed dangers of the vaccine. For over a week he has been lying on his stomach gazing at his phone and wondering how he got here. He missed his daughter’s first day of first grade. “It was foolish not to get vaccinated,” he says. “When you hear that everyone’s getting vaccinated but people are still getting sick, you take a step backward.” Other patients in the internal medicine ward who were able to talk preferred not to, maybe because it’s hard to keep explaining why you decided not to get the shot. Michael says that if he could go back in time he would get vaccinated, but when asked if he would get a booster shot every six months if that’s what the Health Ministry recommended, he says “I’d have a dilemma.” According to nurse Aya Jabarin, who races from one patient to another, “There have been fully conscious unvaccinated patients who understand what’s going on around them. I explain to them how important the vaccine is, but I can’t do more than that. Not everyone will be convinced and get vaccinated. All you can do is shine a spotlight on it. “I wouldn’t say that I’m angry. I’m not here to scold the patient, I’m here to take care of him. Yes, these people had a way not to be here, but they chose differently.” Jabarin also lost her grandfather to the virus. “He followed the rules, he was older, and when it happened to him we were in shock,” she says. “It was really tough.” There’s something else that the medical staff all agree about – the emotional toll on them. They realize that something in them has changed. “You just ask about it and I feel like crying,” says Pnina Artzman, the head intensive care nurse, who has more than 25 years of experience. “I’ve never experienced anything like COVID. I’ve never seen a disease that affects the lungs like this,” she says. “You just receive the patient and immediately you have to intubate them. In the second wave it was very hard; many patients died. It was very frustrating for the team. And that was back when people were applauding the medical workers.” But that time is gone – people have left their balconies. Public hospitals are still pleading for funding. And at this point, a year and a half into the pandemic, someone has to start taking care of the medical staff too. Kagan, the head of the ICU ward, says the third wave hit them hard. “It really got to us because of the high death rate, because of the young people,” he says. “You take these things home with you. Like when you have a young patient who’s being intubated and he asks when he’ll wake up, and you have to lie and tell him in a week, when you know there’s a good chance he won’t come out of it.” Nurse Jabarin adds: “There are difficult shifts with resuscitation, and I see it when I’m going to sleep. I hear the monitors all the time. But this is our life. I don’t think anyone who has been dealing with this pandemic will come out of it the same. It will leave its mark on all of us.”

First it was Dick Farrel. Then Phil Valentine. Most recently, Marc Bernier. Just within the past month, those three conservative radio hosts — all unvaccinated critics of inoculation efforts — died after contracting Covid. Will their deaths help sway any minds of unvaccinated listeners or the broader segment of conservatives resistant to the shots? Some fellow personalities think so — although the optimism is limited. “There’s no question when somebody like Phil Valentine, when you read that he has it and then three weeks later he’s dead, it will get your attention,” said John Fredericks, a pro-Trump conservative radio personality who said he is vaccinated. Nearly nine months into the inoculation campaign, the political divide over Covid vaccinations is still gaping. But conservative media counterparts see a chance to soften some resistance on the right after trusted messengers who have mocked the shots or otherwise encouraged audiences to resist efforts to get them vaccinated have died. It is an indication of just how influential local conservative radio hosts, many of them hardly known outside their local or regional communities, continue to be for many Republicans. “I think, certainly in the case of Phil Valentine and Farrel, who both had recanted their anti-Covid vaccine views before their deaths, it could have as much impact as anybody could possibly have,” said Jim Bohannon, a longtime right-of-center radio host. “For Marc Bernier, who maintained his stance as Mr. Anti-Vax till his death and never publicly recanted a thing, I think the impact will be less, although certainly it must be hard for people” to see his death and not question their stances on vaccination. With the delta variant of the coronavirus having surged across much of the South as states like Florida experience record case, hospitalization and death counts, the overwhelming majority of Covid hospitalizations and deaths nationwide are among unvaccinated people, NBC News reported last month. Bernier, 65, a longtime conservative radio personality in Daytona Beach, Florida, died last week, as announced by WNDB, the radio station he broadcast from. A little more than three weeks before, Farrel, 65, who formerly hosted shows for several Florida stations and was a fill-in anchor on Newsmax, succumbed to the virus. Between their deaths was Valentine’s. The 61-year-old hosted a prominent Nashville-based radio program.

© Mandel Ngan Marc Bernier during a radio interview on Oct. 24, 2006 in Washington, DC. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images file)

Each had publicly either mocked vaccination or derided broader vaccination efforts. Bernier said on Twitter that the Biden administration’s push for vaccine intake was Nazi-esque. Farrel posted to Facebook in July: “why take a vax promoted by people who lied 2u all along about masks, where the virus came from and the death toll?” And Valentine questioned why he should get the shots and risk side effects when he was at low risk of death. Before they died, Farrel and Valentine changed their postures.

Politics have played a key role in who is and is not getting the shots, as NBC News polling has shown. A recent survey found that just 55 percent of Republicans have been vaccinated, which drops to 50 percent among Trump voters and 46 percent among Republicans who support former President Donald Trump more than the party — each total among the lowest of any demographic group surveyed. In contrast, 91 percent of Biden voters said they have gotten vaccinated. In addition, a Kaiser Family Foundation vaccination tracking poll released last month found that Republicans were the second-least-likely demographic group to be vaccinated.

That can be a signal for conservative media personalities to play into their audiences’ skepticism.

“A lot of people, of course, are going to do what they think will improve their ratings and will appeal to their core audience,” said Bohannon, who got vaccinated as soon as a vaccine was available to him. “I know these people are whores in the worst sense of the term. … Others, I think, may be more open and may, in fact, go ahead and alter their view.”

Southern Stone Communications and Cumulus Media, the companies that own the radio stations Bernier and Valentine broadcast from, did not respond to requests for comment about the hosts’ deaths.

Matthew Sheffield, a former conservative media creator who has left the movement and is now at the media platform Flux, said that he hopes some listeners will learn from what happened but that as for any change in messaging, “that’s just not how things work there in that media world.”

“There’s too much money to be had. And blind people,” Sheffield said. “So it’s not going to change. The only thing that people in right-wing media are going to respond to are legal threats. The death of their colleagues means nothing, but the loss of their personal fortunes is meaningful to them. And that says a lot.”

But even when it is delivered by icons of the far right, a pro-vaccination message can fall upon deaf ears. Late last month, Trump was greeted by some boos at an Alabama rally after he told supporters they should get vaccinated.

Don Thrasher, former chair of Nelson County, Kentucky, GOP, is one such Republican for whom Trump’s message falls flat. He said in an email that the recent deaths of conservative radio hosts “would give some people pause to reconsider, but there are a lot of people including myself that are still hesitant.”

He said that hesitancy extends outside the conservative world and that “the sooner we have open and honest debate on these groups’ concerns and not the demeaning, condescending attitude of ‘do as we say,’ the better.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. economy created the fewest jobs in seven months in August as hiring in the leisure and hospitality sector stalled amid a resurgence in COVID-19 infections, which weighed on demand at restaurants and hotels. But other details of the Labor Department’s closely watched employment report on Friday were fairly strong, with the unemployment rate falling to a 17-month low of 5.2% and July job growth revised sharply higher. Wages increased a solid 0.6% and fewer people were experiencing long spells of unemployment. This points to underlying strength in the economy even as growth appears to be slowing significantly in the third quarter because of the soaring infections, driven by the Delta variant of the coronavirus, and relentless shortages of raw materials, which are depressing automobile sales and restocking. “It is important to keep the right perspective,” said Brian Bethune, professor of practice at Boston College. “Given the supply chain constraints and the ongoing battle to lasso COVID-19 to the ground, the economy is performing exceptionally well.” The survey of establishments showed nonfarm payrolls increased by 235,000 jobs last month, the smallest gain since January. Data for July was revised up to show a whopping 1.053 million jobs created instead of the previously reported 943,000. Hiring in June was also stronger than initially estimated, leaving average monthly job growth over the past three months at a strong 750,000. Employment is 5.3 million jobs below its peak in February 2020. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast nonfarm payrolls increasing by 728,000 jobs in August. Though the Delta variant https://www.reuters.com/business/delta-causes-jump-us-workers-sidelined-recent-weeks-survey-shows-2021-09-03 was the biggest drag, fading fiscal stimulus was probably another factor. The response rate to the survey is lower in August and the pandemic has made it harder to adjust education employment for seasonal fluctuations. The initial August payrolls print has undershot expectations over the last several years, including in 2020. Payrolls have been subsequently revised higher in 11 of the last 12 years. The August payroll figures have historically been revised higher in the years since the Great Recession, sometimes significantly, and there’s a good chance this effect will occur again this time,” said David Berson, chief economist at Nationwide in Ohio. Employment in the leisure and hospitality sector was unchanged after gains averaging 377,000 per month over the prior three months. Restaurants and bars payrolls fell 42,000 and hiring at hotels and motels decreased 34,600, offsetting a 36,000 gain in arts, entertainment and recreation jobs. Retailers shed 29,000 jobs. Construction lost 3,000 jobs. There were gains in mining, financial services, information and professional and business services as well as transportation and warehousing.

The Biden administration has hailed the need for COVID-19 vaccine booster shots as the Delta variant cripples some states’ health-care systems, but top government scientists are urging it to hit the breaks. Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting head of the Food and Drug Administration, and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had a meeting with the White House’s COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients on Thursday, The New York Times reports. In it, the two told Zients they needed more time to collect and review the science behind booster shots, including whether they should only be given to those with the Pfizer vaccine and how many of those individuals should take it. As a result, they said, the White House should scale back its push on boosters, which it had hoped to offer later this month. The White House said it was waiting on full FDA approval before moving forward. “We always said we would follow the science, and this is all part of a process that is now underway,” spokesman Chris Meagher said. “When that approval and recommendation are made, we will be ready to implement the plan our nation’s top doctors developed so that we are staying ahead of this virus.”

Small caps have started to outperform the MSCI quality index as well as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, two of the highest-quality large-cap indices in the world.

We think this may be the early signal that it’s time for high-quality names to finally take their hit on valuation, completing the mid-cycle transition.

Understanding why this might happen could help to put one into the right stocks for the rest of the year. We see two very different possible narratives ahead.

• On the one hand, while the Fed has not yet begun to taper its asset purchases, we think that the start is inevitable later this fall or in the winter. With record GDP and earnings growth, rising inflation and the rates of infection from the Delta variant peaking, the Fed will feel more pressure to remove what is essentially emergency monetary accommodation. We expect a more formal signal from the Fed at the September FOMC meeting, and the markets are likely to anticipate it. That means higher interest rates and lower equity valuations. Our rates strategists expect a move to 1.8% on 10-year Treasury yields by year-end. Assuming a stable equity risk premium at 345bp, P/Es would fall to 19x, or 10% lower. With the quality stocks now expensive relative to the market and arguably more crowded today, it may be their turn to experience the rolling correction that’s been ongoing all year. It also suggests that we get a rotation back towards cyclicals and reopening plays. We favor financials the most in this possible outcome.
• The other reason why we might finally see the S&P 500 experience its mid-cycle transition correction is that growth disappoints. With peak everything, a deceleration is looming, and the chances are increasing that it’s greater than expected, as forecasts have been extrapolated from an unrepeatable 1H consumption boom. In this outcome, we favor defensive quality sectors like healthcare and staples that have less valuation risk in the event rates move higher.

In short, this fall we still expect our mid-cycle transition to end with a 10%+ S&P 500 correction, but a narrative of either fire or ice will determine the leadership from here. As such, our recommendation is a barbell of defensive quality with financials to participate and protect in either outcome.

US over 100,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations most since February