FOMC Minutes Shows Hawkish Fed Hiking "Faster Than Anticipated", Warn Of Omicron Risks -Since December 15th's FOMC statement, bonds have been battered, the dollar is down modestly while stocks and gold are up strongly.... The short-end of the yield curve has risen dramatically, pricing in the new hawkish dot-plot offered by The Fed (for 2022) with a 73% chance of Fed hikes by March 2022 now ((from 40% pre-FOMC)... Interestingly though, the market has rejected The Fed's longer-term dots, presumably pricing in a policy-error/reversal... All of which leaves the market desperately seeking clues today on the accelerated taper and timing of lift-off and trajectory of rate-hikes among the Minutes.On the liftoff timing and pace of rate-hikes:"Participants generally noted that, given their individual outlooks for the economy, the labor market, and inflation, it may become warranted to increase the federal funds rate sooner or at a faster pace than participants had earlier anticipated. ."Policymakers thought changes in Fed Funds Rate should be primary means for adjusting stance of policy. Some participants also remarked that there could be circumstances in which it would be appropriate for the Committee to raise the target range for the federal funds rate before maximum employment had been fully achieved. On Omicron's impact: “In particular, the possibility that COVID-19 cases could continue to rise steeply, especially if the Omicron variant proves to be vaccine resistant, was seen as an important source of downside risk to activity,while the possibility of more severe and persistent supply issues was viewed as an additional downside risk to activity and as an upside risk to inflation.”"Members also agreed that, with the emergence of the Omicron variant, it was appropriate to note the risk of new variants of the virus in their assessment of risks to the economic outlook."On normalization: “Participants judged that the appropriate timing of balance sheet runoff would likely be closer to that of policy rate liftoff than in the Committee’s previous experience.” On Inflation: In their comments on inflation expectations, some participants discussed the risk that recent elevated levels of inflation could increase the public's longer-term expectations for inflation to a level above that consistent with the Committee's longer-run inflation objective.“Participants noted that supply chain bottlenecks and labor shortages continued to limit businesses’ ability to meet strong demand. They judged that these challenges would likely last longer and be more widespread than previously thought.”
Fed Minutes Point to Possible Rate Increase in March – WSJ -Federal Reserve officials at their meeting last month eyed a faster timetable for raising interest rates this year, potentially as soon as in March, amid greater discomfort with high inflation.Minutes of their Dec. 14-15 meeting, released Wednesday, showed officials believed that rising inflation and a very tight labor market could call for lifting short-term rates “sooner or at a faster pace than participants had earlier anticipated.”Some officials also thought the Fed should start shrinking its $8.76 trillion portfolio of bonds and other assets relatively soon after beginning to raise rates, the minutes said. Investors would see the move as another way for the Fed to tighten financial conditions to cool the economy.Stocks turned sharply lower after the minutes were released Wednesday afternoon. The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.1%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index lost 3.3%.Meanwhile, government bond yields rose Wednesday. After the minutes were released, trading in interest-rate futures markets implied a roughly two-thirds probability that the Fed would raise rates in March, according to CME Group. Julia Coronado said that the minutes prompted her to move up her forecast for rate increases to begin in March, instead of June. “The Fed is on a glide path to hiking in March,” . “It is hard to see what is going to hold them back.”Most central bank officials, in projections released after last month’s meeting, penciled in at least three quarter-percentage-point rate increases this year. In September, around half of the group thought rate increases could wait until 2023.For months, Fed leaders stuck to a view that higher price pressures in 2021 were caused primarily by supply-chain bottlenecks and would ease on their own. But Fed Chairman Jerome Powell had before the meeting signaled much less conviction about that forecast, and other officials last month broadly shared his views.“While participants generally continued to anticipate that inflation would decline significantly over the course of 2022 as supply constraints eased, almost all stated that they had revised up their forecasts of inflation for 2022 notably, and many did so for 2023 as well,” the minutes said. One immediate sign of their concerns could be seen from plans they approved at that meetingto more quickly scale back, or taper, their asset purchases. The program is now on track to end in March instead of June.
Debate Emerges Over How to Shrink Fed’s $8 Trillion Bond Pile -- Federal Reserve officials have begun debating how to approach shrinking a stockpile of more than $8 trillion of bonds as a key element of a policy-normalization campaign in the wake of unprecedented moves to shore up the economy during the pandemic. While there was a consensus that current conditions are notably different to the last time that the Fed embarked on scaling down its balance sheet, a diversity of views emerged at the Fed’s Dec. 14-15 meeting, minutes of that session showed on Wednesday. The discussion last month began with a presentation by Fed staff members on the last policy-normalization campaign, which started with raising the key overnight interest-rate target and then two years later was complemented by shrinking the central bank’s bond portfolio. That episode ended in controversy, with the Fed having been blamed by some market participants for taking too much liquidity out of the financial system, undermining confidence and roiling markets. Last month’s discussion alluded to issues with the 2017-19 experience, without detailing them. “The previous experience highlighted the benefits of maintaining the flexibility to adjust the details of the approach to normalization in response to economic and financial developments,” the minutes said. Participants in the meeting “generally emphasized” that boosting the key federal funds rate target would be the “primary means” for the Fed to tighten. Three reasons were cited:
- There’s less uncertainty about the impact of rate hikes than on shrinking bond holdings
- Rate increases are easier to communicate to the public
- It’s easier to tweak the rate-increase plan than the process of running down the bond portfolio
Even so, “some” policy makers made the point that relying more on balance-sheet contraction than on rate hikes could help to limit a flattening in the yield curve. That’s when short-term rates rise by more than longer-term ones. An inversion of the curve, when long-term yields are below short-term ones, is a recession signal. In theory, by shrinking its bond holdings, the Fed could prop up longer-term yields. Relying less on rate hikes would meantime reduce the amount by which short-term rates rise. “A few of these participants raised concerns that a relatively flat yield curve could adversely affect interest margins” for lenders, the minutes said, referring to a sub-group of those favoring greater reliance on balance-sheet measures. Such a yield curve “may raise financial stability risks,” according to these officials. A study by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City released in October made a similar argument -- “we conclude that normalizing the balance sheet before raising the funds rate might forestall yield curve inversion and, in turn, support economic stability.”
The Fed is scaring markets with the triple threat of policy tightening -Investors have been preparing for the Federal Reserve to start hiking interest rates. They also know the central bank is cutting the amount of bonds it buys each month. On top of that, they figured, eventually, the tapering would lead to a reduction in the nearly $9 trillion in assets the Fed is holding.What they didn't expect were all three things happening at the same time.But minutes from the Fed's December meeting, released Wednesday, indicated that may well be the case.The meeting summary showed members ready to not only start raising interest rates and tapering bond buying, but also being prepared to engage in a high-level conversations about reducing holdings of Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities.While the moves are designed to fight inflation and as the jobs market heals, the jolt of a Fed triple threat of tightening sent the market into a tailspinWednesday. The result saw stocks give back their Santa Claus rally gains and then some as the prospect of a hawkish central bank cast a haze of uncertainty over the investing landscape.Markets were mixed Thursday as investors tried to figure out the central bank's intentions."The reason the market had a knee-jerk reaction yesterday was it sounds like the Fed is going to come fast and furious and take liquidity out of the market," said Lindsey Bell, chief market strategist at Ally Financial. "If they do it in a steady and gradual manner, the market can perform well in that environment. If they come fast and furious, then it's going to be a different story."Fed officials said during the meeting that they remain data-dependent and will be sure to communicate their intentions clearly to the public.Still, the prospect of a much more aggressive Fed was cause for worry after nearly two years of the most accommodative monetary policy in U.S. history.
The Fed Sets Out to Kill the Economy to Save It by Yves Smith --In case you missed it, Mr. Market is in a funk about the Fed girding its loins to go out and wage war on inflation. The Financial Times gives a representative take: European equities dropped on Thursday as a sell-off gathered pace after the US central bank signalled a swift end to its pandemic-era monetary stimulus… The moves came after minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting revealed that officials at the central bank, which has boosted financial markets since March 2020 with a massive bond-buying programme and record-low interest rates, broadly agreed it was time to accelerate the withdrawal of this support.In fairness, as we’ve said for quite a while, the Fed has quietly recognized that its super low interest rate experiment was a mistake. I recall thinking when the Fed dropped interest rates below 1% in the runup to the crisis that that would prove to be a mistake. But the central bank then had fallen into the “75 is the new 25” pattern, of using big cuts to signal seriousness about saving the markets, when at very low interest rates, the impact of rate cuts and increases is magnified.As as even casual market watchers will know, the Fed has wanted to back out of its super low interest rate corner since at the 2014 taper tantrum era, but the central bank has also been afraid of spooking the market. Now with investors fulminating about inflation, job markets nominally tight (even though due to workers exiting, when strong economies typically pull marginal laborers in) and markets overheated even by the standards of the past decade, the Fed sees itself as under pressure to act by hitting the brakes.I really should say more, but the spectacle of the Fed having engaged in mission creep and becoming the self-assigned regulator of the economy is now coming to its logical and sorry conclusion. In a system where economists have long been the only social scientists with a seat at the policy table, those experts have done a poor job of devising policies that will create stability, to the extent that can be achieved in a dynamic environment, and a reasonable level of growth. Of course many will now question the legitimacy of growth as an aim given global warming and the need to marshal resources better, but we’ll put that to the side.It has been convenient for politicians to fob responsibility for economic stewardship to a typically oracular Fed and no do simple-minded things like emphasize economic stabilizers, as in programs that are countercyclical, where payments (economic stimulus!) rises when times are bad and fall when activity rebounds. But the wee problem is the most effective programs will target citizens with a high marginal propensity to spend, as in the low income, and in America, we hate the poor. Congress has also hidden behind the skirts of the neoliberal propagandist masquerading as evenhanded CBO; we’ve written some scathing posts about how the agency not only often puts a finger on the scales when it is making its analyses but also invests a lot of energy in providing conservative talking points.A final issue is that the Fed still lives under glow of the myth that Volcker driving interest rates to the moon is what broke the deeply entrenched 1970s stagflation. In fact, Warren Mosler has put together an analysis that shows that not only was that great inflation substantially due to oil price increases, which were outside the central bank’s influence, but more important, that oil prices were finally falling in 1979 and inflation has started receding too. So that inflation would have worked its way out of the system, albeit more slowly, had the Fed stood pat.
These Charts Are the Smoking Guns in the Fed’s 2019-2020 Emergency Repo Loan Bailouts - Pam Martens -- Nine days ago the Fed released the names of the Wall Street trading houses that had borrowed a cumulative total of $4.5 trillion in emergency repo loans from the Fed during just the last quarter of 2019. From September 17, 2019 through July 2, 2020, the same banks had borrowed a cumulative total of $11.23 trillion. The Fed is slowly doling out the names of the banks and the specific amounts borrowed on a quarterly basis, after eight quarters of time has elapsed. The Fed is only releasing the information because the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 made it a legal obligation of the Fed to do so. The Fed had fought a multi-year court battle with the press after the 2008 financial crisis to keep its secret bailouts to Wall Street firms hidden from the American people. Strange as it may seem, the same press outlets that battled the Fed in court following the 2008 financial crisis to get the names of the banks and the amounts borrowed, have this time around invoked a total news blackout on publishing the names of the banks. One of the large borrowers under this 2019-2020 Fed facility was not even a U.S. bank. On October 8, 2019 the Fed conducted a one-day (overnight) repo loan operation, offering $37.5 billion. Deutsche Bank Securities, a unit of the giant German bank, took two lots totaling $7.5 billion. On the same day, Deutsche Bank Securities took another $3 billion of a 14-day term repo loan offered by the Fed, bringing its total borrowing from the Fed on just that one day to $11.5 billion. But the 14-day term loan that Deutsche Bank Securities had previously taken on September 27 for $3 billion had not yet expired, so it actually had an outstanding Fed loan balance at that point of $14.5 billion. The Fed, the U.S. central bank, was making loans of this size (although they were collateralized) to the trading unit of a serially troubled foreign bank. October 8, 2019 was just 13 days after Deutsche Bank’s headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany were raided by police for the second time in less than a year. The police were probing a vast money laundering operation in Europe. On January 30, 2017, Deutsche Bank was fined a total of $630 million by U.S. and U.K. regulators over claims it had laundered upwards of $10 billion on behalf of Russian investors. This was not a propitious time for Deutsche Bank to be splashing about in the headlines over having its headquarters raided again. It was one of the largest derivative counterparties (taking the other side of derivative trades) to some of the largest systemically important banks in the world, including the largest U.S. banks. In June 2016, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a report that found that Deutsche Bank posed the greatest threat to global financial stability than any other bank because of its interconnections to Wall Street mega banks and large banks in Europe. As the graph above illustrates, many of the banks showing the largest interconnectedness with Deutsche Bank were the identical banks whose trading units were borrowing from the Fed’s emergency repo loan facility in 2019 and 2020. But the raid on the headquarters of Deutsche Bank and the money laundering probe were far from the end of Deutsche Bank’s problems. The bank was having serious financial difficulties. Its attempt to merge with Commerzbank had fallen through in April 2019. On July 7, 2019 it announced a plan to fire 18,000 workers and had plans to create a good bank/bad bank, moving its toxic assets that it hoped to sell to the bad bank. Deutsche Bank had also reported losses in three of the prior four years. Its share price had lost 90 percent of its value over the prior dozen years and was trading close to an historic low in September of 2019 when the Fed’s emergency repo loans appeared out of nowhere for the first time since the financial crisis of 2008.The Monday after the emergency repo loan operations began, Deutsche Bank announced that it would be moving clients and staff from its prime broker unit (that makes loans to hedge funds) to BNP Paribas along with its electronic trading operations. As the chart above shows, JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, was heavily interconnected to Deutsche Bank. Any fallout from problems at Deutsche Bank were going to have “net spillover” to JPMorgan Chase. There was also a correlation between the plunging price of JPMorgan Chase’s share price and Deutsche Bank’s plunging share price during some of the worst trading sessions in March 2020. For example, the chart below shows that on Friday, March 27, 2020, the S&P 500 closed down only 3.37 percent while the shares of both JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank lost over 7 percent – which was far in excess of JPMorgan’s peer banks,
Biden's likely Fed pick could change tone on climate risk, capital rules — The Biden administration appears close to naming a Treasury Department veteran and leading voice on fighting climate-related financial risk to the top bank-regulatory job at the Federal Reserve Board.Sarah Bloom Raskin — who was the No. 2 at Treasury and a Fed governor in the Obama administration — has emerged as the top candidate for vice chair of supervision at the central bank and could be nominated as early as this week, according to several news outlets.If appointed, Raskin likely would be welcomed by progressives eager for a stronger bank regulatory focus on climate-related issues, as well as banking's impact on low-income consumers. This would deviate to some extent from policy priorities of former Trump-appointed Vice Chair for Supervision Randal Quarles, who was more focused on regulatory relief, observers said.
Business Cycle Indicators, at Year’s Start 2022 by Menzie Chinn - Monthly GDP for November is in; next big indicator is December nonfarm payroll on Friday. Here are some key indicators followed by the NBER BCDC. Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment (dark blue), industrial production (red), personal income excluding transfers in Ch.2012$ (green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2012$ (black), consumption in Ch.2012$ (light blue), and monthly GDP in Ch.2012$ (pink), all log normalized to 2020M02=0. NBER defined recession dates, peak-to-trough, shaded gray. Source: BLS, Federal Reserve, BEA, via FRED, IHS Markit (nee Macroeconomic Advisers) (1/3/2022 release), NBER, and author’s calculations. Monthly GDP as measured by IHS-Markit is down. From today’s release: Monthly GDP declined 0.8% in November, reversing about one-half of a 1.6% increase in October. T…. The November decline was mainly accounted for by a sharp widening of the goods deficit. There was also a decline in nonfarm inventory investment. One hint at what will show up in the employment report is a hit to leisure and hospitality employment. AsPaweł Skrzypczyński points out, seated diners in December are down relative to 2019 levels, so sectoral employment is unlikely to have increased strongly.
Q4 GDP Forecasts: Moving Down - From BofA: Our forecast for retail sales to contract in December led us to lower our 4Q GDP tracking estimate down to 5.5% qoq saar from 6.0% previously. [January 7 estimate] From Goldman Sachs: We left our Q4 GDP tracking estimate unchanged at +7.0% (qoq ar). [January 6 estimate] And from the Altanta Fed: GDPNow: The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the fourth quarter of 2021 is 6.7 percent on January 6, down from 7.4 percent on January 4. [January 6 estimate]
What real-time indicators suggest about Omicron’s economic impact | The Economist - - What is the economic impact of Omicron? The latest variant of the coronavirus has let rip at such a ferocious pace that forecasters are still catching their breath, and it will be some time before its economic effects become apparent in the official data, which are published with a lag. But a number of speedier, albeit partial, indicators can provide some insight into how consumers and workers may be adjusting their behaviour. Consider first people’s willingness to go out and about. A mobility index using real-time data from Google and constructed by The Economist includes visits to workplaces, retail and recreation sites, and transport hubs. This measure has been reasonably stable in America, albeit at levels below pre-pandemic norms, and has fallen a little in Britain and Germany in recent days. But underlying those headline figures are bigger differences depending on the kind of activity. The return to the office seems to have stalled. In America and Germany journeys to workplaces fell to about 25% and 16% below pre-pandemic levels, respectively, in the week to December 23rd. In Britain, where the government has issued guidance to work from home, they were 30% lower (see chart 1). By contrast, retail- and recreation-related activity has continued to recover in all three countries. This suggests that people may have become more discriminating about when to leave the house, especially as the festive season began. It might also indicate that people who can easily work from home were doing so, a sign of the economy’s increased adaptability to new variants.
Seven High Frequency Indicators for the Economy - These indicators are mostly for travel and entertainment. It is interesting to watch these sectors recover as the pandemic subsides. The TSA is providing daily travel numbers.This data is as of January 1st.This data shows the 7-day average of daily total traveler throughput from the TSA for 2019 (Light Blue), 2020 (Black), 2021 (Blue) and 2021 (Red). The 7-day average is down 17.8% from the same day in 2019 (82.2% of 2019). (Dashed line) Air travel had been off about 20% relative to 2019 for the last five months (with some ups and downs) - but picked up over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. The second graph shows the 7-day average of the year-over-year change in diners as tabulated by OpenTable for the US and several selected cities. I This data is updated through January 1, 2022. This data is "a sample of restaurants on the OpenTable network across all channels: online reservations, phone reservations, and walk-ins. Note that this data is for "only the restaurants that have chosen to reopen in a given market". Since some restaurants have not reopened, the actual year-over-year decline is worse than shown. Dining was mostly moving sideways, but there has been some decline recently, probably due to the winter wave of COVID. The 7-day average for the US is down 13% compared to 2019. This data shows domestic box office for each week and the median for the years 2016 through 2019 (dashed light blue). Blue is 2020 and Red is 2021. The data is from BoxOfficeMojo through December 30th. Movie ticket sales were at $204 million last week, down about 44% from the median for the week. This graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four-week average. The red line is for 2021, black is 2020, blue is the median, dashed purple is 2019, and dashed light blue is for 2009 (the worst year on record for hotels prior to 2020). This data is through December 18th. The occupancy rate was up 8.0% compared to the same week in 2019. Although down compared to 2019, the 4-week average of the occupancy rate is now above the median rate for the previous 20 years (Blue). This graph, based on weekly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), shows gasoline supplied compared to the same week of 2019. As of December 24th, gasoline supplied was up 8.5% compared to the same week in 2019. There have been 13 weeks this year that gasoline supplied was up compared to the same week in 2019 - so consumption is running close to 2019 levels now. This graph is from Apple mobility. From Apple: "This data is generated by counting the number of requests made to Apple Maps for directions in select countries/regions, sub-regions, and cities." This data is through December 31st for the United States and several selected cities. According to the Apple data directions requests, public transit in the 7-day average for the US is at 81% of the January 2020 level. New York City is doing OK by this metric, but New York subway usage is down significantly (next graph).This graph shows how much MTA traffic has recovered in each borough (Graph starts at first week in January 2020 and 100 = 2019 average).Manhattan is at about 26% of normal (impacted by holidays too). This data is through Friday, December 31st.
Lawrence Wilkerson: Is Biden Risking War by Pushing Taiwan Independence? -Yves here. Lawrence Wilkerson and Paul Jay have a wide-ranging discussion of America’s military posture, with a focus on China and why Team Dem believes it is advantageous to cop an aggressive ‘tude. Wilkerson is quite clear that the US is willing to launch a nuclear war to protect Taiwan, even though neither the Chinese nor Russians want a confrontation with the US. By Paul Jay. Originally published at theAnalysis.news. Podcast: Play in new window | Download Welcome back to theAnalysis.news. This is a continuation of my conversation with Larry Wilkerson. President Biden recently held his democracy conference, or whatever it was called. Something like that. Where he invited a whole bunch of countries that under their definitions, the White House definitions, are democracies. Of course, a lot of questions can be raised about who got invited. But that being said, one of the quote-unquote invitees— I was about to say countries except they’re not, was Taiwan. What business did Taiwan have to be there? Yeah, they have elections and so on. Still, even according to U.S. law and U.S. diplomacy, Taiwan is supposedly part of One-China, so what is it doing at a conference of countries other than to raise the level of tension with China?Now joining us again to discuss the situation in China and Taiwan is Larry Wilkerson, who’s a retired professor. He used to be Chief of Staff to Colin Powell at the State Department, and he’s a good friend and regular on theAnalysis. Thanks for joining us again, Larry.
Democrats return with lengthy to-do list - Lawmakers are set to return to Washington with a full legislative plate after punting some of their biggest priorities into 2022. Democrats are poised to dive directly into two big fights — President Biden’s sweeping spending plan and voting rights legislation — putting a spotlight back on intraparty divisions that dominated the end of last year. Other deadlines, like funding the government, are also looming. And coloring all of the legislative fights is the growing pull of the midterm elections, which typically dampen the chances for major legislation. Democrats are under pressure to pass big priorities amid uncertainty over who will control Congress after this year.Here are five things on Congress’s to-do list for the start of 2022:
- Build Back Better revival: Democrats are vowing to find a way to resuscitate at least part of a roughly $2 trillion climate and social spending bill after Sen. Joe Manchin(D-W.Va.) put it in the deep freeze. Manchin — after weeks of signaling concerns about the House-passed bill but refusing to give it a direct cut — announced his opposition during a “Fox News Sunday” interview on Dec. 19 and then doubled down during a West Virginia radio interview warning that Democrats had miscalculated if they though they could pressure him into supporting the sweeping legislation. “I'm not from where they're from, and they can just beat the living crap out of people and think they'll be submissive, period," he said. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), facing pressure from within his own caucus, is pledging to force a vote in early January on a revised version of the House-passed bill..
- Voting rights and filibuster reform: After months of grumbling over the rules, and growing pressure from both activists and Senate Democrats, Schumer is poised to bring a fight over voting rights and changing the Senate’s filibuster rule to a head.In a letter to his caucus, the Senate Democratic leader said he would bring voting legislation to the floor in January and that if it is blocked by Republicans, “the Senate will then consider changes to any rules which prevent us from debating and reaching final conclusion on important legislation.” Republicans have used the 60-vote legislative filibuster to block several voting and election bills, arguing that they would federalize elections. That’s fueled frustration from outside groups and members of Schumer’s own caucus who want the majority leader to outline a plan for how Democrats will pass legislation as state legislatures debate new voting rules.
- Nord Stream 2 sanctions : As part of a deal struck with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to clear dozens of Biden nominees before Christmas, the Senate will vote on sanctions related to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which carries natural gas from Russia to Germany. The pipeline has sparked bipartisan pushback in Congress, but also headaches for the administration as Cruz kept holds for months on Biden’s State Department nominees. Senators discussed three potential options: a vote on Cruz’s bill at 60 votes, a vote on Cruz’s bill as an amendment to a larger bill from Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) that touches on Nord Stream 2 or competing and separate votes on the Menendez and Cruz bills.In the end, the Senate agreed to vote on Cruz’s bill by Jan. 14, where it will need 60 votes to advance. That means Cruz needs to peel off at least 10 Democrats.
- Funding the government: After Congress clears its January schedule, they will run almost immediately into another deadline to fund the government and prevent a Valentine's week shutdown. Lawmakers have until Feb. 18 to fund the government after passing a short-term stopgap bill in early December. The top four appropriators — Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Kay Granger (R-Texas) — have met or spoken recently about how to break a months-long stalemate and make progress on full-year funding bills. But so far they’ve yet to hit a breakthrough, raising the prospect that Congress could need to use another stopgap, which continues funding at current levels, to get them deeper into 2022.
- Iraq War authorization: The Senate is expected to turn back to a years-long push to nix the military authorizations for the Iraq wars after hopes of a vote this year hit procedural stumbling blocks. Kaine and Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) had expected to get a vote on their proposal — which would repeal the 1991 and 2002 authorizations for the use of military force — as part of a sweeping defense bill. But amendment votes ran directly into a brick wall when Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) blocked votes on a package of 25 amendments, including the Kaine-Young one, over a push to get his own legislation either voted on as an amendment or passed in the House. Amid the stalemate, the Senate scrapped passing its own version of the defense bill and instead took up a compromise worked out between leaders on the House and Senate Armed Services committees. That did not include the repeal of the Iraq War authorizations. Kaine and Young have the 60 votes needed to break a likely GOP filibuster.
Manchin: There are 'no negotiations' on Biden spending bill 'at this time' - Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) told reporters Tuesday that he isn’t involved in any serious talks at this time about reviving President Biden’s sweeping climate and social spending bill, underscoring the lack of progress on the president’s signature domestic policy plan. “I’m really not going to talk about Build Back Better anymore because I think I’ve been very clear on that. There is no negotiations going on at this time,” Manchin said, doubling down on comments he made to “Fox News Sunday” last month announcing that he would not vote to proceed to the legislation. Manchin said he’s more interested in working on legislation that has bipartisan support and again expressed concern about pushing legislation that further divides Democrats and Republicans. “There’s an awful lot of things, a lot of things that were very, I think, well intended. And there was a lot of things that was a pretty far reach,” he explained. “Our country is divided and I don’t intend to do anything that divides our country anymore.” Instead, Manchin said he wants “whatever I can do to unite and bring people together.” The West Virginia Democrat, however, expressed interest in backing more federal support for renewable energy sources and technologies, raising the possibility that he might be able to vote for a smaller climate-focused package. But the parameters of such a bill still need to be sketched out and Manchin didn’t clarify whether he would support moving such a bill with simple-majority votes under the special budget reconciliation process or under regular order with 60-plus-vote majorities. “There’s a lot of good things in there,” he said when asked about the climate-related provisions in the Build Back Better bill. “We got a lot of money in there for innovation, technology, tax credits for basically clean technologies and a clean environment and I think we have to continue. But Manchin also argued for preserving the role of fossil fuels to ensure a dependent supply of affordable energy, as he has done many times before. “We have to have enough energy to run our country,” he said. Manchin made his comments shortly after Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he is working with Democratic colleagues on another iteration of the Build Back Better bill. Schumer on Monday again promised he would bring some version of the bill to the floor. “The negotiations will continue with members of our caucus and with the White House on finding a path forward on Build Back Better. As I mentioned before Christmas, I intend to hold a vote in the Senate on BBB and we’ll keep voting until we get a bill passed,” he said. Senate Democrats say they don’t expect a vote this month, however, and warn that the climate and social spending bill, or a slimmed-down version of it, may have to wait until March or later.
Manchin expresses openness to climate action amid spending bill stalemate - Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Tuesday that it’s likely Democrats will have an easier time coming to an agreement on climate change than on other areas of President Biden's proposed climate and social spending bill. Manchin, who last month said he would vote against the Build Back Better Act in its current form, seemed relatively open to its climate components in the first workweek of the new year. “The climate thing is one that we probably can come to an agreement much easier than anything else,” he told reporters. Asked about the climate provisions, he said, “There’s a lot of good things in there.” “We have a lot of money in there for innovation, technology, tax credits for basically clean technologies and a clean environment,” the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman said. But he also expressed some hesitance, saying the country has to be “realistic.” “We have to have enough energy to run our country, and we have to have a transition as it happens as we move from fossil dependency,” he said. “You do that by using fossils in cleaner ways ... and you do it by creating new technologies that are the renewables that we have as far as wind and solar and hydro,” he added. “I’m big on hydrogen, I’m big on nuclear, and I’m really big on basically making sure fossils are used in the cleanest possible fashion.” The climate comments come as Manchin remains stagnant on the package overall, saying there have not been new talks. “I’m really not going to talk about Build Back Better anymore because I think I’ve been very clear on that. There is no negotiations going on at this time,” he said. Overnight Energy & Environment — Manchin raises hopes on climate... Manchin: There are 'no negotiations' on Biden spending bill 'at this... But the measure's climate components have already been significantly pared down amid negotiations with Manchin. Most notably, a program that aimed to incentivize a shift toward clean electricity was removed because the senator opposed it. But there have also been more recent climate sticking points, including the senator’s objection to a provision that sought to provide an additional tax credit for union-made electric vehicles.
Manchin floats modest Senate rules changes --Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Tuesday night floated smaller changes to the Senate rules that would stop short of the filibuster reforms being pushed for by many of his Democratic colleagues.Manchin, coming out of a meeting with Majority Leader Charles Schumer(D-N.Y.) and other Democrats involved in the negotiations, didn't pledge to vote for any specific rules reforms but appeared open to smaller changes."I think the filibuster needs to stay in place, any way shape or form that we can do it," Manchin said, asked about keeping the current rule that requires most legislation to get 60 votes to advance through the Senate.Manchin added that he was still "optimistic" that Republicans could back smaller changes to the Senate rules with an eye toward making it easier to get bills onto the Senate floor for debate.One idea Manchin said he would support would be getting rid of the 60-vote hurdle currently required to start debate on legislation. Manchinhas raised potentially scrapping the procedural roadblock in talks he's had with GOP senators on the Senate's rules."That's a rule change I would think Republicans—they've been for that before," Manchin said, while noting that it wouldn't change the ability for Republicans to use the filibuster to block senators from ending debate on the bill and moving to final passage.Manchin also said that he wanted to put "power back in the hands of committees." Senators have previously discussed streamlining the ability for bills that come out of Senate committees with significant support to be able to get an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. Currently one senator can block a quick vote and force leadership to eat up days of floor time and overcome the 60-vote filibuster.Manchin said that Democrats were also talking about the idea of a talking filibuster, where opponents could slow down a bill for as long as they could hold the floor, but there were questions about how under such a change "how do you get off of it."
Tough talk, uncertainty ahead of new reconciliation push - The next steps for the "Build Back Better Act" are in flux amid a busy month in the Senate and continued unsettled negotiations between Sen. Joe Manchin and Democratic leadership. Democrats were broadly confident that they would be able to get some form of climate and social spending package passed as they emerged from the two-week holiday recess yesterday. But what, exactly, that package looks like is as uncertain as ever, and they may not get much resolution over the next few weeks. Manchin (D-W.Va.) signaled yesterday he is comfortable with the $550 billion climate portion of the existing reconciliation package, but his objections to the spending structure of the child tax credit and other major social programs remain a major hurdle. Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is pushing to overhaul the Senate filibuster rules and pass voting rights legislation by Jan. 17, kicking the spending package to the back-burner. "We’re going to get this done come hell or high water," Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told reporters during an event with the League of Conservation Voters yesterday. "And right now, we have both hell and high water." Still, much depends on Manchin, who said yesterday that he can support policies like "innovation, technology [and] tax credits." As it currently stands, the bill would offer up roughly $325 billion in clean energy, advanced manufacturing and electric vehicle-related tax incentives. Those provisions alone could have a massive impact on U.S. emissions. “I think that the climate thing is one that we probably can come to agreement much easier than anything else,” the West Virginia Democrat told reporters yesterday in his first comments on the package of the new year (Greenwire, Jan. 4). Manchin threatened to scuttle the entire $1.7 trillion package late last month, prompting a round of public recriminations among Democrats who had been negotiating with him for months. But his comments yesterday sparked hope in the environmental community that the climate provisions, which would be crucial to President Biden’s emissions targets, remain a live option. They also raise the possibility of passing a stand-alone climate package, an idea some Democrats have discussed for weeks (E&E Daily, Jan. 3). "These investments are already fully funded through the ten year window that Senator Manchin has requested for other portions of the bill, and have support throughout the Senate Democratic caucus — progressives and conservatives alike," Evergreen Action Executive Director Jamal Raad said in a statement. "It’s time to make them a reality. No excuses."
Democrats Seek to Salvage Paths for Immigrants in Imperiled Bill | Bloomberg Government Democrats are trying to regroup on immigration changes in their sweeping tax and social spending bill, even as key proposals face enormous obstacles and the overall package teeters on collapse. “We haven’t given up,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) said in an interview Wednesday. Democrats are actively discussing how to advance immigration measures, she said. The House-passed provisions of the legislation (HR 5376) would offer parole status with temporary work authorization and protection from deportation for some undocumented immigrants, along with addressing chronic backlogs in the visa system. In a December one-two punch, the Senate parliamentarian concluded the parole plan violated the chamber’s rules for the budget reconciliation process Democrats are using to pursue their agenda without Republican support. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) dealt a bigger blow to the package days later when he announced he wouldn’t support the House bill. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has vowed to push forward with a vote, and some lawmakers have floated options for a slimmer package to appease Manchin, whose vote is crucial. Advocates are working to ensure immigration measures are included in any future version. If a deal comes together, Democrats are poised to at least vote on disregarding the parliamentarian’s advice and plowing ahead on rejected immigration provisions, according to a person familiar with the discussions. Schumer and other key Democrats signaled support for that approach before Manchin’s announcement last month. Many immigrants’ rights advocates are ramping up pressure for senators to use a procedural maneuver to ignore the parliamentarian and revive earlier provisions that would provide a path to citizenship. At the same time, other immigration advocates are crafting new language to try to pass muster with the Senate rules official, the person said. Those efforts are tentative for now, as Democratic leaders assess how to move forward on the package and turn their attention to voting rights legislation in the meantime. The fate of separate provisions that address backlogs in the legal immigration system also remains to be seen.
Joe Manchin appears to have withdrawn offer to back $1.8tn bill on Biden agenda - A $1.8tn spending offer proposed to the White House in late 2021 by Senator Joe Manchin appears to be off the table, following another breakdown in talks between the moderate Democrat from West Virginia and the Biden White House, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. Manchin told reporters this week he is no longer involved in discussions with the White House and has signaled privately that he is not interested in approving any legislation like Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Package, the newspaper said, citing three people with knowledge of the matter.Manchin’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The legislation is one of Biden’s signature domestic priorities. Manchin’s vote is critical in the evenly divided Senate. In December, his opposition torpedoedBuild Back Better, drawing ire from progressives and sending the party scrambling to find a way to resurrect the package.Biden’s plan includes funding for high-priority issues for many Americans, including free pre-school, support for childcare costs, coverage of home-care costs for the elderly and expansion of free school meals. It also seeks to fund measures to combat the climate crisis.Manchin has spoken with officials and others seeking to garner his support, the Post said, among them the senior White House aide Steve Ricchetti; a former economic adviser to Donald Trump, Larry Kudlow; and the Republican senator Mitt Romney, of Utah.Manchin is the only Democrat in major elected office in West Virginia. Attempts to secure his support for Build Back Better have been dogged by fears he could quit the party, either to sit as an independent or to switch to the Republicans, thereby tipping the Senate to the GOP.
CDC to reconsider latest guidance amid backlash, rise in cases - The highly transmissible COVID-19 omicron variant has thrown many pandemic-related plans for a loop as Americans canceled holiday plans or were left stuck in a travel nightmare caused by flight crews who could not work because they became sick. A decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week to cut isolation time in half, from 10 days to five days for asymptomatic COVID-19, was met with backlash after officials said it was due in part to allow people to return to work faster. It came one week after some companies, including Delta Air Lines, wrote to the CDC requesting such a change. Now, Anthony Fauci, the president's chief medical adviser, says the testing part of that guidance may change to now require one as officials struggle with rising cases that at times are breaking pandemic records.Appearing on ABC’s “This Week" on Sunday, Fauci said the CDC was looking into amending its isolation guidelines nearly one week after it updated its latest guidance, which did not require a negative test before the five days were up."There has been some concern about why we don't ask people at that five-day period to get tested. That is something that is now under consideration," Fauci said. “The CDC is very well aware that there has been some pushback about that. Looking at it again, there may be an option in that, that testing could be a part of that, and I think we're going to be hearing more about that in the next day or so from the CDC.” Last week, Jerome Adams, the former surgeon general during the Trump administration, criticized the abbreviated time and advised people to still get a COVID-19 test before leaving isolation."Regardless of what CDC says, you really should try to obtain an antigen test," Adams tweeted. "There’s not a scientist or doctor I’ve met yet who wouldn’t do this for themselves/ their family." Amid the latest surge in cases, officials across the country have also begun weighing the possibility of closing down schools and returning to remote learning. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Sunday said the government was committed to maintaining in-person learning."We've been very clear, our expectation is for schools to be open full time for students for in-person learning. We remember the impact of school closures on students last year, and our science is better, we have better tools," Cardona said on "Fox News Sunday."President Biden has also stayed away from suggesting any pandemic-related lockdowns or stay at home orders, a politically unpopular option that could help curb the spread of the latest variant.Cardona expressed his support for continued vaccinations, but said he would leave vaccination decisions to the state and local levels.
US moves to shut down case reporting to cover up Omicron disaster - In a repeat of the Trump administration’s calls to “slow the testing down,” the Biden administration and state governments are working to cripple the reporting of COVID-19 testing in the United States to cover up their massive failure to protect the population from the pandemic. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been in discussions with the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists about a directive that “would direct states to limit daily case reporting,” according to a report published last week in the New York Times. The move to shut down reporting of individual cases has no scientific or medical basis. There are no reputable public health experts, virologists, or epidemiologists—outside of those employed by the White House as press surrogates—who favor reducing reporting of COVID-19 cases. And there has never been a precedent for a government abandoning efforts to track, isolate, and contain a SARS-like pathogen. Rather, the aim of these efforts is to cover up the policy of the federal and state governments of deliberately allowing COVID-19 to spread throughout the population in accordance with the pseudoscientific theory of “herd immunity.” States led by far-right Republicans are already slashing testing and reporting. Tennessee, run by the far-right governor Bill Lee, who refused to recognize the election of US president Joe Biden, has already stopped daily case reporting, switching to a once-per-week system of reporting tests. Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said Monday the state intended to “unwind” the “testing mentality.” Ladapo reports to Governor Ron DeSantis, a right-wing ideologue who also refused to acknowledge the outcome of the 2020 election. Even more states plan to end weekly reporting, with many “that are still doing daily reporting eager to make the shift in the coming months,” Marcelle Layton, chief medical officer at the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, told the Times. The moves to end case reporting by states and the federal government are a continuation of the criminal “herd immunity” policy initiated under the Trump administration, which deliberately sabotaged the country’s testing infrastructure to promote the mass infection of the population. In a report published at the end of 2021, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis reported, “Trump Administration officials purposefully weakened the [CDC] testing guidance to reduce the amount of testing being conducted and obscure how rapidly the virus was spreading across the country.”
Biden tamps down omicron alarm, urges vaccinations -- President Biden on Tuesday sought to tamp down worries about the omicron coronavirus variant, underscoring that COVID-19 vaccines protect against severe illness from the virus. Speaking before a briefing with his COVID-19 advisers at the White House, Biden said that the U.S. has the tools to protect Americans from severe illness from the virus. He also advocated to keep schools open at a time when cases are rising and some school districts are opting to start the year remote once again. “Folks, I know we’re all tired and frustrated about the pandemic. These coming weeks are going to be challenging. Please wear your mask in public to protect yourself and others. We’re going to get through this,” Biden said. “We have the tools to protect people from severe illness due to omicron if people choose to use the tools.” The U.S. reported over 1 million COVID-19 cases on Monday, driven up in part by backlogs over the New Year’s holiday. The U.S. is now averaging over 480,000 daily COVID-19 infections. Hospitals in some states have been overwhelmed, forcing the federal government to send personnel to help with the surge in cases. Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, declared a state of emergency on Tuesday, citing projections that COVID-19 hospitalizations could exceed 5,000. There is some promising news when it comes to the protection that COVID-19 vaccines offer against omicron, however. Thus far, data has shown that vaccines and booster doses protect against severe disease from the omicron variant. That’s why Biden and government health experts are urging Americans who have not done so to get vaccinated, and those who are eligible for booster doses to get them as soon as possible. Currently, about 66 percent of eligible adult Americans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and roughly one-third have received a booster dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “If you are vaccinated and boosted you are highly protected,” Biden said Tuesday, noting that those who are vaccinated can still contract COVID-19 but are unlikely to become seriously ill. “Be concerned about omicron but don’t be alarmed. But if you’re unvaccinated, you have some reason to be alarmed,” he said. Biden also announced plans to double the federal government's purchases of Pfizer’s COVID-19 treatment Paxlovid to 20 million courses, but he cautioned that it would take months for the pills to be produced and available. Biden has faced criticism in recent weeks as the nation has grappled with shortages of at-home testing kits and a surge in demand for tests ahead of the Christmas holiday. On Tuesday, the president expressed frustration with the testing situation but insisted it was improving, pointing to his administration’s plan to send 500 million tests to Americans free of costs beginning this month. “I know this remains frustrating. It remains frustrating to me, but we’re making improvements,” Biden said. Biden also twice underscored his desire to keep schools open, noting funding allotted for schools in the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package passed last year. His message has been consistent that school closures and other shutdowns are not necessary to address the current wave of cases. Despite Biden’s position, some schools have temporarily reverted to virtual learning due to the omicron wave.
US orders another 10 million courses of Pfizer COVID-19 treatment - The United States is purchasing an additional 10 million courses of Pfizer's COVID-19 treatment Paxlovid, the company said Tuesday, bringing the total U.S. order to 20 million. The move comes as the Biden administration seeks to ramp up the treatments available as another tool to battle the virus. Pfizer also said Tuesday that the delivery of the first 10 million courses has been accelerated to June, with the following 10 million coming by September. Experts have been pushing the White House to do more to ramp up production of the treatment given that it can play a major role in defanging the virus, but it is expected to be in shortage in the near term. The White House previously said that just 265,000 courses of the treatment would be available in January, amid a major surge of COVID-19. Officials have pointed to a complex manufacturing process as posing hurdles to getting doses sooner. "It’s still way too small and too late to meet the anticipated needs," Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, wrote in an email after the announcement of the new order. President Biden is set to give remarks on the omicron variant and the latest in the response to the surge later Tuesday afternoon. Pfizer did not give a price for the latest order of its treatment. The U.S. paid $5.295 billion for the original 10 million courses. Trials showed that the pill is highly effective, reducing the risk of hospitalization or death by 89 percent in high-risk patients. It is intended to be taken within five days of the onset of symptoms.
“They Really Are Trying to Kill Us” --by Yves Smith --The headline above has become a recurrent theme in our Covid brain trust. Here’s one example from December, the approval of Merck’s Covid treatment molnupiravir, which showed only 30% effectiveness and will generate Covid mutations: MOV can be bad to the virus in particular conditions: If you can trap the virus in an environment with high enough MOV for long enough time, then all copies of the virus in that environment will accumulate mutations that break some important function of a viral protein.The key thing to appreciate is you can create the conditions for MOV to work in a petri dish and in lab animals in a cage, but you cannot do it reliably in human patients. And then when you don't, what you get are viruses that are mutated but not dead.And then from there, any mutations that benefit the virus, e.g. by evading antibodies from vaccines or prior infection or by making it more contagious, will expand, no matter how rare they are. That's natural selection. The entire thread is worth reading but the sections above make the key point.In case you need more persuading, how about: And we now have the testing fiasco: there aren’t enough and so hospitals and doctors are flying blind. IM Doc, who practices in a very affluent area, has been distraught. From recent e-mails:I am quite literally in the middle of a tsunami. This AM we had 109 cases from the night and day before – rapidly falling way behind and there is no end in sight. I can no longer call them COVID, however, we simply have no testing. I have 24 that have actual positive COVID testing – the other 85 we are doing sheer guess work. Please remember – we were griping about busy days just a few weeks ago with 20 or so COVID patients. Just imagine what it is like here now. I have one staff out on quarantine. And the other one is just frazzled and overwhelmed and emotional after days of this. The other two have been pulled to other critical areas because they have zero staff. There was a time when we would all be on quarantine because of the exposure. I do not have adequate test kits to waste on testing them though. The private home tests have completely dried up. Many patients have plenty that they have hoarded apparently – but not willing to share. People are being requested to stay home with mild symptoms – and so all I have is guess work on Zoom or the phone…. I have never felt so helpless or out of control in my life. On top of this is all the usual stuff every day in a busy practice – abnormal mammograms, glucoses going off the wall, chest pain, infected toes – you name it. I feel like I am drowning. And how about masks? After having treated not wearing a mask as a sign of vaccinated virtue last May, and not bothering to communicate that the quality of masks matters, let alone not using the National Production Act to ramp up output of N95 and distribute them for free, only now do we see the press clear its throat and show how much they can help:
Biden, in Shift, Prepares Americans to See Covid-19 as Part of Life – WSJ —As Covid-19 cases climb across the U.S., President Biden and his administration are preparing Americans to accept the virus as a part of daily life, in a break from a year ago when he took office with a pledge to rein in the pandemic and months later said the nation was “closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.”The recalibration of Mr. Biden’s message comes as the country braces for another round of disruptions wrought by the pandemic. A growing number of schools temporarily have returned to virtual instruction and many businesses are strained by staffing shortages, in both cases due to infections triggered by the highly transmissible Omicron variant. Thursday marked the 12th straight day of more than 1,000 flight cancellations, and many states warned that ongoing testing shortages will make it harder to return people to work and school. Airlines scrapped more than 3,000 U.S. flights and delayed more than 5,000 on Monday. The new wave of cancellations and delays comes as the surge in Covid-19 infections in the U.S. has left the airline industry stretched thin. Photo: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty ImagesMr. Biden and his top aides have sought to cut through the disorder, even as the surge in cases has left many Americans confused by evolving state and local requirements for masks and for schools. White House officials have dismissed the need for lockdowns and urged schools to remain open.The administration has sought to convey in appearances by the president and briefings with top officials that many Americans will be infected with Covid-19, but that those who are vaccinated have no reason to panic. “You can control how big an impact Omicron is going to have on your health,” Mr. Biden said. “We’re seeing Covid-19 cases among [the] vaccinated in workplaces across America, including here at the White House. But if you’re vaccinated and boosted, you are highly protected.” To help combat Omicron, the Biden administration is opening up more Covid-19 testing sites and delivering 500 million tests to Americans. In a series of opinion articles published Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, some health experts who advised Mr. Biden during the presidential transition outlined potential next steps for reducing transmission of the virus while accepting its enduring presence. They wrote that the Biden administration should establish thresholds for what level of hospitalizations and deaths from respiratory illnesses, including Covid-19, would necessitate emergency measures.The authors also laid out measures the administration should take to better equip the country against Covid-19 outbreaks, such as broadening vaccine mandates to eventually include schoolchildren, phasing in vaccines to target new variants, making low-cost testing more widely accessible, upgrading ventilation and air filtration systems in congregate settings, and providing N95 masks to the public.Asked about the recommendations, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Mr. Biden’s “ultimate goal continues to be to defeat the virus,” but she said the administration’s focus at this stage was on reducing the number of hospitalizations and deaths and making more Covid-19 treatment options available. She said it was up to local school districts to make decisions around vaccine mandates for students.
CDC director, under fire for confusing guidance, seeks to reshape messaging - The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took a calculated gamble Friday as she sought to assume greater control over confused public health messaging about the coronavirus as the pandemic enters its third year.Rochelle Walensky held her first solo covid-19 news conference since becoming the chief of the public health agency nearly a year ago, vowing that it would be “the first of many.”The briefing comes at a precarious moment for Walensky, a highly regarded infectious-diseases physician who has come under intense criticism for failing to communicate CDC’s often-changing guidance clearly. With coronavirus cases surging to record levels in the United States and around the world, that criticism has been particularly stinging of late, with an uncharacteristically sharp critique this week from the American Medical Association over the agency’s failure to require a negative coronavirustest result before people exit shortened isolation.“Potentially hundreds of thousands of people could return to work and school infectious if they follow the CDC’s new guidance on ending isolation after five days without a negative test,” the group said.Inside the administration, frustration has also been mounting. Officials acknowledge the rapidly changing virus complicates the pandemic response, but some worry Walensky’s public statements have only added to many Americans’ confusion. At times, her guidance has also been at odds with that of other senior administration officials, most notably, that of Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser.Though some outside experts have called on Biden to change the agency’s leadership, administration officials say the president has no such plans. They say ousting the director amid a new wave of cases would be ill-advised. For months, at the suggestion of the White House, Walensky has been receiving media coaching from Democratic media consultant Mandy Grunwald, according to an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Grunwald did not respond to messages for comment. Grunwald’s role was first reported by CNN.CDC spokesman Jason McDonald said in a statement that directors “have historically consulted coaches and other outside advisers to improve communications and media interview skills. This is not out of the ordinary.”Walensky offered no apologies on Friday. But she did acknowledge the challenges of staying on top of a fast-evolving virus, saying the CDC is “working really hard to get information to the American public. This is hard, and I am committed to continue to improve as we learn more about the science and to communicate that with all of you.”
CDC director turns to media consultant as Covid-19 messaging frustrations mount - Dr. Rochelle Walensky assumed her new role as the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last January with a vow to restore trust in the agency. But last fall, several months into the job and after a series of messaging missteps, Walensky sought out media training.For months, Walensky has met privately with prominent Democratic media consultant Mandy Grunwald to improve her communication skills and continues to do so, according to a person familiar with the previously unreported sessions. On Friday, Walensky will hold the CDC's first independent media briefing since the summer after deciding abruptly this week that she wanted to take questions "head on," according to a person familiar with her decision to hold the briefing.It comes as the agency is facing a barrage of criticism over confusion stemming from its new guidelines on isolation for people who test positive for Covid-19. Beyond Walensky's personal messaging struggles, the agency has faced criticism for months over its at-times confusing guidance surrounding the pandemic, with one former senior Biden administration official saying the agency appears to be "overthinking" its communications.Scientists within the CDC have also grown increasingly frustrated with Walensky's handling of public health guidance, a CDC scientist told CNN. According to the scientist, Walensky largely crafted the new guidance with the help of a small circle of top advisers, eschewing the traditional process of rigorous scientific vetting by experts at the CDC who would in turn also consult with outside public health partners and experts.The director, a well-regarded infectious diseases expert with no prior government experience, is now responsible for explaining that decision and other Covid-19 guidance both in public and in briefings with top White House officials. During Friday's briefing, Walensky said that she is working to improve the quality of the agency's communication with the public."We're in an unprecedented time with the speed of Omicron cases rising, and we are working really hard to get information to the American public, and balancing that with the reality that we're all living with," Walenksy said.
CDC reports record number of child COVID-19 hospitalizations - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky reported Friday that there have been a record number of pediatric hospitalizations due to COVID-19 and announced new isolation guidelines for students, staff and teachers to preserve in-person learning in schools. During a media briefing, Walensky cautioned that pediatric hospitalizations are at the highest point they have ever been during the pandemic, even though they are much lower when compared to adults. She said it’s still not clear if the increase is due to a greater burden of disease in children's communities or their lower rates of vaccination. The increase was seen most in children younger than 4, who are ineligible for vaccination, and the data include those admitted to hospitals for reasons other than COVID-19 who then tested positive. “Please, for our youngest children, those who are not yet eligible for vaccination, it's critically important that we surround them with people who are vaccinated to provide them protection,” Walensky said. “This includes at home, at day care and preschool and throughout our entire community.” According to CDC data, in the week ending Jan. 1, children under the age of 4 had 4.3 COVID-19 associated hospitalizations per 100,000. Children ages 5 to 17 had only 1.1 hospitalizations per 100,000. Both are well under the rate of 14.7 in adults over 65. Currently just over 50 percent of children ages 12 to 17 are fully vaccinated and 16 percent of ages 5 to 11 are fully vaccinated. The CDC director also detailed the agency's updated quarantine and isolation guidance for students, staff and teachers as part of an effort to keep people safe while schools remain open. The new policy shortens the period of isolation time following infection to five days and brings schools in line with the agency’s guidance for the general public and health workers. Walensky noted that many schools have closed or returned to virtual learning after the holiday break due to surging cases of the omicron variant. “Our updated recommendations for isolation and quarantine, and our prior publications and continued assessment of test-to-stay protocols in schools, provide the tools necessary to get these schools reopened for in-person learning and to keep them open for the rest of the school year,” Walensky said. But amid continued questions and confusion about the isolation and quarantine guidelines, Walensky sought to clarify that people should not be leaving isolation if they’re still showing symptoms, even if it has been five days since their symptoms began. “If on day five, you don't have symptoms anymore, then we can talk about, you know, coming out of isolation with a mask on, strictly masking for those remaining five days, but the first indication there is, do your symptoms remain or not,” Walensky said. “Our guidance is very clear that you should not leave isolation if you're still symptomatic.”
How American capitalism profits on death - On Monday, as the United States recorded one million COVID-19 cases, three times higher than the peak of previous waves, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up by 400 points, setting a new all-time record.The rally continued Tuesday, as the US crossed another grim milestone: 100,000 hospitalizations from the pandemic, eclipsing the level of the surge over the summer. Child hospitalizations have also reached an all-time high.Throughout 2021, as 478,000 Americans died, the Dow logged 70 closing records in its third straight year of annual double-digit increases. “If you looked at new all-time highs last year,” one trader told Yahoo! Finance, “there were actually more new all-time highs than in the entire '70s and 2000s combined, those two decades.”And just as deaths were higher in 2021 than in 2020, so were returns on the stock market. The Dow rose 18 percent in 2021, compared to 7 percent in 2020.Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the correspondence between mass infection and stock prices is well established. The markets fall when they suspect measures will be taken to stop the spread of COVID-19, and they rise when the disease is allowed to spread unchecked. In early December, fears that the new, more contagious Omicron variant would lead to emergency school and business closures led to a sustained fall on Wall Street. That fall ended on December 21, when US President Biden, speaking before the end of the trading day, went on national television to declare that his administration is “making sure that COVID-19 no longer closes businesses or schools.” Since then, the Dow has surged more than 2,000 points, hitting record after record, even as cases, hospitalizations and deaths have soared. The subordination of public health to the demands of Wall Street has been the single constant element of US government policy since the very beginning of the pandemic. During the initial weeks of the spread of COVID-19, Donald Trump sought to “play it down,” as he later told journalist Bob Woodward. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic,” he added. The “panic” Trump was concerned about was a panic on Wall Street. Jared Kushner, who organized the White House’s pandemic response, had, according to the Financial Times, argued that “testing too many people, or ordering too many ventilators, would spook the markets and so we just shouldn’t do it.” But as Trump was “playing down” the pandemic, members of Congress adjusted their own stock portfolios to minimize the impact on their own wealth when the truth inevitably became impossible to conceal. By that time, a massive bailout, in the form of the CARES Act of March 2020, had already been prepared. More than $1.4 trillion of the $2.3 trillion CARES Act consisted of bailouts to business, with the overwhelming majority going to large and well-connected enterprises. The CARES Act also facilitated a massive monetary intervention by the Federal Reserve that totaled over $4 trillion. As a result, the Fed balance sheet rose from $4.1 trillion in February 2020 to more than $8.7 trillion today, $1.4 trillion of which has been handed out since the inauguration of Biden.
Multimillionaire Republican donor declares vaccines are part of a Jewish plot for world domination -- A major Republican donor and majority shareholder of Utah-based software company Entrata, David Bateman, claimed in a fascistic email Tuesday morning, sent to the Utah political and businesses elite, that COVID-19 vaccines were an extermination plot conceived by “the Jews” as part of a scheme for mass depopulation and global domination. Entrata, a property management software company, based in Lehi, Utah, claims on its website to have 1,400 employees. Forbes magazine verified that the email was sent by Bateman at 4:59 a.m. Tuesday. Among the over 50 recipients of Bateman’s antisemitic screed included Utah Governor Spencer Cox (Republican), Utah Senate Minority Whip Luz Escamilla (Democratic) and billionaire owner of the Utah Jazz National Basketball Association franchise and co-founder and executive chairman of Qualtrics, Ryan Smith. “I write this email knowing that many of you will think I’m crazy after reading,” wrote Bateman. “I believe there is a sadistic effort underway to euthanize the American people. It’s obvious now. It’s undeniable, yet no one is doing anything. Everyone is discounting their own judgment and dismissing their intuition. I believe the Jews are behind this.” In statements that could have been plagiarized from Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Facebook rants, Bateman spewed vile antisemitic conspiracies that have floated around the ruling class for centuries: “For 300 years the Jews have been trying to infiltrate the Catholic Church and place a Jew covertly at the top. It happened in 2013 with Pope Francis. I believe the pandemic and systematic extermination of billions of people will lead to an effort to consolidate all the countries in the world under a single flag with totalitarian rule. I know, it sounds bonkers. No one is reporting on it, but the Hasidic Jews in the US instituted a law for their people that they are not to be vaccinated for any reason.” When contacted by KSTU-TV after his email was made public, Bateman doubled down on his fascistic delusions: “Yes. I sent it. I have nothing but love for the Jewish people. Some of my closest friends are Jews. My heart breaks for the 2,500 years they’ve been mistreated by nearly every country on earth. But I do believe Scottish Rite Freemasons are behind the pandemic (overwhelmingly Jewish). And I fear billions of people around the globe right now are being exterminated.”
US Airlines, FAA, Mayo Pete Fighting Rearguard Action to Delay 5G Rollout Over Flight Safety Concerns; Carriers Offer Modest Concession - Yves Smith - The spat between the FAA and FCC over the about to begin 5G launch in the US just became front page business press news, although the battle heated up big time earlier in December.This struggle is not only important in and of itself, but it illustrates a pathology that has become pervasive in America: money talks and the public be damned.The very short version is that Verizon and AT&T spent oodles buying 5G spectrum rights in early 2020, where despite (or as you will see, arguably because) rulemaking, the FCC imposed no meaningful restrictions on the carriers’ use of the rights they purchased. A group representing 10 airlines is having a hissy, having lost at the rulemaking phase, they are still trying to stop the 5G rollout until the safety of the 5G operation with respect to airline altimeters is concerned. As we will again see, theoretically there is no interference, but as a saying attributed to Yogi Berra goes, “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”One reason the two sides are at odds is the airlines have vastly more stringent notions of safety than communications providers, and for good reasons. The reason the great unwashed public is willing to do something so seemingly crazy as get into what amounts to aluminum orange juice cans and fly at crazy heights is that the airlines have a phenomenal safety record. Their existence depends on the perception of lack of danger despite otherwise high apparent risks (look at the safety record of gliding, when most glider pilots are professionals gliding for sport, as a contrast). So their cautiousness is deeply ingrained as necessary for industry survival. From Reuters: The chief executives of AT&T (T.N) and Verizon Communications (VZ.N) rejected a request to delay the planned Jan. 5 introduction of new 5G wireless service over aviation safety concerns but offered to temporarily adopt new safeguards. U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Federal Aviation Administration chief Steve Dickson had asked AT&T CEO John Stankey and Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg late Friday for a commercial deployment delay of no more than two weeks. The wireless companies in a joint letter on Sunday said they would not deploy 5G around airports for six months but rejected any broader limitation on using C-Band spectrum. The Verge has posted a copy of the Verizon missive. Reuters reports that Airlines for America, which represents American Airlines, Delta, FedEx, JetBlue and UPS, among others, is pretty het up and plan to file for an emergency injunction Monday if the wireless carriers didn’t climb down. The wireless carriers attempt to claim the moral high ground by saying they’ve made the same concessions in France that they’ve offered to make here, and that should settle the matter. But even Reuters makes clear that the French network is not the same as the US one:FAA officials said France uses spectrum for 5G that sits further away from spectrum used for radio altimeters and uses lower power levels for 5G than those authorized in the United States.Verizon said it will initially only use spectrum in the same range as used in France, adding it will be a couple of years before it uses additional spectrum. The larger U.S. exclusion zone around U.S. airports is “to make up for the slight difference in power levels between the two nations,” Verizon added.Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA), representing 50,000 workers at 17 airlines, on Sunday wrote on Twitter that pilots, airlines, manufacturers and others “have NO incentive to delay 5G, other than SAFETY. What do they think … we’re raising these issues over the holidays for, kicks?” This gives an idea of what the airlines see at the extent of the problem:
Sherman Act v. Modern Conglomerate Agriculture - Multiple times the Biden Administration, along with Secretary Vilsack, and other administrations have made multiple public comments and now threats of investigation of beef producers and their horizontal and vertical integration over the past few decades. The targeting of the beef industry is one of the loudest and most recent, but we fail to realize this is a problem indicative of our entire food system. Let’s start with meat. The overwhelming majority, 85% of all meat production is handled by four companies, Tyson, the largest for chicken, Cargill, beef and now chicken with the acquisition of Sanderson, JBS, beef and pork, and National Beef, mostly beef. They all operate multi-function processing plants in both North and South America that process all consumer meat staples including turkey. The spotlight has always been on market manipulation and Monopolistic Capitalist White Men Hegemony. This is false. We did this to ourselves. Every time an E.Coli or Salmonella outbreak would happen, the public backlash was always immense and lawmakers, paid off by the Big 4 offered solutions. Through the USDA, all of the processing plants were to be inspected and credentialled by the government, establishing a framework that currently looks like this: Each chokepoint, err, processing facility is owned and operated by the Big Four under the direction of the USDA. We’ve allowed them as a public to get to this point, and now that they have vertically integrated the processes behind their respective positions, have now began to Sam Walton their Monopoly power into driving up prices for consumers while also suppressing expenses from growers. Run and I have been posting multiple articles to the matter. He recently sent me thisBiden Turns to Antitrust Enforcers to Combat Inflation – News Concerns. We don’t need to look very hard for articles to support the argument, even the White House is sounding off Addressing Concentration in the Meat-Processing Industry to Lower Food Prices for American Families | The White House. You can see from the White House analysis that the trend is much higher beef prices at retailers, but the producers are flat. Given the inflationary environment, land price crunch, and people attempting to finally make a living we see some behaviora by producers that unfortunately, in the end, leave loved ones broke, broken, and communities saddened, as with what happened in Washington state. Betting the ranch | The CounterWe focus on meat prices because those are the easiest farm direct nutrition aside from vegetables. Other retail brands are heavily dominated in the produce space by Dole Foods, Con-Agra. In the processed foods Kraft-Heinz, Nestle, Mondelez. The ultra processed grain space held by Kellogg’s.
White House announces $1B plan to address increases in meat prices - The White House on Monday announced plans aimed at addressing rising prices for meat and poultry, including setting aside $1 billion for smaller producers. The Biden administration unveiled its action plan to diversify and strengthen the meat-producing supply chain ahead of a scheduled virtual meeting between President Biden and independent farmers and ranchers. The White House has previously pointed to a small number of conglomerates for driving higher meat and poultry prices, which have been a major contributor to broader inflation in recent months. "When dominant middlemen control so much of the supply chain, they can increase their own profits at the expense of both farmers — who make less — and consumers — who pay more," the White House said in a fact sheet announcing its action plan on Monday. "Most farmers now have little or no choice of buyer for their product and little leverage to negotiate, causing their share of every dollar spent on food to decline." The Biden administration is dedicating $1 billion from the American Rescue Plan, a bill signed into law earlier this year, specifically for the purpose of expanding independent meat processing capacity. That includes $375 million in grants for independent meat producers, $275 million in additional financing available for processors, $100 million to address inspection costs for smaller processing plants and $100 million in training for workers in the meat and poultry industry. The administration also announced new efforts to ensure transparency in cattle markets and to ensure there is reasonable levels of competition in the industry so that it is not controlled by just a few big conglomerates
Biden disapproval hits record high in new poll -- President Biden's disapproval rating reached a new high in December, according to a new CNBC-Change Research poll. Overall, the survey showed 56 percent of voters disapproved of Biden's performance in office, an uptick from 54 percent in September and 49 percent in April. His approval rating now stands at 44 percent. Biden was particularly hard hit when it came to the public’s opinion of his handling of the economy and the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the poll indicated that 60 percent of respondents disapproved of Biden’s handling of the economy and 55 percent disapproved of his pandemic response. For the economy, 72 percent said they disapprove of Biden's management of the price of everyday goods, and 66 percent said they did not approve of the president's efforts to help their wallets. Additionally, 46 percent of respondents said the stock market is doing “not so good” or “poor” despite one of the market's best years in decades, according to CNBC, as the S&P 500 completed the year up 26.89 percent. Regarding vaccine mandates, the survey also indicated that 50 percent said Biden had gone too far. Twenty-six percent said the administration had the right approach, and 24 percent said it had not gone far enough. The survey included 1,895 respondents from Dec. 17 through Dec. 20. Its margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Ted Cruz: GOP May Impeach Biden If They Win Control Of House Again - Texas Senator Ted Cruz announced that he is of the opinion that the Republican party could bring impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden, should the GOP win control of the House again in the mid terms. During his own Podcast, titled “The Verdict,” Cruz said “I do think there is a chance of that,” reasoning that “Whether it’s justified or not… the Democrats weaponized impeachment.” Cruz continued, “They used it for partisan purposes to go after Trump because they disagreed with him. And one of the real disadvantages of doing that… is the more you weaponize it and turn it into a partisan cudgel.” “You know what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” Cruz urged. “I said at the time when we had a Democratic president and a Republican House, you can expect an impeachment proceeding. That’s not how impeachment is meant to work, but I think the Democrats crossed that line,” the Senator added. Expanding on exactly what the GOP would seek to impeach Biden on, Cruz said “I think there are potentially multiple grounds to consider for impeachment.” “I think there will be enormous pressure on a Republican House to begin impeachment proceedings,” Cruz said, adding “Probably the most compelling is the utter lawlessness is President Biden’s refusal to enforce the border — his decision to just deify immigration laws and allow 2 million people to come in here unimpeded in direct contravention of his obligation under Article 2 of the Constitution to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. That’s probably the strongest grounds right now for impeachment, but there may be others.” “And because Democrats decided this is just another tool in the partisan war chest, I think there is a real risk that turnabout will be fair play,” Cruz further emphasized.
Senator Rand Paul Quits YouTube Over "Despicable" Censorship, Moves Permanently To Rumble - 2022 will be the year that people in their millions jump the sinking ship of big tech and move to newer independent, and uncensored platforms. Among plenty of others, that’s the prediction of Senator Rand Paul, who is leading the charge by voluntarily quitting YouTube in favour of Rumble. “About half of the public leans right. If we all took our messaging to outlets of free exchange, we could cripple Big Tech in a heartbeat,” Paul announced in an op ed. “So, today I take my first step toward denying my content to Big Tech. Hopefully, other liberty lovers will follow,” the Senator added. He continued, “As a libertarian leaning Senator, I think private companies have the right to ban me if they want to, however, those of us who believe that truth comes from disputation and that the marketplace of ideas is a prerequisite for innovation should shun the close-minded censors and take our ideas elsewhere, which is exactly what I’m doing.” Paul called his “dysfunctional” interaction with Google a “toxic relationship” where his every word is scrutinised by politicised “fact checkers.” “Sure, I can get millions of views. But why should I allow anonymous ‘fact-checkers’ to censor my fully sourced, fact-based content?” Paul asked, adding “They don’t want to challenge or debate me with opposing views, they just want my silence.”
YouTube takes down antivaxx Joe Rogan interview with Dr Robert Malone which likened vaccines to mass psychosis - YouTube has removed a video of a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience in which the podcast host was talking to Dr Robert Malone – a physician with a history of controversial statements related to Covid-19.The episode in question, No 1757, was uploaded to Spotify on New Year's Eve, as Mr Rogan has an exclusive deal with the streaming service. While Mr Rogan no longer uploads full shows to YouTube, several third-party channels have taken it upon themselves to post the episodes that would otherwise only be available on Spotify.While a number of recent JRE episodes remain on YouTube, one featuring Dr Malone was removed by the platform after only a few hours, The Post Millenial reports.Given the doctor’s contested views on Covid-19, including his opposition to vaccine mandates for minors, the act by YouTube has sparked several accusations of censorship amongst right-wing politicians and political commentators. The now-viral conversation between Mr Rogan and Dr Malone saw the latter drawing parallels between current American society and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Nazis came into power, saying American society is developing a “mass formation psychosis”.“Very intelligent, highly educated population, and they went barking mad. And how did that happen? The answer is mass formation psychosis.“When you have a society that has become decoupled from each other, and has free-floating anxiety, in a sense that things don’t make sense. We can’t understand it. And then their attention gets focused by a leader or series of events on one small point, just like hypnosis. They literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere,” said Mr Malone.
Turley: Could The Maxwell Conviction Be Tossed Over Juror Misconduct? --Ghislaine Maxwell’s conviction has been widely celebrated as bringing some justice to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. However, that moment may prove fleeting in light of a startling disclosure made by one of the jurors to Reuters this week. A juror identified only by his first two names (“Scotty David”) admitted that he was able to sway fellow jurors by discussing his own experience with abuse. It is not clear if he disclosed that prior abuse on the juror questionnaire as part of the voir dire process. The disclosure could give Maxwell a strong argument for reversal if the prior abuse was not revealed and was then used in the jury room to pursue the jury after it deadlocked in its proceedings.David, 35, told the Independent that the room went silent when he disclosed his past abuse. What is most concerning is that he seemed to suggest that his account was used to overcome the problem that jurors had with the failure of the victims to recall key facts in their testimony. He also reportedly used his own experience to explain the delay in the victims disclosing their abuse.He is quoted by Reuters as saying that “when I shared that, they were able to sort of come around on, they were able to come around on the memory aspect of the sexual abuse.”That is troubling in itself. That is precisely why such past experiences are the subject of intense review during voir dire. The 230 prospective jurors were given questionnaires asking, among other things, if they or anyone in their families had experienced sexual abuse.David could not remember if he answered affirmatively to that question and said that he “flew through” the questionnaire.We have previously discussed major juror misconduct questions in high-profile cases like the prosecutions of Roger Stone. and Derek Chauvin. The First Circuit recently overturned the sentence of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev due to juror bias. Nevertheless, I have been critical of judges who turn a blind eye to juror bias, including false answers on jury forms. This would be exceptionally serious if a juror failed to disclose prior abuse and then used that prior abuse to influence jury deliberations. The Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that the “minimal standards of due process” demand “a panel of impartial, indifferent jurors.” I expect we will learn soon if the juror failed to disclose such abuse but it would be odd, if he did, that the defense did not question him about it.
There’s a News Blackout on the Fed’s Naming of the Banks that Got Its Emergency Repo Loans; Some Journalists Appear to Be Under Gag Orders - By Pam Martens ~ Four days ago, the Federal Reserve released the names of the banks that had received $4.5 trillion in cumulative loans in the last quarter of 2019 under its emergency repo loan operations for a liquidity crisis that has yet to be credibly explained. Among the largest borrowers were JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, three of the Wall Street banks that were at the center of the subprime and derivatives crisis in 2008 that brought down the U.S. economy. That’s blockbuster news. But as of 7 a.m. this morning, not one major business media outlet has reported the details of the Fed’s big reveal. On September 17, 2019, the Fed began making trillions of dollars a month in emergency repo loans to 24 trading houses on Wall Street. The Fed released on a daily basis the dollar amounts it was loaning, but withheld the names of the specific banks and how much they had borrowed. This made it impossible for the public to see which Wall Street firms were experiencing the most severe credit crisis. The dollar amounts of the Fed’s repo loans grew to staggering levels. On October 24, 2019, we reported the following: “The New York Fed will now be lavishing up to $120 billion a day in cheap overnight loans to Wall Street securities trading firms, a daily increase of $45 billion from its previously announced $75 billion a day. In addition, it is increasing its 14-day term loans to Wall Street, a program which also came out of the blue in September, to $45 billion. Those term loans since September have been occurring twice a week, meaning another $90 billion a week will be offered, bringing the total weekly offering to an astounding $690 billion. … One bank, Citigroup, received over $2.5 trillion in Fed loans, much of them at an interest rate below 1 percent, at a time when it was insolvent and couldn’t have obtained loans in the open market at even high double-digit interest rates.)” Those Fed revelations, that had been withheld from the American people for two years, should have made front page headlines in newspapers and on the digital front pages of every major business news outlet. Instead, there was a universal news blackout of the story at the largest business news outlets, including: Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal, the business section of the New York Times, the Financial Times, Dow Jones’ MarketWatch, and Reuters. The Fed was required to release its repo loan data and names of the banks for the span of September 17 through September 30, 2019 at the end of the third quarter of this year. We reported on what that information revealed on October 13. Because we were similarly stunned by the news blackout on that Fed release, out of courtesy we sent our story to the reporters covering the Fed for the major news outlets. Our article alerted each of these reporters that a much larger data release from the Fed, for the full fourth quarter of 2019, would be released on or about December 31. The data was posted at the New York Fed sometime before 1:23 p.m. ET last Thursday.The most puzzling part of this news blackout is that the majority of the reporters who covered this Fed story at the time it was happening in 2019, are still employed at the same news outlets. We emailed a number of them and asked why they were not covering this important story. Silence prevailed. We then emailed the media relations contacts for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times and the Washington Post, inquiring as to why there was a news blackout on this story. Again, silence.Next, we emailed a number of reporters who had covered this story in 2019 but were no longer employed at a major news outlet. We asked their opinion on what could explain this bizarre news blackout on such a major financial story. We received emails praising our reporting but advising that they “can’t comment.”The phrase “can’t comment” as opposed to “don’t wish to comment” raised a major alarm bell. Wall Street megabanks are notorious for demanding that their staff sign non-disclosure agreements and non-disparagement agreements in order to get severance pay and other benefits when they are terminated. Are the newsrooms covering Wall Street megabanks now demanding similar gag orders from journalists? If they are, we’re looking at a form of corporate tyranny previously unseen in America.
Senate Banking panel to hold Powell, Brainard hearings next week - The Senate Banking Committee will hold separate hearings next week for Jerome Powell on his nomination to a second term as Federal Reserve chair and for Lael Brainard’s elevation to vice chair.Powell will appear by himself before the committee on Jan. 11 at 10 a.m. in Washington, the committee said in a notice on its website Tuesday. Brainard, currently a Fed governor, will testify two days later alongside Sandra Thompson, the White House nominee to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The Federal Reserve chair, in his first public remarks on the omicron variant of the coronavirus, said it poses risks to both sides of the central bank's mandate to achieve stable prices and maximum employment. President Biden has three more seats to fill on the board, including a new vice chair for supervision. Those picks, along with Powell and Brainard’s four-year terms for their slots, are all subject to approval by the full Senate.
Morgan Stanley to pay $60 million to settle data breach claims --Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $60 million to settle a class action suit by consumers claiming the firm failed to safeguard their personal information. The agreement, if approved by a federal judge in Manhattan, would resolve claims over two security breaches that compromised personal information of 15 million current and former clients, according to a group of them that sued in July 2020. The customers claimed the information was stored in data centers that were shut down and on computer servers in branch locations that were replaced. Data stored on the decommissioned data center equipment, including customers’ Social Security numbers and birth dates, weren’t fully wiped clean and the equipment went missing. A software flaw left data on the old servers in unencrypted form, they claimed.
4 questions about FDIC's leadership limbo -Even against the backdrop of a power struggle that raised questions about who controlled the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s agenda, the resignation of FDIC Chair Jelena McWilliams with only hours left in 2021 came as a shock to many in the capital. McWilliams had said repeatedly that she planned to serve out the remainder of her five-year term ending in June 2023 regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican was president. That changed suddenly on Dec. 31 when the FDIC released McWilliams' letter to President Biden announcing her last day would be Feb. 4.
Major US banks to start new year working from home -- Goldman Sachs said Sunday that it will join other major banks in encouraging employees in the U.S. to begin the new year working from home.JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America have also asked staffers to work from home as the country endures a major uptick in COVID-19 cases fueled by the omicron variant.While Goldman Sachs employees will be urged to work from home until Jan. 18, offices will remain open with previously announced COVID-19 protocols in place including a vaccine requirement and mask mandate. Starting Feb. 1, boosters will also be required and bi-weekly testing will be implemented starting Jan. 10, according to Reuters. JPMorgan Chase & Co told its employees they could work from home for the first two weeks of January, though the company said they expected employees to return to the office no later than Feb. 1, according to Bloomberg.“We are not changing our long-term plans of working in the office,” JPMorgan said in a memo to staffers last week, per Bloomberg.“However, with the increase in holiday travel and gatherings, we are allowing for more flexibility during the first two weeks of January to work from home (if your role allows) at your manager’s discretion,” the memo added.
Banks, fintechs tailor offerings for millennial entrepreneurs --Millennials are changing what small-business owners want from their banks. They jump on new technologies as soon as they’re released. Members of this demographic, ages 25 to 40, are comfortable turning to nonbank fintech providers and spreading their loyalties across multiple institutions. They want their banks to offer capabilities that may have previously come from third parties, such as expense management and payroll services, and to partner with fintechs if necessary to deliver them. Banks can gain a competitive edge — and perhaps new sources of fee income — by appealing to this growing segment of business owners. Millennials voiced a willingness to pay for value-added services in a recent report about small-business banking and millennials from Aite-Novarica Group.
Cryptoland: a glimpse into the future we all deserve - Just when bitcoin and crypto and NFTs were finally being taken seriously with imminent mAsS aDopTiOn an inevitability as we headed for blockchain-based utopia, someone goes and puts something like this on the internet:Talk about a party pooper.Yes that’s an 18 minute 35 second presentation of “the world’s first physical crypto island” which frankly is giving us quite uncanny déjà vu vibes but we just can’t work out what it reminds us of. Whatever it was, we’re sure it all worked out great.In case you don’t have 18 minutes and 35 seconds to spare, we thought we’d take you through some of it. First the essentials (transcribed from the video):Cryptoland is an international hub for the community to come work, live, and have fun, and enjoy a first-class crypto lifestyle. A paradise island with a complete ecosystem that represents the blooming crypto space.A paradise made by crypto enthusiasts for crypto enthusiasts.If that doesn’t sound like paradise to you are you even alive?Cryptoland, we’re told, will have three main areas: Cryptoland Bay, House of DAO, and the Blockchain Hills which feature a members-only bar called the Vladimir Club:The Vladimir Club was the part where we thought, “oh, perhaps this is a joke” but then realised it wasn’t. Earlier in the clip we are shown a fairly well-known strong-jawed crypto Chad named Kyle Chassé (yeah) who tells us:If they didn’t have the video, if they didn’t have the architectural plans, if they didn’t have the purchase agreement already done for the island, if they didn’t have the master plan for the government of Fiji already signed off, if they hadn’t spent half a million dollars of their own money getting all of this stuff done already, then I wouldn’t have been interested.HALF A MILLION DOLLARS!?! Architectural plans? A video? Think we can all agree we need to take this seriously at this point. And yes, the island in question seems to be in Fiji — its name is Nananu-i-cake. The Next Web hasmore detail if you’d like it.For instance, did you know that Cryptoland is going to feature 60 parcels of land you can “buy” via NFTs and build mansions on? Or that the total area of this vast island is 0.9375 square miles? Or the fact that it already has some inhabitants? Perhaps it might interest you that the founders plan to fund the whole thing (apart from their very generous $500k injection) via the sale of digital receipts that they reckon they can flog for about $1m a pop?(You can also read this excellent thread by a software engineer called Molly White who was the first to draw attention to this, and features some interesting information about the co-founders.)Back to the video. An unspecified crypto bro responds to Chassé:That’s incredible. This is by far one of the most ambitious projects I’ve seen. And what I am easily the most excited for. I’m gonna do everything in my power to make sure I get one of these lots. I highly recommend you go watch this — look at the quality of this 3D animation.They’re really basing a lot of belief in a new magical land on the quality of the animation aren’t they? To be fair, it’s actually several orders of magnitude better than the animation that the $924bn company formerly known as Facebook spent on its Cleggtopian vision of the future.
NCUA liquidates small Virginia credit union -- regulators have liquidated Portsmouth Schools Federal Credit Union in Portsmouth, Virginia.The $2.2 million-asset PSFCU was placed into involuntary liquidation by the regulator on Dec. 30, the National Credit Union Administration said in a press release, though it did not disclose reasons for the liquidation. PSFCU recorded net losses for the last several years, with recent call data from the NCUA showing losses that exceeded $200,000 in the first nine months of 2021.As part of the liquidation of PSFCU, the $2.2 billion-asset Newport News Shipbuilding Employees Credit Union in Newport News, Virginia, which does business as BayPort Credit Union, assumed PSFCU’s assets, member shares and loans. BayPort does not expect interruptions in services for the incoming members.
Does CFPB rebuke of credit bureaus portend tougher rules? - The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau slammed the nation’s credit reporting bureaus over their handling of complaints in a report that could serve as a precursor to stricter oversight of the industry. The CFPB said that Equifax, Experian and TransUnion often fail to help consumers resolve issues or to give them adequate responses. The consumer agency received more than 700,000 complaints about Equifax, Experian and TransUnion between January 2020 and September 2021, accounting for more than half of all the consumer complaints submitted to the CFPB during that period, according to the report. The report said consumers are often “caught in an automated system” that fails to fix incomplete or inaccurate information on their credit reports, and that their issues are getting solved far less often than in the past, ultimately hurting their credit scores and making it more expensive for them to borrow.
Card startup Petal embroiled in suit alleging theft of business idea - Two co-founders of the credit card startup Petal are expected to give depositions this month in a lawsuit that alleges one of them stole the idea for the company from an acquaintance. The suit was filed by an entrepreneur named Cassandra Shih who alleges that she developed the idea for a firm that would facilitate credit for immigrants with little or no credit history. In 2015, Shih worked with Petal co-founder Andrew Endicott, who took the idea, brought in other collaborators and then froze her out of what became a multimillion-dollar company, according to the lawsuit. Petal, which declined to comment, has denied Shih’s allegations and is defending itself against the suit. On Wednesday, the company announced a $140 million funding round led by Tarsadia Investments, which reportedly values the company at $800 million. M
Freddie Mac to increase credit-risk transfer securitizations in 2022 - Freddie Mac is ramping up its credit risk transfer activity this year, announcing plans to increase issuance by $7 billion while also offering two new slices to the investment grade tranche due to increased interest in the product. In 2022, the government-sponsored enterprise plans $25 billion of total issuances, primarily through the Structured Agency Credit Risk and Agency Credit Insurance Structure programs. The upsizing was expected by the markets, given previous announcements from the Federal Housing Finance Agency that signaled a change in direction from the Trump Administration’s posture toward the programs.
FHFA hikes fees for high balance and second home mortgages -The Federal Housing Finance Agency is boosting guarantee fees for high balance and second home mortgages, a move that has cautious support from some segments of the industry.Back in September, the FHFA suspended revisions to the Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements that capped second home loan purchases by the government-sponsored enterprises, in addition to pausing caps on investment property mortgages and loans with certain risk characteristics.Upfront fees for high balance loans will increase between 25 and 75 basis points, based on the loan-to-value ratio. For second home loans, upfront fees will increase between 112.5 and 387.5 bps, also tiered by LTV. These changes are effective with loans delivered to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac starting April 1.
CoreLogic: House Prices up 18.1% YoY in November -Notes: The CoreLogic HPI is a three-month weighted average and is not seasonally adjusted (NSA). From CoreLogic: CoreLogic Reports Annual Home Price Appreciation Continues to Accelerate; Up 18.1% in November CoreLogic® ... today released the CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI™) and HPI Forecast™ for November 2021. While 2021 was a record-breaking year for U.S. home price growth, for many prospective buyers the hot housing market will continue to exacerbate ongoing affordability challenges into the new year — and beyond. Though home price growth remains at historic highs, it is projected to slow over the next year. However, economic growth and inflation will most likely lead to increases in mortgage rates, which will further erode affordability."Over the past year, we have seen one of the most robust seller's markets in a generation,” said Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “While increased interest rates may help cool down homebuying activity, we expect 2022 to be another strong year with continuing upward price growth."...Nationally, home prices increased 18.1% in November 2021, compared to November 2020. On a month-over-month basis, home prices increased by 1.3% compared to October 2021....Home price gains are projected to slow to a 2.8% increase by November 2022.
Housing Inventory January 3rd Update: Inventory Down 5.4% Week-over-week; New Record Low --Tracking existing home inventory is very important in 2022. Inventory usually declines sharply over the holidays, and this is a new record low for this series. This inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research. As of December 31st, inventory was at 294 thousand (7-day average), compared to 420 thousand for the same week a year ago. That is a decline of 30.0%. Inventory is down 5.4% from last week.Compared to the same week in 2019, inventory is down 61.5% from 764 thousand. A week ago, inventory was at 310 thousand, and was down 29.0% YoY. Seasonally, inventory bottomed in April (usually inventory bottoms in January or February). Inventory last week was about 4.2% below the previous record low set-in early April 2021.Inventory peaked for the year in early September, when inventory was at 437 thousand (the peak for the year), so inventory is currently off about 32.8% from the peak for 2021. Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube. U.S. Natural Gas Faces Wild 2022 as Foreign Crises Exert Pull - U.S. natural gas is in for another wild year as the insularity that once shielded North American energy consumers from overseas turmoil disintegrates. Benchmark American gas futures climbed almost 45 per cent in 2021 for the strongest annual performance in half a decade after a deadly freeze that crippled output was followed by summer heatwaves that lifted demand and hindered efforts to stow away supplies for winter.As 2022 dawns, traders, explorers and utility operators are facing the prospect of continued volatility amid rising competition from buyers as far away as Poland and the Netherlands who are dealing with a crisis so acute that factories have shut down and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is warning there’s a “clear risk of running out of gas.” Overseas buyers purchased 13 per cent of U.S. gas production in December, a seven-fold increase from five years earlier when most of the infrastructure required to ship the fuel out of the country didn’t yet exist. Prior to the advent of the American gas-export business, the U.S.-Canada market was a provincial sphere where prices were dictated by cold snaps in places like Pittsburgh and Chicago, and hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. But those days are long gone as brokers in Seoul and Rotterdam shell out record amounts to entice tankers laden with U.S. gas to sail their way.“We continue to expect more price volatility to be present in these markets relative to recent history, albeit at a more diminished level once exiting the peak demand season of winter weather,” said Natasha Kaneva, head of commodities research and strategy at JPMorgan Chase & Co. “This is particularly true in the U.S., where price volatility has long been absent.”Volatility in New York-traded gas futures surged to the highest in almost three years in early December as late-autumn concerns that the U.S. was on the verge of its own supply crunch collapsed on the back of milder-than-normal weather and prices tumbled more than 40 per cent from an October peak. Prices also have recently been falling in Europe as the arrival of American cargoes eased fears of an immediate shortage, although buyers in continental Europe still are paying six times as much as U.S. rivals.Anxiety hasn’t completely evaporated given that the coldest months of winter in the northern hemisphere are still ahead. As recently as Dec. 30, almost 50 tankers carrying American LNG were steering for Europe, with destinations as varied as Gibraltar, Turkey, Croatia and Poland, according to data compiled byBloomberg. That was a stunning 77 per cent increase from just a week earlier.
Rents Still Increasing Sharply Year-over-year Mcbride - First, household formation and absorption are important topics. Here is a tweet from Jay Parsons, Deputy Chief Economist at Real Page on apartment absorption:With 2021 in the books, it now goes down as the biggest year for apartment demand in the three decades we've tracked the market ... obliterating the previous high set in 2000 by 66%. A total of 673,448 market-rate units absorbed, on net, in 2021. Really remarkable.From Jay Parsons writing at Real Page: Demand for Apartments in 2021 Smashes Previous Record High by 66%Demand for market-rate apartments in 2021 soared far above the highest levels on record in the three decades RealPage has tracked the market. Net demand totaled more than 673,000 units – obliterating the previous high set in 2000 by a remarkable 66%. Demand would have been even stronger if not for record-low vacancy, severely limiting the number of units available to rent.Strong demand drove up apartment occupancy 2.1 basis points year-over-year to 97.5%. Both the increase and the resulting rate were the highest on record since RealPage began tracking apartments in the early 1990s.Household formation is likely occurring at a faster clip than official government data sources are reporting. It’s not just apartments. We’re seeing huge demand and ultra-low availability for all types of h ousing – including for-sale homes and single-family rentals – in essentially every city and at every price point.This is different from the Moody Reis apartment data (large cities only) that showed absorption was close to normal, but that the lack of completions was driving down the vacancy rate. From ApartmentList.com: Apartment List National Rent ReportOur national index fell by 0.2 percent during the month of December, marking the only time in 2021 when rents declined month-over-month. A slight dip in rents at this time of year is typical of seasonality in the market, but it’s especially notable after a year of record-setting growth. Over the course of calendar year 2021, the national median rent increased by a staggering 17.8 percent. To put that in context, annual rent growth averaged just 2.3 percent in the pre-pandemic years from 2017-2019.This appears to be the normal seasonal slowdown in rent increases. Note that rents fell for much of 2020.I’m going to update some of the data that shows rents are accelerating. Here is a graph of several measures of rent since 2000: OER, rent of shelter, rent of primary residence, Zillow Observed Rent Index (ZORI), and ApartmentList.com. (All set to 100 in January 2017)Note: For a discussion on how OER, and Rent of primary residence are measured, see from the BLS: How the CPI measures price change of Owners’ equivalent rent of primary residence (OER) and rent of primary residence (Rent)OER, rent of shelter, and rent of primary residence have mostly moved together. The Zillow index started in 2014, and the ApartmentList index started in 2017. Here is a graph of the year-over-year (YoY) change for these measures since January 2015. All of these measures are through November 2021 (Apartment List through December). The Zillow measure is up 12.6% YoY in November, up from 12.0% YoY in October. And the ApartmentList measure is up 17.8% as of December, up from 17.7% in November. Both the Zillow measure (a repeat rent index), and ApartmentList are showing a sharp increase in rents. And from ApartmentList: At Apartment List, we estimate the median contract rent across new leases signed in a given market and month. To capture how rents change in a market over time, we estimate the expected price change that a rental unit should experience if it were to be leased today. Both of these measures reflect new leases, whereas most rental units don’t turnover every year (as captured by the BLS measures). Adam Ozimek, Chief Economist at@Upwork explained this succinctly: But this sharp increase in new lease rates should spill over into the consumer price index over the next year (as discussed in earlier article). Clearly rents are increasing sharply, and we should expect this to continue to spill over into measures of inflation in 2022. The Owners’ Equivalent Rent (OER) was up 3.5% YoY in November, from 3.1% in November - and will increase further in the coming months.
Apartment Vacancy Rate Declined in Q4 -- Reis reported that the apartment vacancy rate was at 4.7% in Q4 2021, down from 4.8% in Q3, and down from a pandemic peak of 5.4% in Q1 2021. This graph shows the apartment vacancy rate starting in 1980. (Annual rate before 1999, quarterly starting in 1999). Note: Reis is just for large cities.
Reis also reported the asking rents were up 2.8% in Q4 compared to Q3, and up 11.9% year-over-year. Rents were down year-over-year through Q2 2021 (due to the pandemic) and picked up sharply in Q3. Even with the recent surge in rents, rents are only up 4.5% annualized over the last 2 years (since rents decreased early in the pandemic).For some cities, asking rents were up significantly more, especially in areas like Florida, Arizona and California.With the release of the November Housing Starts report, I noted there were theMost Housing Units Under Construction Since 1973Currently there are 752 thousand single family units under construction (SA). This is the highest level since March 2007. This is that same story for the Reis data for completions and absorptions. For the large cities that Reis tracks, apartment completions were only about 60% of normal. Absorption was about 90% of normal, so there was a mismatch in demand and supply (due to construction delays), and that pushed down the vacancy rate and pushed up rents.The completion of all these units under construction should help with rent pressure.
Reis: Office Vacancy Rates Decreased Slightly in Q4 - Reis reported the office vacancy rate was at 18.1% in Q4 2021, down from 18.2% in Q3, and up from 17.8% in Q4 2020. Q2 2021 saw the highest vacancy rate for offices since the early '90s at 18.5% (following the S&L crisis).The first graph shows the office vacancy rate starting in 1980 (prior to 1999 the data is annual).The office vacancy rate was elevated prior to the pandemic and moved up during the pandemic.Reis also reported that office effective rents were unchanged in Q4; rents are about the same rate as early 2019.
Construction Spending Increased 0.4% in November -- From the Census Bureau reported that overall construction spending increased 0.2%: Construction spending during November 2021 was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,625.9 billion, 0.4 percent above the revised October estimate of $1,618.8 billion. The November figure is 9.3 percent above the November 2020 estimate of $1,487.2 billion. Private spending increased and public spending decreased: Spending on private construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,273.6 billion, 0.6 percent above the revised October estimate of $1,265.8 billion. ... In November, the estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of public construction spending was $352.3 billion, 0.2 percent below the revised October estimate of $353.0 billion. This graph shows private residential and nonresidential construction spending, and public spending, since 1993. Note: nominal dollars, not inflation adjusted.Residential spending is 17% above the bubble peak (in nominal terms - not adjusted for inflation).Non-residential spending is 15% above the bubble era peak in January 2008 (nominal dollars) but has been soft recently.Public construction spending is 8% above the peak in March 2009. The second graph shows the year-over-year change in construction spending.On a year-over-year basis, private residential construction spending is up 16.3%. Non-residential spending is up 6.7% year-over-year. Public spending is down 0.8% year-over-year.Construction was considered an essential service during the early months of the pandemic in most areas and did not decline sharply like many other sectors. However, some sectors of non-residential have been under pressure. For example, lodging is down 30.7% YoY. This was below consensus expectations of a 0.6% increase in spending; however, construction spending for the previous two months was revised up.
Consumer Borrowing in U.S. Surges by a Record $40 Billion - - U.S. consumer borrowing surged in November by the most on record, reflecting outsize increases in credit-card balances and non-revolving loans. Total credit jumped $40 billion from the prior month after a revised $16 billion gain in October, Federal Reserve figures showed Friday. On an annualized basis, borrowing increased 11%. The November gain exceeded all estimates in a Bloomberg survey which had a median projection of $20 billion.
December Vehicles Sales decreased to 12.44 million SAAR - 
New Vehicle Sales in 2021 at 1978 Level: 25 Years of Stagnation Interrupted by Plunges. But Prices Explode to WTF Level -- Wolf Richter -. New vehicle sales in 2021 were marked by supply-chain chaos and the semiconductor shortage. But there was sufficient demand, and consumers switched from astute car buyers to paying whatever, resulting in a collapse of price resistance among consumers, the likes of which I have never seen before, which led to a record spike in prices and obese gross profits per vehicle for dealers. Automakers, dogged by supply constraints, prioritized higher-end models. And the average transaction price exploded. GM, Ford, and others got battered by the chip shortages. Others emerged with their dignity intact. Toyota trounced GM and became Number 1 for the first time ever. But in terms of sales volume, it was another crappy year. Total new vehicle sales – the number of vehicles delivered to ultimate retail and fleet customers – ticked up about 3.1% from the collapsed levels of 2020, to 14.93 million vehicles, about the same as in 1978, adding another year to the 25-year stagnation interrupted by plunges, where the only thing that’s booming is prices. Automakers slashed incentives. The MSRP remains fixed for the model year. The way automakers adjust prices during the year is to increase or decrease the incentives to dealers and customers. In December, average incentives dropped to 3.5% of MSRP, according to J.D. Power estimates. In 2019, incentives ran over 10% of MSRP. Dealers charged more for the vehicles, often advertising vehicles with addendum stickers, of $2,000 or even $20,000 over MSRP. And most astonishingly, there were enough people who paid those crazy prices. So the average gross profit per vehicle sold spiked by 165% year-over-year, to a record $5,258 per vehicle, according J.D. Power estimates. Those dynamics have even shown up in the CPI for new vehicles, which, despite the notorious hedonic quality adjustments, spiked by 11% over the 12-month period through November, the third worst price spike on record, the other two having been in 1975. In addition to these pricing dynamics – the cuts in incentives by automakers and the pricing at the dealer level – there was widespread prioritization of loaded higher-end models by automakers. Lacking components due to the chip shortage, they were building the models that would produce the most revenues and profits. And consumers – many of them having benefited from the Fed-triggered boom in asset prices – went for them. As a result, the Average Transaction Price (ATP) spiked by 20% year-over-year to $45,743 in December, according to J.D. Power estimates. Over the two years, December 2019 through December 2021, the ATP exploded by $10,800, or by 31%. This is just nuts. Soon, dealers will advertise, “Buy One for the Price of Two”:
Annual Vehicle Sales increase 3% in 2021; Sales Mix and Heavy Trucks - The BEA released their estimate of light vehicle sales for December today. The BEA estimates sales of 12.44 million SAAR in December 2021 (Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate), down 3.3% from the November sales rate, and down 23.8% from December 2020. The first graph shows annual sales since 1976.Light vehicle sales in 2021 were at 14.93 million, up 3.1% from 14.47 million in 2020. Sales in 2021 were impacted significantly by supply chain disruptions, and sales were still down 12% from the 2019 level. This suggests vehicle sales will increase in 2022 and boost GDP. This graph shows monthly light vehicle sales since 1967 from the BEA. The dashed line is sales for the current month.The impact of COVID-19 was significant, and April 2020 was the worst month. After April 2020, sales increased, and were close to sales in 2019 (the year before the pandemic). However, sales decreased earlier this year due to supply issues. It appears the "supply chain bottom" was in September, but sales in December were disappointing again.This third graph shows sales for passenger cars and trucks / SUVs through December 2021.Over time the mix has changed more and more towards light trucks and SUVs (red).The percent of light trucks and SUVs was at 79% in December 2021 - near the all-time high.The fourth graph shows heavy truck sales since 1967 using data from the BEA. The dashed line is the December 2021 seasonally adjusted annual sales rate (SAAR).Heavy truck sales really collapsed during the great recession, falling to a low of 180 thousand SAAR in May 2009. Then heavy truck sales increased to a new all-time high of 563 thousand SAAR in September 2019.Note: "Heavy trucks - trucks more than 14,000 pounds gross vehicle weight." Heavy truck sales declined sharply at the beginning of the pandemic, falling to a low of 308 thousand SAAR in May 2020. Heavy truck sales were at 364 thousand SAAR in December, down from 439 thousand SAAR in November, and down 19.5% from 452 thousand SAAR in December 2020. The decline is probably due to supply disruptions.
Daimler expects chips to remain scarce in 2022 - Daimler Chief Technology Officer Markus Schaefer said the luxury carmaker expects chip supply to remain scarce throughout 2022, particularly in the first half of the year. "Chip scarcity will also accompany us in 2022, particularly in the first half," Schaefer said to a journalists roundtable. "We do not expect significant production capacity increases in the first half of the year ... these will barely come in the full year," he said. Daimler, soon to be renamed Mercedes-Benz, produced 23.9per cent fewer cars in October 2021 than the previous year and 21.8per cent less in November, mirroring a production drop as carmakers worldwide struggle to get their hands on enough chips to meet demand.
Trade Deficit Increased to $80.2 Billion in November
AAR: December Rail Carloads Down Compared to 2019; Intermodal Up 
ISM® Manufacturing index Decreased to 58.7% in December - The ISM manufacturing index indicated expansion in December. The PMI® was at 58.7% in December, down from 61.1% in November. The employment index was at 54.2%, up from 53.3% last month, and the new orders index was at 60.4%, down from 61.5%. From ISM: Manufacturing PMI® at 58.7% December 2021 Manufacturing ISM® Report On Business® “The December Manufacturing PMI® registered 58.7 percent, a decrease of 2.4 percentage points from the November reading of 61.1 percent. This figure indicates expansion in the overall economy for the 19th month in a row after a contraction in April 2020. The New Orders Index registered 60.4 percent, down 1.1 percentage points compared to the November reading of 61.5 percent. The Production Index registered 59.2 percent, a decrease of 2.3 percentage points compared to the November reading of 61.5 percent. The Prices Index registered 68.2 percent, down 14.2 percentage points compared to the November figure of 82.4 percent. The Backlog of Orders Index registered 62.8 percent, 0.9 percentage point higher than the November reading of 61.9 percent. The Employment Index registered 54.2 percent, 0.9 percentage point higher compared to the November reading of 53.3 percent. The Supplier Deliveries Index registered 64.9 percent, down 7.3 percentage points from the November figure of 72.2 percent. The Inventories Index registered 54.7 percent, 2.1 percentage points lower than the November reading of 56.8 percent. The New Export Orders Index registered 53.6 percent, a decrease of 0.4 percentage point compared to the November reading of 54 percent. The Imports Index registered 53.8 percent, a 1.2-percentage point increase from the November reading of 52.6 percent.” This suggests manufacturing expanded at a slightly slower pace in December than in November.
December Markit Manufacturing: Production Growth Constrained --The December US Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index conducted by Markit came in at 57.7, down 0.6 from the final November figure.Here is an excerpt from IHS Markit in their latest press release:“December saw another subdued increase in US manufacturing output as material shortages and supplier delays dragged on. Although some reprieve was seen as supply chains deteriorated to the smallest extent since May, the impact of substantially longer lead times for inputs thwarted firms’ ability to produce finished goods yet again.“Adding to the sector’s challenges was an ebb in client demand from the highs seen earlier in 2021, with new orders rising at the slowest pace for a year, largely linked to a reluctance at customers to place orders before inventories were worked through. Alongside a slight pick-up in hiring, softer demand conditions contributed to the slowest rise in backlogs of work for ten months.“While shortages remained significant, the end of the year brought with it some signs that cost pressures have eased. The uptick in input prices was the slowest for six months, and firms recorded softer increases in selling prices amid efforts to entice customer spending.” [Press Release] Here is a snapshot of the series since mid-2012. Here is an overlay with the equivalent PMI survey conducted by the Institute for Supply Management (see our full article on this series here).
US Manufacturing Unexpectedly Tumbles To 12-Month Low As Prices-Paid Slump - After yesterday's disappointing Markit survey of US Manufacturing, analysts expected ISM Manufacturing to print lower and its did significantly. December ISM Manufacturing printed 58.7, well below the 60.0 expected and the 61.1 prior as it caught down to the 12-month lows of Markit's measure... Graphs Source: Bloomberg. Moist notably, Prices Paid tumbled in December to its lowest since Nov 2020... Source: Bloomberg Orders dropped modestly also. The ISM’s factory production measure slipped to 59.2, the lowest since July but robust by historical standards. The pullback may reflect disruptions due to the omicron variant. Improved delivery times and lower input prices typically indicate softer demand. However, ISM claims that the latest declines suggest capacity constraints are beginning to loosen. That’s welcome progress for manufacturers who have struggled to keep up with demand because of materials shortages, hiring challenges and transportation bottlenecks.
ISM® Services Index Decreased to 62.0% in December - The December ISM® Services index was at 62.0%, down from 69.1% last month. The employment index decreased to 54.9%, from 56.5%. Note: Above 50 indicates expansion, below 50 in contraction. From the Institute for Supply Management: Services PMI® at 62% December 2021 Services ISM® Report On Business® “In December,the Services PMI® registered 62 percent, 7.1 percentage points below November’s all-time high reading of 69.1 percent. The Business Activity Index registered 67.6 percent, a decrease of 7 percentage points compared to the reading of 74.6 percent in November, and the New Orders Index registered 61.5 percent, 8.2 percentage points lower than the all-time high reading of 69.7 percent reported in November. This was below the consensus forecast, and the employment index decreased to 54.9%, from 56.5% the previous month.
December Markit Services PMI: Demand Strengthens in December - The December US Services Purchasing Managers' Index conducted by Markit came in at 57.6 percent, down from the final November estimate of 58.0.Here is the opening from the latest press release: Commenting on the latest survey results, Siân Jones, Senior Economist at IHS Markit, said: “Service sector business activity growth remained strong in December, supporting indications of a solid uptick in economic growth at the end of 2021. Although the expansion in output softened slightly, the flow of new orders picked up, with buoyant client demand rising at the fastest pace for five months. "The service sector continued to aid overall growth, as the manufacturing sector saw output hampered again by material and labor shortages. The impact of the latter, however, had a burgeoning effect on service providers as job creation rose at only a marginal pace amid challenges keeping hold of staff and enticing new starters. "Subsequently, soaring wage bills and increased transportation fees drove the rate of cost inflation up to a fresh series high. "Business confidence strengthened at the end of the year to the highest since November 2020, as firms were hopeful of more favorable labor market and supply-chain conditions going into 2022. The swift spread of the Omicron variant does lace new downside risks into the economic outlook heading into 2022, however. Any additional headwinds or disruption faced by firms are likely to temper sentiment." [Press Release] Here is a snapshot of the series since mid-2012.
US Services PMI Dips In December As Input Prices Hit Record High = After Markit's Manufacturing survey for December dropped to 12-month lows, the Service Sector survey also faded modestly Graphs Source: Bloomberg The IHS Markit US Composite PMI Output Index posted 57.0 in December, down slightly from 57.2 in November. The latest data signalled a steep increase in private sector business activity, albeit largely driven by the service sector as manufacturing production rose at a relatively muted pace. Input shortages, transportation delays and upticks in labor costs drove the rate of private sector input price inflation to a fresh series high in December. Commenting on the latest survey results, Siân Jones, Senior Economist at IHS Markit, said: “Service sector business activity growth remained strong in December, supporting indications of a solid uptick in economic growth at the end of 2021. Although the expansion in output softened slightly, the flow of new orders picked up, with buoyant client demand rising at the fastest pace for five months. "The service sector continued to aid overall growth, as the manufacturing sector saw output hampered again by material and labor shortages. The impact of the latter, however, had a burgeoning effect on service providers as job creation rose at only a marginal pace amid challenges keeping hold of staff and enticing new starters. "Subsequently, soaring wage bills and increased transportation fees drove the rate of cost inflation up to a fresh series high. "Business confidence strengthened at the end of the year to the highest since November 2020, as firms were hopeful of more favorable labor market and supply-chain conditions going into 2022. The swift spread of the Omicron variant does lace new downside risks into the economic outlook heading into 2022, however. Any additional headwinds or disruption faced by firms are likely to temper sentiment." Does this feel like a good time to be tightening monetary policy?
Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims Increase to 207,000 -- The DOL reported: In the week ending January 1, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 207,000, an increase of 7,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 2,000 from 198,000 to 200,000. The 4-week moving average was 204,500, an increase of 4,750 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 500 from 199,250 to 199,750. The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since 1971. The dashed line on the graph is the current 4-week average. The four-week average of weekly unemployment claims increased to 204,500. The previous week was revised up. Weekly claims were close to the consensus forecast.
ADP: Private Employment increased 807,000 in December -- From ADP: Private sector employment increased by 807,000 jobs from November to Decemberaccording to the December ADP® National Employment ReportTM. Broadly distributed to the public each month, free of charge, the ADP National Employment Report is produced by the ADP Research Institute® in collaboration with Moody’s Analytics. The report, which is derived from ADP’s actual data of those who are on a company’s payroll, measures the change in total nonfarm private employment each month on a seasonally-adjusted basis“December’s job market strengthened as the fallout from the Delta variant faded and Omicron’s impact had yet to be seen,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist, ADP. “Job gains were broad-based, as goods producers added the strongest reading of the year, while service providers dominated growth. December’s job growth brought the fourth quarter average to 625,000, surpassing the 514,000 average for the year. While job gains eclipsed 6 million in 2021, private sector payrolls are still nearly 4 million jobs short of pre-COVID-19 levels. This was well above the consensus forecast of 413,000 for this report.The BLS report will be released Friday, and the consensus is for 400 thousand non-farm payroll jobs added in December. The ADP report has not been very useful in predicting the BLS report.
ADP Private Employment Upside Surprise by Menzie Chinn - ADP released its December employment estimate of 807K vs Bloomberg consensus of 400K.Figure 1: Private nonfarm payroll employment from BLS November release (black), Bloomberg consensus for November as of 1/5 (teal square), ADP November release (red), all on log scale. Source: BLS, ADP via FRED, Bloomberg, and author’s calculations.In its note today, Goldman Sachs writes: This morning’s ADP data was consistent with a strong pace of job growth in December, and it suggests that the Omicron wave may have arrived too late to significantly affect job growth in the month. We boosted our December nonfarm payroll forecast by 50k to +500k (mom sa) ahead of Friday’s report.Interestingly, GS notes hospitality and leisure employment was strong at +246K. This is suggestive of a relatively small hit from omicron (especially as the BLS survey takes place in the early part of the month).Figure 2: Change in leisure and hospitality services employment from BLS November release (black), and from ADP December release (red), both in 000’s, seasonally adjusted. Source: BLS via FRED, ADP, and author’s calculations.One wouldn’t want to make too much of this increase in the ADP figure given that the correlation between the two series (in differences) has been low in 2021. A regression of the BLS changes on the ADP changes yields an adjusted R2 of 0.08, standard error of regression of 154K, so the BLS series could very well record a negative number.
BLS: Job Openings Decreased to 10.6 million in November - From the BLS: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary The number of job openings decreased to 10.6 million on the last business day of November, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Hires were little changed at 6.7 million and total separations increased to 6.3 million. Within separations, the quits rate increased to 3.0 percent, matching a series high last seen in September. The layoffs and discharges rate was unchanged at 0.9 percent.The following graph shows job openings (yellow line), hires (dark blue), Layoff, Discharges and other (red column), and Quits (light blue column) from the JOLTS.This series started in December 2000. Note: The difference between JOLTS hires and separations is similar to the CES (payroll survey) net jobs headline numbers. This report is for November, the employment report on Friday will be for December.Note that hires (dark blue) and total separations (red and light blue columns stacked) are usually pretty close each month. This is a measure of labor market turnover. When the blue line is above the two stacked columns, the economy is adding net jobs - when it is below the columns, the economy is losing jobs. The huge spike in layoffs and discharges in March 2020 are labeled, but off the chart to better show the usual data.Jobs openings decreased in November to 10.6 million from 11.1 million in October. The number of job openings (yellow) were up 56% year-over-year. Quits were up 37% year-over-year. These are voluntary separations. (See light blue columns at bottom of graph for trend for "quits")
Workers See Their New Power, Quit in Record Numbers to Get Better Jobs at Companies Struggling to Fill 10.6 Million Openings - Wolf Richter -The number of workers who quit jobs to work for another company, or to stay home and fix up the house or take care of the kids or who feel like they don’t have to work anymore after booking big gains in their stocks or cryptos, or whatever, spiked in November to a record of 4.53 million (seasonally adjusted).In the private sector, “quits” spiked to a record of 4.31 million, 30.6% higher than in November 2019, a year when the job market had also been hot and the number of quits had reached record levels. Private sector quits accounted for over 95% of total quits. Only about 216,000 folks quit jobs at federal, state, and local government agencies.This is not based on online job postings that can be all over the place, but on a survey of the payroll departments of 21,000 nonfarm businesses and government entities by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, released today in itsJOLTS report. Record quits are a sign that employees feel confident.Workers either have a better job lined up, or are confident they can easily get a better job, or are confident that they can pull off starting their own business, and the number of new businesses has exploded in 2021.Others made big percentage gains in stocks, cryptos, and real estate and are confident that these gains will be endlessly repeated, year after year, and they’re confident that they don’t have to work anymore. We did some of that thinking in the late 1990s. The dotcom crash put an end to those well-laid-out plans as people scrambled to get their day-jobs back. Record quits are a sign of churn: employers poach each other’s’ workers. Employers are offering higher pay, better benefits, signing bonuses, and/or more flexibility – hours, working from home, etc. – to hire workers. And they’re hiring workers that already have jobs with a company somewhere else, which creates a huge amount of churn, which is precisely what workers are using to improve their own situation.When a company hires a worker away from another company, it counts as a quit, reported by the company that lost that employee, and the job opening shifts from the hiring company to the poached company. Poaching employees from other companies doesn’t change the overall count of job openings; it just shifts them. But it does increase the quits.The “quits rate” in the private sector – the number of quits as a percent of total private-sector employment – jumped to a new record of 3.4%:
Imagine, if you will, a game of musical chairs - Imagine a game like musical chairs, except that some players are the chairs (employers) as well as people who want to sit in the chairs (potential employees), and players, both sitters and chairs, are continually entering and exiting the game. The game would be in equilibrium if the number of sitters and chairs are always equal. If there are more sitters than chairs, sitters will be unsuccessful (unemployed). If there are more chairs than sitters, the chairs will be empty (unfilled job openings). In the former case, we would expect wages to go down (or at least increase more slowly vs. inflation); in the latter, we would expect wages to increase more sharply. The JOLTS report for November, released yesterday morning, continued to show that there are far more chairs than there are those wanting to sit in them. As a result, wages have continued to increase sharply – even accelerate a little more.To the details . . . Job openings (blue in the graph below) decreased by -529,000 to 10.562 million, a little below the July peak of 11.098 million. Voluntary quits (the “great resignation,” gold, right scale) increased 370,000 to 4.527 million – a new record high. Actual hires (red) increased 191,000 to 6.697 million, in line with the past few months, and better than the early part of this year: Layoffs and discharges (violet, right scale in the graph below) increased 19,000 from last month’s record low to 1.369 million. Total separations (blue) increased 382,000 to 6.273 million: In summary, we continue to have near-record high job openings and low layoffs, new record high quits, with still-strong hiring and total separations; i.e., little progress is being made towards establishing a new equilibrium. Further, as indicated in last month’s jobs report, wage gains YoY have continued to accelerate, up 5.9% in November, the highest since 1982 except for April and May 2020: Returning to my rubric of musical chairs, due to the pandemic, there is a persistent shortfall – currently on the level of about 4 million – in the number of people willing to sit in the seats on offer from potential employers. They either are fearful of coming down sick, don’t want to face irate customers, or have to stay home to provide care to their children either due to lack of childcare options or closed schools. Because of this persistent shortfall, those willing to sit in the chairs can “trade up” to a more desirable chair. As each potential sitter does so, the lowest 10% or so of chairs are consistently left vacant. To fill those chairs with bodies, employers have to offer more money. But so long as the shortfall persists, there will always be a rotating number of vacant chairs, and those potential employers with those empty chairs will have to continually offer more compensation to get people to sit in them. In other words, wages will continue to rise until the potential employer can no longer make any profit off the potential employee for that job. Because the JOLTS data has only been around for 20 years, there are only two jobs recoveries with which to compare the present situation. In order for the situation to resolve, the first thing I want or expect to see is a further increase in monthly hiring. At the same time, or shortly thereafter, I would expect to see a significant decline in voluntary quits. Only after these two things have occurred would I expect to see a substantial downturn in job openings, and I would not expect to see any significant increase in layoffs until all of those other trends are in place. In November, we didn’t get an *increased* surge in hiring, and far from declining, quits increased. In other words, we are nowhere near to resolving the current jobs market imbalance – the best situation for employees in half a century.—— One postscript: I also want to make note of one specific jobs sector. Below is the quits rate (left scale) and number (right) for employees in the health care sector: Both made new records, and are roughly 30% higher than at any time previous to the pandemic. In other words, employees in a critical sector are leaving their jobs in droves. To me, this points to the utter failure of a system that has been coddling defiant anti-vaxxers and their families. But more on that in my next Coronavirus Dashboard.
What to watch on jobs day: A strong finish to 2021, but Omicron’s impact looms - EPI Blog - In an unprecedented change, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) the same week as the monthly employment situation report. Given this new release schedule, I’m going to talk about what we learned from this week’s JOLTS report, which provides data for the full month of November (or the end of November, depending on the specific measure) as a preview for the jobs day release on Friday, because the reference week for Friday’s numbers is shortly after at December 5-11. This means that the rapid Omicron variant surge in the United States will not affect the trends released on Friday, as job growth is expected to approach 7 million for 2021 as a whole. The JOLTS report for November continued to show high levels of churn in the labor market and strong net job growth. Job openings ticked down a bit, while hires ticked up and quits hit another series high. The media has focused on the high quits rate, but what’s often missing from that coverage is that workers who are quitting their jobs aren’t dropping out of the labor force, they are quitting to take other jobs. Hiring continues to outpace the number of quits, and the labor force continues to claw its way back after a huge drop in the spring of 2020. While the majority of job losses added to the ranks of the unemployed (+17.4 million), the labor force fell by nearly 8 million workers in March and April 2020 and has regained about 70% of those losses since then, including an increase of 1.8 million over the last nine months, when the quits rate has been so high. Much attention throughout the recovery has been on accommodation and food services, which suffered the greatest losses in employment when the pandemic hit and is now experiencing record-high levels of quits. In November 2021, accommodation and food services recorded nearly a million quits (920,000). But—and here’s the part many commentators seem to be missing—hiring in accommodation and food services exceeded quits in November, coming in at over 1 million (1,079,000). It’s useful to note that accommodation and food services always tends to have more churn than other sectors. In particular, accommodation and food services has always exhibited a higher quits rate than any other sector (since the survey began in 2000) and the highest or second-highest hires rate (second only to arts, entertainment, and recreation). High churn in this industry is not surprising given that it’s also the lowest paid of the major sectors in the U.S. economy, but quits are happening to a much greater extent now than ever before—with a bigger increase than in any other sector. This fact, combined with the strong wage growth seen in this industry in 2021, implies workers are leaving their jobs to take jobs with higher pay, likely often within the same sector.The figure below tells us what’s happening with churn across the labor market, charting the hires rate against the quits rate for major sectors using the latest JOLTS data from November. The 45-degree line represents where hires and quits rates are equal. Notably, all the data lie above the 45-degree line, meaning that hiring exceeds quits in all sectors. So, while there are record numbers of quits, workers aren’t just leaving the labor force: most are taking other jobs, often in the same sector.
December Employment Report: 199 thousand Jobs, 3.9% Unemployment Rate
US unemployment sinks to 3.9% as many more people find jobs -(AP) — The nation's unemployment rate fell in December to a healthy 3.9% — a pandemic low — even as employers added a modest 199,000 jobs, evidence that they are struggling to fill jobs with many Americans reluctant to return to the workforce. The drop in the jobless rate, from 4.2% in November, indicated that many more people found work last month. Indeed, despite the slight hiring gain reported by businesses, 651,000 more workers said they were employed in December compared with November. Still, the data reported Friday by the Labor Department reflected the state of the job market in early December — before the spike in COVID-19 infections began to disrupt the economy. Economists have cautioned that job growth may slow in January and possibly February because of omicron cases, which have forced millions of newly infected workers to stay home and quarantine. The economy is still about 3.6 million jobs short of its pre-pandemic level. For now, steady hiring is being driven by strong consumer demand that has remained resilient despite chronic supply shortages. Consumer spending and business purchases of equipment are likely propelling the economy to a robust annual growth rate of roughly 7% in the final three months of 2021. Americans’ confidence in the economy rose slightly in December, according to the Conference Board, suggesting that spending was probably healthy for much of last month. Wages also rose sharply in December, with average hourly pay jumping 4.7% compared with a year ago. That pay increase is a sign that companies are competing fiercely to fill their open jobs. A record-high wave of quitting, as many workers seek better jobs, is helping fuel pay raises. Low unemployment and rapid wage gains, though, could further heighten inflation as companies raise prices to cover rising labor costs. Price increases have already surged to a four-decade high, prompting a sharp pivot by the Federal Reserve, from keeping rates low to support hiring to moving toward raising interest rates to combat inflation. Most economists expect the Fed to raise its benchmark short-term rate, now pegged near zero, in March and to do so two or three additional times this year. “Companies are paying up for workers,” . “This is consistent with inflation well above 2%, which keeps the pressure on the Fed to raise interest rates.” Becky Frankiewicz, president of the staffing giant ManpowerGroup North America, said that many of Manpower's clients are shifting employees from temporary to permanent status, because with workers scarce, they want to “lock people up.” Frankiewicz said Manpower has calculated that because of omicron, absenteeism is running at three times its peak in 2021. Yet there has been “no slowdown in demand” for workers, she said. More broadly through the economy, though, job growth will likely take a big hit this month from the omicron variant, which has sickened millions of Americans, forced airlines to cancel thousands of flights, reduced traffic at restaurants and bars, and caused some major school systems to close, potentially keeping some parents at home with children and unable to work. That could make it even harder for companies to remain fully staffed and could slow the economy, too. Michael Pearce, an economist at Capital Economics, notes that millions of workers will likely be quarantining at home next week. For those who aren't paid — about one-fifth of the U.S. workforce lacks sick leave — their jobs won't be counted by the government. That would lower the employment gain reported by businesses for January. Even with December’s modest gain, 2021 was one of the best years for American workers in decades, though one that followed 2020, the job market’s worst year since records began in 1939, a consequence of the pandemic recession. Companies posted a record number of open jobs last year and offered sharply higher pay to try to find and keep workers.
December jobs report: Payrolls rise by 199,000 as unemployment rate falls to 3.9% - The U.S. economy unexpectedly saw a slowdown in hiring in December compared to November, while the unemployment rate improved to a fresh pandemic-era low. The Labor Department released its December jobs report Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET. Here were the main metrics from the print, compared to consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg:
- Non-farm payrolls: +199,000 vs. +450,000 expected and a revised +249,000 in November
- Unemployment rate: 3.9% vs. 4.1% expected and 4.2% in November
- Average hourly earnings, month-over-month: 0.6% vs. 0.4% expected and a revised 0.4% in November
- Average hourly earnings, year-over-year: 4.7% vs. 4.2% expected and a revised 5.1% in November
The labor market posted a twelfth consecutive months of job growth in December, albeit with gains coming at a rate slower than many expected. Consensus economists expected that December payrolls increased by over 400,000, or more than double the tally from November, when a slowdown in service-sector hiring had weighed on overall employment growth. "It's a solid report. Obviously it didn't hit what the experts had said ... but when you look at 2021 as a combined total, as the president has been sworn into office, passed the American Rescue Plan, 6.4 million jobs have been added, which is a record," U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh told Yahoo Finance Live on Friday."There's no question that we still have people out of work, we have people that have left the workforce. We're working on also inflation," he added. "So we do have some work to move forward." By industry, some of the services-related sectors hardest-hit initially by the pandemic saw muted hiring at the end of December. Leisure and hospitality jobs rose by 53,000 in the last month of the year, rising compared to November's gain of 41,000, but coming in well below the 211,000 seen in October. Other industries saw a deceleration in hiring in December. Transportation and warehousing jobs rose by just under 19,000 during the month after a rise of more than 42,000 in November, while professional and business services positions rose by 43,000 after a gain of 72,000 during the prior month. Education and health services employment gains totaled 10,000, slowing from 14,000 in the prior period. Meanwhile, retail trade employers shed jobs for a back-to-back month. In the goods-producing sector, both construction and manufacturing employment growth also slowed compared to December. Manufacturing jobs gains alone came in at 26,000, missing consensus estimates for a rise of 35,000. Even given the latest surge in virus cases, many economists suggested more pronounced Omicron-related impacts to the monthly labor market data are unlikely to appear until at least the January report. The Labor Department collects data for the monthly jobs reports during the week including the 12th of the month, which may have been too early to capture disturbances from the Omicron variant discovered in the U.S. in late November.But despite the disappointment on headline payrolls, other metrics within the report were as strong or stronger than economists were anticipating. The unemployment rate improved more than expected to 3.9%, or the best level since February 2020's 50-year low of 3.5% before the pandemic. And the labor force participation rate was upwardly revised by a tick to 61.9% for November and held at this level in December. The size of the civilian labor force remained lower by more than 2 million compared to pre-pandemic levels, however. “While the 199,000 gain in non-farm payrolls once again disappointed the consensus, a much larger gain in the household measure of employment and a tepid rise in participation pushed the unemployment rate back below 4%," Michael Pearce, senior U.S. economist for Capital Economics, wrote in a note on Friday. "Together with another exceptionally strong monthly increase in wages, that raises the odds the [Federal Reserve] brings forward plans to raise interest rates and run down its balance sheet this year." And indeed, heading into the December jobs report, other economic data have been upbeat in registering the labor market's momentum. During the survey week for the monthly jobs report, weekly jobless claims came in just above 200,000 — or at a level below the 2019 weekly average from before the pandemic. And ADP reported on Wednesday that private-sector employers added back 807,000 jobs in December, coming in at nearly double the consensus expectation and marking the biggest rise since May.
More signs of real tightness, while new jobs added are (seasonally?) disappointing - There were three big questions I had going into this jobs report: 1. whether the big decrease in new jobless claims to a half-century low would translate to another big top-line number in the jobs report2. is wage growth holding up? Is it accelerating?3. Would last month’s “poor” 210,000 number of new jobs be revised higher? The answers were:1. The 6 month average of monthly gains has declined significantly, from about 600,000 to 500,000 – still very good, but a significant deceleration in the past 2 months. We still have 3.6 million jobs to go to equal the number of employees in February 2020 just before the pandemic hit. At the current average rate for the past 6 months, that’s about 7 more months.2. Wage growth is still very high, at 5.8% YoY, a slight deceleration from last month.3. Both of the last 2 months were revised higher, but November’s revision was only +39,000, still disappointing. Here’s my in-depth synopsis of the report:
- 199,000 jobs added. Private sector jobs increased 211,000. Government jobs declined by -12,000 jobs. The alternate, and more volatile measure in the household report indicated a gain of 671,000 jobs, the second very sharp increase in a row, and which factors into the unemployment and underemployment rates below.
- The total number of employed is still -3,049,000, or -2,3% below its pre-pandemic peak. At this rate jobs have grown in the past 6 months (which have averaged 508,000 per month), it will take another 7 months for employment to completely recover.
- U3 unemployment rate declined -0.3% to 3.9%, compared with the January 2020 low of 3.5%.
- U6 underemployment rate declined -0.4% to 7.3%, compared with the January 2020 low of 6.9%.
- Those not in the labor force at all, but who want a job now, declined -106,000 to 5.713 million, compared with 5.010 million in February 2020.
- Those on temporary layoff decreased -63,000 to 872,000.
- Permanent job losers declined -206,000 to 1,703,000.
- October was revised upward by 102,000, while November was revised upward by 39,000, for a net gain of 141,000 jobs compared with previous reports.
- the average manufacturing workweek, one of the 10 components of the Index of Leading Indicators, declined -0.1 hour to 40.3 hours.
- Manufacturing jobs increased 26,000. Since the beginning of the pandemic, manufacturing has still lost -219,000 jobs, or -1.7% of the total.
- Construction jobs increased 22,000. Since the beginning of the pandemic, -88,000 construction jobs have been lost, or -1.2% of the total.
- Residential construction jobs, which are even more leading, rose by 700. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 46,600 jobs have been *gained* in this sector, or +5.5%.
- temporary jobs declined by -1,600. Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have still been -57,100 jobs lost, or -5.3% of all temporary jobs.
- the number of people unemployed for 5 weeks or less decreased by -8,000 to 1,977,000, which is lower than just before the pandemic hit.
- Professional and business employment increased by 43,000, which is still -35,000, or about -0.2%, below its pre-pandemic peak.
- Average Hourly Earnings for Production and Nonsupervisory Personnel: rose $0.12 to $26.61, which is a 5.8% YoY gain. This continues to be excellent news, considering that a huge number of low-wage workers have finally been recalled to work, and just below lat month’s high of +5.9% YoY.
- the index of aggregate hours worked for non-managerial workers rose by 0.3%, which is a loss of -1.5% since just before the pandemic.
- the index of aggregate payrolls for non-managerial workers rose by 1.1%, which is a gain of 9.4% (before inflation) since just before the pandemic.
- Leisure and hospitality jobs, which were the most hard-hit during the pandemic, gained 53,000 jobs, but are still -1,222,000, or -7.2% below their pre-pandemic peak.
- Within the leisure and hospitality sector, food and drink establishments increased 43,000 jobs, and is still -653,000, or -5.3% below their pre-pandemic peak.
- Full time jobs increased 803,000 in the household report.
- Part time jobs decreased -275,000 in the household report.
- The number of job holders who were part time for economic reasons decreased by -399,000 to 3,929,000, which is a decrease of 461,000 since before the pandemic began.
- Health care employment declined by -3,100, a YoY gain of only 63,300, or 0.4%, despite being the most critical sector during the pandemic.
SUMMARY: Two days ago I described the November JOLTS report as being analogous to a reverse game of musical chairs, with jobs being the chairs and potential employees those wanting to sit in them. With a chronic shortage of people being willing to sit in the chairs on offer due to the pandemic, jobs are going unfilled, while virtually nobody is getting laid off. Today we learned that the dynamic continued in December, as the unemployment rate fell close to its 50-year lows, at a level only exceeded by one month in 2000, and during 2018-19. This also continued the dynamic of sharp wage increases for nonmanagerial workers.White-collar professional jobs have almost fully recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Construction is not far behind. What are lagging are leisure and hospitality jobs most hard hit by pandemic issues, and – surprisingly – manufacturing. That health care is losing workers while the pandemic is at one of its worst levels is a demonstration of the failure of how the US has been dealing with the pandemic, as Trumpist courts and governors are refusing virtually all efforts at mitigation, and vaccinations are nowhere near the level needed for safety. The Biden Administration is not blameless, as its “vaccination-only” strategy has not worked.It is also somewhat concerning that the last two months have only averaged a little over 200,000 jobs gained. But the household report, which tends to lead at inflection points, has been *very strong,* and October’s initial gain of 531,000 has since been revised up to 648,000. I suspect that seasonality has reared its ugly head, as the huge number of Christmas holiday jobs typically added has thrown a monkey wrench into pandemic calculations. If so, next month the report for this month (January) will reverse that.All in all, the jobs sector continues strong, and is getting very tight, but still lagging in terms of filling job openings created by pandemic losses.The final pieces of the employment picture will not resolve until the pandemic is resolved.
Comments on December Employment Report - Mcbride - The headline jobs number in the December employment report was below expectations, however, employment for the previous two months was revised up by 141,000. The participation rate was unchanged, the employment-population ratio increased, and the unemployment rate decreased to 3.9%. Leisure and hospitality gained 53 thousand jobs in December. In March and April of 2020, leisure and hospitality lost 8.22 million jobs, and are now down 1.22 million jobs since February 2020. So, leisure and hospitality has now added back about 85% all of the jobs lost in March and April 2020. Construction employment increased 22 thousand and is now 88 thousand below the pre-pandemic level. Manufacturing added 26 thousand jobs and is still 219 thousand below the pre-pandemic level. State and Local education lost 10 thousand jobs, seasonally adjusted. This accounted for most of the 12 thousand public sector jobs lost in December. Earlier: December Employment Report: 199 thousand Jobs, 3.9% Unemployment Rate In December, the year-over-year employment change was 6.45 million jobs, making 2021 the best year ever for job growth. Permanent Job Losers Click on graph for larger image. This graph shows permanent job losers as a percent of the pre-recession peak in employment through the report today. (ht Joe Weisenthal at Bloomberg). This data is only available back to 1994, so there is only data for three recessions. In December, the number of permanent job losers decreased to 1.703 million from 1.905 million in November. These jobs will likely be the hardest to recover, so it is a positive that the number of permanent job losers is declining fairly rapidly. Since the overall participation rate has declined due to cyclical (recession) and demographic (aging population, younger people staying in school) reasons, here is the employment-population ratio for the key working age group: 25 to 54 years old. The prime working age will be key as the economy recovers. The 25 to 54 participation rate was unchanged in December at 81.9% from 81.9% in November, and the 25 to 54 employment population ratio increased to 79.0% from 78.8% the previous month. Both are still low, compared to the pre-pandemic levels, and indicate that some prime workers have still not returned to the labor force. Typically, retail companies start hiring for the holiday season in October, and really increase hiring in November. Here is a graph that shows the historical net retail jobs added for October, November and December by year. Retailers hired 104 thousand workers Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA) net in December. This was close normal, and seasonally adjusted (SA) to a loss of 2 thousand jobs in December. "The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons, at 3.9 million in December, decreased by 337,000 over the month. The over-the-year decline of 2.2 million brings this measure to 461,000 below its February 2020 level. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs." The number of persons working part time for economic reasons decreased in December to 3.929 million from 4.466 million in November. This is at pre-recession levels. These workers are included in the alternate measure of labor underutilization (U-6) that decreased to 7.3% from 7.7% in the previous month. This is down from the record high in April 22.9% for this measure since 1994. This measure was at 7.0% in February 2020 (pre-pandemic). This graph shows the number of workers unemployed for 27 weeks or more. According to the BLS, there are 2.008 million workers who have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks and still want a job, down from 2.193 million the previous month. This does not include all the people that left the labor force. Summary: The headline monthly jobs number was below expectations; however, the previous two months were revised up by 141,000 combined. This was the most jobs added in a single calendar year ever (6.45 million), but not as a percent of the labor force (that happened after WWII). And the headline unemployment rate decreased to 3.9%. The household survey indicated a large gain in employment of 651 thousand, and that led to a sharp decrease in the unemployment rate and an increase in the employment-population ratio. The prime age participation rate and employment-population ratio, are still below pre-pandemic levels, indicating some prime workers are still out of the labor force. And there are still 3.6 million fewer jobs than prior to the recession.
Hard to Imagine the Labor Market Will Go Back to Pre-Pandemic Dynamics. Too Much Has Changed by Wolf Richter - Momentous shifts in the labor market, brought on by the pandemic, are percolating to the surface, with millions of people not joining the labor force, with companies having trouble hiring as people don’t want to be hired under the current conditions, and with people striking out on their own to get out of the rat race and chase after their dream. Side-gigs that were started while working-from-home may have turned into full-time businesses, and these people quit their W-2 jobs – contributing to the record number of “quits” – and are now chasing after their dream, and the creation of tiny businesses has exploded. And wages are surging. For the second month in a row, households reported large gains in people who are working – including the self-employed and people starting their own businesses. But employers reported that they’d added only a smallish number of employees to their payrolls, which don’t include the self-employed and those striking out on their own. Hourly wages jumped more than expected. And the unemployment rate dropped to 3.9%, the lowest since February 2020, when it was 3.5%, which had been the low since the 1950s. The labor force ticked up only a minuscule amount and remained way below the pre-pandemic trends as many people decided for whatever reason to remain on the sidelines. The reference period for all this drama is the week around December 12, before the spike in omicron cases, and it’s based on two large-scale surveys, one of households and the other of employers (“establishments”), released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It adds more color to the picture of a labor market that has changed in dramatic ways. Employers added just 199,000 people to their payrolls, based on surveys for the payroll week that included December 12. Over the past three months, employers added 1.1 million employees. This brought the total number of employees on the payrolls to 148.9 million, still down by 3.6 million from February 2020 and about 8 million below pre-pandemic trend. In other words, employers are now able to hire at the pre-pandemic pace but are not able to catch up. Households reported that the number of working people, including the self-employed and entrepreneurs, jumped by 651,000 people in the reference week of December 12, and by a massive gain of 2.17 million people over the past three months, bringing the total to 156.0 million people who’re now working. This was still down by 2.8 million from the total in February 2020, and about 7 million workers below trend, but they’re catching up with pre-pandemic trends (red line). This is the image of the disconnect. It speaks of people choosing to be self-employed or starting their own thing, from ecommerce retail operations out of the garage to transaction lawyers leaving a law firm to start their own M&A shops out of their house, and taking their clients with them, during the biggest M&A boom the world as ever seen. These folks are tracked by the household surveys, but not the establishment surveys. The average hourly wage jumped by $0.19 for the month, the biggest increase since April 2021. In the data going back to 2006 until the pandemic, there had never been a $0.19 increase per hour. Year-over-year, the average hourly wage, at $31.31, jumped by 4.7%. The labor force and “labor shortages.” The labor force – people who were either already working or who were actively looking for a job in the four weeks prior to the survey of households – ticked up by only 168,000 people in December, which brought the three-month gain to 823,000.This leaves the labor force down by 2.3 million people from February 2020 and by 5.2 million from trend, while employers were desperately trying to fill an enormous 10.6 million in job openings.
Farm Income – 2021 - by Menzie Chinn - Net income up, government support down. Reader Bruce Hall bewails the plight of farmers. It was of interest to me to see how the massive bribe the Trump administration propped up farm income in the wake of the disastrous trade war, and how cash income has popped up in 2021. Hence, despite lower government support, net income is forecasted to be up.Figure 1: Contributions to change in farm income from cash receipts from sales (blue bar), from direct government support (brown bar), and from all other components (green bar). Source: USDA, data of 12/1/2021.In other words, in 2020, the increase in government support ($23.3 bn) more than accounted for the change in net income ($15.7 bn). Where were all the fiscal conservatives at the time that occurred (equivalently, why don’t I hear cries about farm welfare from those avowed fiscal conservatives?)Here are the sources of farm income, in levels. Figure 2: Farm income from cash receipts from sales (blue bar), from direct government support (brown bar), and from all other components (green bar). Source: USDA, data o 12/1/2022.By the way, I do attribute some of the movements in ag prices to the pandemic (fears of which a commentator in March 2020 assured me was overblown), but note that rising government financial support and falling cash income began in 2019, before the pandemic struck (but after Trump’s trade war started).
1,800+ flights canceled in US on Monday - More than 1,800 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were canceled on Monday as airlines grapple with inclement weather and staff shortages due to COVID-19.A total of 1,867 flights were canceled as of 8:20 a.m. ET on Monday, according to FlightAware. As of Monday morning, airlines had already issued 861 delays for flights within, into or out of the U.S. Southwest canceled 437 flights, JetBlue reported 136 cancellations, United recorded 103 cancellations, Delta called off 78 flights and American Airlines canceled 36 trips, according to FlightAware.Monday’s cancellations were the latest in a weeks-long saga of airlines being forced to cancel trips because of a nationwide surge in COVID-19 cases. Some airlinesreported staff shortages because of the virus, forcing them to pare down the number of flights per day.The U.S. is seeing a spike in COVID-19 infections driven in part by the omicron variant, which is more transmissible than previous strains of the virus.More than 2,700 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were canceled on Sunday. More than 15,000 U.S.-flights have been canceled since Christmas Eve, according to USA Today.Inclement weather conditions are also driving Monday’s flight cancellations. A winter storm slammed a part of the Midwest on Sunday and is now headed for sections of the East, according to USA Today.Federal offices in Washington, D.C. are closed on Monday because of the wintry weather.Undeterred by the cancellations and delays, travelers still made trips this weekend. The Transportation Security Administration said more than 1.6 million individuals passed through travel checkpoints on Saturday.
As flight cancellations mount, airlines pressure COVID infected crews to return to work - Air travel throughout the United States during the holidays was snarled by flight cancellations caused by the surging Omicron variant among airline workers and inclement weather. More than 3,100 flights to, from and within the United States were canceled on Monday bringing the total to 18,700 since Christmas Eve, according to the tracking web site FlightAware. Throughout the holidays, airline “crews were increasingly out sick from the fast-spreading Omicron variant of Covid,” CNBC reported. In addition, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials reported there were 1,778 active infections among TSA employees as of Sunday. United, Spirit, Alaska and other airlines offered holiday bonuses to lure workers to man the flights even if they were exhausted or sick, but this failed to stem the tide of cancellations. In addition to sicknesses caused by the pandemic, flights were snarled due to several large winter storms near key transit hubs in the Midwest and on the East Coast. A New Year’s Day winter storm brought between five and nine inches of snow to the Chicago region, causing the cancellations of over 1,600 flights at O’Hare International and Midway International airports on Saturday and Sunday. A Monday winter storm on the East Coast caused hundreds of cancellations at Reagan National Airport in Washington D.C. and other airports. Anticipating a sharp spike in absenteeism during the holidays, Delta Airlines, Southwest and other industry officials lobbied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to reduce its quarantining guidelines for infected or exposed workers. In an act of criminal disregard for public health, the CDC on December 26 changed its guidelines from 10 to five days, giving a green light to the airlines and other companies to order workers back to work before they fully recovered and/or have stopped being transmissible. “Delta Air Lines was one of the first companies to adapt to the updated guidance” on December 27, according to TheNew YorkTimes. “Delta is providing five days’ sick leave for infected workers, with two additional paid sick days if they choose to be tested on Day 5 and the results are positive,” the Times reported. The newspaper added, “On Tuesday, in a memo seen by The New York Times, JetBlue told employees that it would expect those ‘who have no symptoms, or whose symptoms are improving, to come back to work after five days.’ Crew members may remain on leave if they provide a doctor’s note, but they won’t be paid as if they were working, according to Mr. [Angelo] Cucuzza of the Transport Workers Union.”
Have Covid? You can’t get unemployment benefits -- Covid-19 infections are ballooning, and sick Americans who miss work due to the virus may wonder if they qualify for unemployment benefits. The short answer: They don't. There were more than 1 million new U.S. Covid cases reported Monday, a single-day record, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The seven-day average of daily new cases is over 480,000. The dramatic rise in caseloads, fueled by the highly contagious omicron and delta virus strains, is causing worker shortages and disrupting businesses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently shortened the Covid isolation period to five days for people without symptoms, down from 10 days. Individuals who test positive for Covid-19 and stay home to recover and isolate from others aren't eligible for jobless benefits, according to Michele Evermore, a senior policy advisor for unemployment insurance at the U.S. Department of Labor. Unemployment benefits are a type of social insurance paid on a weekly basis. The law requires Americans to be "able and available" for work to qualify for the assistance. An individual who has Covid-19 doesn't meet this core requirement, Evermore said. "[Unemployment insurance] is not intended to be used as paid sick leave," the Labor Department wrote to state workforce agencies, which administer benefits, in March 2020. This wasn't always the case during the pandemic. The CARES Act relief law created a temporary unemployment program offering jobless aid to sick individuals and others (like gig workers) who typically don't qualify for unemployment insurance. The federal program, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, expired on Labor Day. (Many Republican-led states opted out of the program early, in June or July.)
The US Postal Service is getting hit by Omicron after it survived the holiday season by enlisting tens of thousands of workers -The United States Postal Service managed to deliver mail on time this holiday season by enlisting 185,000 new workers. But now, the Omicron variant is spreading among its employees.The USPS announced Thursday that it saw strong performance from October 1 through Christmas Eve, delivering nearly 90% of parcels on time, a 1.24% improvement over the previous quarter. USPS estimates it will deliver more than 12 billion pieces of mail by New Year’s Day. The Postal Service attributed this year’s relatively smooth holiday season to changes it made to the size of its workforce and operations. USPS added 185,000 workers since last year (including 40,000 seasonal workers), installed 112 new package-sorting machines, and added 13 million square feet of space to handle the increased volume of mail and packages. It’s a far cry from last year, when the Postal Service was experiencing a historic volume of deliveries that led to an overflow of parcels and overworked employees. Workers reported at the time that packages were stacked so high, it was difficult to walk around, and parcels were sitting on trucks for several days waiting to be sorted. Some employees reportedly worked 80-hour weeks and were unable to take a day off between Thanksgiving and Christmas in order to keep up with the flood of packages. The agency was also feeling the affects of capacity limits on airlines and trucks that transported the mail, as well as higher package volumes as other carriers turned customers away. Private firms like FedEx and UPS had warned early on of limited capacity, which meant that retailers had to turn to other avenues to ship their goods — like the Postal Service, which accepts all pieces of mail presented to it. At the same time, USPS employees were falling ill by the thousands: The American Postal Workers Union said in December 2020 that 19,000 of the Postal Service’s 644,000 workers were sick or in isolation due to the coronavirus.
Cruise ship crews respond to heightened CDC warnings, recommendation to “avoid cruise travel” - On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its advisory for passengers traveling on cruise ships from Level 3 to Level 4, the highest in the organization’s warning system. Accompanying this change was a notice recommending travelers to “avoid cruise travel, regardless of vaccination status.” The CDC website continued, “[t]he virus that causes COVID-19 spreads easily between people in close quarters on board ships, and the chance of getting COVID-19 on cruise ships is very high, even if you are fully vaccinated and have received a COVID-19 vaccine booster dose.” A USA Today report noted that “[b]etween November 30 and December 14, cruise ships operating in US waters reported 162 cases of COVID-19 to the CDC. Between December 15 and December 29, cruise ships sailing in U.S. waters reported 5,013 COVID-19 cases to the CDC.” These figures represent a roughly a 31-fold or 3,094 percent increase over a two-week period. Currently, nearly 90 ships are listed as “under investigation” by the CDC for containing onboard COVID cases, although official numbers for each ship are not published. Cruise workers have reported that shipboard managements have failed to release or have actively attempted to obscure infection totals. The CDC announcement caused an immediate backlash by the global cruise industry. Royal Caribbean’s CEO Richard D. Fain, an individual whose estimated net worth is $194 million, expressed a callous indifference to the fate of the cruising population, stating that “[o]micron is having a big short-term impact on everyone, but many observers see this as a major step toward COVID-19 becoming endemic rather than epidemic.” Carnival and Holland America Line have similarly downplayed the situation, repeatedly referring to the numbers of infected on board as “small.” The Cruise Line Industry Association (CLIA) responded to the CDC update defensively and doubled down on empty claims that cruise ship travel is safe. Simultaneously, the CLIA said the spread of infection should be considered an inevitable part of cruising, and all other aspects of life as well. “The decision by the CDC to raise the travel level for cruise is particularly perplexing considering that cases identified on cruise ships consistently make up a very slim minority of the total population onboard—far fewer than on land—and the majority of those cases are asymptomatic or mild in nature, posing little to no burden on medical resources onboard or onshore,” the CLIA stated on Thursday.
Life Insurer: Deaths Among Working Age Americans Up 40% Under Covid - Yves Smith --On the one hand, we may have a tiny bit of cheery Covid news, in that Omicron indeed may produce a lower level of hospitalizations. The notion that it doesn’t typically settle in the lower lungs and produce viral pneumonia appears to be borne out. GM provided a technical explanation for those who like that sort of thing:[…] And on the other hand, even if Omicron might be less deadly, getting it does not confer lasting immunity. And the baseline for how many people died from Covid, particularly younger cohorts thought to be not generally vulnerable, has been revised upward. From the Center Square (hat tip Paul R):The head of Indianapolis-based insurance company OneAmerica [with $100 billion in assets] said the death rate is up a stunning 40% from pre-pandemic levels among working-age people.“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at One America,” the company’s CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference this week. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”…Davison said the increase in deaths represents “huge, huge numbers,” and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica.“And what we saw just in third quarter, we’re seeing it continue into fourth quarter, is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he said.“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.”….Most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths, Davison said.“What the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.”He said at the same time, the company is seeing an “uptick” in disability claims, saying at first it was short-term disability claims, and now the increase is in long-term disability claims. Now you might say, but isn’t this out of line with excess death estimates? Yes, but an insurer is in much better position to have granular information about deaths, and Davison says his company’s experience is shared across the industry. Second, it’s often forgotten that some of the changes during Covid would have reduced deaths. For instance, in the first Covid wave, in early 2020, Alabama locked down in anticipation of an infection spike that turned out to be mild compared to the likes of New York and California. Alabama had negative excess deaths due to the reduction in driving and therefore road accidents.
The United States struggles to avoid widespread shutdowns as Omicron spreads. - Officials across the United States, from President Biden on down, have been insisting that they are no longer in the shutdown business, and will not order any closures to contain the latest surge in coronavirus cases. But Omicron may be taking the decision out of their hands. So many workers are testing positive or calling in sick that businesses, schools, government agencies and more are being crippled by staff shortages that may force them to close some operations anyway.Airlines began canceling flights in large numbers on Christmas Eve for lack of crews, and the problems have continued into the new year. Broadway shows have been canceled because of outbreaks backstage. Major companies have delayed or entirely jettisoned return-to-office plans. Many colleges are switching back to virtual classes to start the semester.And public school leaders are struggling to respond to a situation that has changed greatly from when students went on holiday breaks before Christmas, barely a week ago. Four large city school systems — Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Newark — have joined a growing list of public schools around the country that put off reopening on Monday, switched to remote instruction, or both. Covid-19 outbreaks and staffing shortages forced their hands.Omicron has driven case numbers to staggering new heights: The United States is averaging more than 484,600 daily cases over the past week, a 238 percent increase from two weeks ago. Hospitalizations are up 41 percent in the past two weeks, while deaths are down by 3 percent.In some cases, the very resources needed to cope with Omicron’s staffing disruptions are themselves being disrupted, from the call-center agents who rebook canceled flights to the frontline medical professionals who care for sick workers.Infected police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and transit workers are leaving shifts unfilled. In New York City, subway lines have been delayed by staff shortages, and the Fire Department has asked residents not to call 911 except in a real emergency.Many elected leaders of both parties have discarded their sharpest pandemic-curbing tools, like closing government offices, schools and businesses, which have come with staggering economic, social and political costs. Instead, elected officials have stressed the importance of vaccination, booster shots and mask-wearing.“I am not prepared to shut down schools or the economy at this time,” Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, a Democrat, said before New York suffered a string of new daily case records last week. “I will not overreact and send this economy spiraling out of control once again.”Many leading public health experts aren’t seeking shutdowns, either. If anything, many appear to be taking an opposite tack.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced new guidelines to help schools stay open, by allowing children who are exposed to the coronavirus to “test to stay” instead of automatically having to quarantine at home. And it has said that some Americans who test positive can leave isolation after five days, half as long as previous recommendations.
Deputy District Attorney Who Opposed Vaccine Mandates Dies From COVID At 46 - Orange County Deputy District Attorney Kelly Ernby, a California Republican activist who opposed coronavirus vaccine mandates, has died at the age of 46 from COVID-19, according to multiple media outlets.Her boss, District Attorney Todd Spitzer, announced Erby’s death on Facebook on Monday.“The Orange County district attorney’s office is utterly heartbroken by the sudden and unexpected passing of Deputy Dist. Atty. Kelly Ernby,” wrote Spitzer. “Kelly was an incredibly vibrant and passionate attorney who cared deeply about the work that we do as prosecutors — and deeply about the community we all fight so hard to protect.”California Republicans paid tribute to Ernby on Twitter.Jon Fleischman, former executive director of the California Republican Party, hailed her “love for politics, for America and the Republican Party.” He added: “Yeah, she had COVID.”Ben Chapman, chair of the Greater Costa Mesa Republicans, praised Ernby as “an inspiration,” and confirmed she died from “Covid complications.”Ernby ran an unsuccessful campaign for California State Assembly in 2020. She had been widely expected to run again in 2022, reported The Orange County Register.In December, she spoke against vaccine mandates at a rally organized by right-wing student group Turning Post USA, reportedly telling protesters that “there’s nothing that matters more than our freedoms right now.”
Watch: Biden Orders Parents Not To Allow Kids Near The Unvaxxed - During an address from his fake CGI Oval office Tuesday, Joe Biden warned American parents that they should not let their children near unvaccinated people. While talking about the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID, Biden suggested that parents keep their children away from the dirty unvaxxed. “And for parents with kids too young to be vaccinated, surround your kids with people who are vaccinated,” Biden decreed. Watch: Given that most children are not vaccinated, presumably kids should be kept separated from each other according to Biden. Biden also ordered parents to make sure kids “social distance in classrooms, even larger classrooms, on buses, and, uh, everything from bus drivers to buses, the actual bus,” whatever that means. Watch: Biden is just reading off a script. When he deviates from it in the slightest he gets totally lost, the guy doesn’t even know what year it is. “Look, there’s a lot of reason to be hopeful in 2020,” Biden also stated. Watch: And, again, why is he in a fake Oval office across the road from the real Oval office? Just so more press can fit in there to shout more questions that he won’t answer?
Omicron Puts Democratic K-12 In-Person Learning Advocates to the Test -As winter break came to an end this weekend for millions of students across the country, the Biden administration remained steadfast in its belief that the Omicron-driven spike in COVID-19 cases should not lead to the return of virtual instruction. “Our expectation is for schools to be open full-time for students, for in-person learning,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said on Fox News Sunday. “We remember the impact of school closures on students last year. And our science is better. We have better tools. We have $10 billion in the American Rescue Plan for surveillance testing. Vaccinations are available now for children ages 5 and up.”Cardona wasn’t improvising. In recent weeks, a series of top administration officials—from Dr. Anthony Fauci, to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, to President Joe Biden himself—have made the case that the early days of 2022 bear little resemblance to a year ago, when they believed many school districts lacked the tools and resources to safely keep their doors open. Campaigning for office in the summer of 2020, Biden said, “Everyone wants our schools to reopen,” but argued the Trump administration hadn’t prepared well enough to do so safely. “I got Congress to pass billions of dollars in school improvements, ventilation, and social distancing. Schools should be safer than ever from COVID-19,” he told reporters last month. “Now, if a student tests positive, other students can take the test and stay in the classroom if they’re not infected rather than closing the whole school or having to quarantine. We can keep our K through 12 schools open, and that’s exactly what we should be doing.” Coupled with masking and vaccination for all who are eligible, the Biden administration believes this “test-to-stay” (TTS) protocol—introduced by the CDC a few weeks ago—will allow school districts to mitigate the spread of the virus and weather Omicron storm. “At this point, we have a lot of evidence supporting test-to-stay as a safe alternative to quarantine,” Emily Oster—a Brown University economist who has become a leading voice on safely reopening schools—told The Dispatch. “It may be hard for some districts to implement, [but] many have done so successfully, so it’s clearly possible—if tests are available.” However, tests aren’t really available—and plenty of school districts have struggled to procure enough to implement TTS. But Democratic municipal leaders in some of the country’s biggest cities are forging ahead with in-person learning anyway. “The safest place for children is inside a school,” newly sworn-in New York City Mayor Eric Adams said this weekend. “The numbers of transmissions are low, your children [are] in a safe space to learn and continue to thrive. We’ve lost almost two years of education. … We can’t do it again.” But not every city has followed their lead. Detroit Public Schools canceled both in-person and virtual learning Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week because the city’s COVID-19 infection rate is at an all-time high. Atlanta Public Schools originally planned to continue with in-person instruction as normal, but let parents know on Saturday they would go virtual this week due to “the rapid rise in positive cases in the metro Atlanta area.” On Sunday night, Milwaukee Public Schools announced it would do the same because of “an influx of reported positive COVID-19 cases among district staff.” Atlanta and Milwaukee’s school districts said their “goal” is to return to school next Monday.
Ex-CDC chief: COVID-19 surge will make it 'challenging' for schools to stay open - A former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday said a recent surge in coronavirus cases will make it difficult for schools to stay open for in-person instruction in the coming weeks. “I think it’s going to make it challenging for many schools to stay open," Richard Besser, the former director of the CDC and now the president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said in an appearance on NBC's “Today.” "A lot of teachers, a lot of staff are going to come down with covid. And whether schools are going to be able to remain open with the limited staff we'll have to see." Health experts attribute the recent nationwide surge in cases to the highly-contagious omicron variant of the virus, although national rates of hospitalization and deaths have fallen significantly since last year. As vaccines and booster shots become more widely available, many schools districts have been attempting to return to full-time in-person instruction for students, teachers and staff. Besser said any parent who has a child who exhibits any symptoms of a cold should keep them out of school. "What parents can be thinking about is whether or not your schools are requiring masks," he said. "And if your child is in an age range where they are eligible to be vaccinated, talk to your doctor, get your questions answered. I really encourage parents to get their children vaccinated."
'We have staggering numbers': North Texas doctors urge families to be proactive against COVID, as students return to school — As students, teachers and staff prepare to return to school campuses following winter break, safety is top of mind for many. The ongoing surge of coronavirus cases, in communities across Texas, has people concerned. “We have staggering numbers here during this omicron surge already,” said Dr. Jim Versalovic of Texas Children’s Hospital. On Monday, Texas Children’s Hospital announced it saw a surge in record positive COVID-19 cases, with nearly 70 hospitalizations in the past two weeks. Most of the current patients are unvaccinated, according to workers. “It’s gone from 15, double that 30 last Monday, to now close to 70,” said Natasha Barrett, of Texas Children’s Health public relations. The current Omicron variant surge is top of mind, especially as families prepare to return to school. Staffers from Dallas Independent School District formed a long line outside a COVID-19 testing site at a district operations facility in South Dallas on Monday. A few miles north, Richardson ISD hosted COVID-19 testing for students and staff in Lake Highlands High School. Across town in Lancaster ISD, dozens of adults and children waited their turn for COVID-19 vaccines or boosters at a pop-up clinic in the high school’s gym. “What we learned over the holiday break was the fact that individuals simply could not get in to receive a COVID 19 test or a vaccine, due to the high rise of COVID numbers within our local community,” said Kimberly Simpson, Lancaster ISD’s chief of communications. Lancaster ISD is among the first school districts in North Texas to announce plans to return to virtual instruction when school reopens Wednesday. Administrators say the proactive decision was based on student and staff safety. “Our pivot to instructional learning is just that. A pivot. With the hopes of returning on Monday,” explained Simpson. Lancaster ISD will continue making vaccine clinics and COVID-19 testing sites available to the public this week. As will Dallas ISD.
Omicron teaches hard lessons as US schools revamp return from holidays - Many US schools that would normally welcome students back to classrooms on Monday (Jan 3) are delaying their start dates, scrambling to test pupils and teachers, and preparing, as a last resort, to return to remote learning as record COVID-19 cases from the Omicron variant sweep the country. In Washington, DC, all staff and 51,000 public school students must upload a negative test result to the district's website before coming to class on Wednesday. Tests administered before Tuesday will not be accepted. Parents can pick up rapid tests at their school or use their own. Similar efforts are underway in California, which pledged to provide free home-test kits to all its 6 million K-12 public school students. "There's a lot of COVID-19 out there ... it's going to be a bumpy start," New COVID-19 cases have hit record levels of 400,000 new infections a day on average due to the extremely transmissible nature of the Omicron variant. Health experts predict even more people will test positive following holiday gatherings, leading to millions of people in quarantine and isolation in the coming weeks. Schools from Massachusetts to Michigan to Washington state were delaying classes a few days and asking students and staff to use that time to get tested for COVID-19. California Governor Gavin Newsom has said shutting schools in the state should be only a last resort. But school administrators are worried about having enough teachers and other staff. "There will probably be individual school closures, whether due to an outbreak, or not enough staff," McDonald said. In line with updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the state has shortened its quarantine period for those exposed to someone with COVID-19 or testing positive for COVID-19 to five days from 10. Scientists and health experts are concerned the policy fails to distinguish between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, who recover from the virus at different rates. It also does not require testing to confirm that a person is no longer infectious before they end their quarantine.
"Your Kids Are Safer In School" - NYC Reopens Schools As Thousands Of Districts Remain Closed During Omicron Surge - Eric Adams, a former cop and Brooklyn borough president who, as of Jan. 1, took over as the mayor of NYC, has pledged - alongside his predecessor, Bill de Blasio - to keep students safe and schools open. Former NYC schools chancellor Meisha Porter and incoming Schools Chancellor David Banks pledged last week that Adams' team would pursue a multi-pronged approach for safely returning to school in-person this January following winter break. While the city's Department of Education has encouraged all faculty and students to get vaccinated, they stopped short of making it a requirement (presumably for fear that it would prevent faculty from returning to work). What's more, the city is adding city-run testing sites this week, while the DOE will double the in-school surveillance testing programs and deploy millions of at-home rapid tests to allow students to continue learning in school. In a statement released late last week, de Blasio, Adams and Porter all shared statements about the city's plans for keeping schools open, come hell or high water.
- "Schools are among the safest places to be throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and we’re working closely with the incoming administration to keep it that way,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio. “By doubling COVID-19 testing in schools, getting our students vaccinated, and sending students, teachers and staff home with at-home test kits, we can keep everyone healthy and finish out this school year strong."
- "The numbers speak for themselves - your kids are safer in school," said Mayor-Elect Eric Adams. "Thanks to testing, vaccinations, and at-home testing kits we’ll keep it that way. We’re working closely with the de Blasio Administration and we’ll be ready to bring students and staff back to the classroom on January 3rd. This is how we move our city forward."
- "The safety of our students, staff members, and communities is our top priority," said Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter. "Thanks to our multi-layered, gold standard approach to health and safety, New York City's schools continue to be some of the safest places to be during this pandemic. These new measures in school testing build on our high standards for safety, protects our communities, and allows for students to continue receiving an excellent education in-person."
N.Y.C. schools are ‘staying open,’ Mayor Eric Adams says. - Mayor Eric Adams insisted on Monday morning that New York City’s schools would stay open despite an extraordinary surge in Omicron cases. But about a third of city parents did not send their children back to classrooms on the first day after the holiday break. Attendance was just over 67 percent, slightly higher than the low point of 65 percent the system reached on the day before winter break. Throughout the day on Monday, Adams was adamant that the system would remain open. He repeated the message in a series of television interviews and after his first official school visit since taking office on New Year’s Day. “We’re really excited about the opening of our schools,” Mr. Adams said outside the school, Concourse Village Elementary School in the Bronx. “We want to be extremely clear: the safest place for our children is a school building.” Mr. Adams said that remote learning had been disastrous for too many of the city’s nearly one million schoolchildren in the nation’s largest school district, and had been particularly harmful for children in low-income neighborhoods and homeless students. But the calm that Mr. Adams sought to project was not shared by the many parents and educators who greeted Monday morning with profound trepidation. After roughly a year of remarkably low virus transmission in schools, Covid cases soared in the week before the winter break, prompting the closures of 11 schools and over 400 classrooms, and the contact tracing system for city schools effectively collapsed amid the surge. New York City reported 35,650 new virus cases on Sunday, with a 7-day average test positivity rate of nearly 22 percent, according to state data. Some families and elected officials have called on Mr. Adams to delay the start of school by a few days to allow every child and educator to get tested. And teachers have raised questions about how schools will be properly staffed with so many teachers sick with the virus or quarantining due to exposures. “This is an all hands on deck moment,” Mr. Adams said, acknowledging that administrators who are not normally in the classroom would be used to address staff shortages if necessary. Mr. Adams has endorsed a plan created by former Mayor Bill de Blasio that is designed to keep more classrooms open as the surge continues. The plan calls for distributing 1.5 million rapid at-home test kits to schools. Starting Monday, the city is also doubling its random in-school testing program to give P.C.R. tests to 20 percent of consenting children in each school weekly. But most families have not opted in to allow their children to be tested, which has made the testing pool very small at some schools. The mayor and the new schools chancellor, David C. Banks, are betting that their plan to increase testing will prevent major outbreaks. “We’re going to turn those question marks into an exclamation point: we’re staying open,” Mr. Adams said.
Covid Crisis Hits New York City Schools - Facing his first major test as mayor, Eric Adams vowed Monday to keep New York City public schools open despite record-busting city COVID case numbers, even as one-third of children stayed home as classes resumed following holiday break. “We want to be extremely clear: the safest place for our children is in a school building,” the mayor said at a press conference after visiting Concourse Village elementary school in The Bronx. “And we are going to keep our schools open and ensure that our children are safe in a safe environment.” While nearly a million children were scheduled to return to public school classrooms, children with COVID infections — almost all of them unvaccinated — are filling up hospital intensive care units, say those who treat them. The city’s teachers union called for temporary remote learning as New York City fights the latest COVID wave, as the share of positive COVID tests across the five boroughs reached 22% on Monday.. Some parents and teachers called for a “sick out” to protest the lack of a remote school option. Student attendance at city schools on Monday was 67.38%, according to the Department of Education —in contrast to rates that approached 90% this fall. Data on absences from teachers, administrators, and staff at city schools was not immediately available, according to the DOE. Students who did show up expressed anxiety. “I am constantly in fear of getting COVID because of the people around me that aren’t willing to follow the safety precautions correctly,” said Katherine Jiang, 16, and a student at Fort Hamilton High School in Bay Ridge. She thinks schools should resume remote learning — the online education all students experienced for some or all of last year — as cases continue to rise. “People are still missing [in-person] learning because they are scared of getting COVID,” she added. “They would rather stay home.” School staff are also facing their own attendance crisis.On Sunday evening, the principal at P.S. 58 in Carroll Gardens alerted parents that the elementary school would remain closed because of staffing shortages. On Monday evening, theyreversed course.But a similar fate could await other schools, like a Brooklyn elementary where roughly a third of staff called out on Monday, third grade teacher Andrea Castellano told THE CITY.“My school was almost at that point. We had 20 absences today,” Castellano said, speaking of her school’s teaching and support staff. “There are no subs. On a normal day you might be able to get an [Absent Teacher Reserve] or somebody who could cover the class, but with 20 people out, there’s nobody to do it.”
Short-staffed NYC schools are asking teachers with mild COVID symptoms to return to the classroom - As students return to school amid a record-breaking spike of COVID-19 cases in New York City, some might be taught by teachers who tested positive just five days earlier.The latest protocols now say that teachers and school-based staff who have tested positive but are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms can return after five days instead of 10, according to an email from the Department of Education to teachers, which was viewed by Insider. The DOE did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.The new protocol stems from guidance issued by the state that saysessential workers can return after five days of isolation when there are "critical" staffing shortages, and applies to fully vaccinated people who have had two shots of the mNRA vaccine or one shot of J&J at least two weeks prior to their positive test. In August, former mayor Bill de Blasio mandated that all teachers get at least one shot by the start of school, which 96% of teachers did.It's the latest group of workers to be told to return to the workplace after contracting COVID-19 — and another situation that illustrates the new pandemic workplace normal as some essential workers might head back earlier than their peers. The new protocol says that non-school based staff should still quarantine for 10 days."Like every school is in a staffing crisis right now, because of the number of people that are sick, or taking care of sick family members," Liat Olenick, an elementary school teacher, told Insider. "There's a lot of pressure on teachers to return after five days, which I really don't believe is safe."For teachers who test positive, symptoms that would allow them to return include a "minimal cough" — they can't be "coughing up phlegm" — and symptoms have to be mild or improving. Teachers will have to distance themselves if they take off their "well-fitting higher-level face covering" to eat or drink. They also must "must continue to stay at home outside of work" and "observe" other elements of isolation until 10 days pass.They will not need a negative test to return to school. When reached for comment, a spokesperson for the United Federation of Teachers said that its current guidance is "the staff member must be symptom-free," and that anyone who still feels ill should not come to school.The new protocols come after the CDC slashed the isolation time for asymptomatic individuals from 10 to five days, with those people wearing a mask for the next five days. The move sparked some backlash and a myriad of memes. "Many people are no longer contagious five days after diagnosis. And those who are can minimize their risk of infecting others by wearing a mask," Dr. Celine Gounder, a leading infectious disease doctor in the US, told Insider. Currently, all staff and students at New York City schools are required to wear face coverings both inside and outside on school property. "That means that they need to wear that mask diligently for an additional five days when around other people. But in that context, they are very unlikely to infect others."
K-12 schools reopen as Omicron surges throughout the US South - Amid the record-breaking surge of COVID-19 cases in the United States and throughout the world due to the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, infections are on the rise again in states across the Southern US just as K-12 schools reopen for the spring semester. Daily new cases have been at record highs for weeks and, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, a staggering 1.08 million new cases were officially recorded in the US on Monday, by far the highest daily total for any country since the start of the pandemic. Data from the last week of December showed a staggering 58 percent rise in COVID-19 hospitalizations of school-aged children nationwide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), fewer than 25 percent of children under the age of 18 are fully vaccinated, with children 5 years old and younger ineligible to be vaccinated. The reopening of schools during the current surge will compound the tragedy of pediatric illness and death due to COVID-19 in the new year. An alarming rise in child cases occurred during the last week in December, just before schools reopened from the winter holiday. Data from the American Association of Pediatrics shows a staggering 324,340 new cases during the week ending December 30. Over 20,000 of those cases occurred in Southern states in HHS Region 4, which includes states in the Southeast and Deep South. Pediatric hospitalizations have also skyrocketed by over 114 percent across the US, as the CDC notes an average of 672 hospitalizations among children on any given day during the week ending January 2. While the Biden administration falsely claims to follow the science, it has totally abdicated responsibility for the health and well-being of students and staff as they resume in-person instruction amid what many scientists are predicting will be a tsunami of infection for both the unvaccinated and vaccinated. In a meeting with the nation’s governors on December 27, President Biden told them, “There is no federal solution” to the ongoing crisis of the pandemic. He continued, “This gets solved at the state level.” Governors and state legislatures across much of the South have banned or impeded policies and procedures that allow schools to enforce even the most limited mitigation measures such as wearing masks, social distancing, testing, and limiting attendance to indoor events. ‘
More major U.S. school districts delay reopening in person because of the virus surge. --Large city school systems in Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee and Newark have joined a growing list of public schools across the country that have postponed reopening after the holiday break, switched to remote instruction, or have taken both steps because of Covid-19 outbreaks and staffing shortages. Some of the announcements came abruptly, as school leaders struggled to respond to a rapidly changing situation.
- On Sunday night, the 75,000-student Milwaukee Public Schools system said it would temporarily switch to remote instruction beginning Tuesday, citing “an influx of reported positive Covid-19 cases among district staff.” The system said it hoped to resume in-person instruction on Jan. 10.
- School officials in Madison, Wis., a district of 27,000 students, delayed the start of classes until Thursday and said they would be held online until Jan. 10.
- The Detroit school system, citing what officials called a record high test positivity rate of 36 percent in the city, has announcedthat no school would be held Monday through Wednesday, with more information to follow later in the week. The school system said on Friday that it would test its staff early this week and would distribute laptop computers to students, a sign that more remote learning could be in store.
- Elsewhere in Michigan, schools in Pontiac will be remote until Jan. 18, and in Ann Arbor through Jan. 10.
- In Ohio, Cleveland’s public schools, with 35,000 students, were scheduled to be remote this week following an announcement last week by Eric S. Gordon, the school chief. Schools in Lorainand several other northern Ohio districts also were moving to remote instruction.
- Arthur Culver, the superintendent of schools in East St. Louis, Ill., a 5,200-student district, said in a Facebook post on Friday that classes would begin remotely on Tuesday, citing “very high Covid-19 positivity rates over the winter break within our serving ZIP codes.” The district planned to remain remote through Jan. 14.
- The 35,000-student Newark schools announced last week that they would shift to remote learning for at least the next two weeks, returning to classrooms on Jan. 18. It is the largest of several New Jersey school systems moving to remote instruction, including Irvington, Cranford and South Orange-Maplewood (until Jan. 10) and Paterson (until Jan. 18).
Some school systems that are open for in-person instruction this week have nonetheless had to shut some school buildings for lack of staff, including eight schools in Columbus, Ohio, and 12 in Pittsburgh.
Hundreds of Sacramento-area students and teachers have COVID. Will schools remain open? -- Hundreds of public school students in Sacramento County have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent days. But so far, district officials say they have no plans to close campuses or return classes to distance learning. In addition to the students, hundreds of staff at local school districts have also returned positive COVID-19 test results as the omicron variant continues its surge through the region. The San Juan Unified School District reported 561 student cases and 223 staff cases in an update at noon Wednesday. That included 48 cases at Bella Vista High School and 35 at Rio Americano High School. Raj Rai, a district spokeswoman, said officials “don’t have any schools being considered for closure/distance learning at this time.” “We work closely with local health officials to monitor conditions within individual school communities,” Rai said. “If advised by local health officials, we would consider temporary closure or move to distance learning for an individual school community. We do not anticipate a return to distance learning for all schools unless required to do so by local or state health officials.” The Sacramento City Unified School District, which on Monday reported hundreds of students and staff had tested positive for the virus during the winter break, has no plans to implement remote learning or close campuses because of COVID-19, said district spokesman Al Goldberg.
COVID: Getting kids back to classrooms won’t be as easy as keeping them out - Thousands of kids stayed home from school Wednesday after COVID-19 tests provided over the holidays turned up infections across the state. But how and when those students — and many teachers — will be able to return is a much bigger question. California health officials recently adopted new federal guidance that shortened the recommended COVID-19 isolation and quarantine period from 10 days to five for people who had tested positive but are symptom-free and test negative after five days. Schools are expected to shift to that shorter timeline but haven’t yet. For now, students have a few options to return to school after testing positive for the virus. They can bring in a negative PCR test result, if they can get one, or complete a full 10-day quarantine or provide a doctor’s note to return to school, according to current state and local health guidelines. Some districts are allowing negative antigen tests — but not tests taken at home. Meanwhile, the state is struggling to get the promised millions of at-home rapid tests out to schools quickly enough. “I’ve been told there are delays caused by weather,” State Superintendent Tony Thurmond said at a news conference Wednesday. “We’re making efforts around the clock trying to get this backlog addressed.” San Jose Unified, for example, stopped distributing those tests Monday, and the district is unsure if and when it will get any more. San Francisco Unified just received a shipment of rapid tests late Tuesday from the state and is preparing to deliver them to each school to hand out to students. In a statement Wednesday, the labor union that represents teachers in the district said more than 620 San Francisco educators were out on Tuesday, “exacerbating an existing staffing crisis that puts the city’s students at a disadvantage.” Districts such as Oakland and Berkeley Unified did receive their at-home tests on time, allowing those districts to identify hundreds of positive student cases before their classes resumed Monday from winter break. To meet the increasing need for PCR tests, schools across the region are scrambling to increase testing sites and bring kids and teachers back to class promptly. Hundreds of kids tested for the virus at school-hosted sites across the region this week. Students exposed to someone with COVID-19 are required to be tested and may have to isolate from other students for a few days, depending on their test results and whether they are symptomatic.
Biden urges schools to remain open amid COVID-19 case surge, orders 20M antiviral pills - President Joe Biden addressed the COVID-19 case surge in the country before he spoke with his response team from the White House Tuesday afternoon. "We’re going to see, as you all been hearing, a continued rise in cases," he said from the White House. "But you can protect yourself," he continued. "Get vaccinated. Get boosted. There’s plenty of booster shots. Wear a mask when you’re in public." Biden said there are enough boosters shots for the whole nation. He said he anticipates the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will authorize 12 to 15-year-olds to get the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine booster later this week. The president also said that there’s no reason to think that the omicron variant is any worse for children and advocated for schools remaining open. "We know that our kids can be safe when in school," he continued. "That’s why I believe schools should stay open."
Chicago teachers vote to reject return to in-person learning as COVID-19 cases surge - On Tuesday night, Chicago teachers voted overwhelmingly not to return to in-person classes and to move all learning online in the third largest school district in the US. The action is part of a growing movement of educators throughout the country to demand the shutdown of schools as the COVID-19 pandemic surges out of control.The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) announced late Tuesday night that the vote to stop the reopening of schools after winter break passed by 73 percent.The CTU’s House of Delegates voted to hold the membership-wide ballot earlier on Tuesday. The CTU structured the language, however, to allow the rapid reopening of schools. The vote calls for no in-person work until January 18 or until the city’s COVID-19 infection rate falls below the threshold set by the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) last year, whichever comes first. Illinois is experiencing record-breaking numbers of COVID-19 infections, fueled by the spread of the Omicron variant, including a growing number of child infections. On December 30, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker advised hospitals to cancel non-emergency operations in order to free up space for a further increase in infections.The Democratic Party, which controls Chicago politics, has pushed aggressively for the reopening of schools. Prior to the vote on Tuesday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Commissioner of Public Health Dr. Allison Arwady spoke to the media to threaten and berate teachers for considering action to save lives. Lightfoot declared that teachers should not be in a position to “shut down a whole school system, for what?” On Tuesday night, following the vote, the CPS issued a statement announcing that classes would be cancelled and that there will be no remote learning. The CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has declared that teachers who do not report to school will not be paid, essentially declaring a lockout.
Lockout of Chicago teachers continues as child hospitalizations climb - The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) lockout of educators continued for the third day on Friday. Teachers remain defiant in their effort to prevent the pandemic from worsening, while the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is continuing its negotiations with district officials to reopen for in-person learning as soon as an agreement can be reached, or by January 18, whichever comes first. The city’s lockout of teachers has created a chaotic situation, angering many parents. Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot declared Friday evening that ongoing negotiations with the union “remain productive but must be concluded this weekend.” The district has announced that classes will again be canceled Monday, but that administrators are “dedicated to working day and night so we can get our students back to school next week, hopefully on Monday,” raising the possibility it will reopen schools with little notice at the start of next week should it reach a deal with the CTU. On Friday, parents and educators told the World Socialist Web Site that the lockout is preventing teachers from reporting their COVID-19 test results to their online CPS accounts. Thus, those who test positive are presently unable to be approved for telework due to illness and would therefore be required to report in person if classes resumed Monday, a possibility which is prompting growing outrage among both teachers and parents. The school district has attempted to lie, threaten and intimidate educators back into classrooms. Immediately after educators voted to teach remotely, city lawyers reportedly filed an unfair labor practices charge with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board in a bid to get the action declared illegal. On Thursday, Chicago Public Schools published a Facebook post attempting to break up the ranks of teachers protesting in-person learning. The post claimed that 1 in 10 teachers showed up to work on January 5, and 1 in 8 on January 6. After protests by educators, the post was deleted. Staffing levels in some schools are too low to allow the buildings to remain open. While teachers remained locked out of their school accounts and unable to conduct remote classes, CPS schools contacted parents Thursday night to announce that school buildings, which CPS had indicated would open at least in part, would be closed due to custodial and security staffing shortages. Parents are angry at CPS’ refusal to offer remote instruction during the lockout and at having to make important decisions about their families’ health with little or no information. A mother of two attending Inter-American Elementary, a school on the city’s North Side, spoke with the World Socialist Web Site. She said, “We shouldn’t be in this situation right now, but it is not the teachers’ fault. I wish we could stay remote. The kids should be getting instruction. We should be able to reach the teachers and they shouldn’t have locked them out.
Teachers in San Francisco and Oakland organize wildcat sickouts -Teachers in San Francisco and Oakland, California are organizing wildcat sickouts Thursday and Friday to save lives in the face of mass infections. The walkouts in California are only the latest in a growing wave of resistance by teachers to the resumption of in-person learning while the Omicron variant is producing record levels of infections. On Monday, teachers in Chicago voted to shift to distance learning, to which the Democratic administration of Mayor Lori Lightfoot responded with a lockout of teachers. Teachers in Oakland and San Francisco returned from break on Monday to record infections and soaring hospitalizations from the rapidly spreading Omicron variant. Faced with district indifference to student infections and inaction by the teacher unions, teachers have started taking matters into their own hands. Several hundred San Francisco teachers signed an online petition calling for walkouts on Thursday in order to demand a pause to in-person instruction, as well as N95 masks and paid COVID leave. The walkouts occurred Thursday after mass illness already disrupted instruction. Six hundred teachers were out sick in San Francisco on Tuesday, but rather than close school sites to protect students, the district sent central office staff in as substitute teachers. In Oakland, teachers have raised similar demands, adding opposition to budget cuts, and are planning a walkout on Friday. The districts together serve just over 90,000 students. Like most of the country, infections in California have reached unprecedented heights. Over the past week, daily new cases have nearly tripled in San Francisco and quadrupled in Alameda County, where Oakland is located, shattering previous records. Test positivity has also skyrocketed from less than 2 percent a month ago to 17 percent, meaning that many cases are going undetected. Despite the media fiction that the Omicron variant is “mild,” hospitalizations also doubled in both counties over the past week, and the statewide pediatric hospitalization rate is at an all-time high, nearly double last year’s peak. The situation is so bad that in nearby West Contra Costa School District (32,000 students), the superintendent announced Wednesday that in-person instruction would halt for a long four-day weekend to curb the large number of infections brought back from the holidays. In the face of the Omicron crisis, the United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) and Oakland Education Association (OEA) have tried to limit teachers to begging the districts to “bargain in good faith.” However, the political establishment has made it absolutely clear that, as far as it is concerned, there is nothing to negotiate about—It is determined to reopen schools across the country, no matter the cost in infections and deaths, as a critical element in its drive to keep parents on the job producing record profits for Wall Street. Both Democratic Party politicians and the corporate media have responded to the actions by teachers with a vicious smear campaign. The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, ran an editorial yesterday demanding that the Democrats take action to halt the growing wave of teacher resistance. The head of the White House COVID-19 response team, Jeffrey Zients, recently declared, “The President couldn't be clearer—schools in this country should remain open.” As part of a broader policy of mass infection, the Biden administration has reduced isolation time for those infected with COVID, and sought to reduce the daily reporting of new cases.
Philadelphia teachers demand switch to virtual learning as COVID-19 cases skyrocket -On Tuesday, the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) was forced to close 92 schools, switching to virtual instruction for the rest of the week due to COVID-19 outbreaks that have caused massive staff shortages. In Pittsburgh, the school district has been forced to close 26 schools this week. More than 1,000 teachers in Philadelphia have either become infected with COVID-19 or have been exposed to someone who is infected and must self-isolate. Since the start of the year, the district has been short more than 2,000 teachers and other staff members as many have left the profession and positions remain unfilled. Despite the mass levels of infection, Philadelphia’s health secretary, appointed by Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney, continues to call for schools to remain in-person. On Wednesday, Dr. Cheryl Bettigole said that there was no evidence throughout the pandemic that school closures decrease transmission. Echoing lies used by politicians to force open schools, she falsely claimed, “When we do see cases in schools, the majority of those cases are not coming from in-school transmission. They are coming from at-home settings, from activities outside of school.” Amid growing demands by Philadelphia teachers for a shift to virtual learning, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) reiterated that it is committed to working out a plan to continue in-person learning despite the explosion of COVID-19 cases in the city and throughout the region. Demonstrating its role in seeking to keep schools open in the face of the pandemic, the PFT merely criticized the school board for not accepting the union’s proposal for a seven-day pause to give them time to convince their members to return to unsafe buildings. In a Facebook and Twitter post, the PFT wrote, “Instead of heeding our call for a 7-day pause on in-person learning to effectively plan for adequate mitigation measures, the District is undertaking a piecemeal plan that leaves parents and staff alike scrambling to make plans for tomorrow morning.”
Texas teacher charged with allegedly putting COVID-19 positive son in trunk - A Texas teacher has been charged with child endangerment after she allegedly placed her COVID-19-positive son in the trunk of her car, KPRC 2 Houston reported. The Harris County District Attorney’s Office confirmed that the teacher, Sarah Beam, was charged after her son was found in the trunk of her car while they were at a COVID-19 testing site run by a Texas school district, the news outlet reported. She allegedly placed her son in the trunk of her car to avoid being exposed to the teen, who she told authorities had COVID-19. She allegedly told officials that the two were there to do additional testing for her son. Officials first became aware of the incident after a noise coming from the trunk was heard by a witness, and the trunk was later unhatched by the Texas teacher, KPRC 2 Houston reported. The witness then contacted police after Beam was reportedly told that the teen needed to be removed from the trunk and placed in the back seat, or else she would not receive a COVID-19 test. The teen later left the trunk and entered the back seat, according to surveillance footage that officials were able to access, the news outlet noted. The police department for Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District said a warrant for her arrest has been issued, KPRC 2 Houston reported. She is on administrative leave by the school district. It was not immediately clear if Beam had a lawyer representing her. The Hill has reached out to the school district, the school district’s police and Harris County District Attorney’s Office for comment.
Michigan State requiring vaccination or negative test to attend campus events - Michigan State University will now require attendees to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test to attend campus events. In a statement on Sunday, the university said attendees who are 12 years and older are required to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test taken within 72 hours of the event. Attendees who are 17 years of age and under with an adult won’t be required to show photo identification. "Attendees are encouraged to arrive early to allow additional time for verification and entry. No testing opportunities will be available for event attendees on site. Prior to arrival, guests should have their negative COVID-19 results completed and in hand," the school said in a statement. The university will also still implement its mask mandate for all indoor events and spaces. The new vaccine-or-test policy will apply to the school’s winter athletic events, including men’s and women’s basketball, hockey, wrestling, and gymnastics. It also applies to ticketed arts and music events on campus through the spring semester. The first scheduled events under the new policy will be a performance of Cats on Jan. 4 and the men’s basketball game against Nebraska on Jan. 5. The U.S. is currently dealing with a winter surge of COVID-19 infections as the omicron variant has taken hold across the nation. Michigan shattered its previous single-day record for COVID cases this past week, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The end of student loans - When it comes to student loans, President Biden is acting like Lucy removing the football just as naïve Charlie Brown is persuaded to kick it. Every time the president sets a new date to resume student payments, he takes it away. Student borrowers wonder when payments will start again and if they do, where they will find the money they long since spent. Delaying payments is not a policy; it is the absence of a policy. But it does make almost certain that student loans will go unpaid. A loan without discipline, without enforced rules, is just silly. The student loan program always was. It was lending to 17-year-old kids without any credit checks based on a hope and a prayer that the kids would find a way to repay it in the future without having any idea what principal and interest, tenors and defaults really mean. Now, the administration needs to salvage what it can. Just like it had to retreat to the airport in Kabul, it has to accept loan forgiveness. Let’s not forget, he campaigned on forgiving “a minimum of $10,000/person of federal student loans.” If the administration doesn’t accept this reality, it may suffer widespread defaults on the new repayment date on May 1. Of course, it could ramp up enforcement by its debt collectors. But where will it put all the cars they seize from the delinquent student borrowers? Meanwhile, Vice President Harris is calling for new ideas around student loans, for thinking out of the box. When she was running for president, Harris suggested loan forgiveness for those borrowers who started businesses in disadvantaged areas. Its emphasis on entrepreneurship was commendable but it was hardly a comprehensive solution. It had some similarities to the program of public service forgiveness where people choose careers not on their desire or ability but as a means to avoid debt. These prescriptions try to ease students out of a problem they never should have had in the first place and place them in another if they don’t like being a teacher or government lawyer. But the vice president is right about thinking out of the box. The good news is that it is possible to remove the burden on students and save the higher-education system. For instance, how about no longer charging students interest but instead investing their principal payments to earn the return. Or why not have employers match the student debt payments of their workers like they do for social security payroll deductions. After all, they directly benefit from what the students learn in college. And let’s have the government start treating families like adults by sending them the money their children borrow rather than skipping over them to send it to the colleges like they do now. If the students and families are mature enough to repay the debt, aren’t they mature enough to receive the money in the first place? If the government put the money into tax-advantaged 529 accounts, it might also encourage people to save. With a portion of this money families could even hire counsel to negotiate tuition with colleges. Just as unions fight for increased wages, families could fight to decrease college costs. Today, all of these commonsensical ideas lie scattered outside the box. But none of them are new. Like Lego pieces, they could become building blocks to make a shiny new way to finance college.
Choline during pregnancy impacts children’s sustained attention - -- Seven-year-old children performed better on a challenging task requiring sustained attention if their mothers consumed twice the recommended amount of choline during their pregnancy, a new Cornell study has found. The study, which compared these children with those whose mothers had consumed the recommended amount of choline, suggests that the recommended choline intake for expectant mothers does not fully meet the needs of the fetal brain. “Our findings suggest population-wide benefits of adding choline to a standard prenatal vitamin regimen,” said Barbara Strupp, professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences (DNS) and Department of Psychology, and co-senior author of the study, “Prenatal Choline Supplementation Improves Child Sustained Attention: A Seven-Year Follow-Up of a Randomized Controlled Feeding Trial,” published Dec. 28 in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Choline – found in egg yolks, lean red meat, fish, poultry, legumes, nuts and cruciferous vegetables – is absent from most prenatal vitamins, and more than 90% of expectant mothers consume less than the recommended amount. Several decades of research using rodent models has shown that adding extra choline to the maternal diet produces long term cognitive benefits for the offspring. In addition to improving offspring attention and memory throughout life, maternal choline supplementation in rodents has proven to be neuroprotective for the offspring by mitigating the cognitive adversities caused by prenatal stress, fetal alcohol exposure, autism, epilepsy, Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease. In the Cornell study, all women consumed a prepared diet with a specified amount of choline throughout the third trimester of pregnancy. One half of these women consumed 480 mg choline per day, which slightly exceeds the recommended adequate intake (AI) level of 450 mg/day. The other half consumed a total intake of 930 mg choline per day, approximately double the AI level. When tested at 7 years of age, the children of women in the 480 mg/day group showed a decline in accuracy from the beginning to the end of a sustained attention task, while those from the 930 mg/day group maintained a high level of accuracy throughout the task. These findings parallel the effects of maternal choline supplementation and deprivation in rodents, using a closely analogous sustained attention task. “By demonstrating that maternal choline supplementation in humans produces offspring attentional benefits that are similar to those seen in animals,” Strupp said, “our findings suggest that the full range of cognitive and neuroprotective benefits demonstrated in rodents may also be seen in humans.”
Women 32% more likely to die after operation by male surgeon, study reveals - Women who are operated on by a male surgeon are much more likely to die, experience complications and be readmitted to hospital than when a woman performs the procedure, research reveals. Women are 15% more liable to suffer a bad outcome, and 32% more likely to die, when a man rather than a woman carries out the surgery, according to a study of 1.3 million patients. The findings have sparked a debate about the fact that surgery in the UK remains a hugely male-dominated area of medicine and claims that “implicit sex biases” among male surgeons may help explain why women are at such greater risk when they have an operation. “In our 1.3 million patient sample involving nearly 3,000 surgeons we found that female patients treated by male surgeons had 15% greater odds of worse outcomes than female patients treated by female surgeons,” said Dr Angela Jerath, an associate professor and clinical epidemiologist at the University of Toronto in Canada and a co-author of the findings. “This result has real-world medical consequences for female patients and manifests itself in more complications, readmissions to hospital and death for females compared with males. “We have demonstrated in our paper that we are failing some female patients and that some are unnecessarily falling through the cracks with adverse, and sometimes fatal, consequences.” The findings have been published in the medical journal JAMA Surgery.
Mannequin study shows masks can prevent virus transmission - A new study says wearing a face mask is effective at preventing airborne transmission of the novel coronavirus, particularly so when a person infected with the deadly virus puts on one. A group of researchers from the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Tokyo conducted experiments where they gave mannequins mock artificial respiratory systems and had them wear different types of masks. A special chamber was developed to simulate airborne transmission of the actual novel coronavirus and measure the amount of infectious droplets, which are produced by humans breathing and coughing, that pass through the mask a mannequin is wearing. The study is significant because amid the pandemic, especially at its earliest stages, there was a lack of consensus and evidence on whether masks are effective for protecting against airborne transmission of the virus. In the paper, researchers said, “We found that cotton masks, surgical masks, and N95 masks all have a protective effect with respect to the transmission of infective droplets and aerosols” of the novel coronavirus, and that “the protective efficiency was higher when masks were worn by a virus spreader.” In the experiment, researchers placed two mannequin heads near one another facing each other. One was labeled as a COVID-19 patient and was set up to emit a mist through its mouth, mimicking a virus spreader exhaling. The other, a “non-patient” and otherwise healthy mannequin, was connected to an artificial ventilator and equipment that let researchers detect how much of the virus it would inhale. A gelatin film was placed along the respiratory tract, and the amount of virus attached to it was measured. The researchers tested a range of scenarios with three types of face masks placed on the mannequins: an N95 mask, a surgical mask and a cotton cloth mask. When the infected mannequin wore a surgical or cotton mask, and the healthy mannequin did not wear a mask, it reduced the amount of the virus that the healthy mannequin inhaled to 20 to 40 percent of the amount that the healthy mannequin inhaled with no mask. When the infected mannequin wore an N95 mask, a type of mask that is not expected to be worn by a COVID-19 patient, the amount of the virus that the healthy mannequin inhaled was nearly zero percent. When the infected mannequin did not wear a mask and the healthy mannequin wore a surgical mask, it reduced the amount of the virus that the healthy mannequin inhaled to 50 percent of the amount of virus it inhaled with no mask. The amount was reduced to 60 to 80 percent with a cotton mask, while it was reduced to 10 to 20 percent with an N95 mask. When both mannequins wore a cotton mask, the amount of inhaled virus dropped to 30 percent of the amount inhaled when neither wore masks. When they both donned a surgical mask, the figure dropped further, to the range of 20 to 30 percent. But an N95 mask needs to fit the wearer’s face perfectly to work most effectively. When the mannequins did not wear N95 masks correctly, they had about the same result as they would wearing a surgical mask. In each instance, including when they both wore masks, the researchers found genes of the virus made their way into the respiratory tract of the healthy mannequin. But they said more research is needed to determine whether those genes would necessarily cause infection. “It is important for everybody to wear a mask to prevent the spread of the pandemic,” said Kawaoka.
SARS-CoV-2 infection and immunity in pregnancy and fetal development - COVID-19 transmission from infected pregnant mothers to fetuses has been documented, albeit infrequently. COVID-19 instances in children have been recorded, with fatal results. Long COVID, a severe infection outcome in which symptoms last for five weeks or longer after an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection, has been described in children in the same way it has been in adults. Children have also been diagnosed with pediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome (PIMS-TS), which has been linked to COVID-19. Compared to older children and adults, children under the age of 5 with mild to moderate COVID-19 have more SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA in their nasopharynx, which could affect transmission.Infection with SARS-CoV-2 causes fetal discomfort as well as significant morbidity and death in infants. There is insufficient evidence indicating negative impacts on future generations resulting from persons who tested positive for COVID-19 during pregnancy. However, the findings of multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) and other complications suggest that more research is needed to fully understand the full range of COVID-19 effects in children, in utero development, and on SARS-CoV-2 cellular trafficking mediated by exosomes during the in utero and perinatal developmental stages. Although it is apparent that SARS-CoV-2 infection triggers an immune response in pregnant women, the effects on fetal immune responses are still a hot topic of discussion. A recent study looked into 205 babies born to COVID-19-positive mothers. While only 10% of newborns tested positive for COVID-19, the majority of SARS-CoV-2-infected infants produced immunoglobulin G and M (IgG, IgM) antibodies. No viral RNA was found in the placentas of COVID-19 positive pregnant women in another study. Furthermore, there appear to be no verified examples of SARS-CoV-2 infection transmitted from mothers to their fetuses during pregnancy. Although severe sickness has been documented in infants under the age of one year, such cases have had underlying comorbidities established. These data show that vertical infection is uncommon and that infants born to COVID-19-positive women have innate passive immunity.
Melatonin found to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 entry into mice brains - Scientists from France have recently unveiled the utility of melatonin and melatonin-derived medicines in reducing brain entry of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and subsequently preventing long-term neurological consequences of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The study is currently available on the bioRxiv* preprint server, whilst the article undergoes peer review. The efficacy of melatonin (low-dose and high-dose) and two clinically-approved melatonin-derived medicines (agomelatine and ramelteon) was tested in SARS-CoV-2-infected mice. The clinical evaluation indicated a significant improvement in COVID-19 related signs and symptoms (body weight, activity, fatigue, eye closure, and respiration) in melatonin-treated mice compared to untreated mice. A similar tendency was observed in mice treated with melatonin-derived medicines. The most persistent benefits were observed in mice treated with high-dose melatonin. No significant effect of applied treatments was observed on the lung viral load. However, high-dose melatonin was found to significantly reduce the brain viral load. Other tested drugs also seemed to reduce the brain viral load. The SARS-CoV-2 infection caused an induction in brain inflammation. The treatment with high-dose melatonin appeared to reduce the brain levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines and the markers of infiltrating macrophages. Other treatments failed to significantly diminish brain inflammation. In the mouse brain, SARS-CoV-2 infection significantly disrupted small vessels by inducing viral main protease-mediated apoptosis of endothelial cells. The treatments with high-dose melatonin and melatonin-derived medicines significantly prevented SARS-CoV-2-induced damages to small vessels and helped maintain overall brain vascular density. Mechanistically, melatonin binding to ACE2 was found to cause conformational changes in the ACE2 interface, leading to altered interaction between spike RBD and ACE2. The study identifies melatonin as a potent inhibitor of SARS-CoV-2 entry into the brain. Melatonin binding to the allosteric binding site of ACE2 induces conformational changes in the receptor interface, which in turn prevents the interaction between spike RBD and human ACE2.
Did Omicron Come From Mice? Chinese Scientists Believe So.- Researchers in China have gathered evidence that the super infectious Omicron variant may have originated through a chance encounter with mice. Their work has some caveats, but it provides an interesting alternative to the prevailing theory that the variant evolved in a chronically sick person with a weak immune system. Their study was published in the Journal of Genetics and Genomics on Christmas Eve, but a free-to-read draft of the paper can be found on the pre-pint server bioRxiv. The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant was first reported in South Africa on November 24, 2021. The variant is distinctly strange as it contains 45 mutations, some of which appear to make it more resistant to vaccines and more infectious compared to other variants. Most curiously, many of these mutations have not been seen before in other variants. In the evolutionary tree of SARS-CoV-2 variants, Omicron sticks out like a sore thumb. To explain this oddity, a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing argues that this array of mutations differs from the viruses that evolved in human patients, but closely resembled the mutations associated with virus evolution in mouse cells. Furthermore, they say that the mutations show that the virus has adapted to infecting mouse cells. This, they believe, suggests that the virus may have hopped over to mice from humans where it accumulated these unusual mutations before jumping back into humans. “Our results suggest that the progenitor of Omicron jumped from humans to mice, rapidly accumulated mutations conducive to infecting that host, then jumped back into humans, indicating an inter-species evolutionary trajectory for the Omicron outbreak,” the study authors write in their paper.
Boosters Reduce Risk of Omicron Household Transmission (Reuters) - The odds that vaccinated people will catch the virus if a household member becomes infected are nearly three to four times higher with Omicron than with Delta, but booster doses reduce that risk, new findings suggest. Researchers analyzed transmission data collected from nearly 12,000 infected households in Denmark, including 2,225 households with an Omicron infection. Overall, there were 6,397 secondary infections in the week after the first infection in the house. After accounting for other risk factors, the rate of person-to-person spread of the virus to fully vaccinated people was roughly 2.6 times higher in Omicron households than in Delta households, the researchers reported on medRxiv ahead of peer review. Booster-vaccinated people were nearly 3.7 times more likely to get infected in the Omicron households than in the Delta households, they found. Looking only at Omicron households, however, booster-vaccinated people were 56% less likely to become infected compared to vaccinated people who had not received a booster. And overall, when booster-vaccinated people were the ones who first brought home the virus, they were less likely than unvaccinated and vaccinated-but-not-boosted people to pass it to others.
Omicron now 95% of new COVID-19 infections in U.S., CDC estimates - The Omicron variant made up around 95.4% of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an updated estimate published on Tuesday. Only two regions of the U.S. — New England and part of the Midwest — have yet to reach 90% locally. The Delta variant, which was dominant up until a few weeks ago, makes up nearly all the other cases.Earlier federal estimates showed Omicron rapidly spreading, but with labs in several states still working on sequencing their first outbreaks of the variant, the precise numbers were hard to pin down. However, in the weeks since, CDC officials have said the agency has worked to refine its projections of the variant's growth as more labs have sequenced Omicron cases. The CDCcollects data from commercial and local public health laboratories, as well as from its own contractors, to track variants in the country and produce its "Nowcast" estimates. For consumers, standard COVID test results don't distinguish between Omicron, Delta or other variants, but labs are able to sequence the genome of the virus to identify the strain that caused a positive test.The new estimates come as growing data on Omicron's spread in the U.S. and abroad has enabled researchers to better predict the course of the current wave fueled by the variant.In a new round of forecasts released this week from the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub, which compiles data from more than a dozen leading research organizations, most models chart a "sharp and fast" increase in cases expected to peak "before the end of January 2022" in every state. The pace of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths are expected to begin to slow through March, but "are projected to remain elevated" compared to the low levels seen in June last year. Despite growing evidence of Omicron's lower individual risk of severe illness, the models suggest the strain remains dangerous enough that the current wave will lead tohospitalization rates topping the Delta variant's worst days.
Hospitalizations less common from omicron, U.S. study finds — The omicron variant is resulting in significantly less severe patient outcomes than the delta variant, according to Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine researchers who’ve released the first U.S. study comparing the disease severity of the two variants. The researchers compared the rates of severe outcomes among more than 14,000 people who contracted COVID-19 between Dec. 15 and Dec. 24 to outcomes from the fall period when the delta variant accounted for more than 99% of U.S. COVID-19 cases. “We found that as omicron was rising, the proportion of adverse outcomes went down,” said Dr. Pamela Davis, dean emerita and Arline and Curtis Garvin Research Professor. “There's substantial difference in the rate of hospitalization, ER visits, mechanical ventilation and ICU admissions.” The risk of hospitalization in the December period was less than half of what was observed during the fall, prior to the emergence of omicron. There was an even greater drop in more serious outcomes — ICU risk was one-third of that for the fall period, and the risk of mechanical ventilation was just one-sixth. Davis expects the risk of severe outcomes will fall even further as omicron overtakes delta in prevalence. Because sequencing data shows the delta variant was still circulating in the December period the researchers studied, they believe it was responsible for many severe outcomes. The authors caution that even though they have associated omicron with milder disease severity in the U.S., it remains possible that the sheer number of cases could lead to more strain on hospitals. “Because of omicron’s increased transmissibility, the overall number of ER visits, hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and mechanical ventilator patients may still be greater with the omicron variant than the delta variant,” they wrote in their Jan. 2 preprint paper.
Omicron is less severe because it does not infiltrate the lungs -Scientists are using the word “milder” with much trepidation to describe the illness conferred by the Omicron variant of SARS-Cov-2. It is widely accepted that even if the variant is milder, the sheer number of people it infects might lead to more hospitalisations overall, with healthcare workers having to isolate due to testing positive. Real-world data is still coming in about whether or not this variant does indeed cause a milder illness and carries a lower risk of hospitalisation, but early laboratory data on lung tissue in mice and hamsters may hold some of the answers. We already know that the Omicron variant harbours mutations that make it more transmissible. A team of researchers at Hong Kong University’s faculty of medicine found Omicron replicates 70 times faster than Delta in human airways. The study, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, showed that when compared with both Delta and the original coronavirus, the Omicron variant was much quicker at getting into the bronchus or tubes that run through the upper airways and lungs but much slower at infiltrating the lung tissue itself. According to the researchers, the Omicron variant replicated less efficiently, more than 10 times lower, once inside the human lung tissue than the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, which may suggest lower severity of disease. It is hypothesised that serious illness from COVID-19 occurs once the virus gets into the lungs and spreads to other parts of the body from there, if it can be contained in the upper airways, the mouth, nose, etc, there is much less chance of severe disease. Many of the COVID-19 hospitalisations have occurred not only because of the illness the virus causes but also because of the unpredictable nature by which our immune systems respond to the virus. In some cases, the immune system is unable to switch off and attacks not only the cells infected by the virus but the healthy cells, as well. Chan noted that a highly contagious virus like Omicron may cause more severe disease and death simply by spreading much faster, even though the associated lung infection appears not as bad. A team studying the Omicron variant in Glasgow think they have found the answer as to why this variant is unable to infect the lung cells as much as it does the upper airways. They found an essential protein found on lung cells called TMPRSS2, which usually helped previous SARS-COV-2 variants to gain entry into the lung cells themselves bound less strongly to Omicron, meaning it was more difficult for this variant to get inside and infect lung cells. The virus enters the cells lining the nose, throat and upper airways in a different way, so although it was found in high quantities in these parts of the airways, the concentration of the virus was lower in lung tissue. This might also partly explain why the Omicron variant is so transmissible, if it is concentrated in high quantities in the upper airways, viruses are more likely to be coughed, sneezed or breathed out from these parts of the airways and infect other people. A combined American and Japanese study, which is still under peer review, looked at the effects of the Omicron variant in mice and hamsters. These rodents had the same ACE2 receptors that humans have and what the coronovairus binds to in order to enter and infect cells. The study found the rodents that were infected with Omicron had less lung damage, lost less weight and were less likely to die than those infected with Delta.
Omicron infections no less severe than delta, early study suggests --Some experts are warning against writing off the omicron variant as milder than other variants, and preliminary findings from the U.K. suggest it appears no less severe than delta.An Imperial College London study assessed data from the U.K. Health Security Agency and U.K. health service for all PCR-confirmed COVID-19 infections in the area from Nov. 29-Dec. 11. The data included only 24 hospitalizations of patients suspected of having the omicron variant and has not been peer reviewed.The study found hospitalization and asymptomatic infection indicators were not significantly associated with omicron, suggesting limited changes in severity compared with delta. The study authors also estimate the risk of COVID-19 reinfection with the omicron variant is 5.4 times higher than that of delta, suggesting low remaining levels of immunity from previous infection."This study provides further evidence of the very substantial extent to which omicron can evade prior immunity given by both infection or vaccination," Dr. Neil Ferguson, a professor and epidemiologist at Imperial College London, said in a Dec. 17 statement. "This level of immune evasion means that omicron poses a major, imminent threat to public health." Recently, many health officials — including Soumya Swaminathan, MD, chief scientist for WHO, and former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, — have said it's still too early to tell if the omicron variant is milder than other strains, The Hill reported Dec. 20.
Study shows fully vaccinated individuals preserve cross-neutralizing memory B-cells against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant --B cells create antibodies to protect against viruses such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). But SARS-CoV-2 is evolving with more mutations that make it harder for antibodies to identify — making the role of memory B cells that produce broader reactivity even more valuable.New research recently published in the bioRxiv* preprint server suggests memory B cells play an essential role in the increased protection against variants of concern after vaccination. The study found increases in resting memory B cell subsets showed strong cross-reactivity against several variants, including Omicron.In this study, the researchers studied the capabilities of vaccine-induced neutralizing antibodies over time. Their focus was neutralizing antibodies identifying and binding to the receptor-binding domain as it contains many epitopes. Receptor binding domain proteins were created using several SARS-CoV-2 strains including the original one discovered in Wuhan, Beta, and Delta.Against the Wuhan strain, two doses of the mRNA vaccine produced robust IgG antibody titers with over a 2000-fold increase one month after vaccination. Additionally, IgA titers rose 44-folds following vaccination. Given the greater boost in IgG antibody levels, the researchers suggest IgG antibodies play a significant role in neutralization.There was a reduction in vaccine-induced IgG titers against Beta and Delta. The vaccines produced a 2.4-2.7 fold for Beta and 1.1-fold for Delta. Neutralizing antibodies had a challenging time against variants with mutations that allow them to escape detection. Nevertheless, IgG antibodies were modestly successful in binding to the variants’ receptor binding domain.Omicron drastically reduced the number of IgG antibodies that could bind to its receptor-binding domain. The decline in neutralization against Omicron persisted over time, suggesting the mutations on Omicron outweighed maturing neutralizing responses.But to the researcher’s surprise, resting memory B cells produced similar neutralizing activities to the Beta and Omicron variants. About 59% produced antibodies with cross-neutralization against Beta and 27% produced cross-neutralization against Omicron.
Omicron COVID-19 variant evades immunity better than Delta, Danish study finds - The Omicron COVID-19 variant is better at circumventing vaccinated peoples' immunity than the Delta variant, according to a Danish study published last week, helping explain why Omicron is spreading more rapidly. Since the discovery of the heavily mutated Omicron variant in November, scientists have been racing to find out whether it causes less serious disease and why it appears more contagious than the previously dominating Delta variant. A virus can be more transmissible due to a number of reasons, such as the time it lingers in the air, its ability to latch onto cells, or its evasion of the body's immune system. Investigating nearly 12,000 Danish households in mid-December, the scientists found that Omicron was 2.7 to 3.7 times more infectious than the Delta variant among vaccinated Danes. The study, conducted by researchers at University of Copenhagen, Statistics Denmark and Statens Serum Institut (SSI), suggests the virus is mainly spreading more rapidly because it is better at evading immunity obtained from vaccines. "Our findings confirm that the rapid spread of the Omicron (variant) primarily can be ascribed to the immune evasiveness rather than an inherent increase in the basic transmissibility," the researchers said. The study has yet to be peer-reviewed. Seventy-eight per cent of Danes have been fully vaccinated, while nearly 48 per cent of those have received a third booster shot. More than eight out of 10 Danes have received Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine. The study also found that booster-vaccinated people are less likely to transmit the virus, regardless of the variant, than the unvaccinated.
New report on 1.23 million breakthrough symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections by vaccine --Several vaccines have been developed against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to curb the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. As of December 28, 2021, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have reported at least 77.6% of the U.S. population over the age of five have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccineA new research letter published in JAMA Network Open evaluates whether the estimated vaccine effectiveness changes against infection over time in an effort to help inform public health policy and clinical practices.The results indicated that out of the 1,237,097 individuals included in the study, 59.2% were women, 40.7% were men, and 0.1% were unknown. The study also involved diverse groups that included Asians, Black or African Americans, White, Hispanic, Alaska Natives, Pacific Islanders, and American Indian individuals. Of the vaccinated individuals, 27.1% received the BNT162b2 vaccine, 16.8% received the mRNA-1273 vaccine, and 4% received the JNJ-78436735 vaccine. The results reported that individuals who received the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccines had the lowest incidence rate, while unvaccinated individuals had the highest. The unvaccinated individuals were found to have 412%, 287%, and 159% more infections as compared to those who had received the mRNA1273, BNT162b2, or JNJ-78436735 vaccines, respectively.
Factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infection in fully vaccinated individuals --In a recent study posted to the medRxiv* pre-print server, researchers conducted a retrospective case-control exploratory research to determine the demographic and clinical risk factors associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) breakthrough infections and their severity in fully vaccinated individuals.Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines effectively reduce SARS-CoV-2 infection-related hospitalizations and deaths and also show efficacy against different variants of SARS-CoV-2. However, many cases of breakthrough infections have been reported in fully vaccinated individuals. The factors compromising vaccine effectiveness and leading to breakthrough infections are still unknown and should be determined to develop an effective vaccination strategy against the new SARS-CoV-2 variants.The present study used the data of 1,26,586 residents of the Canton of Basel-City, who were fully vaccinated with any approved SARS-CoV-2 vaccine between 28 December 2020 to 25 December 2021. The study aimed to identify the risk factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infections and severity in individuals who had received both doses of vaccine. The researchers also compared the patient characteristics between breakthrough infections by Alpha and Delta variants. By the end of the study period, 1,26,586 individuals were fully vaccinated against SARS-COV-2 with either BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech), mRNA-1273 (Moderna), or Ad26.COV2.S (Janssen) vaccine, among which breakthrough infection was found in 492 individuals.The analysis of patient characteristics showed that the median age of patients was 45 years (ranging between 32 – 64 years) and females (52.6%) comparatively had slightly more breakthrough infections than males. About 99.2% of the immunized population was vaccinated with mRNA-1273 (Moderna) or BNT162b2 mRNA (Pfizer/BioNTech). Among the people with breakthrough infections, 26/492 (5.3%) suffered asymptomatic disease and 452/492 (91.9%) had a mild illness. The patients requiring hospitalization were very few (18/492; 2.8%) and were generally older in comparison to those who did not require hospitalization. The patients with moderate or severe illness displayed high predisposing risk factors as compared to those with mild or asymptomatic breakthrough infection.
Commentary: Why Omicron is breaking through populations that are triple-vaccinated - When the Omicron variant first emerged in South Africa in November 2021, there was a lot of alarm at the exponential spread of the infection. This phenomenal speed of spread exceeds what we saw with previous variants. This trend has been mirrored elsewhere in the world, including the UK where the number of infections was doubling every two days in early December. What caused further concern was that this rapid spread was occurring in a highly vaccinated (and therefore theoretically highly immune) population. Was our vaccine protection failing? On the surface, it appeared that the vaccines were not working. But this depends on how vaccine protection is defined. First, does the vaccine protect against infection? There is now ample evidence that shows the vaccines are not very effective at stopping a vaccinated person from getting infected or from spreading infection. This was graphically illustrated by a superspreading event that took place in the Faroe Islands where 21 out of 33 triple-vaccinated healthcare workers who attended a private gathering caught Omicron. This was also despite the fact that several had done a PCR or lateral flow test in the 36 hours before the event. Some – especially anti-vaxxers – might take this as proof that vaccines don’t work. However, this is not unexpected. Even against the other variants, such as Delta, it is known that the vaccines don’t provide “sterilising immunity”, that is, totally preventing infection. Nobody has claimed that the COVID-19 vaccines provide sterilising immunity and it may be an unachievable goal. At best, they offer weak protection against infection. Nonetheless, this weak protection may help slow the spread of infection. The vaccines do, however, provide excellent protection of a different kind. So far, the vaccines have proven to be very good at preventing severe disease. This protection is just as important, if not more so, as they keep the vast majority of infected people out of hospital and from dying. Against the Delta variant, vaccine protection against severe disease and death from COVID-19 was over 90 per cent with relatively little waning of protection over at least five months after two doses.
How Effective Are the Current COVID-19 Vaccines Against the Omicron Variant? - A recent study by researchers at the University of Toronto and other institutions provides us with a clear picture of the effectiveness of the current COVID-19 vaccines against both the Omicron and Delta variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The object of the study was to estimate vaccine effectiveness or VE against infections caused by both Delta and Omicron variants. The authors looked at data from the Province of Ontario in Canada (Canada's most populous province) and estimated the effectiveness of the vaccine against infection irrespective of symptoms and severity caused by the Delta and Omicron variants between November 22 the day when the first case of Omicron was identified in Ontario and December 19, 2021. Individuals with at least 2 COVID-19 vaccine doses with at least one dose being an mRNA vaccine were included and the effectiveness over time of the two or three doses was estimated using multivariable logistic regression which establishes the relationship between a dependent variable (the outcome of interest) and more than one independent variable. At the time of the study, 88 percent of Ontarians aged 12 and older had received two doses of COVID-19 vaccine. Long-term care residents were excluded from the study as were individuals who had received only 1 dose of COVID-19 vaccine or who had received their second dose 7 days or less prior to being tested as well as individuals who had received two doses of the AstraZeneca or Johnson& Johnson vaccines. It is also important to note that Ontario began to roll out its third dose (i.e. booster) program in August 2021 primarily to residents of long-term care and retirement homes with individuals 70 years and older qualifying on November 6 followed by individuals aged 50 years and older on December 13 and individuals aged 18 and older on December 18. The final data base used by the researchers included 9,201 Delta positive cases and 3,442 Omicron positive cases with Omicron cases being more common among younger males (mean age of 34.9 years compared to 45.0 years) and were less likely to have comorbidities. After 2 doses of COVID-19 vaccines (with at least one being an mRNA vaccine), the vaccine effectiveness against the Delta variant waned as follows:
- 84% - 7 to 59 days after second dose
- 71% - greater than or equal to 240 days after second dose
After the third dose, the vaccine effectiveness rose to 93 percent 7 days or longer after receiving an mRNA vaccine.After two doses of COVID-19 vaccines, the vaccine effectiveness against the Omicron variant was as follows:
- 38 percent - 120 to 179 days after the second dose
- 42 percent - 180 to 239 days after the second dose
After the third dose, the vaccine effectiveness against Omicron was only 37 percent 7 days or longer after receiving an mRNA vaccine.This finding is similar to the findings of a study in Denmark where the vaccine effectiveness against Omicron was only 55.2 percent in the first 30 days after receiving a third dose and waned quickly.In closing, here is the authors' conclusion "Two doses of COVID-19 vaccines are unlikely to protect against Omicron infection. While VE against Omicron infection is substantially lower than against Delta infection, a third dose of mRNA vaccine affords some level of protection against Omicron infection in the immediate term. However, the duration of this protection and effectiveness against severe disease are uncertain. Additional tools beyond the currently available vaccines, such as public health measures, antivirals, and updated vaccines, are likely needed to protect against Omicron infection."
Characteristics and Clinical Outcomes of Children and Adolescents Aged <18 Years Hospitalized with COVID-19 — Six Hospitals, United States, July–August 2021 – CDC -In this study of six U.S. hospitals during July–August, 2021, approximately three quarters of pediatric patients with COVID-19–related hospitalizations were hospitalized for COVID-19. The majority of those hospitalized for COVID-19 were Black or Hispanic and were aged <5 or 12–17 years. Approximately one third of patients aged <1 and 1–4 years had a viral coinfection, approximately one third of patients aged 5–11 years and approximately two thirds of patients aged 12–17 years had obesity. Less than 1% of vaccine-eligible patients were fully vaccinated against COVID-19.Five of the six hospitals had policies to test all pediatric patients for SARS-CoV-2 upon admission during the study period, allowing for detection of incidental positive SARS-CoV-2 test results. However, the proportion of such patients was smaller in this study compared with that in a previous report (1). Patients aged 0–4 and 12–17 years accounted for 79% of COVID-19–related hospitalizations in this study, which is consistent with data from other hospitals and communities (2). Among hospitalized children aged <5 years, most were aged <1 year, which might reflect clinical practice differences, because infants might be more likely to be hospitalized with milder disease than older children (3). Most patients were Black or Hispanic in this study; an earlier study demonstrated higher hospitalization rates among Black or Hispanic children compared with White children (1).Approximately two thirds of patients hospitalized for COVID-19, including 83% and 88% of patients aged 5–11 and 12–17 years, respectively, had one or more underlying medical conditions. Approximately two thirds of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 aged 12–17 years had obesity. Compared with patients without obesity, those with obesity required higher levels and longer duration of care. These findings are consistent with previous reports (4) and highlight the importance of obesity and other medical conditions as risk factors for severe COVID-19 in children and adolescents. The proportions of patients admitted to ICU and who required IMV are similar to those in prior reports, which predominantly included hospitalized pediatric COVID-19 patients before Delta variant predominance (2,5). Adolescents were more likely to require ICU admission and oxygen support compared with other age groups and required the longest median duration of IMV. The median duration of IMV overall (7 days) is consistent with previous reports (6,7). Approximately one half of patients aged 1–4 years required oxygen support, which might be related to the high proportion with viral coinfection. This study occurred during July–August 2021, the first period during the COVID-19 pandemic with high circulation of RSV¶¶¶¶ and other respiratory viruses. Compared with prior studies (2,5), this study found a high proportion of patients had high-flow nasal cannula as the highest level of respiratory support (37%), which might reflect a change in practice to avoid intubation or the high proportion of viral coinfections, including RSV.
With no way to identify Omicron and Delta patients, treatment decisions are vexing doctors.. --Most U.S. doctors have no way to determine which variant of the coronavirus a patient is carrying, a distinction that could mean the difference between life and death. High-risk patients carrying the Delta variant could benefit greatly from two particular monoclonal antibody treatments shown to reduce hospitalization and death. But those medications would most likely do nothing for patients with Omicron, who would only respond to a third antibody treatment that is in very short supply. While U.S. officials have endorsed using a workaround test that can identify Omicron’s genetic signature, experts say it’s not feasible for large health systems facing a crush of patients to employ in each case. That makes treating patients challenging in places like Maryland, where cases are spiking and Omicron accounts for roughly 58 percent of them. The Delta variant is also holding strong in the Great Plains and swaths of the West, including California. While there is no approved test to determine each individual’s variant, a national network of state and other labs use genome-sequencing tests to track variants broadly in communities. Health systems then use those regional estimates or their own data to decide which antibody treatments to use in their clinics and hospitals. Many of them concluded that a community of largely Delta patients would benefit most from the antibody drugs made by Regeneron and Eli Lilly, while communities where Omicron patients are predominant would benefit from antibodies from GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology. Federal officials have dabbled with making the decision for the nation. On Dec. 23, they stopped shipments of antibody treatments by Eli Lilly and Regeneron after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 73 percent of U.S. Covid cases were Omicron. An outcry followed from Republican political leaders, who argued that some people in their states were still infected with Delta. And on Tuesday, the C.D.C. slashed its estimate of national Omicron cases to 59 percent. On Dec. 31, federal officials resumed national shipping all of the antibody treatments. For the next few weeks, as the country grapples with this uneven mix of both variants, tailoring treatments to each patient will be “extraordinarily difficult,” said Dr. Alex Greninger, assistant director of the clinical virology laboratories at the University of Washington Medical Center.
FDA authorizes COVID-19 boosters for 12 to 15-year-olds -The Food and Drug Administration on Monday authorized Pfizer booster shots for people aged 12 to 15 years, another expansion in the population eligible for the third shots. Booster shots are seen as a key tool to fight the omicron variant, which has shown a heightened ability to infect people who have two shots, though vaccinated people still have important protection against severe disease. The FDA also shortened the time for all adults to get their booster shots, down to five months from six months after the initial shots. Finally, for children 5-11 years old, the FDA authorized a third shot for certain immunocompromised children, who it said might not respond fully to two shots. “Based on the FDA’s assessment of currently available data, a booster dose of the currently authorized vaccines may help provide better protection against both the delta and omicron variants. In particular, the omicron variant appears to be slightly more resistant to the antibody levels produced in response to the primary series doses from the current vaccines,” said Peter Marks, a top FDA vaccine official. “With this in mind, the FDA has extended the range of individuals eligible to receive a booster, shortened the length of time between the completion of the Pfizer primary series for individuals to receive a booster and is authorizing a third protective vaccine dose for some of our youngest and most vulnerable individuals," he added. The FDA said the decision on boosters for 12-15 year-olds was based off real world data from 6,300 people in Israel.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Takes Multiple Actions to Expand Use of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine – FDA - Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration amended the emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to:
- Expand the use of a single booster dose to include use in individuals 12 through 15 years of age.
- Shorten the time between the completion of primary vaccination of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine and a booster dose to at least five months.
- Allow for a third primary series dose for certain immunocompromised children 5 through 11 years of age.
“Throughout the pandemic, as the virus that causes COVID-19 has continuously evolved, the need for the FDA to quickly adapt has meant using the best available science to make informed decisions with the health and safety of the American public in mind,” said Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, M.D. “With the current wave of the omicron variant, it’s critical that we continue to take effective, life-saving preventative measures such as primary vaccination and boosters, mask wearing and social distancing in order to effectively fight COVID-19.”Today’s action expands the use of a single booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to include its use in individuals as young as 12 years of age.
- The agency has determined that the protective health benefits of a single booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to provide continued protection against COVID-19 and the associated serious consequences that can occur including hospitalization and death, outweigh the potential risks in individuals 12 through 15 years of age.
- The FDA reviewed real-world data from Israel, including safety data from more than 6,300 individuals 12 through 15 years of age who received a booster dose of the vaccine at least 5 months following completion of the primary two-dose vaccination series.
- These additional data enabled the FDA to reassess the benefits and risks of the use of a booster in the younger adolescent population in the setting of the current surge in COVID-19 cases.
- The data shows there are no new safety concerns following a booster in this population. There were no new cases of myocarditis or pericarditis reported to date in these individuals.
The FDA is also authorizing the use of a single booster dose five months after completion of the primary vaccination series of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine.
- Since Pfizer initially submitted safety and effectiveness data on a single booster dose following primary vaccination, additional real-world data have become available on the increasing number of cases of COVID-19 with the omicron variant in the U.S.
- No new safety concerns have emerged from a population of over 4.1 million individuals 16 years of age and older in Israel who received a booster dose at least five months following completion of the primary vaccination series.
- Additionally, peer-reviewed data from multiple laboratories indicate that a booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine greatly improves an individual’s antibody response to be able to counter the omicron variant. Authorizing booster vaccination to take place at five months rather than six months may therefore provide better protection sooner for individuals against the highly transmissible omicron variant. Given the demonstrated safety and effectiveness of a booster dose when administered five months after the primary vaccination series, and the fact that a booster dose may help provide better protection against the rapidly spreading omicron variant, the FDA has determined that the known and potential benefits of administering a booster to individuals ages 12 and older at least five months following completion of the primary vaccination series, outweighs the known and potential risks.
- While today’s action applies to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, the FDA continues to review data concerning all available vaccines and will provide additional updates as appropriate.
Children 5 through 11 years of age who have undergone solid organ transplantation, or who have been diagnosed with conditions that are considered to have an equivalent level of immunocompromise, may not respond adequately to the two-dose primary vaccination series. Thus, a third primary series dose has now been authorized for this group. This will now allow these children to receive the maximum potential benefit from vaccination.
Moderna CEO Bancel says people may need another COVID-19 vaccine booster shot in fall of 2022 - The efficacy of boosters against COVID-19 is likely to decline over the next few months, and people may need another shot in the fall of 2022, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said at a Goldman Sachs-organised healthcare conference on Thursday (Jan 6). Bancel said that the company is working on a vaccine candidate tailored to the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, but is unlikely to be available in the next two months. "I still believe we're going to need boosters in the fall of '22 and forward," Bancel said. His comments on needing a fourth shot come on the back of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett citing a study on Tuesday that a fourth dose of COVID-19 vaccine boosts antibodies five-fold a week after the shot is administered. Moderna, which benefits by repeat inoculations, during its third quarter earnings results said that commercial booster market sales could be up to US$2 billion in the United States in 2022.
An evaluation of the association between COVID vaccination and myocarditis in 42 million people aged 13 or older - Several studies have indicated an association between COVID-19 vaccination and myocarditis. In addition, evidence from several countries suggested exposure to the BNT162b2 messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine was associated with acute myocarditis. Furthermore, an increase in hospitalization or death due to myocarditis has been reported against both mRNA and adenoviral vaccines. However, since the risk of myocarditis is higher after the second dose of vaccine as compared to the first dose, there is an immediate requirement to evaluate the risk associated with a third dose as booster programs are being implemented internationally to combat the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. A new study posted to the medRxiv* pre-print server included individuals over 13 years of age receiving the third vaccine dose to further evaluate the association between myocarditis and COVID-19 vaccination or infection. According to the results, 13.5 percent of the individuals tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 after receiving the first dose of the vaccine, 30.9 percent after receiving the second dose, and 0.9 percent after receiving the third dose. The percentage of individuals hospitalized or who died due to myocarditis during the study period was 0.006 out of which 0.001 percent occurred within 1-28 days following any dose of vaccine. The results reported that over the 1 to 28 days post-vaccination, an association was observed with the first dose of BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1 but not the mRNA-1273 vaccine. However, after the second dose, the risk of association was higher with mRNA-1273 as compared to the BNT162b2 vaccine. No association with the ChAdOx1 vaccine was found after the second dose. Association with only the BNT162b2 vaccine was observed after the third dose. The risk for myocarditis was also higher in the 1 to 28 days following a positive SARS-CoV-2 test. An increased risk of myocarditis was observed in men less than 40 years of age on days 1-28 following the first dose of mRNA-1273 and BNT162b2 vaccines, second dose of ChAdOx1, mRNA-1273, and BNT162b2 vaccines, third dose of BNT162b2 vaccine, and a SARS-CoV-2 positive test. In females, an increased risk of myocarditis was observed in 1-28 days following the second dose of the mRNA-1273 vaccine only. In the case of older women, no association between myocarditis and vaccination was observed while in older men the risk of myocarditis increased after the third dose of BNT162b2 vaccine and a positive SARS-CoV-2 test. An estimate of the number of excess myocarditis events per million persons in the 1-28 days following exposure showed there would be an additional 1 and 2 myocarditis events per million exposed following the first dose of the ChAdOx1 and BNT162b2 vaccines, respectively. Approximately 2 and 36 myocarditis events could be expected after the second dose of BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 vaccines, respectively, while an additional 2 myocarditis events per million persons could be expected after the third dose of BNT162b2. Following a positive test additional 30 myocarditis events per million could be expected.An additional 3 and 12 myocarditis events per million in the 1-28 days were estimated in males less than 40 years of age following the first dose of BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 vaccines respectively. An additional 14,12 and 101 myocarditis events could be estimated after the second dose of ChAdOx1, BNT162b2, and mRNA-1273 vaccines respectively, and an additional 13 events following the third dose of BNT162b2 vaccine. An additional 7 myocarditis events could be expected after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test. For older males, 3 and 73 events could be estimated following a third dose of BNT162b2 and a positive SARS-CoV-2 test respectively.
The Cameroon Mutation - Is This the Next COVID-19 Vaccine Escapee? --With the COVID-19 vaccines showing a lack of efficacy against the latest SARS-CoV-2 mutation, recent research from France gives us a sense of what lies ahead no matter what mechanisms governments put in place to control the spread of the virus.Scientists in Marseilles, France have released this preprint (not peer reviewed) entitled "Mergence in Southenr France of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant of probably Cameroonian origin harbouring both substitutions N501Y and E484K in the spike protein:The research was funded by the French government under the "Investments for the Future" program managed by the National Agency for Research among other supporters.In the paper, the researchers note that SARS-CoV-2 variants have become a major concern since they are able to escape from vaccine-induced immunity. The index case of yet another variant returned from travel in Cameroon three days prior to testing and, after exhibiting mild respiratory symptoms, underwent a private RT-PCR test from a sample collected in mid-November 2021, the day after symptoms appeared. It is important to note that the subject was vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2. The test revealed an atypical combination of mutations in the spike gene which did not correspond to the pattern of the Delta variant which was involved in nearly all of the SARS-CoV-2 infections at that time.The researchers also collected samples from two adults and five children living in the same geographical area who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. The samples from all seven of these infected individuals exhibited the same combination of mutations that were seen in the traveller who had returned from Cameroon.Samples from all eight individuals were sent to the University Hospital Institute (IHU) Mediterranee Infection for genome sequencing. The analysis of viral genomes revealed the presence of 46 nucleotide substitutions and 37 deletions resulting in 30 amino acid substitutions and 12 selections with 14 amino acid substitutions and 9 amino acid deletions being located in the spike protein. This suggests that a new variant has evolved which the researchers termed "IHU", in reference to the name of their institute of study. Respiratory samples collected until the end of November 2021 from four additional SARS-CoV-2 positive patients living in the same city or borough as the index case were also shown to contain the IHU variant, showing the same combination of spike mutations.Here is the rather stunning conclusion of the study:"Overall, these observations show once again the unpredictability of the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants and their introduction from abroad, and they exemplify the difficulty to control such introduction and subsequent spread."
45,000 new cases reported in Los Angeles area over holiday weekend --Los Angeles County reported nearly 45,000 new COVID-19 cases over the holiday weekend. With 23,553 new cases recorded on Saturday and 21,200 on Sunday, the weekend figures were down from over 27,000 cases reported on Dec. 31 as officials urged Angelenos to celebrate the new year with caution. "During this surge, given the spread of a more infectious strain of the virus, lapses can lead to explosive transmission," Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the county’s director of public health, said in a statement on Sunday. "Well-fitting and high-quality masks are an essential layer of protection when people are in close contact with others, especially when indoors or in outdoor crowded spaces where distancing is not possible," she added. More than 20 percent of those recently tested for COVID-19 received a positive test result, according to the county’s public health department. But despite the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant, which was first detected in South Africa in November, only four COVID-19 deaths were reported over the weekend by county officials. Early studies have indicated that, despite how easily it spreads, the omicron variant is less likely to lead to hospitalization than the delta variant. Last month, the city of Los Angeles saw cases more than double from 3,052 to over 6,500 in just one day. Around that time, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) said that he did not "see a lockdown" coming for the city as case rates already increased. "I think we’re so much better protected than we were,” the mayor said. “I do think that restrictions such as masking indoors will continue, especially as these cases go up. We’ll have to follow our hospitalizations very carefully."
Covid-19 Cases Soar to New Records in U.S. – WSJ - Covid-19 infections continued to soar far above previous peaks across the U.S., as students returned to classrooms while some workers remained home after contracting or being exposed to the virus.The seven-day average of daily reported Covid-19 cases in the U.S. reached a pandemic record 403,385 on Sunday, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. The fresh peak arrived even as most states paused reporting during the New Year’s holiday weekend. Reporting delays will likely lead to spikes in reports of cases this week as states catch up. While Covid-19 tests remain in short supply in much of the U.S., Covid-19 testing was less robust last year, complicating comparisons between pandemic surges. Hospitalizations for confirmed or suspected Covid-19 reached a seven-day average of 97,855 on Monday, according to data posted by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. That is up 41% in the past two weeks but below both the pandemic peak of 137,510 on Jan. 10, 2021, and the smaller peak of 102,967 on Sept. 4, 2021, during the Delta surge.Hospitalizations in New York state increased but remain less than half of their peak level in 2020. Gov. Kathy Hochul said that based on a review of recent data, “we can say with certainty that the cases are not presenting themselves as severely as they could have or as we had feared. That is the silver lining.”Los Angeles County reported more than 20,000 new Covid-19 infections on Sunday for the fourth day in a row, a sharp increase from the 7,425 cases reported last Monday. Officials said the count was likely distorted by reporting delays over the New Year’s holiday weekend. Hospitalizations in the county have increased as well, at a lower rate.Groups representing emergency physicians and nurses in Massachusetts warned on Monday that emergency rooms there are at critical capacity and said the situation would likely worsen. The groups advised people not to use emergency rooms for routine testing or mild symptoms.“In the coming days and weeks, we will see more nurses, doctors, and support staff become infected and stay home to isolate and get well,” said the Massachusetts College of Emergency Physicians and Massachusetts Emergency Nurses Association.In Washington, the top doctor for Congress and the Supreme Court sent a letter Monday to members and staff warning of a surge of cases in the Capitol. Dr. Brian P. Monahan wrote that the Capitol testing center had seen a rise in the seven-day rate of positives from less than 1% to more than 13%, amid a huge surge of cases in the D.C. metropolitan area.
Latest Statistics on Covid-19 Hospitalizations, Fatality Rates, and Speculation - From NYT, today. In case you didn’t already know it, fatality rates are much higher for unvaccinated, and hospitalization rates are rising as rapidly as has been recorded (as far as I can eyeball). The fact that unvaccinated are 17 times (unadjusted for demographics, etc., I think) more likely to be hospitalized than vaccinated suggests that there is going to be disproportionate impact – both geographically and along the rural/urban divide. Given the transmissibility of the omicron variant and its (conjectured) lower degree of severity, I think a good indicator of the impact is hospitalizations. There the trajectory is quite disconcerting, even if it isn’t following closely cases.The Economist has just posted a new article on the impact – mostly speculation of course. Airlines, restaurants, will likely be hit hard.
Covid Contraction in Michigan is Increasing - Hospitalization for Covid increased dramatically in Michigan. According to the CDC, it is the delta strain impacting the unvaccinated Michiganders. The Republican dominated Senate and House shut down the Governor and Michigan Health Director’s ability to restrict public gatherings. This was before the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. And the state is in trouble. CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky; While much of the world is focused on the new omicron variant, first identified in South Africa, delta is still a threat Stated at a Tuesday White House Covid-19 Response Team briefing. Having the highest hospitalizations in the US when adjusted for population, Michigan’s hospitalizations are up 70 percent since Nov. 10. In the neighboring states of Indiana and Illinois, hospitalizations have almost doubled. In Michigan, 3 of 4 hospitalized Covid patients are unvaccinated, according to Chelsea Wuth, an associate public information officer at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. Unvaccinated people make up 87 percent of Covid patients who are in an intensive care unit in the state, she said, and 88 percent of Covid patients who are on a ventilator are unvaccinated. More than 70 percent Michiganders age 16 and older have had at least one shot of a Covid vaccine, she said. Dr. Matthew Sims, a physician and director of infectious disease research at Beaumont Health (Michigan’s largest health care system):“almost all the Covid patients coming in are unvaccinated. Roughly 600 patients are sickened with Covid across the system as of Tuesday, noting the staff is exhausted. We’ve been doing this for so long. It does get tiring to the nurses, the doctors, everybody when we see this huge number of patients that are all coming in that are not vaccinated.” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):If you’re fully vaccinated and are in an area with a high number of new COVID-19 cases, the CDC recommends wearing a mask indoors in public and outdoors in crowded areas or when you are in close contact with unvaccinated people. People who haven’t been fully vaccinated should wear face masks indoors and outdoors where there is a high risk of COVID-19 transmission, such as crowded events or large gatherings. The CDC says that surgical N95 masks should be reserved for health care providers. Respirators such as KN95s and non-surgical N95s can be used by the general public when supplies are available.The point is, no one really knows who is vaccinated or not. This is part of the problem which exists today. And it happens to exist more frequently in Republican parts of the country. Livingston County is Republican and has been for 27 years I know of. Early in December, less populated Livingston County’s with its ~190,000 residents had a higher contraction rate of Covid per 100,00 than the 8 times more populated Wayne County where Detroit is located.
Michigan COVID-19 cases skyrocket, hitting record seven-day average of 12,442 - Michigan reported 61,235 new, reported coronavirus cases in the five days through the New Year’s holiday and crushed a pandemic record.The state had never surpassed 10,000 cases – it reached a peak last week with 8,402 a day – but hit 12,442 a day in the week ending Monday, Jan. 3. In August, moving into the fall surge, the state was reporting that many cases per week.Michigan also recorded 298 deaths, a seven-day average of 91 a day from Thursday, Dec. 30, to Monday.The cases include new referrals of confirmed cases to the Michigan Disease Surveillance System since the last update on Wednesday, Dec. 29. The deaths include 172 identified during a vital records review, done multiple times a week, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.A week ago, after the Christmas holiday, Michigan reported an average of 6,663 new, reported cases a day and 95 deaths.There have now been 1,568,573 cases and 27,286 deaths since the start of the pandemic.As of Monday, there had additionally been 207,292 probable cases and 2,056 probable deaths, in which a physician and/or antigen test ruled it COVID-19 but no confirmatory PCR test, which detects the presence of a virus, was done.The peak case numbers come as the highly contagious omicron variant makes its way about the state. As of Monday, there had been 289 confirmed cases in the state, up from 75 last week. Routine testing does not identify variants, however, and only a small number of specimens undergo genomic sequencing in laboratories to determine variants. Documentation lags real-world transmission.The average percentage of positive tests in the last week was about 30%, also a pandemic record.
Setting a global record, US tops 1 million Covid-19 cases in 24 hours -More than 1 million people in the U.S. were diagnosed with Covid-19 on Monday as a tsunami of omicron swamps every aspect of daily American life.The highly mutated variant drove U.S. cases to a record, the most -- by a large margin -- that any country has ever reported since the pandemic began more than two years ago. Monday’s number is almost double the previous record of about 590,000 set just four days ago in the U.S., which itself was a doubling from the prior week. America’s daily case count on Monday was more than twice the number seen in any other country at any time. The highest number outside the U.S. came during India’s delta surge, when more than 414,000 people were diagnosed on May 7, 2021. The stratospheric numbers being posted in the U.S. come even as many Americans are relying on tests they take at home, with results that aren’t reported to official government authorities. This means that the new record is surely a significant under-estimate.The surging infections have led to canceled flights, closed schools and offices, overwhelmed hospitals, and strangled supply chains. The data from Johns Hopkins University is complete as of midnight eastern time in Baltimore, and delays in reporting over the holidays may have played a role in the rising rates.
Omicron drives Covid cases in US to record highs | Financial Times - The US chief medical adviser has warned of an “unprecedented” surge in Covid-19 cases, as the country reported record-breaking numbers of infections that have driven up hospitalisation rates and caused widespread disruption to flights. The US seven-day rolling average of cases neared 400,000 on Saturday, its highest daily tally since the start of the pandemic and more than double the average registered on Christmas Day, according to the Financial Times data tracker. “If you look at the uptick, it is actually almost a vertical increase,” Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, told ABC News on Sunday. “There’s no doubt about it, the acceleration of cases that we have seen is really unprecedented, gone well beyond anything we have seen before”. Though studies suggest the virus may have “a lower intrinsic pathogenicity”, Fauci remained “concerned about stressing and straining the hospital system”. The growth in infections comes as Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general at the World Health Organization, on Thursday said it would be possible to end the pandemic in 2022 if 70 per cent of the global population was vaccinated by the middle of the year. “If we end inequity, we end the pandemic,” he said in a statement, after the WHO warned of a “tsunami of cases” of Covid around the world. The latest surge in infections has caused havoc for travel around New Year celebrations, disrupting thousands of US flights over the weekend. More than 2,700 flights to, from or within the US were cancelled on Saturday, with the number on Sunday surpassing 2,000 by the US morning, according to tracking website FlightAware. The surge comes as US schools prepare to reopen from their winter break on Monday. With high vaccination rates among teachers and the ability to immunise children aged five and above, “it’s safe enough to get those kids back to school, balanced against the deleterious effects of keeping them out”, said Fauci. Miguel Cardona, US education secretary, told CBS on Sunday: “Our students belong in the classroom, and we can do it safely.” Some teachers unions have complained about slow delivery of tests and called for a delay in schools’ reopening. Cardona said the government was “working with [school] districts to set up systems that maybe were not set up when there was a dip in [the Covid-19] spread . . . We’re working really hard to make sure that they have access to tests and that they have resources to provide testing”. Eric Adams, the newly elected New York City mayor, also supported a physical return to school. “The safest place for children is inside a school,” Adams told ABC News on Sunday. The mayor added that requiring tests prior to students’ return was “a good idea”, but the power to make testing mandatory lay with the state governor. The jump in cases has made the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revisit recently issued guidelines that shortened the quarantine timeline for people infected with Covid to five days if they show no symptoms. Requiring testing at the end of that period “is now under consideration”, said Fauci. Even US states with high vaccination rates are reporting record-breaking Covid cases. New York, where 72 per cent of individuals are fully vaccinated, on Friday registered more than 85,000 new cases as the number of daily hospitalisations accelerated rapidly. Phil Murphy, New Jersey governor, said the 28,000 daily cases reported on Friday were approximately “quadruple from just two weeks ago, and four times as many cases than during the height of last winter’s surge”, according to US media reports.
Covid: US reports record 1m cases with peak still to come - The US has recorded more than one million new Covid cases, as officials warn the peak of a fast-spreading Omicron surge is still to come. A record 1,080,211 cases were reported on Monday - the highest one-day tally of new cases anywhere in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University. The Omicron variant accounts for the majority of cases in the US. The top US pandemic adviser Anthony Fauci has said the country is facing "almost a vertical increase" in cases. He said the peak may be weeks away. While rates of death and hospital admissions in the US have been far lower in recent weeks than in previous infection spikes, the number of hospital admissions has been steadily rising. But Dr Fauci said the example of South Africa - where Omicron first spread rapidly before subsiding - offered some hope. Omicron has also led to school districts across the country postponing the return of students to classrooms following the winter break due to the rapid spread of the variant and subsequent staffing shortages. There are also concerns over challenges in securing rapid tests for students and teachers. In Detroit, Michigan, for example - which is experiencing an all-time high infection rate of 36% - city school officials announced that schools will remain closed through Wednesday. A number of other major school systems, including Atlanta, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Newark, have announced postponements or a return to virtual classes. In New York City, the largest school district in the US, schools remained open. On Monday, Mayor Eric Adams said that school is "the safest place or our children". The New York Times reported, however, that approximately one third of parents kept their children at home over Covid-19 fears. In terms of hospital admissions, data from the US Department of Health and Human Services shows that more than 103,000 people are currently in hospital with Covid-19 - the first time the tally has crossed the six-figure mark since September. State health officials have reported that the vast majority of Covid hospital admissions are among the unvaccinated. In Illinois, for example, officials over the weekend said that nearly 85% of patients with Covid-19 or related diseases are unvaccinated. "I'm still very concerned about the tens of millions of people who are not vaccinated at all because even though many of them are going to get asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic, a fair number of them are going to get severe disease," Dr Fauci told ABC on Monday. Officials have also said that the number of children in hospital is rising. Some 8,652 people are reported to have died from the disease in the past week, according to Johns Hopkins. The previous US record of cases was 590,000, reported four days ago.
The massive Omicron surge is leading to soaring hospitalization in the US - The number of COVID-19 cases across the United States during the week leading up to New Year’s Day exceeded 2.5 million, up 50 percent from the preceding week, which included the Christmas holiday. This means an average of more than 361,000 COVID-19 cases each day, far above any previous peak during the pandemic. On Monday, the moving average of new cases exceeded 400,000 for the first time. In line with the rise in infections, hospitalizations for COVID are now accelerating, having surpassed 100,000 as of yesterday. Principled scientists and epidemiologists have warned that even these extraordinary figures will soon be eclipsed as a return to school and work, which the Biden administration and its house scientists and public health officials are furiously promoting, will only further fuel the surge and every metric associated with the pandemic. According to a recent Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimate, more than 140 million Americans will be infected with Omicron, more than 40 percent of the US population in the next three months. Since January 2020, the US has had some 57 million reported cases and almost 850,000 deaths. Hospitals are flooded with patients well before the full impact of the Omicron surge is felt. The health workforce is rapidly shrinking as doctors, nurses and other workers become infected and must quarantine. These two processes are putting unbearable strain on the health infrastructure in the US. It is on the brink of collapse. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Biden’s White House coronavirus task force have engaged in brazen maneuvers to meet Wall Street’s demand for workers to stay at their jobs, by making changes in guidelines which lack any scientific merit, but actually lead to more infections and deaths. This has shattered whatever respect for and trust in the CDC and other health institutions existed in the population. In fact, in its most recent call to limit isolation to five days, the CDC openly cited the impact it would have on the economy to allow workers to appropriately quarantine for the sake of their health and the welfare of their community. As Dr. Anthony Fauci noted this week and continues to defend, the CDC guidelines were introduced to “get people back to jobs.” This is a major factor in the stock market’s continual ascent. Yesterday the Dow Jones average reached its highest level ever, along with the daily average of the deadly pandemic. Meanwhile, the unprecedented rise in infections has led to soaring test positivity rates of over 20 percent, up from their lows of 4.6 percent at the end of October. The only other time such figures were ever seen was in April 2020 in the initial weeks of the pandemic, when the country lacked any significant testing capacity, a byproduct of the opposition (and incompetence) of the Trump administration. Indeed, even these startling infection rates cited by every COVID dashboard should be considered drastic undercounting of the accurate scale of infections. In the northeastern state of New Jersey, where daily case rates exceed 30,000, the positivity rate is at an unbelievable 100 percent, meaning that every test reported has confirmed an infection. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy—a Democrat and investment banker with 23 years at Goldman Sachs—evades his responsibility to protect the people of that state with nonsensical arguments about “staying the course.”
More people are being admitted to Houston hospitals with COVID-19 - — COVID-19 numbers in the Greater Houston area have reached record levels and health experts believe the peak of omicron is still a couple of weeks away. According to the Texas Medical Center, more people are being admitted to its hospitals daily than ever before. It’s creating a strain on hospitals where more healthcare workers are getting sick. "Last week, we had over 1,100 staff who had COVID and were unable to come to work on their normal schedules," said Roberta Schwartz, the executive vice president for Methodist Hospital. "We’ve had to really juggle our staffing and constrain our beds." Last week, TMC averaged 401 new COVID admissions per day. Compared to the previous week, there was an average of 201 new COVID hospitalization per day, and in November there was an average of 56 hospitalizations per day. "I will tell you it’s very nerve wracking to be going up at this rate," Schwartz said. At Methodist, about 60 percent of hospitalized patients are showing up because of COVID symptoms. The rest tested positive after being admitted for other issues. At Ben Taub, Dr. Robert Atmar says more than half of its patients who tested positive were admitted with non-COVID issues. "Because we’re testing everybody who comes in, we’re identifying those people who are infected but coming in for a different reason," Dr. Atmar said. "That said, there are still patients being admitted with omicron variant for COVID." The new COVID-19 positivity rate for testing in the Texas Medical Center is now much higher than the delta peak. As of January 2, the positivity rate from the TMC stood at 28 percent. When the delta variant reached its peak, the positivity rate hit 15 percent. The weekly average of daily new cases is also much higher than the delta surge. About 5,600 people are testing positive each day. In November, TMC recorded an average of only 232 new cases per day. Houston Methodist said it's seeing a significant number of positive COVID cases among younger patients and breakthrough infections with people who have been vaccinated. The hospital does note the omicron variant appears to be much less severe. Houston Methodist takeaways from the first 862 omicron patients:
- The median age of COVID-19 patients is 38.9
- 16% were admitted to the hospital for a median of 3 days
- 50% were fully vaccinated
- 10% had a booster shot
- 99% survived
Covid warning symptoms in children: Kids hospitalized in record numbers -- The number of children hospitalized with Covid-19 is soaring nationwide, especially as the highly transmissible omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads across the country. According to an NBC News analysis, at least nine states have reported record numbers of Covid-related pediatric hospitalizations: Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maine, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania, as well as Washington, D.C. Some of those children were found to be Covid-positive through routine testing if they had to be hospitalized for other, unrelated issues. But many have been hospitalized specifically because of complications from Covid-19.The spike in hospitalizations frustrates pediatric infectious disease doctors on the front lines treating children sick with the coronavirus. "It seems like people have tried to downplay the significance of the disease in children," said Dr. Mark Kline, the physician-in-chief at Children's Hospital New Orleans. "We've spent two years rebutting myths pertaining to Covid and children, that it's 'harmless' for children. It's not."As of Monday, Kline said, 14 children were sick enough with Covid-19 to be hospitalized at his facility, and three were in the intensive care unit. The three children are under age 2. The youngest is just 8 weeks old. At Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, pediatric hospitalization numbers, at close to 70 patients, have surpassed the peak of patients during the surge of the delta variant in the summer, Dr. Jim Versalovic, a pathologist who is a co-leader of the Covid-19 Command Center, said at a news briefing Monday. More than 90 percent of the cases are due to the omicron variant. "More children infected with omicron still translates into a big number of children who may need hospital-based care," Versalovic said. On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported a sharp rise in pediatric Covid-19 cases. At least 325,340 cases were reported during the week of Dec. 23, compared with 198,551 cases during the week of Dec. 16. While serious illness from Covid is still rare for younger children, the sheer number of new cases worries doctors. As of Sunday, the number of pediatric Covid admissions had hit a new peak: 1,354 a day, based on a seven-day average, according to NBC News data. We rarely see a vaccinated child in the hospital. And the number of kids who simply occupied hospital beds each day, even if they ultimately weren't admitted to the hospital, reached a record average of 3,081 a day over the last seven-day period.
Texas Children's reports COVID cases more than double in one week with 12 babies in ICU — Texas Children's Hospital reports an alarming surge in the number of children being hospitalized with COVID-19, primarily with the omicron variant.At a news conference Monday, the Houston hospital reported 70 pediatric patients arecurrently hospitalized with COVID. A week ago, TCH had 30 young COVID patients. The week before that, they had 15. More than one-third of patients hospitalized in recent days are younger than 5 years old, according to Dr. Jim Versalovic, who leads TCH's COVID-19 Command Center. Unlike adults, Versalovic said it's too early to say whether the variant is milder for young children. "We are seeing cases of viral pneumonia and respiratory distress, serious lung infections in children even under two years of age," the doctor said. "There's no question that omicron is making a real impact in the youngest of children."The patients include several babies who are very sick from the virus. "Just last week, we had 12 babies in the ICU with COVID," TCH spokesperson Natasha Barrett said. "It's heartbreaking what we're seeing in the halls of our hospital right now." "We do know that conditions such as Down syndrome, diabetes, certain forms of pediatric cancer, lung and heart conditions and obesity may put children, including adolescents, at greater risk for severe COVID," Dr. Versalovic said. He said they've seen only one case of co-infection with both COVID and the flu and that child did not need to be hospitalized.Like adults, the omicron variant is blamed for the dramatic surge of cases in children. Hospital officials say the positivity rate has skyrocketed from 15 percent during the Delta surge to a current rolling seven-day average of about 30 percent."We've had already staggering numbers from this omicron surge already," Versalovic said. "90 percent of recent cases are due to omicron."Barrett said the majority of their patients are unvaccinated, including older kids who are eligible for the vaccines.
Hospitalizations skyrocket in kids too young for COVID shots | AP News -Hospitalizations of U.S. children under 5 with COVID-19 soared in recent weeks to their highest level since the pandemic began, according to government data released Friday on the only age group not yet eligible for the vaccine. The worrisome trend in children too young to be vaccinated underscores the need for older kids and adults to get their shots to help protect those around them, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since mid-December, with the highly contagious omicron variant spreading furiously around the country, the hospitalization rate in these youngest kids has surged to more than 4 in 100,000 children, up from 2.5 per 100,000. The rate among children ages 5 to 17 is about 1 per 100,000, according to the CDC data, which is drawn from over 250 hospitals in 14 states. Overall, “pediatric hospitalizations are at their highest rate compared to any prior point in the pandemic,” Walensky said. As of Tuesday, the average number of under-18 patients admitted to the hospital per day with COVID-19 was 766, double the figure reported just two weeks ago. The trend among the very youngest kids is being driven by high hospitalization rates in five states: Georgia, Connecticut, Tennessee, California and Oregon, with the steepest increases in Georgia, the CDC said. At a briefing, Walensky said the numbers include children hospitalized because of COVID-19 and those admitted for other reasons but found to be infected.The CDC also said the surge could be partially attributable to how COVID-19 hospitalizations in this age group are defined: a positive virus test within 14 days of hospitalization for any reason.The severity of illness among children during the omicron wave seems lower than it was with the delta variant, said Seattle Children’s Hospital critical care chief Dr. John McGuire. “Most of the COVID+ kids in the hospital are actually not here for COVID-19 disease,” McGuire said in an email. “They are here for other issues but happen to have tested positive.”The nation’s top infectious-disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said earlier this week that omicron appears to cause less-severe disease across the board, but that the sheer number of infections because of its extreme contagiousness will mean that many more children will get infected, and a certain share of them will wind up in the hospital. Fauci also said many children hospitalized with COVID-19 have other health conditions that make them more susceptible to complications from the virus. That includes obesity, diabetes and lung disease.
Omicron Breakthrough Infections Soar, But Unvaccinated Far More Likely to Be Hospitalized – As COVID-19 infections with the omicron variant of the virus surge out of control nationwide, emergency rooms are filling up again -- and one well-known New York City doctor says what they're seeing now is much different than the last two years of the pandemic.Manhattan emergency room physician Dr. Craig Spencer took to Twitter late Monday night to explain how the current surge is different -- both in who's coming to the ER and how they're being affected by the highly contagious virus. "Today it seemed like everyone had COVID. Like, so many. And yes, like before, there were some really short of breath and needing oxygen. But for most, COVID seemed to topple a delicate balance of an underlying illness. It’s making people really sick in a different way," Spencer wrote.Spencer cited a few examples - diabetic being tipped into ketoacidosis, the elderly who were so weak from being ill that they couldn't get out of bed, and etc."What’s also different now is those COVID cases are often in beds next to patients who’ve done everything to avoid the virus, and for whom an infection might have a dramatic toll. The cancer patient on chemotherapy. Those immunocompromised or severely sick with something else," Spencer said.He acknowledged, as studies around the world have concluded, that the omicron variant seems to cause milder disease than the delta variant that tore through the country last summer. But at the same time, with so many more people infected, for hospital purposes it ends up not really mattering. "But there’s just SO much of it and it’s impacting patients in different ways. So even if just a tiny portion of cases need to stay in the hospital, it can turn into a huge influx," Spencer tweeted. Spencer, a Manhattan ER doctor affiliated with Columbia University, recently shared a detailed breakdown of what the omicron cases he and his colleagues have encountered look like so far. "Every patient I’ve seen with Covid that’s had a 3rd ‘booster’ dose has had mild symptoms. By mild I mean mostly sore throat. Lots of sore throat. Also some fatigue, maybe some muscle pain. No difficulty breathing. No shortness of breath. All a little uncomfortable, but fine," Spencer wrote. From there, it goes downhill, depending on your vaccination status or lack thereof. But Spencer's comment about sore throats gets to a recent debate about COVID testing and whether the omicron variant is more common in some parts of the body than previous strains of the virus. The #SwabYourThroat trend on Twitter grew out of a series of anecdotal reports from symptomatic people who tested negative on rapid antigen tests with nasal swabs, repeated the test with a throat swab and came back positive immediately. The trend picked up steam with a Dec. 27 tweet from a biologist at University College London, who said she'd tested negative repeatedly until swabbing her throat. For now neither the FDA nor other public health authorities have changed any instructions or recommendations on how to use at-home COVID tests, which primarily rely on nasal swabs instead -- even though in the UK, authorities have been offering instructions on how to take at-home throat swabs since early 2020.
NY COVID Hospitalizations Top 2021 Surge Levels; Omicron Quintuples Risk of Breakthrough Cases - The risk of breakthrough infections more than quintupled on a rolling basis in December, while the risk of breakthrough hospitalizations nearly doubled; unvaccinated NYers are still getting infected and hospitalized at more than 6x and 14x the rate, respectively, of vaccinated ones.The omicron variant, the first local case of which was reported Dec. 2, accounted for 95.3% of genetically sequenced positive New York COVID samples uploaded to GISAID, over the last two weeks.More than 9,000 New Yorkers are now hospitalized with COVID-19, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Monday, surpassing the levels of January 2021's peak surge and reaching levels not seen since May 2020 as omicron's infectiousness continues to envelop the Empire State at a rapid pace.Statewide hospitalizations stand at 9,563, 290 admissions higher than the most recent peak on Jan. 18, 2021 and a 790-patient increase since Sunday. The total marks a 199% increase in the last month alone and a five-fold increase since Nov. 1. Daily deaths hit the triple digits (103) on Monday for the first time since vaccinations became widely available early last year.New daily cases dropped a bit to around 51,700, though with less testing done and lags in reporting over the holiday weekend, Hochul called that number misleading and said she is certain the overnight counts will climb."Those numbers are going to be much higher tomorrow. They didn't go from, really, 90,000 to 51,000. That is simply a function of people not getting tested over the weekend," Hochul said as she shared "shocking" rolling rates. "This is not the wave we saw last year, where it kept just going up and up. It's just going straight up."More than 335 New Yorkers per 100,000 are testing positive over the latest seven-day average, Hochul said. New York City has the most elevated numbers by far -- 457.75 new cases per 100,000 residents, followed by Long Island (398.82) and the Mid-Hudson region (304.18). Those three regions have the three highest adult full vaccination rates among New York's 10 regions, yet their density makes them more vulnerable to viral spread from a variant as formidable as omicron, officials say.Hospitalization rates per 100,000 residents showed a bit more of that vaccination impact. The Finger Lakes, which are among the state's least fully vaccinated regions have the second-highest rolling hospitalization rate (42.1 per 100K), a hair higher than New York City (42.0). Long Island now has the highest (43.4 per 100K), but the influx of hospitalizations is affecting regions like the Finger Lakes in terms of available bed capacity than denser areas like New York City.
COVID hospitalizations in Massachusetts near last year’s peak as percentage of breakthrough cases rises - COVID hospitalizations in Massachusetts are close to surpassing last year’s post-holiday peak at the same time the state reported another large wave of positive cases on Tuesday.Massachusetts reported 16,621 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, continuing high numbers that spiked last week in the days following Christmas. The state also reported 73,343 new COVID molecular tests.The age group with the highest rate of infection continues to be those in the 30 to 39 range, with the average age of infected individuals being 35.Data by test date from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health shows the highest number of new cases on record in the state occurred four days after Christmas, on Dec. 29, when the state saw 22,638 new positive cases. That number could continue to tick up as more cases from that date make it through the state’s reporting system.According to the Centers for Disease Control, symptoms from COVID-19 can occur two to 14 days after exposure.The state reported 45,029 new breakthrough cases of the virus in the last seven-day period ending Jan. 1. During that same period, the state reported a total of 79,908 new cases. The new breakthrough cases represent about 56% of the total number of new cases reported in that period, an uptick from the 44% the previous week.About 3.5% of all vaccinated people in the state have tested positive for the virus, the state’s data shows. Yet percentages drop significantly with hospitalizations and deaths with the state reporting that only 3,909 of all hospitalizations have been among the fully vaccinated — or 0.08% of all vaccinated people. The state also reported another 94 confirmed COVID deaths. Tuesday’s report of new deaths is from a three-day period starting Saturday. A total of 942 vaccinated people have died since the start of the pandemic, or 0.02% of vaccinated individuals. The average age of those who have died from the virus in the past 14 days is 75.
A record-high number of kids are getting hospitalized as overall Covid-19 hospitalizations soar past the Delta peak - More children are getting hospitalized with Covid-19 than ever before as the Omicron variant's dominance intensifies. An average of 672 children were admitted to hospitals every day with Covid-19 during the week ending Sunday, the highest such number of the pandemic, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It follows a record-high number of new cases among children, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The US had more than 325,000 new cases among children during the week ending December 30, according to data published this week by the AAP, marking a 64% increase in new childhood cases compared to the previous week, the AAP said. About 1,045 children under 18 have died from Covid-19, the CDC said. And across all age groups, Covid-19 hospitalizations reached a new milestone. On Tuesday, 112,941 Americans were hospitalized with Covid-19, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services. The new figure far exceeds peak hospitalizations during the Delta variant surge -- nearly 104,000 in early September. It's also creeping toward the pandemic-high number of Covid-19 patients hospitalized in a single day -- 142,246, on January 14 of last year. "Unfortunately, this is the consequence of a highly transmissible variant, the Omicron variant," US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told CNN on Tuesday. In just four weeks, Omicron jumped from an estimated 8% of new Covid-19 infections to an estimated 95% of new infections, according to the CDC. The Omicron variant is up to three times more infectious than the Delta variant, the CDC said. Now, more hospital intensive care units are nearing capacity. Nationwide, 1 in 5 hospitals with an ICU said its beds in that unit were at least 95% full last week, according to DHHS data. And more than a quarter of ICU beds nationwide were occupied by Covid-19 patients.
California coronavirus cases reach record high – LATimes - Coronavirus cases in California exploded into record territory as counts from the holiday weekend were tallied, and officials are warning that the next few weeks are crucial in the fight against the highly infectious Omicron variant.The mounting toll was evident in long lines for those seeking tests and increasingly crowded conditions at some hospitals. In a sign of how widespread the coronavirus is, the share of tests coming back positive reached a seven-day rate of 20.4%, the highest during the pandemic so far, according to the California Department of Public Health.“We need to quickly adapt to periods of high transmission, like right now,” San Francisco Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax said in a statement Tuesday. “The next several weeks are absolutely critical. It is within our power to limit the damage of this latest surge, but we need everybody’s help.” The state reported a massive backlog of 237,084 new cases Tuesday, a total that includes four days’ worth of data. This pushed the statewide seven-day average of newly announced infections to 50,267, easily eclipsing the sky-high case counts seen during last winter’s deadly COVID-19 wave, according to data compiled by The Times.The degree to which the holiday reporting delay has warped the weekly case average won’t become clear until New Year’s is further in the rearview mirror.However, it’s already apparent that California is experiencing a record-smashing surge. According to slower-to-update figures that track infections by the date someone begins experiencing symptoms, an average of 45,466 Californians per day were falling ill during the week leading up to Dec. 31. Data for more recent days are still incomplete.That figure outstrips the previous pandemic peak of 45,059 new daily infections, which was recorded over the weeklong period ending Jan. 8, 2021.While the higher recently reported case number is affected by the backlog, it also likely fails to capture many of those who are testing positive using self-administered at-home tests — meaning not every new coronavirus-positive Californian necessarily shows up in the state database.Regardless, it’s clear that COVID-19 has rebounded with a vengeance in the Golden State. Mexico has suffered two consecutive years of low rainfall. The situation was already severe in April 2021. As an article in El País noted in May, “surviving the dry season depends in large part on how much water has been accumulated during the wet months”: Mexico is no stranger to water crises. In 1996 and 2011 the country suffered severe droughts but as the El País article points out, lessons were not learnt. It is also true that Mexico has not exactly taken care of its precious water resources. Mexico City itself lies in the heart of a region called Valley of Mexico that was once home to a vast network of lakes. Between the 17th and early 20th centuries the five lakes of Valley of Mexico — Xaltocan, Chalco, Texcoco, Xochimilco and Zumpango — were almost totally drained, partly to protect the city from constant flooding but also to help it grow. Mexico City could only grow into the vast metropolis it has become through a ruthless process of land reclamation. As a recent report by Greenpeace points out, not only is Mexico City suffering from a severe shortage of water, but what water is available is distributed unevenly. In largely middle or upper middle-class municipalities such as Benito Juárez, Coyoacán, Cuauhtémoc and Miguel Hidalgo, only 0.1% of homes do not have piped water compared to 11% in working class neighborhoods such as Milpa Alta.
Map: 7 straight days of record-setting Covid case counts - Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations across the country are breaking records day after day as the omicron variant rages on. The U.S. has set a seven-day-average record for Covid cases every day over the last week, according to an analysis of NBC News’ case numbers and Department of Health and Human Services hospitalization data. In that time, 33 states, Washington, D.C., and two territories have set records for cases, hospitalizations or both. On Monday, the U.S. recorded 1 million new Covid cases, according to data compiled by NBC News. The number of records reinforces recent studies and statements from the World Health Organization that the omicron variant is spreading faster than any previously detected strain of the coronavirus. “We have learned by now that we underestimate this virus at our peril,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last month. “Even if omicron does cause less severe disease, the sheer number of cases could once again overwhelm unprepared health systems.” Twenty-seven states, Washington and two territories have set seven-day-average records for case numbers since Dec. 28. New Jersey set a case record every day in that period, with the average count ballooning from 15,000 cases a day to more than 27,000, while New York’s average number of cases set six records, from 37,000 to a peak of more than 71,000 average cases per day. Average case numbers in Puerto Rico, which has one of the highest rates of cases in the past week, nearly doubled, from 5,100 to 9,900. The hospitalization increases are concentrated in a handful of states, unlike cases of the disease, which are rising in all but three states. As many as 22 states, one territory and Washington, D.C., have set hospitalization records in the previous week. Of those, Washington, D.C., and Ohio accounted for the most records. And almost half the records were for pediatric hospitalizations: Covid hospitalizations among children, now at a record high nationally, are growing at a faster rate than adult Covid hospitalizations.
16,621 new COVID-19 cases, 94 additional deaths reported in Massachusetts —The Massachusetts Department of Public Health reported an additional 16,621 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Tuesday.The state's seven-day positivity rate is now 21.6%, a 2 percent increase since Monday and 6 percent higher than what the rate was one week ago. On Dec. 4, the state's seven-day positivity rate was 4.85%.The number of positive cases is more than double the 9,228 confirmed cases reported last Tuesday and is based on slightly more tests than reported on the same day last week. According to Tuesday's report from the DPH, 2,372 patients with confirmed coronavirus cases were hospitalized in Massachusetts, of which 441 were reported to be in an intensive care unit. The 7-day average of hospitalizations stands at 1,993, more than double what the seven-day average was at the same time in early December. The seven-day average of hospitalizations was 952 on Dec. 4. .State health officials also added 94 confirmed COVID-19-related deaths to the state's total, which is now 19,954. More than 5.09 million of Massachusetts' 7.03 million residents are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the DPH. Cases among vaccinated residents: Massachusetts public health officials reported 45,029 new breakthrough COVID-19 cases in fully vaccinated individuals in the past week, data released Tuesday from the state's Department of Public Health shows.A breakthrough case is when an individual tests positive for COVID-19 after they've been fully vaccinated against the disease. The mark is the highest one-week total reported since the state began releasing breakthrough data in early July, surpassing last week's record mark of 20,247.
45,029 New Breakthrough Cases in Mass., More Than Doubling Week Over Week – NBC Boston - Massachusetts health officials on Tuesday reported more than 45,000 new breakthrough COVID cases over the past week, more than doubling last week's total, and 88 more deaths in people with breakthrough cases.In the last week, 45,029 new breakthrough cases -- infections in people who have been vaccinated -- were reported, with 370 more vaccinated people hospitalized, Massachusetts Department of Public Health officials said Tuesday. It's a 122% increase in the rate of new breakthrough cases in Massachusetts -- last week saw20,247 new COVID infections in vaccinated people.The new report brings the total number of breakthrough cases to 179,594, and the death toll among people with breakthrough infections to 942. Both figures remain a tiny percentage of the total number of all people who have been vaccinated.
Alabama health officer on omicron variant: 'Spreading like wildfire' - A top Alabama health official said on Tuesday that the highly transmissible COVID-19 omicron variant is "spreading like wildfire" as the state sees record numbers of new coronavirus cases. “We are unfortunately not in a real good place right now. We are seeing the highest daily case numbers we have seen since the pandemic began,” Alabama State Health Officer Scott Harris said, according to The Associated Press.. “It is just spreading like wildfire,” he added, warning that “omicron will infect a very large number of people in Alabama before it finally subsides.” The entire state of Alabama is currently considered to have a high rate of transmission, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH). The state currently has a testing positivity rate of 38.5 percent. Alabama last Wednesday recorded nearly 8,700 new cases, the highest number of daily COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic, surpassing the peak that was recorded during the surge in delta cases. "We really need people to do the single most important thing they can do, which is to be fully vaccinated and boosted when it’s appropriate to do so," Harris said. While some early studies and anecdotal reports have suggested that the omicron variant may be milder than previous strains, Harris advised that people remain cautious. Harris stated that high transmission rates could still result in higher rates of hospitalization. Alabama has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the U.S., the AP noted, with less than 50 percent of the state's population being fully vaccinated.
COVID: California blows through record for new daily cases as omicron surges - The numbers from the holiday weekend are in — and California has broken every record for new coronavirus cases. Obliterated them, actually. The California Department of Public Health reported more than 230,000 new cases on Tuesday, more than twice as many as has been reported in a single day before. The holiday data dump brings California’s closely-watched 7-day average of new daily cases to a record high of 45,466 — nearly doubling the data available the day before. That figure appears poised to soar past 50,000 average daily cases as new data is confirmed and the highly contagious omicron variant continues its head-spinning spread. The Golden State is catching up to COVID hotspots in other parts of the country that had already toppled last winter’s peak for new infections. The 7-day average of new daily cases in the U.S. as a whole surpassed 400,000 this week for the first time and was headed toward a half-million. Last winter’s surge peaked at 251,000 on Jan. 11. “Our exposure notifications have been off the charts,” said Christopher Longhurst, chief medical officer at UC San Diego Health, whose team has a contract with the state to run a system that notifies people when they’ve been exposed to the virus. As during previous spikes, the highest concentration of new cases is in Southern California, with Los Angeles, San Diego, San Bernardino and Orange counties registering some of the state’s highest rates — all with a daily average of more than 100 cases per 100,000 residents. The positivity rate for COVID tests across California has reached a startling 20%, topping the previous high of 17% one year ago. In highly vaccinated San Francisco, 829 people are testing positive on average each day, more than double last winter’s peak, and there are more than 95 cases per 100,000 people in the city. “We believe that the height of this surge is upon us,” the city’s health director, Grant Colfax, said during a news conference Tuesday. But Colfax and other San Francisco officials said the omicron wave is behaving differently, in large part because most residents are vaccinated and boosted, so they are well protected against severe illness, hospitalization and death. Right now, Colfax said, as many as 30% of patients with COVID-19 at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital were found to be positive after arriving for other reasons. “We’re in a much different place,” said San Francisco Mayor London Breed. “Right now, we’re learning what it means to live with COVID.” “The consequences today are not catastrophic” for vaccinated residents, Breed said. “That’s a stark contrast to the impact COVID had before the vaccines.”
California extends face mask mandate amid record COVID cases - Californians will have to keep wearing face masks indoors past Valentine’s Day regardless of vaccination, the state’s top health official said Wednesday as COVID-19 cases reached a new record fueled by the fast-spreading omicron variant. Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said the face mask mandate will be extended a month to Feb. 15 and reevaluated then. “Omicron is here, and it’s here now and we can’t abandon the tools we’ve used to achieve our collective success that have allowed California to be one of the safest states in the pandemic,” Ghaly said. California’s 7-day average of new daily cases has nearly doubled since Friday to 54,695, a new record high. Citing the surge, organizers of the Grammy Awards, scheduled to take place at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles later this month, postponed the event Wednesday, but Ghaly said the Super Bowl is still scheduled to be played in Los Angeles on Feb. 13. Health officials are working with the National Football League, he said, “to make sure people can enjoy this important event” while ensuring measures are in place to avoid spreading the virus. COVID-19 infections are spreading like wildfire across the country as well, topping an average of nearly 550,000 new cases a day, with omicron now accounting for about 95% of cases, according to the CDC. “We’re asking everyone to follow these four steps: Get vaccinated and get boosted if you are eligible, wear a mask, stay home when you’re sick, and take a test if you have symptoms or are looking for greater, extra reassurance before you gather with others,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday. In the first year of the pandemic, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a statewide requirement for everyone to wear face coverings in indoor public settings in June 2020, and didn’t lift it until June 15 of 2021. That was a month after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had said the vaccinated no longer needed to mask up in most indoor public settings, with the exception of public transit, schools, shelters, prisons and jails and health care facilities. Several Bay Area counties in October reinstated the requirement, citing rising cases and concerns about worsening outbreaks over the winter, including breakthrough cases as immunity from vaccines and previous infections waned. California officials last month reinstated the statewide mask requirement for everyone down to age 2 regardless of vaccination status in all indoor public settings. The requirement began Dec. 15 and was to run through Jan. 15 before Wednesday’s extension.
Florida COVID update: Record cases, hospitalizations go up --Florida on Monday reported 85,707 cases and 61 new deaths to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to Miami Herald calculations of CDC data. This is the largest multi-day increase of newly reported cases since the pandemic began in March 2020.The previous multi-day record was set during the height of the delta wave last summer when 56,036 cases were reported on Aug. 16.The large increase comes from the CDC backlogging cases and deaths for Florida on Mondays and Thursdays, when multiple days in the past had their totals changed. In August, Florida began reporting cases by the “case date” rather than the date the case was logged into the system, resulting in a number of cases back-filling over time.All but 570 of the newly reported cases — about 99.3% — occurred since Dec. 6, according to the Miami Herald analysis.Of the deaths added, about 59% occurred over the past 28 days (since Dec. 6) and about 43% in the last two weeks, according to Herald calculations of CDC data. .In the past seven days, the state has added 22 deaths and 53,195 cases per day, on average, according to Herald calculations of CDC data. In all, Florida has recorded at least 4,308,534 confirmed COVID cases and 62,541 deaths. That rolling seven-day case average is the highest it’s ever been.The CDC didn’t update vaccination data Monday, but here is where the numbers stood as of Thursday, the last time it updated: About 13,607,439 eligible Floridians — 63.4% of the state’s population — have completed the two-dose series of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines or have completed Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ohio sets new record for COVID hospitalizations; More COVID testing sites coming | WKSU- Ohio on Monday set another record for COVID-19 hospitalizations. There are more than 6,150 COVID patients statewide and more than 1,300 in ICUs. Meanwhile, the Beacon Journal reportsAkron Public Schools says an ongoing driver shortage will likely lead to bussing delays as students return from winter break Tuesday. In Cuyahoga County, Common Pleas Court judges have postponed jury trials until the beginning of next month, and Ohio state legislative leaders have told their employees to work from home for the next week due to the COVID surge. Gov. Mike DeWine has mobilized additional Ohio National Guard members to staff more drive-thru COVID-19 testing sites. So far sites are operating in Akron and Cleveland, with one now open in Columbus and others coming soon, including in Canton. Summa Health’s atrium in Akron has a capacity for 300 tests a day, and most appointments are filled within hours. The Beacon Journal reports appointments will be released two days at a time, so people should checkSumma’s website frequently.
Local health leaders: Omicron cases doubling 'every 2-4 days' — The number of new COVID-19 cases and people in the hospital with infections reached record levels Wednesday, according to Hamilton County public health leaders. New data showed a new single-day high almost double the 716 case total recorded in December 2020. "We are on Mt. Everest with 1,472 cases of (coronavirus) in our community without a top of the mountain in sight," Hamilton County Health Commissioner Greg Kesterman said. "We continue to grow day after day." Kesterman, along with Hamilton County Commissioner Denise Driehaus and Dr. Richard Lofgren, Chief Executive Officer for UC Health, spoke about the tremendous surge in COVID-19 infections during a Zoom call with media on Wednesday. At the same time, hospitalizations from the virus hit an all-time high and the percentage of people testing positive rose to 27%, according to county data. "Every single community in Hamilton County: east side, west side, north side, everywhere has a significant spread of COVID right now," Kesterman said. "We know that it's spreading rapidly and we know that if you're not taking precautions it won't be long before COVID catches up with you." Dr. Richard Lofgren, Chief Executive Officer for UC Health, said his health care systems saw higher percentages of staff infected or quarantined in recent weeks. An average of 300 each day required testing last weekend, Lofgren said. UC Health currently faces staff shortages with frontline workers worn down from months of double-shifts and overtime, he added. Periodically, the hospital closes beds when patient demand surges and staffing falls short of levels able to meet health care system standards, Lofgren said. "The pandemic is not over," he added. "In fact, it is heating up more and more intense than it ever has been in the entire almost two years that we've been wrestling with this." COVID-19 cases are doubling every 2-to-4 days since the omicron variant became prevalent in the area, according to Dr. Lofgren. He said the number of hospitalizations that were admitted to Intensive Care Units during the peak of the delta variant was 25 percent. With omicron, that number is less, at 15 percent. But omicron is much more contagious. Delta was twice as contagious as the first cases of COVID-19 in the US. Omicron is 2-to-4 times as contagious as delta. In order to avoid the onslaught of patients crippling health care systems in northeastern Ohio, local public health leaders repeated old pleas for increased use of masks, social distancing, better hand hygiene, along with vaccinations and booster shots for anyone eligible. Without such measures, they think record-breaking trends continue. "It's astounding to me that these numbers are so high," Denise Driehause, Hamilton County Commissioner said. "It's a wake up call. We need to practice what we know works, which is staying home when you're sick, masking and keeping a safe distance." Lofgren said the situation has been hard due to the tremendous labor shortage in the health care industry. Kesterman said omicron was the perfect variant to spread if the population is tired of COVID-19, because of how highly contagious it is and how easily it spreads. "It lives on the surface a bit more" Lofgren said. "It's in the air a bit more, which is why masking becomes important. I think one of the things we need to recognize, it's how effective the vaccine is. It's not going to keep you from getting COVID, but it will still keep you out of the Emergency Room."
Hospitalizations in Illinois due to COVID-19 reach record high as omicron surge continues The Illinois Department of Public Health reports 6,294 were hospitalized with Covid-related illness as of yesterday, the highest number of hospitalizations since the pandemic began. Covid patients now occupy 25% of all in-use hospital beds in Illinois and account for 41% of patients in intensive care statewide. The surge in hospitalizations comes as the number of confirmed daily Covid-19 cases also reaches a pandemic peak. Approximately 90% of the patients hospitalized with Covid in recent weeks are not fully vaccinated, according to an IDPH spokesperson. Will and Kankakee Counties continue to report 95% of ICU beds are occupied, suburban Cook County is at 90%. The strain on hospitals comes as the total number of intensive care beds in Illinois have declined in recent months due to staffing and other issues.According to Illinois health officials, 85 percent of patients currently hospitalized with COVID-19 are not fully vaccinated.Also Monday, IDPH is reporting a daily average of 23,069 new Covid cases and an average 59 Covid-related deaths per day.
Record COVID-19 cases now leading to record hospitalizations | WWLP - The rate of hospitalizations is far lower than what we saw before vaccines arrived, but because we’re seeing record numbers for cases, we’re also seeing a jolt in hospitalizations. “If we ever need to go to stage four, it means converting some of our non-clinical areas into clinical spaces,” said Doctor Syed Hussain, the Chief Clinical Officer of Trinity Health Of New England. “That includes large conference rooms, it includes auditoriums and relying on assistance to get those staffed up.” Doctor Hussain with Trinity Health of New England said this is a public health crisis for people seeking medical care, whether it’s for COVID-19 or otherwise. With more people being hospitalized, they’re prepared for the surge. Doctor Artenstein with Baystate Health said with lower vaccination rates in our area, that means COVID-19 hospitalizations in the state even though we represent about five percent of the beds.” He added when we look at where hospitals stand now compared to previously in this pandemic, it’s a dual edged sword. More infections means more hospitalizations, but it’s not necessarily as bad as in the past. “We have less people that need to be in critical care. Less people on ventilators,” he said. “A lot less about half as many at Baystate health as we had back in January of 2021 and in April of 2020.” Doctor Artenstein said what you can do to reduce the impact on hospitals is not go to the emergency room if you’re having minor symptoms, wear a mask, get vaccinated and if you’re eligible get the booster shot.
5 states reporting record COVID-19 hospitalizations -- The U.S. recorded 1,082,549 new daily COVID-19 cases on Jan. 3, an all-time high, according to data from Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. During the latest surge driven by the omicron and delta variants, however, health officials have urged a shift to focus on hospitalizations as the key metric to gauge virus transmission and to steer public health guidance rather than case counts. That's because the virus is spreading in a different landscape than earlier surges, with wider vaccination coverage and testing. Still, health officials have warned against complacency toward omicron — which a growing body of evidence suggests causes milder illness than earlier variants — as hospitals may still become overwhelmed in some areas. Nationwide, hospitalizations have increased at a much slower rate than cases, with the daily average sitting at nearly 98,000 on Jan. 3 — a 41 percent increase over the last 14 days — according to data from The New York Times. For comparison, the daily average for new cases was more than 486,000 on Jan. 3, a 239 percent jump over the same length of time. Here are five states reporting record COVID-19 hospitalizations:
- 1. NBC New York reported the state sits at 9,563 hospitalizations with a 790 patient increase since Jan. 2. Gov. Kathy Hochul is asking hospitals to adjust COVID-19 hospitalization reporting to distinguish patients admitted for the virus being their primary condition versus those who test positive during a hospitalization for other reasons.
- 2. Illinois reported 6,294 hospitalizations Jan. 2, surpassing the previous record of 6,175 set Nov. 20, 2020, according to the Chicago Sun Times.
- 3. Ohio reported 5,356 COVID-19 hospitalizations Dec. 29, 2021, surpassing the previous hospitalization record of 5,308 on Dec. 15, 2020.
- 4. Maryland state data last updated Jan. 3 showed 2,746 patients are hospitalized for COVID-19, which CBS Baltimore reported is the highest the state has seen in the pandemic thus far.
- 5. State data shows Delaware reported 481 hospitalizations on Dec. 31, 2021, surpassing the previous Jan. 12, 2021, record of 474. Gov. John Carney declared a public health state of emergency Jan. 3.
Florida COVID-19 infections continue to hit record levels as officials abandon testing measures - The latest wave of COVID-19 in the US is wreaking havoc across the state of Florida with the Omicron variant of the virus fueling a record-shattering spike in cases, which is pushing the state’s hospital system to its breaking point and risks causing a massive death toll. Like every region nationwide, Florida saw an explosive growth in infections amid the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, as political figures encouraged millions to travel across the country and gather together despite the threat of the Omicron variant, which was first identified in November. The current wave is also occurring as Florida’s school districts press forward with the reopening of schools this week, a move that will lead to classrooms becoming super spreaders for the more transmissible variant and threaten the lives of millions of educators, students, and their families. On Monday, Florida reported a record 85,707 new infections from a backlog of case totals, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Although the CDC reported multiple days of cases instead of a single-day increase, it was the largest multi-day increase of newly reported cases since the pandemic began in March 2020. The CDC reported 254,814 new cases in Florida last week, with a positivity rate of more than 20 percent. The last multi-day record was set during the height of the Delta wave in August when 56,036 cases were reported. This was the same month Florida began reporting cases by the “case date” rather than the date the case was logged into the health system, resulting in a number of cases back-filling over several days. This was a crucial factor in greenlighting the resumption of in-person learning in schools and a significant maneuver on the part of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who has worked to cover-up the health crisis engulfing the state from the outset. Monday’s CDC calculations also added 61 deaths to Florida’s toll. The state has recorded 22 deaths and 53,195 cases per day on average in the past seven days. The state now stands at 4,308,534 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 62,541 deaths, the third largest totals in the nation, and the seven-day case average is the highest it’s ever been. COVID-19 cases in Florida have risen by 948 percent in just the past two weeks. Thousands of people across the state, fearful over the rapid rate of transmission, are desperately seeking to get tested for the virus, but even this is proving tremendously difficult. In Tallahassee, the state’s capital, images in the local press showed long lines and traffic jams in COVID-19 testing sites. Lines of cars were seen backed up for blocks in both directions at a location outside Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University’s (FAMU) testing site Monday as dozens of people waited to get tested.
Omicron pushes U.S. COVID hospitalizations toward record high (Reuters) - COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States are poised to hit a new high as early as Friday, according to a Reuters tally, surpassing the record set in January of last year as the highly contagious Omicron variant fuels a surge in infections.Hospitalizations have increased steadily since late December as Omicron quickly overtook Delta as the dominant coronavirus variant in the United States, although experts say Omicron will likely prove less deadly than prior iterations. While potentially less severe, health officials have warned that the sheer number of infections caused by Omicron could strain hospital systems, some of which have already shown signs of distress, partly due to staffing shortages. "I don't believe we've seen the peak yet here in the United States," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky told NBC News' "Today" program on Friday, as schools and businesses also struggle with rising caseloads. The United States reported 662,000 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, the fourth highest daily U.S. total coming just three days after a record of nearly 1 million cases was reported, according to the Reuters tally. The seven-day average for new cases set a record for a 10th consecutive day at 597,000, while COVID hospitalizations reached nearly 123,000 and appeared poised to top the record of over 132,000 set last year. Deaths, an indicator that lags hospitalizations, remain fairly steady at a still high 1,400 a day, according to the tally, well below last year's record numbers. New York Governor Kathy Hochul and the head of one of the largest U.S. hospitals both said they were cautiously optimistic that cases and hospitalizations would soon plateau in the state. "We think with our modeling that the peak will happen next week," said Steven Corwin, chief executive of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, during Hochul's daily briefing. Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Vermont and Washington, D.C., all reported record levels of hospitalized COVID patients in recent days, according to the Reuters analysis. Hospitalization data, however, does not differentiate between people admitted for COVID-19 and so-called incidental positives. Those are patients who were admitted and treated for issues other than COVID-19 and contracted the virus while in the hospital and are counted in coronavirus hospitalization numbers. Incidental infections have occurred throughout the pandemic but might be significantly higher now due to the staggering pace of Omicron's spread - a phenomenon that has prompted state health departments to consider altering their disclosures. Starting next week, Massachusetts hospitals will report whether admissions are primary or incidental to COVID-19, said Kathleen Conti, a spokesperson for the state's department of health. Rising cases have forced hospital systems in nearly half of U.S. states to postpone elective surgeries. While many school systems have vowed to continue in-person instruction, some have faced ad hoc closures as cases rise. Chicago Public Schools, the third-largest U.S. school system, were closed for a third day on Friday amid a teacher walkout over COVID-19 protections.
Record hospitalizations in Delaware from COVID - Numbers released by the State of Delaware show a record number of hospitalizations as a result of COVID-19. As of January 3, 2022, 602 people were in the hospital with COVID, with 72 of them in critical condition. The more than 600 hospitalizations is 125 more than the previous record of 474 set in January of 2021. "One of the things we know about those in the hospital is that, consistently, between 70 and 80% of those that are hospitalized with COVID-19 are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated," said Governor John Carney during an online COVID briefing on Tuesday, January 3, 2022. Carney said the number of people testing positive is over 25%. "One in four COVID tests are positive," said Carney. "So if you have COVID symptoms you should assume you have COVID, and you should make sure you get tested or quarantine right away and make sure you're not infecting other family members, co-workers. If you're sick, stay home." Carney and Division of Public Health Director Dr. Karyl Rattay pleaded with people to wear a mask and get vaccinated. "This is a preventable crisis," said Carney. "There is a way to protect the hospitals, and that's to make sure that more people get vaccinated, make sure people wear masks when they're in public settings or in close proximity to others." Carney said that requires people to act responsibly when it comes to social events and group gatherings. "Really think twice about having social events," said Carney. "Having the guys over to have a beer and watch a football game or whatever the case may be, it's really not a good time to do it." But Carney said there's nothing he can do to stop such gatherings. "There's nothing we can do to control those private environments nor would you want us to," said Carney. "It's really a time where all of us have to take our own individual responsibility to come together as a community to protect one another."
Sick Kids Are Filling Up Hospitals In The Omicron Surge - CDC Director Rochelle Walensky warned on Friday that pediatric hospitals are seeing record numbers of children with COVID-19, as the Omicron variant surges nationwide. US coronavirus cases are currently higher than they’ve ever been, averaging around 600,000 new cases reported daily (itself an undercount), with hospitalization rates that have increased for people of all ages, according to Walensky, who briefed reporters on Friday. More than 1,200 people a day are dying of COVID-19 nationwide. “While children still have the lowest rate of hospitalization of any group, pediatric hospitalizations are at the highest rate compared to any prior point in the pandemic,” Walensky said. “Sadly, we are seeing the rates of hospitalization increasing for children 0 to 4, children who are not yet currently eligible for COVID-19 vaccination.” As of Jan. 1, the rate for COVID-19 hospitalizations among children under 4 was 4.3 cases per 100,000. That’s almost four times higher than it is among kids 5 to 17, who are eligible for vaccination, according to Walensky, and more than twice the hospitalization rate seen in this age group at the same time last year. She added that CDC data does show that children above the age of 4 are more likely to be in the hospital if they are unvaccinated. Walensky pointed out that some unknown number of these cases are incidental — children who test positive when they are hospitalized for non-COVID reasons. Many of the case reports of children come from asymptomatic kids who enter the hospital for elective procedures or other illnesses, she added, complicating the picture for epidemiologists trying to figure out risks for kids. George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology and pediatrics at UCSF, said these numbers show that COVID is widespread, is infecting children, and some proportion of them will be hospitalized. “Hospitalizations are going up. There's no reason to think that they wouldn't go up in children,” he said, adding that “children don't seem to be as unsusceptible to this as they have been to earlier strains.” Still, he said that COVID-19 is a serious disease for children, and protecting them while Omicron surges across the country is paramount. “In 2020 COVID was the seventh leading cause of death in children in the United States,” Rutherford said. “It is a big deal. And people who pooh-pooh it and say 'oh, it's no big deal' are blind to facts.”
CDC: Record Number of Kids With Coronavirus Are Hospitalized - The hospitalization rate among kids with COVID-19 has surpassed the peak seen during the delta wave and is the highest reported during the pandemic, according to the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on Friday previewed agency data showing that “while children still have the lowest rate of hospitalization of any group, pediatric hospitalizations are at the highest rate compared to any prior point in the pandemic.” Several factors could contribute to rising hospitalizations, including the large amount COVID-19 spreading across the country and low vaccination rates. Walensky said that unvaccinated children are more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than vaccinated kids. “We are still learning more about the severity of omicron and children and whether these increases we are seeing in hospitalization reflect a greater burden of disease in the community or the lower rates of vaccination for these children under age 18,” Walensky said on a call with reporters. More than 760 kids under the age of 18 are getting hospitalized with COVID-19 on average each day, according to CDC data. It’s the highest average ever reported for the age group. Hospitalization rates are increasing, especially among children under the age of 5, which is the only age group that doesn’t yet have access to a coronavirus vaccine. Only 16% of kids 5-11 are fully vaccinated, and just over half of kids ages 12-17 are fully vaccinated, according to CDD data.
US West Coast hospitals overwhelmed by Omicron with thousands of doctors and nurses infected -Hospitals from California to Washington state are in the worst crisis of the pandemic as a massive spike in cases of the now dominant and highly transmissible Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 rips through the population, shattering records and infecting even fully vaccinated frontline health care workers. In the United States, this week’s seven-day average of new daily cases has surpassed half a million, a record high, with nearly 120,000 people hospitalized with COVID-19, near an all-time high. The Omicron variant now makes up around 95 percent of all new COVID-19 cases in the United States according to a Tuesday update by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In Oregon, the average of new daily cases has reached 3,331 per day with 580 out of 768 adult ICU beds filled. The Oregon State Hospital in Salem is pausing new patient admissions due to a COVID-19 outbreak with 29 patients and 32 employees in the facility testing positive. Hospital Superintendent Dolly Matteucci announced in a letter on Tuesday that “We expect that number to rise, given the high-risk exposures involved.” Over the last week, Washington state has averaged 8,123 new confirmed cases per day with 77 percent of ICU beds filled, 915 out of 1,189. Dr. John Lynch, the medical director of Harborview Medical Center’s infection control program, said that hospitalizations are pushing Washington’s health care system “closer than they’ve ever been [to] a crisis point.” Washington is facing hospitalization rates higher than at any other point in the pandemic. Seattle Children’s Hospital has seen a record number of patients. Shaquita Bell, a pediatrician at Seattle Children, told NPR that “ERs are at 200 percent. Like, our ER here in Seattle, at Seattle Children’s, is operating at all-time high records of patients seeking care. We’ve had record rates of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV infections. Children are being admitted with both COVID and RSV infections.”
US hospitalizations for COVID-19 rapidly closing in on pandemic high - According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as of January 7, 2022, inpatient beds in use for COVID-19 have reached 132,000. The highest peak in admissions occurred last January 14, 2021, when over 142,000 people were admitted for COVID-19. Intensive care units are presently operating at over 82 percent capacity nationwide, and one in five are at 95 percent capacity. More than a quarter of all patient admissions to these highly specialized treatment units are for COVID-19. Hospital admits are climbing for every age category but are the highest are for those 60 years and older where admission numbers have doubled since Christmas Eve. This age group is the most prone to complications despite vaccination status. Health officials indicate that admissions are expected to continue to surge. What differentiates recent hospitalizations from last winter is that the explosive upswing in admissions is placing such a tremendous strain on the national health infrastructure, operating with a much-reduced workforce. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics around 450,000 health care workers have quit during the pandemic. In little over one month, the US has added 10 million more cases of COVID infections to its ledger, which will surpass 60 million this weekend. The number of active infections has ballooned to over 16.6 million, implying that an astounding one in 20 people in the US are currently positive on testing and considered infective. One in four tests in the US are positive for COVID-19 infection, indicating that there is a vast undertesting of the population. Yesterday, more than three-quarters of a million people were confirmed infected. The seven-day average of daily infections, continuing its meteoric rise, has reached 610,173. The daily COVID-19 death toll is also steadily trending upwards. More than 2,140 people died from their infection, raising the cumulative death toll to 856,000, according to the Worldometer dashboard. The present infection level has led to an unprecedented number of health care workers calling in sick or isolating due to exposure to the coronavirus. Many are being forced to work despite knowing they are infected, with the attendant risk of infecting their patients, leading to growing frustration and resentment. Emergency first responders in Los Angeles and New York City are out by the hundreds. Staffing shortages are becoming dire at several major health systems in California, Florida, Texas and New York, creating massive gridlock and delays for patients waiting hours for their nurse or caregiver to reach their rooms.
Omicron pushes U.S. hospitalizations toward record high - COVID-19 hospitalizations are on the verge of a new record high in the United States as the highly contagious Omicron variant fuels a surge in infections, according to a Reuters tally. "I've never seen anything like it since I've been a nurse." Jodi Parsons is an ICU charge nurse at Western Reserve Hospital in Ohio: "When we had our first surge, when the pandemic first started, it was nothing like it is today. I would say we're surging more today in this hospital than we were when it all started a year ago, or two years ago...We noticed a lot of after the holidays gatherings. Like after Thanksgiving, we really imploded. We were full. We had 12 beds full at all times." Hospitalizations have increased steadily since late December as Omicron quickly overtook Delta as the dominant coronavirus variant in the U.S. - although experts say Omicron will likely prove less deadly. "So it takes a few days for the medication that you guys are giving me to try to bring it back up?" COVID-19 patient Frank Clark tested positive for the virus as well as his wife: "A few hours later my wife took the test and she tested positive. She's also a victim of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, so we're double-trouble." The seven-day average for new cases set a record for a 10th consecutive day at 597,000, while COVID hospitalizations reached nearly 123,000 and appeared poised to top the record of over 132,000. Officials continue to press vaccinations as the best protection against serious illness, although federal mandates requiring them have become politically contentious.
Omicron fuels unprecedented spike in COVID-19 cases - The omicron variant is fueling an unprecedented spike in COVID-19 cases and placing a strain on hospital capacity, but experts say the spike could play out in the shape of an “ice pick” — a sharp but fast increase — that may leave the U.S. on better footing as soon as next month. The U.S. health care system is in for significant pain in the short term, but the fast surge could even help defeat the pandemic in the longer term by conveying broader immunity. Some experts are calling for people to buckle down for a last stretch of diligent precautions like mask-wearing in public, indoor settings to spread cases out and get hospitals through the next few weeks before the situation improves. “We need to have sort of the last effort so that we can make it to the spring,” Janis Orlowski, chief health care officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), said in a press briefing. Some experts predict that cases could peak in the U.S. later in January or in early February, though because of the large size of the country, certain areas will have localized spikes after currently hard-hit areas like New York have already peaked. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Friday the experience in South Africa indicates a “precipitous increase and then a precipitous decline,” in the shape of an “ice pick,” though she noted that pattern could be one that “travels across the country” at different times. Carlos del Rio, an infectious diseases professor at Emory University School of Medicine, predicted the national peak could come “between the third week of January and the first or second week of February.” Once the highly transmissible omicron variant burns through the population, the outlook will be improved. “At this rate we may actually really be able to reach herd immunity because we're going to get so many people in the population infected that at some point in time this may be sort of the beginning of the end of the pandemic, at least in this country,” del Rio said, during a discussion hosted by Emory University. “Because omicron is really going to infect pretty much everybody who hasn't been infected so far.” Experts still stress that it is far better to get your immunity from vaccinations and boosters without getting sick, rather than from getting the virus, which can have lingering effects even if it is not bad enough to require hospitalization. The symptoms of omicron are milder on average, and people who are vaccinated and boosted are especially well-protected against severe disease. But even with only a small percentage of cases requiring hospitalization, the sheer number of total cases means overwhelmed hospitals. “We are overrun,” said Orlowski, of AAMC, which represents teaching hospitals across the country. The U.S. is recording more than 700,000 new cases per day and climbing, an unprecedented number, though between the protection from vaccinations and omicron’s diminished severity, many are mild or asymptomatic. Still, hospitalizations from COVID-19 are spiking to over 128,000, according to a New York Times tracker, though deaths have so far stayed relatively steady at about 1,400 per day. Orlowski and del Rio said about a third of patients in the hospital with the virus are not sick solely because of COVID-19, but have other conditions that in some cases are exacerbated by having the virus, too. Some hospitals reported as many as roughly half of patients testing positive were not primarily in the hospital because of COVID-19. Del Rio said that among patients solely in the hospital for COVID-19, about 80 to 90 percent are unvaccinated, or in some cases have received two doses of vaccine (without a booster shot) and also have an underlying condition.
Oregon Hits New Record of COVID Cases For 4th Consecutive Day, More than Doubles Old Mark - Oregon hit a new record of COVID cases for the fourth consecutive day Thursday, more than doubling its old mark.Health officials reported 7,615 new COVID cases Thursday. The state record before this week of 3,207 cases in a day was set in August.Oregon averaged 4,001 COVID cases the past week. That figure is up 162 percent from just last Thursday. The infections are being driven by the Omicron variant, which is highly contagious, although less severe. Much of the spread occurred since Christmas.Almost 25 percent of the state's reported COVID tests were positive on Thursday, as well. Despite the record number of cases, Oregon reported some of the lowest rates of cases in the nation during the latest COVID surge.Health officials in some of Oregon's largest counties, such as Multnomah, where Portland is, said the number of COVID cases and hospitalizations will probably continually increase over the next several weeks."I suspect all of us are going to feel the squeeze of Omicron spreading quickly through our communities and people calling out sick," Dr. Jennifer Vines, Multnomah County's health officer, said. "It's going to disrupt hospitals, childcare, businesses, and public services, as people stay home when they're sick."
Michigan’s record COVID cases increase testing demand, but capacity is limited - Risk of coronavirus transmission is high across Michigan and public health officials say robust testing is critical to controlling spread, but tests can be difficult to secure. Nearly two years into the pandemic, waits are sometimes hours long at drive-up or free testing sites, at-home tests are hard to locate, and timely appointments might not be available at major pharmacies like Walgreens, where at some locations, there aren’t any openings for several days. Demand for testing, especially free, easily accessible testing, is high. “I think there’s definitely room for capacity. Like the free testing that is at no cost to people so there are no barriers. There just isn’t enough of that,” said Rebecca Burns, health officer for the three-county Branch-Hillsdale-St. Joseph Community Health Agency. If there ever was a need, it is now. Statewide, more than 30% of tests have been positive for COVID-19 in recent days. This is by far the highest rate since the state began large-scale testing in about May 2020. Grand Rapids-based Spectrum Health was seeing “astronomically high” lab positivity with 1,000 positive tests a day, the greatest level of the pandemic, Dr. Darryl Elmouchi, president of Spectrum Health West Michigan, said in a mid-week update. In the Detroit-based Henry Health System, nearly 5,000 people tested positive for the coronavirus last week. This was the highest number of positive tests the system had seen in one week for all of 2021, said Dr. Adnan Munkarah, executive vice president and chief clinical officer. Expansion is difficult. “We don’t have enough staff to do the nasal swabbing for more and more testing.” It can be difficult to identify options and decide where best to seek a test. Turn-around times widely vary for PCR tests, the most accurate, but not the quickest of those available. Sparrow Health System in Lansing says patients will see PCR results the next day. The state health department, at its sites, says it takes three to four days. Costs differ too. Many locations advertise free testing. Walgreens, for example, says it will not send bills, but the lab might bill an insurer when a patient displays an insurance card. Reporters this week visited several testing sites in Michigan and talked to officials at others to assess the situation.
Pa. sets record with 32,000 new COVID cases - Pennsylvania shattered its record for new COVID-19 cases on Friday, with more than 30,000 new cases registered for the first time in the pandemic. The state Department of Health added 32,053 new cases, 4,000 more than the previous record of 28,018 set on Wednesday. Additionally, COVID-19 hospitalizations in Pennsylvania increased by more than 200 for the fourth consecutive day. After surpassing 6,000 COVID hospitalizations for the first time in nearly a year on Wednesday, another 234 patients were hospitalized on Friday. The number of COVID patients in Pennsylvania hospitals has increased by more than 1,400 since January began and by more than 65 percent since Dec. 1. Friday marked the sixth time in the last eight days with at least 20,000 cases statewide. The 10 highest one-day increases in cases of the pandemic have been over the past 10 days. With 170,475 cases so far, January 2022 already has the fifth-most cases in a single month since the pandemic began in early 2020. A record 299,504 infections were recorded in Pennsylvania last month. Statewide, there were also 156 more deaths linked to the coronavirus on Friday. It was the fourth day in a row with more than 100 deaths statewide. There were no Valley deaths linked to COVID in the latest release. The Valley recorded 362 new infections on Friday, the third day in a row with at least 200 new cases in the region. All 67 Pennsylvania counties continued to see high community transmission of the disease on Friday, meaning at least 100 new cases per 100,000 residents over the previous seven days, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Georgia sets one-day record for COVID-19 cases - The swift spread of the coronavirus’ omicron variant brought Georgia to a new single-day record for new COVID-19 cases Friday. The Georgia Department of Public Health reported 26,033 combined confirmed and probable coronavirus infections. The new record exceeded the previous record of 25,212 cases, set on Wednesday. Overall the state, with a population of 10.8 million, has recorded nearly 2 million infections throughout the pandemic as of this week. It’s not clear yet whether omicron’s big spike in cases will also lead to record levels of hospitalizations and death, as the delta variant did over the summer. Hospitals will find out in the next two weeks. The number hospitalized with COVID in Georgia was 4,658 on Friday. Georgia’s mounting case numbers Friday also came as failures with the state’s public health data systems yet again prevented DPH from producing its daily report on pandemic information. DPH maintains a public website, https://dph.georgia.gov/, listing daily updates on COVID case counts, hospitalizations, deaths and other data, and it has reported multiple data problems this week. The website didn’t update Monday, Thursday or Friday. DPH instead issued a press release Friday evening with the basic numbers. “Due to ongoing issues with Electronic Laboratory Reporting (ELR), the Georgia Department of Public Health will not publish an updated COVID-19 Daily Status Report today,” the agency stated. “Data for case counts, hospitalizations and deaths come from sources other than ELR, and as such are not impacted by the same problem.” It’s an inopportune time for the problems as omicron continues to spread across the state and the seven-day rolling average of new confirmed and probable infections is at its highest point of the pandemic. Hospitals and other health care and science workers are watching the numbers with deep concern to understand what the next days hold and how to respond. Their resources are stretched and they are filled already with COVID-19 patients.
L.A. County sees a record 44,000 new coronavirus cases - Emergency rooms across California are coming under strain as they contend both with a deluge of new coronavirus-positive patients and people coming in to demand tests — all as their workers are increasingly being stricken by the rapidly spreading Omicron variant.In Los Angeles County, officials said the healthcare system is experiencing significant workforce shortages because of rampant coronavirus transmission.Over the week ending Thursday, 973 new coronavirus cases were reported among healthcare workers, according to the county Department of Public Health, up 47% from the previous week.Overall, L.A. County reported 43,712 new coronavirus cases on Friday alone — the highest single-day total of the pandemic. The previous record, 37,215, came Thursday. Those numbers are well above the average daily peak last winter, when L.A. County was recording about 16,000 new coronavirus cases a day.The surge in cases has brought along a surge in demand for coronavirus testing, overwhelming hospitals and other sites.Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday that National Guard troops would be deployed throughout the state to help with testing.“The National Guard plan will deploy over 200 Cal Guard members across 50 Optum Serve sites around the state, providing interim clinical staff while permanent staff are hired, adding capacity for walk-ins, assisting with crowd control and back-filling for staff absences — all in an effort to conduct more tests for more Californians. Additional members of the Guard will be deployed next week in similar capacities,” the governor’s office said in a statement.In Orange County, about five of its 25 hospitals are asking for more staffing from the state “because they are experiencing extreme staffing shortages,” and more requests are expected, said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, a deputy county health officer.“Our hospitals are full, and the emergency departments are really getting hit hard,” she said Friday.Emergency rooms have a limited number of beds and staff to work with. Chinsio-Kwong said that, anecdotally, she’s heard anywhere from 10% to 20% of workers are unavailable due to coronavirus-related reasons, calling it a “dire situation.”Ambulances are waiting as long as 52 minutes at hospitals to drop off patients, well above the 30-minute goal, Chinsio-Kwong said, most hospitals have set up surge tents to increase capacity, and Orange County has stopped accepting hospital patients diverted from neighboring counties.It’s possible that hospitals in Orange County will have to start suspending scheduled surgeries, as has already occurred elsewhere in California, including L.A. County.Many counties are seeing a growing percentage of people entering hospitals with a coronavirus infection but being treated for something other than COVID-19.“This is very different than what we were experiencing a year ago,” Dr. Brad Spellberg, chief medical officer at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, said Friday. “Clearly, the number of positive tests is actually higher than it was a year ago — and I understand why that’s very scary, in terms of these numbers going up — but the average sickness level is substantially lower.”
Los Angeles Shatters Covid Case Record For Second Day In A Row; Daily Infections Now Greater Than Entire Population Of Beverly Hills --Los Angeles County’s 43,712 new Covid infections today is the highest daily total of the entire pandemic, breaking a record set just 24 hours before, when 37,215 new cases were announced. Thursday’s number had, in turn, skyrocketed up over 10,000 cases from 26,754 the day before.On Tuesday, the county recorded 21,790 new daily cases. That means in the four days from Tuesday to Friday of this week, new infections in the county more than doubled. And the starting point — Tuesday’s 21,790 — was at that point a near record.Put another way, Friday’s 43,712 new Covid infections accounts for more county residents than the entire population of Beverly Hills or Culver City.Driving the rise is widespread infection. The county’s 7-day rolling average of people testing positive was 20.9% as of Friday. That’s up from 11.4% just two weeks before. Even that near-record test-positivity rate may be artificially low, according to county health officials, due to the number of people who use take-home tests and don’t report the results. Along with the increased case numbers has came the anticipated rise in hospitalizations, with state figures showing 2,902 Covid-positive patients in L.A. hospitals as of Friday. That was up from 2,661 on Thursday. Of the hospitalized patients, 391 were being treated in intensive care units, up from 352 a day earlier.While still well short of the peak hospitalization numbers seen last winter — when more than 8,000 COVID-positive patients filled hospitals — the rising number is still generating concern. The state’s composite forecast predicted record numbers of hospitalizations in California by early February.What’s more, health care facilities are finding themselves increasingly short-staffed, in part because of Covid infections among health care workers.According to the county Department of Public Health, 973 infections among health care workers were reported over the past week, a jump of 47% from the prior period. That rise comes despite the relatively high rate of health care workers who’ve been vaccinated — showing the power of theOmicron variant of the virus to infect even vaccinated residents, although they are less likely to become severely ill.The state is requiring all health care workers in the state to receive a booster dose of vaccine by February 1. Those who do not receive the booster must be tested twice weekly.
California Calls Out National Guard To Increase Covid Testing In Surge – California Governor Gavin Newsom today announced he has activated the California National Guard to support local communities with additional testing facilities and capacity amid the surge in Covid cases driven by the Omicron variant.The state’s National Guard plan will deploy over 200 Cal Guard members across 50 Optum Serve sites around California, providing interim clinical staff while permanent staff are hired, adding capacity for walk-ins, assisting with crowd control and back-filling for staff absences – all in an effort to conduct more tests. Additional members of the Guard will be deployed next week in similar capacities, according to the governor’s office.Los Angeles is experiencing not just a shortage of rapid tests, but also a scarcity of appointments for the more reliable PCR tests. And with LAUSD and other schools starting back up next week, the region is wise to flood the zone in hope of catching outbreaks at their outset.While the state today recorded the highest number of tests administered ever, the 7-day test positivity rate has continued to soar. Test positivity generally declines with more testing. An increase in positivity along with testing generally indicates the full spread of infection is not being captured.The state’s 7-day average test positivity rate is up 3.6% in the past week to an all time high of 21.7% today. That’s 60-plus percent higher than the peak of last winter’s surge. It means one in every five people tested in the state are positive. It also comes on a day when the state registered a massive 528,039 tests.“California has led the country’s fight against Covid-19, implementing first-in-the-nation public health measures that have helped save tens of thousands of lives,” said Newsom. “We continue to support communities in their response to COVID by bolstering testing capacity.”This new action will add to the existing 6,000 testing sites that have been set up across the state and the recent demand-based expansion of hours at state-operated sites.The announcement comes as Omicron continues to spread rapidly, accounting for at least 80% of Covid cases in the region.
Infections and hospitalizations skyrocket as Canadian governments facilitate rampant Omicron spread - Canada’s federal government reported 322,362 active COVID-19 cases across the country as of January 4, up by around 100,000 in just four days. Underscoring the rapidity with which the Omicron variant is spreading, the current number of infected people amounts to close to 15 percent of the 2.3 million positive cases detected since the pandemic began two years ago. This catastrophic situation, which is already producing a dramatic rise in hospitalizations and deaths, is the product of the criminal policies pursued by the ruling elite. The federal and provincial governments have openly embraced the fascistic policy of “herd immunity”—i.e., the claim that the pandemic can be ended by allowing enough people to get infected and build up collective immunity. Governments have cut quarantine periods to ensure big business has a ready supply of workers and restricted COVID-19 testing to conceal the scale of mass infection from the public. In Ontario, Health Minister Christine Elliott reported Tuesday that 1,290 people are currently receiving hospital care for COVID-19, up by a staggering 163 percent compared to the 491 receiving treatment a week ago. Of these, 266 patients are currently in intensive care, up from 187 a week earlier. The Ontario Science Advisory Table estimates that only one in five infections is being detected by the authorities. Based on Elliott’s announcement of 11,352 new infections yesterday, that would mean that the true figure of daily infections is close to 60,000 in Ontario alone. At a press conference Monday, Premier Doug Ford declared that Ontario’s hospitals could be left short by “thousands” of beds in a matter of weeks. Under pressure from widespread public outrage over his government’s mishandling of the pandemic and the mounting Omicron catastrophe, Ford was compelled to announce a two-week delay to the reopening of schools for in-person learning. Delays of at least a week to school reopenings have also been announced in British Columbia, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec. Omicron is taking a particularly devastating toll on children. On Christmas Day, 12 children aged 10 or under were admitted to hospital in Quebec, a single-day record since the beginning of the pandemic. As of early January, 149 children aged nine or under had been admitted to hospital since the beginning of Quebec’s fourth wave of infections. This includes a two-month-old baby who died of COVID-19 at Montreal’s Sainte-Justine hospital on December 16. Even though the Omicron wave is only in its early stages, hospitals are already reporting being overwhelmed by the rapid increase in patients. William Osler Health System, which oversees Brampton Civic and Etobicoke General hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area, declared a code orange yesterday for the first time during the pandemic. Code orange is declared when demand for patient care outstrips a hospital’s capacity. In Quebec, more than 440 staff members at Quebec City's Québec-Université Laval hospital have been infected with COVID-19, with another 400 isolating due to possible exposure. The hospital will cut medical appointments and operating room activities by half as of today.
New COVID-19 cases at record single-day tally on U.S. bases | The Asahi Shimbun: Prefectural authorities here announced a single-day record of 235 new COVID-19 cases among U.S. forces in Okinawa Prefecture on Jan. 1, adding that U.S. military officials were still trying to grasp how the explosive outbreak had taken hold. The issue was complicated by the fact that U.S. authorities refused to share anything other than basic facts. As a result, it was not immediately known to which U.S. base or bases the infected individuals were deployed and whether they had the highly contagious Omicron variant. The number of infections among U.S. service personnel, as well as civilian base employees, has been surging in the prefecture since last month following an outbreak reported Dec. 17 at the U.S. Marine Corps Camp Hansen that involved 70 individuals. U.S. authorities reported 45 new cases on Dec. 30 and 98 on Dec. 31, bringing the monthly total of novel coronavirus cases among military personnel to 522 in December alone. According to prefectural officials, U.S. officials have not determined the trigger for the surge in infections at its bases in the southernmost prefecture and are still investigating. In light of recent developments, Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki called Dec. 21 for U.S. military personnel to be confined to their bases to prevent the spread of infections to the prefecture’s civilian population. He made the request to the U.S. military as well as the Japanese government. In reply, U.S. authorities said they were making progress in containing the outbreak but made no mention of the request to restrict troop movements. Prefectural officials said they will again urge the U.S. military to ensure that all personnel stay at home following a flurry of reports from local residents that some are still going out and not even bothering to wear face masks. The slipshod approach taken at all U.S. bases in Japan surfaced after the outbreak occurred at Camp Hansen. On Dec. 22, Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi conveyed his annoyance about the outbreak in Okinawa Prefecture to Ricky Rupp, the commander of U.S. forces in Japan, and urged him to improve the situation. Four days later, the U.S. military moved to require personnel to get tested 72 hours prior to their departure to Japan. Based on the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement, U.S. military personnel are not subject to Japanese law, which means they fall outside steps taken by Japan to make its borders safe from the novel coronavirus.
Okinawa chief rips U.S. military over spread of Omicron variant | The Asahi Shimbun: —Okinawa Prefecture reported 130 new COVID-19 cases on Jan. 3, the highest single-day total since Sept. 25. For the most recent week, the prefecture has averaged 17.37 new infections per 100,000 people, the worst ratio in the nation, prefectural officials said. And those numbers do not include infections among U.S. military personnel in the prefecture. Prefectural officials said Jan. 3 that the outbreak at U.S. military’s Camp Hansen on Dec. 15 had spread to eight other U.S. bases, affecting 832 military personnel and related individuals. An infuriated Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki blasted the U.S. military for failing to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus and allowing the Omicron variant to spill over to the civilian population. “I am outraged because the sharp increase in the number of infected among U.S. military personnel suggests that their management is insufficient,” Tamaki said at a news conference on Jan. 2. He renewed his call for U.S. military authorities to implement thorough measures to rein in the virus. U.S. forces reported 70 new COVID-19 cases among personnel stationed in Okinawa Prefecture on Jan. 2, a day after confirming a record 235 new infections. But U.S. authorities would not give the prefectural government further details, such as whether the highly transmissible Omicron variant is responsible for the new infections. Nonetheless, Tamaki blamed U.S. military personnel for spreading the Omicron variant to local communities. He also appealed for an overhaul of the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement, noting that U.S. military personnel and related individuals are exempt from Japan’s quarantine rules. “I urge both the Japanese and U.S. governments to have a strong sense of alarm that (the prevalence of the virus is caused by) a systemic problem,” he said.
IHU: New Covid variant with 46 mutations worries experts in France -So far, 12 people have been infected with the new variant -- While the world is grappling with the highly infectious Omicron, strain of Covid, scientists in France have identified a potentially worrying new variant, which has 46 mutations. Named IHU, the new B.1.640.2 variant has so far infected 12 people living in southeastern France. The first case was linked to a person with a travel history to Cameroon, western Africa, said researchers in a paper published on medRxiv. However, experts were quick to announce that just because a new variant had been discovered, that did not necessarily mean IHU will prove as infectious as other strains, including Omicron. In the analysis, the authors found “46 mutations” which had not been spotted in other countries, nor labelled a variant under investigation by the WHO. The genomes were obtained by next-generation sequencing. The authors of the paper claimed that the person who was idenitifed with the IHU variant, was fully-vaccinated. The person tested positive for covid after returning from a three-day trip to Cameroon. The authors of the research paper said "subsequent detection... of three mutations in the spike gene to screen for variants... did not correspond to the pattern of the Delta variant involved in almost all SARS-CoV-2 infections at that time”. Arguing that the emergence of the new variant emphasised the importance of “genomic surveillance”, the authors said their observations once again showed the “unpredictability of the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants”. In a long Twitter thread, epidemiologist and a fellow at Federation of American Scientists, Eric Feigl-Ding said the new variant was being monitored to evaluate how infectious or dangerous it could prove to be. “There are scores of new variants discovered all the time, but it does not necessarily mean they will be more dangerous.
Omicron becoming dominant strain in India not a ‘bad thing’, says expert --The Omicron variant of coronavirus becoming a dominant strain in near future is not a “bad thing” as the symptoms are less severe than other variants of concern, a health expert has suggested. Dr S Chandra, a consultant physician at Delhi’s Helvetia Medical Center, told news agency ANI that the symptoms in coronavirus disease (Covid-19) patients infected with Omicron mostly seem to be mild and moderate and further get reduced within three to four days.“Omicron will become dominant strain which is not a bad thing considering the fact that its symptoms are less severe,” ANI quoted Chandra as saying.“Symptoms mostly seem to be mild and moderate in Omicron patients. The symptoms are reduced within 3-4 days in such patient,” he added.The doctor underlined that vaccinated individuals are getting infected because Covid-19 vaccines may not be effective enough against the new variant of concern due to the high number of mutations. He, however, stressed that vaccines held in reducing the severity of the disease. Chandra said that the third Covid wave won’t be as severe as the second wave.“We seem to be at beginning of the third wave. Although cases are rising, the mortality rate is still very low. The third wave won't be as severe as the second wave,” Chandra said, as quoted by ANI.The rapid rise in fresh Covid cases, driven by the highly contagious Omicron variant, prompted the Delhi government to announce a fresh set of curbs in the national capital, including the weekend curfew. Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain told reporters that the capital is expected to report about 5,500 new Covid cases on Tuesday, with a positivity rate close to 8.5 per cent. He emphasised that weekend curfew should not be considered as lockdown.
'Be vigilant, Covid cases are doubling each day, next 2 weeks are crucial' --With India continuing to witness a surge in COVID-19 cases, Health Expert has said that the infections are doubling each day and advised people to be vigilant as the next two weeks will be crucial. Speaking to ANI, Dr Ashish Khattar, Senior Consultant, Internal Medicine at Delhi's Venkateshwar Hospital said that the cases are doubling each day but the symptoms are mild with upper respiratory tract infection and there is no major requirement for hospitalisation. "In the last three days, we have seen doubling of COVID-19 cases and even more than that. Definitely, over the next two weeks, we can see a certain spurt in COVID-19 cases. By end of January, a major population would have been affected," Dr Khattar said. Notably, India on Wednesday reported 58,097 fresh COVID cases and 534 deaths while on Tuesday, the country had recorded 37,379 new COVID cases and 124 deaths. "Majorly, we are witnessing is an upper respiratory tract infection in patients. People are coming commonly with complaints of fever, headache, back pain, severe lethargy, fatigue, running nose, blocked nose, throat pain, and minimal cough. Over the last four or five days, I have seen 60-70 patients, but none of them complained of any respiratory distress or breathlessness. Of these patients, we have hardly admitted one," Dr Khattar said. According to him, most of the infected people are in home isolation and are recovering well adding that the hospitalisation rate is less this time as compared to the last wave of the pandemic. "I haven't seen anybody complaining of worsening of the illness and landing at the hospital or any fall in the saturation," he said. When asked about the treatment being given to COVID-infected patients, Dr Khattar said that commonly, symptomatic medications like cetirizine, anti-inflammatory drugs or antipyretics like paracetamol, few multi-vitamins like Vitamin C, Zincovid are being given. Raising a note of caution as Omicron is steadily spreading, Dr Khattar said, "It is a viral infection and mutations have been happening. We don't know when the mutations turn up again and the illness becomes severe. Thus, I suggest that people be vigilant, whether it is a mild infection or severe infection. It is unclear when this minor infection might turn into severe disease."
England sets new record for COVID-19 cases -England reported 162,572 new COVID-19 cases on Saturday, setting a new record for daily infections in the country.Saturday’s case count shattered the previous record of 160,276 infections, which was set on Friday, according to Reuters, which cited official data.The number of COVID-19 deaths within 28 days of a positive test in England, however, slightly decreased between Friday and Saturday, falling from 178 to 154. Data from England typically accounts for statistics in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well, but Saturday’s numbers only focused on England because the countries had different reporting schedules this holiday weekend, Reuters noted.The coronavirus spread rapidly throughout the United Kingdom in December, according to official data, with cases skyrocketing over the course of the month. The number of infections has shattered records set in the U.K.’s previous waves of the pandemic.Deaths in England, however, have remained low compared to previous waves. The U.K.’s seven-day average for deaths hovered around 115 last month, according to official data. Last January, that number exceeded 1,000.The current spike in cases is driven, in part, by the highly transmissible omicron variant, which was first discovered in South Africa in November but has since spread widely across the globe. Early data suggests that the new variant may be less severe than the delta strain for individuals who are vaccinated, according to White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci.Officials in Scotland, Wolves and Northern Ireland have implemented COVID-19 mitigation measures to help curb the current outbreak, according to Reuters, but England has not.U.K. Health Minister Sajid Javid wrote in the Daily Mail on Friday that COVID-19 restrictions will be the “last resort” amid the current wave of the pandemic. “Curbs on our freedom must be an absolute last resort and the British people rightly expect us to do everything in our power to avert them,” Javid wrote.
Johnson declares, “We can find a way to live with this virus” as UK reports one-day record 218,000 COVID infections Britain passed the horrific milestone of 200,000 COVID cases in a single day Thursday, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced in a Downing Street press conference that he would do nothing to combat the pandemic. No further restrictions will be imposed to prevent the spread of the virus, he said. On the contrary, “We have a chance to ride out this Omicron wave without shutting down our country once again. We can keep our schools and our businesses open and we can find a way to live with this virus.” The almost 220,000 cases (218,724) were up more than 60,000 on the previous day. Due to the unhindered circulation of the Omicron variant, over 1.2 million have been infected in Britain in just the last seven days—an increase of 60 percent week-on-week. Britain is second globally only to the United States (3,264,875) in the number of officially recorded infections over the last week. However, the US population is five times as large. The UK’s 17,751 cases per million over the last seven days is almost double that of the US, with 9,777 per million. Fully 20 percent of Britain’s population have been infected with a disease which has killed over 173,000 people. The 909 people who have died in the last seven days was up by 51.8 percent on the previous week. Even Johnson’s number-one yes man, Chief Medical Office Sir Chris Whitty, felt obliged to point out, “The idea that this is a mild disease as opposed to less likely to be hospitalised I think is easily demonstrated to be incorrect.” While 200,000 plus cases is the new daily benchmark, this is likely only the tip of the iceberg as the UK’s track-and-trace system is in chaos. Statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), told BBC Radio on New Year’s Eve, “We should take (daily case data) with a pinch of salt because we don’t actually count reinfections… and testing is limited—people are finding it more difficult to find tests. Normally the number of cases are around half the number of infections, so we could be talking about half a million new infections per day.” According to new data, it is estimated that 15 percent of all new Omicron infections are reinfections, which are not recorded in the official statistics. The surge is bringing the under-resourced and understaffed National Health Service (NHS) to its knees. Nearly one in 10 NHS staff were off sick over the New Year, with 50,000 at home either sick with COVID or self-isolating. This is as 14,126 people were in hospital with COVID on December 31, up 5,600 on the previous week. Thousands more are likely to have been admitted since then.
UK National Health Service “overwhelmed” as COVID surge escalates - A staggering 3.7 million people were infected with COVID in Britain in the last week of 2021, according to the Office for National Statistics latest estimate. This was an increase of around 60 percent from the 2.3 million in the week to December 23. Against all claims that Omicron could be controlled by the government’s minimal “Plan B” measures, one in 15 people in England and one in 10 in London were infected. In Scotland and Wales, one in 20 people had the virus, and in Northern Ireland one in 25. Even these figures are an underestimate as they only include those living in private households, not cases in hospitals, care homes and other settings. There is a resident population of almost 500,000 highly vulnerable elderly people in care homes alone. The UK is now recording well over a million COVID cases a week. Following the record near 220,000 announced Tuesday, another 194,747 were announced Wednesday. Deaths remain constantly high with another 343 announced yesterday. Most of these were in England, with the 314 deaths NHS England compiled from four days of data after delays over the New Year. Figures published by the Office for National Statistics show there have now been 174,000 deaths registered in Britain where Covid was mentioned on the death certificate. The lie that Omicron is a mild variant is exposed by the rapid increase in hospitalisations. As of January 4, there were 17,276 people in hospitals nationwide with COVID, a rise of over 5 percent. This figure did not include data from Wales and Northern Ireland. Nearly 1,000 (911) are seriously ill requiring ICU beds. As a result of the surge, hospitals face record numbers of staff absences. On New Year’s Eve, one in 10 National Health Service (NHS) staff were absent, including 50,000 either ill or isolating with COVID. This situation worsened drastically in the first days of January, with NHS trusts around the country serving hundreds of thousands of people declaring “critical incidents”. By Monday evening, six NHS trusts had declared critical incidents. By Tuesday night, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced to admit that several trusts were “at least temporarily overwhelmed”, this had risen to at least 12. Yesterday Downing Street confirmed that more than 20 hospital trusts have declared critical incidents over COVID. This includes University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust and Blackpool Teaching Hospitals, responsible for sites across Lancashire including Blackpool Victoria Hospital, Fleetwood Hospital, Clifton Hospital, Morecambe Bay, Westmorland General Hospital, the Royal Lancaster Infirmary and Furness General.
Mexico nears 300,000 deaths from COVID-19 as cases surge after holidays - Mexico is likely to surpass 300,000 deaths from COVID-19 this week - the fifth highest death toll worldwide - as infections rise after the holiday season, fuelled by the Omicron coronavirus variant and largely unrestricted tourism. Infections have more than doubled to 20,000 during the last week when many tourists visited Mexico from the United States and Canada. Eleven of Mexico's 32 states decided not to resume in-person school classes this week with cases climbing fast. The arrival of the highly contagious Omicron variant reversed a downturn in infections during the autumn, when the widespread application of vaccines provided relief. Some Mexicans said people had dropped their guard as the holidays came. "Since December, a lot of people started to go out and there are many who no longer wear face masks," said Isauro Perez, a 53-year-old taxi driver in Mexico City. "If we don't take care of ourselves, the government won't take care of us." As of Wednesday, Mexico had registered 299,805 confirmed deaths from COVID-19, a figure that is likely significantly below the real toll, officials say. Separate government data showed there had been nearly 452,000 deaths "linked to" COVID-19 by mid-December, and lower testing has likely helped to understate the reach of the virus. Mexico has the highest fatality rate - deaths per confirmed cases - among the 20 nations most affected by COVID-19 worldwide, according to an analysis by Johns Hopkins University. Laurie Ximenez-Fyvie, an expert on molecular genetics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), said in the end, Mexico's death toll would be the ultimate yardstick of how the government had performed in the pandemic. So far, she argued, it risked suffering "absolute failure.
Brazil's Bolsonaro knocks vaccinating children, criticises health regulator - President Jair Bolsonaro criticised Brazil's health regulator Anvisa on Thursday (Jan 6) for authorising the vaccination of children aged 5 to 11 years against COVID-19, one day after his health minister unveiled plans to inoculate that age group. Vaccine sceptic Bolsonaro said in a radio interview that he had not heard of children dying of COVID-19 and repeated that his daughter Laura, 11, would not be vaccinated. Bolsonaro said vaccines could have side effects on children, but gave no evidence. Anvisa and health regulators around the world have found that COVID-19 vaccines are safe from age 5 and up. "Are you going to vaccinate your child when the possibility of dying is almost zero? What is behind this? What are the interests of vaccine maniacs?" Bolsonaro stated. The Ministry of Health announced on Wednesday that it had bought 20 million paediatric vaccines developed by Pfizer and voluntary vaccination of children 5 to 11 years old will begin by the end of the month. In a social media broadcast later on Thursday, Bolsonaro stressed that the vaccination was not obligatory. "No town mayor or state governor can prevent a child from going to school for not being vaccinated," he said. Bolsonaro warned that Pfizer has not assumed responsibility for any side effects the vaccine could have in children, and said parents should immediately seek a doctor if their child developed chest pains or shortage of breath. Anvisa approved the Pfizer vaccine for children on Dec 16, drawing heated criticism from people opposed to vaccines and the president, who suggested that children only be vaccinated with a doctor's prescription. The ministry dropped the idea as impractical. Requiring a written prescription would discourage vaccination at a time when the more transmissible coronavirus variant Omicron is starting to spread in Brazil, health experts said.
Number of Covid cases doubling, there is a community spread, says UT Health Services Director Suman Singh - Chandigarh’s Director of Health Services, Dr Suman Singh, on Friday, expressed concern at the rate at which Covid was spreading in the UT and estimated that very soon, there might be a shortage of health care staff at hospitals. “The rate of transmission of the virus is very high. The rate at which health care workers have contracted the virus during this wave, we estimate that we will face a shortage of staff in all our departments soon. As our OPD numbers are very high, we will soon start teleconsultation in most departments of GMSH-16, and only patients who need to be medically examined will be given an appointment. The number of cases is doubling and there is a community spread,” said Dr Singh. The span of the disease added Dr. Singh, is short, and though the rate of hospitalisation is low and a large number of patients — more than 909 — are home isolated at the moment. “There is no way to predict how the virus will behave and how it may mutate. More adults are getting infected this time, with many staying asymptomatic or getting a mild infection,” she said. “We have sent 15 per cent of random samples for whole genome sequencing and we are monitoring more than 682 international travelers from high-risk countries. We track the active cases on a daily basis and are doing extensive contact tracing. Many people who are vaccinated are have not been wearing masks as they feel they will not be infected. We need to remember that vaccination saves us only from a severe form of the disease but not the infection completely. We at this point of time need to be very cautious, mask up and avoid gatherings,” added Dr. Singh. 352 health care workers on PGI campus Covid positive since December 20 An increase in Covid cases among health care workers is commensurate with an increase in cases among the population at large, Dr Singh believed. A total of 352 health care workers have tested positive since December 20, last year in the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, data showed. Of these, 157 are doctors – junior residents, senior residents and faculty members. More than 95% of health care workers who tested positive had received both doses of the Covid vaccine. In almost all such cases, doctors noted, the infection has been mild. Health care workers who are staying in the hostels on the institute’s campus and who do not have provision for home isolation have been isolated in Nehru Hospital Extension Ward. At present, it is difficult to be sure whether these cases are of the Omicron variant or not. The administration is keeping a close watch on the situation and is taking all steps to control the situation. All departments have been advised to strictly follow Covid-appropriate behaviour and the staff has been instructed to wear appropriate masks at all times. The administration, in association with the Association of Resident Doctors, has decided to convert all mess facilities in PGI hostels into ‘take away’ eateries. All sports events/tournaments have been cancelled and indoor courts have been closed. Teaching activities at PGI are being conducted through online mode.
Why Victoria's Covid-19 cases DOUBLED in just one day to a record high of 51,356 infections The doubling of new COVID-19 case reports in Victoria to 51,356 is based on the delayed reporting of cases that are up to a week old, according to the state's health minister. Saturday's case number is more than double Friday's figure, with almost half (26,428) the positive cases revealed using new rapid antigen test (RAT) reporting. But Health Minister Martin Foley has told reporters only about a quarter (5923) of Saturday's positive RAT results were from the latest 24 hour reporting period. 'We've had, as we expected, a very big response to the pent up demand that we knew was out there,' he said. 'That doesn't mean that the new daily case figure has doubled in the course of 24 hours. What it means is it's give us a realistic picture of transmission in the community.' Victoria is the first jurisdiction to introduce a hotline and online reporting system for RATs, with the system going live on Friday. It was set up after the PCR testing regime came under extreme pressure, with suspected cases queuing for hours to get tested and results taking several days to come through. Despite this, Saturday's figures include a further 24,928 cases identified through PCR lab tests, of which more than 89,000 were conducted. Mr Foley gave assurances that the spike in numbers would stabilise over time and give a more accurate picture of the spread of the Omiccon variant.
Italy's coronavirus cases hit new daily record of 219,441 Thursday - Italy reported a record daily number of new COVID-19 cases on Thursday at 219,441 against 189,109 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of coronavirus-related deaths fell to 198 from 231.Italy has registered 138,474 deaths linked to the virus since its outbreak emerged in February 2020, and has reported 6.975 million cases to date.There were 177 new admissions to intensive care units, sharply up from 132 on Wednesday. The total number of intensive care patients increased to 1,467 from a previous 1,428.Before Christmas just over 1,000 patients were in intensive care. Patients in hospital with COVID-19 - not including those in intensive care - stood at 13,827 on Thursday, up from 13,364 a day earlier.
France reports new record of more than 332,000 new Covid-19 cases in 24 hours - France registered a record of more than 332,000 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, while the number of deaths also rose as the country battles a fifth wave of the virus. The final number of new French COVID cases stood at 332,252 - slightly below an earlier indication given to the French parliament from Health Minister Olivier Veran. The number of COVID-19 deaths in hospitals rose by 246 in the last 24 hours, taking the total since the pandemic began to 97,670. The number of COVID patients in hospital intensive care units (ICUs) stood at 3,695 and there were over 20,000 COVID patients in hospital in total, the highest number since late May. France is backing on ramping up its COVID-19 vaccination programme to avoid having to take any drastic new restrictions to curb the spread of the virus. French President Emmanuel Macron had said earlier that he wanted to "piss off" unvaccinated people by making their lives so complicated they would end up getting jabbed. He was speaking in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper in which he also called unvaccinated people irresponsible and unworthy of being considered citizens.
Remote Antarctic station hit with Covid-19 outbreak RT -Researchers working at Belgium’s Princess Elisabeth Polar Station in Antarctica have contracted Covid-19, even though all personnel have been inoculated and any new arrival has to follow rigorous safety protocols. Two-thirds of the station’s staff of 25 have been infected with the coronavirus, Belgium’s polar secretariat confirmed to local media earlier this week. But how the virus could have reached the remote station, located some 220km (137 miles) from the Antarctic coast, remains a mystery. “All those present have received two doses of vaccine, and one person has even received a booster shot,” said Alain Hubert, the facility’s executive operator and head of security measures. All staff members also have to undergo a series of PCR tests on their long journey to the station. Those en route there take one PCR test in Belgium before leaving for South Africa and another five days after their arrival. They self-isolate for 10 days in Cape Town, then undergo two further tests: one before leaving for Antarctica and another five days after arriving at the station. Nonetheless, even such strict control measures were apparently not stringent enough, as the first Covid-19 case was reported at the station in mid-December among a group of new arrivals. The person in question was immediately placed in isolation, but two others were soon revealed to have contracted the coronavirus as well. All three infected researchers were evacuated on December 23, but this measure did not stop the virus from spreading further. A virologist contacted by the polar secretariat said the variant that has infected personnel at the station might be Omicron – the highly transmissible strain recently discovered in South Africa. There are two emergency doctors and all the necessary equipment at the station to treat anyone who falls ill, according to the media. In the meantime, the polar secretariat has placed all personnel under quarantine and put a halt to any new arrivals until the Covid-19 cluster there dissipates. Explorers venturing on two new expeditions had been expected on January 12, but their arrival has now been delayed.
Global Coronavirus Cases Top 300 Million - It took more than a year for the world to record the first 100 million coronavirus cases, and half that time to tally the next 100 million. The third 100 million came even faster, in barely five months, as large segments of countries, rich and poor alike, remain unvaccinated and a fast-spreading new variant has proved able to infect even those who are. Case counts, though imperfect, have been a key barometer throughout the pandemic, a benchmark not only for governments implementing mitigation measures but also for people trying to discern the threat in their own communities. Yet surpassing 300 million known cases — a milestone that was reached on Thursday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University — comes as a growing number of experts argue that it is time to stop focusing on case numbers. So far, the new Omicron variant appears to produce severe illness in fewer people than previous versions of the virus did, and research indicates that Covid vaccines still offer protection against the worst outcomes. And though cases are rising faster than ever — the United States, Australia, France and many other nations are seeing record surges — hospitalizations and deaths from Covid are increasing more slowly. But experts do worry that the sheer number of possible cases may still burden health care systems already strained by previous waves of infection. About 60 percent of the world has received at least a single dose of a Covid vaccine, but nearly three-quarters of all the shots have been administered in the world’s wealthiest nations, leaving people in parts of Africa and Asia vulnerable.In the United States, cases are averaging a staggering 610,000 each day, a 227 percent increase from two weeks ago. Hospitalizations are rising at a slower rate, up 60 percent in the past two weeks, while deaths are up by 2 percent. In France, average daily cases have quadrupled to a record, while hospitalizations have risen by about 70 percent and deaths have doubled, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford. The trend suggests that the grim cadence seen for the past two years — a wave of infections, followed by a matching surge of hospitalizations, then deaths — may have been altered, in large part because of the protection offered by vaccines. However, because of the way deaths lag cases, it will be weeks before the full effect of the current case surge is reflected in death counts. And because of the widening availability of at-home tests in the United States and Europe, official case numbers — which scientists have long argued are an undercount — may diverge more than ever from actual totals. Not all home tests are reported to authorities and many people may never get tested. Even before Omicron emerged, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that only one in four U.S. infections was reported.
WHO: Record weekly jump in COVID-19 cases but fewer deaths -- The World Health Organization said Thursday a record 9.5 million cases of COVID-19 were tallied around the world last week, marking a 71% weekly surge that amounted to a “tsunami” as the new omicron variant sweeps worldwide. However, the number of recorded deaths declined. “Last week, the highest number of COVID-19 cases were reported so far in the pandemic,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. He said the WHO was certain that was an underestimate because of a backlog in testing around the year-end holidays. The U.N. health agency, in its weekly report on the pandemic, said the weekly count amounted to 9,520,488 new cases — with 41,178 deaths recorded last week compared to 44 680 in the week before that. WHO officials have long cited a lag between case counts and deaths, with changes in the death counts often trailing about two weeks behind the evolution of case counts. But they have also noted that for several reasons — including rising vaccination rates in some places, and signs that omicron affects the nose and throat more than the lungs -- omicron has not appeared as deadly as the delta variant that preceded it. Any rise in hospitalizations or deaths in the wake of the latest surge in cases isn’t likely to show up for about two weeks. While omicron seems less severe than delta, especially among people who have been vaccinated, the WHO chief cautioned: “It does not mean it should be categorized as mild. Just like previous variants, omicron is hospitalizing people, and it’s killing people.” “In fact, the tsunami of cases is so huge and quick that it is overwhelming health systems around the world,” the WHO chief told a regular news briefing. The WHO said the rises in case counts over the last week varied, doubling in the Americas region, but rising only 7% in Africa. The WHO emergencies chief, Dr. Michael Ryan, said speculation that omicron might be the last variant of the outbreak was “wishful thinking” and cautioned: “There still is a lot of energy in this virus.” Added Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19: “I think it’s very unlikely that omicron will be the last variant that you will hear us discussing.” WHO officials called on the public to step up measures to fight the pandemic like getting vaccinated, ventilating rooms, maintaining proper physical distancing and wearing masks — but properly.
Omicron Pushes Weekly Covid Cases to 10 Million, Doubling Record - Almost twice as many people were diagnosed with Covid-19 in the past seven days as the pandemic’s previous weekly record thanks to a tsunami of omicron that has swamped every aspect of daily life in many parts of the globe. The highly mutated and infectious variant drove cases to a record 10 million in the seven days through Sunday, almost double the previous record of 5.7 million seen during in a week in late April. The surging number of infections, at a time when many people have given up on testing or are using at-home kits with results that aren’t reported to local authorities, has led to canceled flights, closed offices and strangled production facilities and supply chains. Soaring infections -- with a record number of cases reported from Australia and the U.S. to Italy and France -- disrupted the holiday season a year after vaccines first started rolling out and two years after the emergence of the virus that many initially hoped would be fleeting. The silver lining is that weekly Covid deaths are still on a downward trajectory, falling to their lowest level in more than a year. The outlook for 2022 depends on whether the death toll follows cases and picks up in the weeks to come, or if early evidence suggesting the omicron wave will be less severe holds up as more real-world data emerges.
World Tops Over 2 Million New Daily COVID-19 Cases: Report An average of 2,106,118 new daily infections were reported over the seven-day period, shortly after the one million case threshold was passed in the week of December 23-29, 2021. The world recorded more than two million daily coronavirus cases on average between January 1 and 7 with figures doubling in 10 days, an AFP tally showed on Saturday. An average of 2,106,118 new daily infections were reported over the seven-day period, shortly after the one million case threshold was passed in the week of December 23-29, 2021. New global case numbers have soared by 270 percent since the highly contagious Omicron variant was discovered in South Africa in late November. But Covid-related deaths were at their lowest level since October 2020, with an average of 6,237 per day recorded in the period between January 1 and 7. Although early studies suggest Omicron causes less severe illness, experts have warned the sheer volume of cases fuelled by the strain could still overwhelm health systems. Countries around the world have reintroduced restrictions and ramped up vaccination programmes in a bid to stem the spread of the virus. Europe, as well as the United States and Canada, are the world's infection hotspots. The two regions respectively represented 49 percent and 33 percent of global Covid cases in the past week. Covid cases skyrocketed by 47 percent in Europe and 76 percent in the United States and Canada compared with the previous week. In the same period, Covid infections increased by 224 percent in Oceania, 148 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean, 116 percent in the Middle East and 145 percent in Asia. The number of new cases reported in Africa remained stable but, as elsewhere, were at their highest level since the start of the pandemic in March 2020. The figures are based on official statistics produced by national health authorities.
How the rich and well-connected rode out Covid-19 in safety and comfort --It was a warm spring evening in Taipei and more than a hundred celebrities, founders, venture capitalists and tech executives gathered for cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. The headline event, a fireside chat, was just an excuse for Taiwan’s best-connected people to socialize, enjoying the kinds of freedoms the rest of the world lacked amid another wave of Covid shutdowns.Notable was that many in the crowd weren’t long-term Taiwan residents. While quite a few were born there, or had family connections, most had spent little time in their ancestral homeland while building their lives in Silicon Valley’s tech hub, the academic institutions of New England, or on Wall Street. But as Covid spread around the world, these same people grabbed their Taiwan passports or scrambled for an exclusive Gold Card visa and headed to that one sanctuary where life remained normal.A similar scenario was playing out for the privileged and well-connected around the world. With money, passports and flexible employment, they managed to pull off the greatest trade of all: Covid arbitrage. The choice of where to live, how to work and which international schools to attend provided relative comfort for the rich, while billions of others scrambled for vaccines and grappled to balance the demands of their jobs and homeschooling.For wealthy Indians, escaping the ravages of the pandemic involved chartering private jets while their home nation was brought to its knees, as waves of Covid-infected patients gasped for oxygen. Bollywood stars were spotted heading to the tropical archipelago of the Maldives, while entire families decamped to Dubai where one-way flights from New Delhi cost $20,000 per person. The Emirati municipality has become so popular among Indian expats that it’s jokingly referred to as the “safest Indian city.”The uber rich in other parts of the world, from U.S. to the U.K., also found ways to hide. Jetting off to far-flung New Zealand, seeking out doomsday bunkers, or simply retiring to holiday homes far from the crowds.In Taiwan, which shut the border for foreigners by March 2020, passport holders and authorized residents could re-enter after completing a mandatory two-week isolation. Having taken early action to combat a virus that originated in neighboring China, Taiwan’s government managed to steer its people through a mix of restrictions, such as mask mandates, while maintaining a degree of flexibility that ensured most institutions and entertainment venues remained open. And so parents seeking to ensure their kids didn't miss any class time, and well-heeled young professionals wanting to enjoy the party life of Taipei’s nightclubs and KTVs started flooding in. Within six months of the U.S. experiencing its first wave of lockdowns and school closures in early 2020, the city's elite international schools had reached full capacity.
Hold That Anti-Fogging Spray: Duke University Researchers Find Forever Chemicals in Commonly Used Eyeglass Products - Duke University researchers released a study this week suggesting many eyeglass wearers may be inadvertently and unnecessarily exposing themselves directly to forever chemicals by using anti-fogging sprays. During the pandemic, use of these agents has skyrocketed, as they reduce fogging that sometimes accompanies wearing a mask. According to The Guardian: Anti-fogging sprays and cloths often used to prevent condensation on eyeglasses from wearing a mask or on face shields may contain high levels of potentially toxic PFAS “forever chemicals”, according to a new study led by Duke University.Researchers tested four of the top-rated anti-fogging sprays as well as five top-rated anti-fogging cloths sold by Amazon. In all nine products, experts found fluorotelomer alcohols (FTOHs) and fluorotelomer ethoxylates (FTEOs), two types of per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS). … “Our tests show the sprays contain up to 20.7 milligrams of PFAS per milliliter of solution, which is a pretty high concentration,” said study lead Nicholas Herkert, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.Echoing Grandjean, Herkert noted the two types of forever chemicals used in anti-fogging sprays – FTOHs and FTEOs – haven’t been studied extensively so that the health risks they pose are unknown. Nonetheless, The Guardian reports: [R]esearch currently suggests that FTOHs inhaled or absorbed through the skin could break down in the body and become toxic, long-lasting PFAs.The FTEOs used in all four anti-fogging sprays were also analyzed in the new study and exhibited substantial cell-altering toxicity and conversion to fat cells during lab tests, said Herkert. Alas, beyond the universe of anti-fogging sprays, The Guardian also reports that there’s been scant research on the health threats posed by use of such chemicals despite their widespread use in other common consumer products. I’m fairly cynical about the deficiencies of U.S. regulation of threats to human health and safety, but even I was shocked by how little research has been done on one class of these chemicals:“It’s disturbing to think that products people have been using on a daily basis to help keep themselves safe during the Covid pandemic may be exposing them to a different risk,” said Heather Stapleton, a distinguished professor of environmental chemistry and health at Duke.This study, conducted by Herkert and Stapleton with researchers from Duke University, Wayne State University, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, is only the second ever to focus on FTEOS. The researchers published their peer-reviewed study on 5 January in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.Herkert and Stapleton said that more research would be needed to expand on initial findings, with larger studies involving tests on living organisms being the next step. Studies that include a larger sample size of sprays and cloths could also help identify other unknown chemicals being used in these products.
House dust from 35 countries reveals our global toxic contaminant exposure and health risk -- Everyone's home gets dusty, but is yours the same as house dust in China or the US? Researchers around the world have united to capture the world's first trans-continental data on household dust.People from 35 countries vacuumed their homes and sent their dust to universities in different countries, where it was tested for potentially toxic trace metals. Researchers gathered data on the human and household factors that might affect how much humans are exposed to these contaminants. This is the first effort to collect global data of this type in a single study. It shed new light on the sources and risks associated with trace metal exposure, which can lead to concerning neurocognitive effects in people of all ages. The study shows it doesn't matter whether you live in a high or low income country, are rich or poor—we're all exposed to contaminants via dust. Local environmental factors and contamination histories can make a difference. In New Caledonia, elevated chromium, nickel and manganese were evident, due to local rock, soil and nickel smelters. These may be linked to increased lung and thyroid cancers in New Caledonia. In New Zealand, arsenic concentrations are naturally high. One in three New Zealand homes exceeded the acceptable health risk for children under two, set by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Australia has concerning levels of arsenic and lead contamination in house dust. One in six Australian homes exceeded the US Environmental Protection Agency acceptable health risk. Arsenic exposure can increase cancer risk and cause problems to respiratory health and immune function. Lead can affect children's brain and nervous system development, causing behavioral and developmental problems. It's clear lead mining and smelting activities cause high lead levels in dust for local communities. But the study shows inner city areas are equally affected, commonly from legacy sources like emissions from the leaded petrol era, or peeling lead paint in homes. Data from Accra, in Ghana showed homes contained elevated lead concentrations, likely due to nearby electronic recycling operations. Old wiring and circuitry are burned to extract metals, causing trace metals such as lead, nickel and copper to fall out as dust across the city. So where do contaminants in house dust come from? One source reflects lead from past leaded petrol emissions and paints. Another reflects the degradation of building materials, rich in copper and zinc. This was more prevalent in older homes, which have seen more wear and tear and have been exposed to traffic emissions longer. The third common source is soil, which gets blown in from outside and walked into homes by people and pets. What factors affect how risky your dust is? We also gathered global data on building materials, pets, hobbies, habits and home characteristics. What made the most difference to metals in dust were house age, peeling paint, having a garden and smoking. Interestingly, homes with garden access had higher dust concentrations of lead and arsenic. Older homes had higher levels of all metals except chromium, and are likely to have residues from peeling paints, traffic and industrial pollutants, pest treatments and other chemicals. Other factors, such as home type, building material, heating fuel didn't appear to influence trace metal concentrations in homes. Critically, what's outside ends up in our homes, where it can be inhaled and ingested.
Increase in US wildfires has led to increase in co-occurrence of two kinds of air pollution - A team of researchers affiliated with a host of institutions in the U.S. has found that an increase in wildfires in western parts of the United States has led to increases in two kinds of air pollutants in areas both near to the fires and far away. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their study of fine particulate matter and ozone levels over large parts of the western United States over a 19-year period. Huge wildfires burning large swaths of forest in the western United States have been making the news for several years. More recently, they have been highlighted for their increasing intensity and frequency, which many have suggested is due to global warming. In this new effort, the researchers noted that forest fires are known to emit large amounts of tiny particulate matter, which has been shown to be a health risk. They also noted that forest fires also produce ozone precursor compounds that often lead to heightened ground-level ozone levels. Ozone is also a health concern. The researchers discovered that few studies have been conducted into the compounding impacts on people of heightened levels of particulate matter or ozone—but those that exist have found that it can have a disproportionate impact on human health. So they sought to determine how often people experience both forms of pollution resulting from large western forest fires. The work involved dividing most of the western U.S. into 111-kilometer squares and then studying air quality samples for each of them over the period 2001 to 2020. They were able to see that the number of days people in places near to fires and far away from them experienced heightened levels of both particulate matter and ozone levels, which increased as the number of fires increased. They also saw that for some years, air quality was particularly bad due to large numbers of fires. They also noted that over the past two decades, the number of people adversely impacted by the two wildfire pollutants has increased—one day in particular stood out: August 21, 2020, when approximately 46 million people were exposed to heightened levels of both types of pollutants.
Excess deaths tied to urban air pollution - Nearly nine in 10 people living in cities around the world — or about 2.5 billion people — are exposed to unsafe levels of air pollution annually, according to a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health. The study, led by George Washington University researchers, shows the tangible health impacts of a high concentration of air pollution.They estimate there were at least 1.8 million excess deaths linked to the inhalation of fine particulate matter in 2019. "Avoiding the large public health burden caused by air pollution will require strategies that not only reduce emissions but also improve overall public health to reduce vulnerability," said lead author Veronica Southerland A second GW-led study published in the journal on Wednesday, found nearly 2 million cases of asthma in children are linked to traffic-related nitrogen dioxide air pollution. Two in three of those cases were in urban areas.
Estimating deaths globally from air pollution - Two studies highlighting the scale of potentially life-threatening air pollution in urban areas have been published in The Lancet Planetary Health.According to the modeling studies by US-based research teams, approximately 86% of people living in urban areas across the globe, or 2.5 billion people, are exposed to unhealthy particulate matter levels, leading to an estimated 1.8 million excess deaths in cities globally in 2019. Additionally, nearly 2 million asthma cases among children worldwide were attributable to NO2 (nitrogen dioxide gas) pollution in 2019, with two in three occurring in urban areas.Commenting on the studies, Dr. Robert Hughes, Clinical Research Fellow at LSHTM and Co-Investigator of Children, Cities and Climate project, said: "These important and timely studies underscore the urgency of improving urban air quality and reducing reliance of fossil fuels in and around our cities. The estimates add to growing evidence showing that decarbonising cities can improve our health, and that of our children, at the same time as reducing the risk of climate breakdown, building on findings from LSHTM's Children, Cities and Climate preliminary report."Improving air quality will be critical to achieving both global health and climate goals. While the specific policies to do this vary from city to city, a common theme is that we need to radically cut down on the combustion of fossil fuels everywhere; put simply, we need to 'stop burning stuff,' especially where we live. This includes stopping burning petrol and diesel to power our cars, moving away from heating our homes with fossil fuels, and decarbonising our electricity grids."It is useful that the studies examine trends over time and provide regional comparisons, highlighting the mixed picture globally. Although in some cities air quality may be improving gradually, in many others it is deteriorating, leading to a growing burden of air pollution-related disease, especially low- and middle-income countries."As acknowledged by the authors, there are several limitations that point towards the need for more data to estimate the true scale of health burdens in cities globally. However, it is noteworthy that most of these limitations mean these studies may be under-, rather than over-estimating the harms associated with air pollution."Further investigation into the impact of air pollution on health is needed to inform effective policy action. For example, a recent study carried out by LSHTM researchers, found that human health risks from airpollution vary depending on the proportion of different components of PM2.5."
Breaking norms at the Biden EPA - Wall Street Journal - One calling card of the Biden Presidency has been its rush to sweep away restrictions on executive power. A purge at the Environmental Protection Agency has now become a legal case worth watching. The suit was brought in October by S. Stanley Young, a scientist appointed to the EPA’s Science Advisory Board in 2017 and reappointed in 2020 for another three-year term. In March new EPA Administrator Michael Regan —20 days on the job—abruptly sacked the entire board and the agency’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee. He then restocked both with green cheerleaders. Any interested person or organization can make nominations for the board and committee, and Mr. Young, who worked as a statistician for the pharmaceutical industry, was renominated for both bodies after the purge. EPA passed him over. The 40-to-50 member science board and the seven-member clean air committee offer advice that isn’t binding. But their recommendations guide agency decisions. Conservatives chafed at green dominance of the boards, and the Trump Administration opened more seats to industry scientists. Liberals raised a fuss, and Mr. Regan cast his political dismissals as a question of scientific integrity. That’s a convenient political cover, but no Administration before this one had fired boards en masse. Mr. Young says in Young v. EPA that his dismissal is illegal under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). That 1972 law requires that advisory committees be “fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented,” and EPA policy and history is to consider “a cross-section of stakeholders directly affected/interested” in and by EPA decisions. The new Biden boards have no industry-affiliated member. The 47-member science board is made up of academics, tribal associates, and representatives from the likes of the Environmental Defense Fund. The clean air board consists of six university professors and a state official. The EPA press release announcing the new board members began by crowing that the air board would “be comprised of five women and two men, including three people of color, making it the most diverse panel since the committee was established.” The EPA’s priority clearly wasn’t “science.” FACA also requires that an agency ensure that advisory committee decisions aren’t “inappropriately influenced” by that agency—since they are meant to be checks on bureaucratic overreach. Yet the Young lawsuit notes that some 20 board and committee members have collectively received hundreds of millions of dollars in EPA grants, and the Biden EPA failed to implement rules to guard against EPA influence over the grantees. The left was outraged by a Trump EPA rule that prohibited grant recipients from serving on boards. That prohibition lost in court, which underscores the legal problem with Mr. Regan’s blackball of industry reps. The EPA purge belies Mr. Biden’s desire to restore faith in government.
Microplastics are widespread in soils of tropical areas -- Microplastics (MPs) refer to plastic particles <5 mm in size. Environmental risks caused by MPs are increasing. As fundamental resources of the global food security system, soils are also affected by MP pollution. However, the distribution characteristics of MPs across different land uses in tropical areas remain largely unknown. In a study published in Chemosphere, researchers from the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed the widespread presence of soil microplastics in tropical areas, from artificial ecosystems to natural ecosystems, in both the top and deep soil layers. The researchers chose two natural ecosystems (primary and secondary forests) and two artificial ecosystems (rubber and banana plantations) in the Xishuangbanna tropical region as the study areas. They measured the abundance, size, type, shape, and color of MPs in the upper (0–10 cm) and lower (10–20 cm) layers of the soil. They found that the dominant size of soil microplastics was <1 mm and the major shapes were fragments and fibers, with colors blue, yellow, and green-blue. Most microplastics were polyethylene, rayon, and polypropylene. The abundance of microplastics in the top soil layer (0–10 cm) was significantly higher than that in the deep soil layers (10–20 cm). Therefore, MP pollution may be increasing seriously in the top soil in tropical areas. Furthermore, the effect of land use on the occurrence and characteristics of microplastics was much higher than soil depth and their interactive effects. The abundance of MPs in banana plantations was approximately 10 times that of in rubber plantations, and 18 times of those in secondary forests and primary forests. In additon, the size of microplastics in the top soil layer in the secondary forest was larger than that in the banana plantations and primary forests, while no size difference was detected among the four land-use types in the deep soil layer. The study suggested that microplastics pollution has already been an emerging problem across all major land uses in tropical areas. "MP pollution in artificial ecosystems is more serious than that in natural ecosystems. We call for effective measures and policies to control MP pollution in tropical areas," said Dr. Xu Guorui of XTBG.
Book Review: Coming to Grips With the Plastic Crisis - In her first book, “Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis,” environmental journalist Erica Cirino tracks the story of plastic pollution — from the creation of synthetic polymers in the 19th century and the discovery of their polluting side effects in the 1970s, to today’s plastic crisis, covering the entire life cycle of the material, from extraction and production to use and disposal.It’s still a matter of ongoing research how much plastics end up in our waterways, but estimatesshow that it’s in the range of millions of tons per year. It’s not only fish that bear the burden of our trash, we now know. More than 900 marine species ingest ocean plastic or get entangled with it, including whales, seals, turtles, and fish. Research shows that even small creatures like corals, plankton, and microbes interact with the remnants of our throwaway society. Some calculate that 90 percent of seabirds swallow plastic at some point during their lifetime. And that’s just the oceans. The ecosystems of rivers, lakes, the air, and the soil are polluted with visible trash as well as microplastics — and possibly even nanoplastics, which are in the same size-range as viruses. In the course of her investigation, Cirino presents a wealth of facts and figures, knowns and unknowns, and takes a critical, comprehensive look at possible solutions, from clean-up and bioplastics to recycling and politics. She gives a detailed account of how science tries to understand the issue. But she also situates the plastic problem in a larger context, demonstrating the environmental injustices that plastics inflict on communities and countries that are in the vicinity of production plants, or receive the pollution and the cheap trash richer countries want to get rid of — injustices with a long history. Cirino begins her five-year journey in Los Angeles, boarding a sailboat bound for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the infamous area between Hawaii and California where bits of plastics and other trash accumulate in what some have called a “plastic soup.” As the small crew of sailors and scientists sample the water for plastics, Cirino documents their research. In this nearly windless area, miles away from shore, the sailors encounter daily fleets of trashed plastic products, and when they skim the water with their manta trawl — also used to sample for plankton — they find small pieces of plastic in it. Later in the book, Cirino sails through Icelandic waters, home to huge whales and tiny plankton; investigates the microplastic pollution in the Great Lakes; watches researchers meticulously clean and analyze plastic bits in their labs; visits the communities and activists living near plastic production plants in Louisiana’s notorious “Cancer Alley”; and goes to Thailand, a global dumping ground for the cheapest, dirtiest plastics. She also explores the health implications of plastics and their additives in the human body.
How Bad Are Plastics for the Environment, Really? - Dad once believed that plastics could be reused indefinitely. I imagine that, maybe, he thought plastics, like their makers, deserved the chance to begin again. When Union Carbide downsized in the 1970s, Dad took severance and stayed home with my siblings until he could figure out what a life beyond plastics might look like. For a time, he ran my hometown’s recycling program. Recycling, though, never lived up to Dad’s ideal. Of all the plastics made over his lifetime, less than 10 percent has been effectively repurposed. This failure, like so many other aspects of our relationship with plastics, is often framed in terms of individual shortcomings; plastics’ producers, or the geopolitics that have made plastics so widespread, are rarely called out. But to read plastics’ history is to discover another story: Demand for plastic has been as manufactured as plastics themselves. Society is awash in throwaway plastics not because of the logic of desire but because of the logic of history and of integrated industrial systems. For decades, the industry has created the illusion that its problems are well under control, all while intensifying production and promotion. More plastics have been made over the past two decades than during the second half of the 20th century. Today, recycling is a flailing, failing system—and yet it is still touted as plastics’ panacea. No end-of-the-pipe fix can manage mass plastics’ volume, complex toxicity, or legacy of pollution, and the industry’slong-standing infractions against human health and rights. All of this has been true for years, but if there is a time to talk about plastics, now might be it. Plastics are poised to dominate the 21st century as one of the yet-unchecked drivers of climate change. When dad’s former employer started making plastics in the late 1920s, no market was itching to buy them. But the company, in a sense, had to make plastics. Its new commercial antifreeze, Prestone, was synthesized from natural gas and created a by-product, ethylene dichloride, a chemical that had no practical purpose and so was stockpiled on-site. Quickly, it amassed in unmanageable, “embarrassing” quantities, as one Carbide newsletter later put it. Its best use, the company decided, was in making vinyl chloride monomer, recognized as a carcinogen since the ’70s, but back then a building block for a rascally class of plastics no one had commercialized yet—vinyls. This isn’t an isolated example, but rather an illustration of how product development often unfolds for chemicals and plastics. For Carbide and other 20th-century petrochemical firms, each product required a series of multistep reactions, and each step yielded offshoots. Develop these, and the product lines further branch, eventually creating a practically fractal cascade of interrelated products. Everything that enters the system, explains Ken Geiser, an industrial-chemicals-policy scholar, in his book Materials Matter, must eventually go somewhere; matter being matter, it is neither created nor destroyed. And so it must be converted: made into fuel, discarded as pollution, or monetized. After many iterations, Carbide arrived at Vinylite, finally made workable by blending two types of vinyls: polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyvinyl acetate. According to an internal marketing report, Carbide spent years trying to “synthesize” new customers and invent new uses for Vinylite, while a credit department eased the financial burden of adopting it. Then World War II erupted. War contracts expedited the development of emerging resins. For example, the U.S. Navy helped DuPont and Union Carbide secure a license from Britain’s Imperial Chemical Industries to begin manufacturing polyethylene for insulating wire and cable (enabling radar). The Manhattan Project spurred DuPont to industrialize its new fluorinated plastic, what would become Teflon, previously produced in batches measured by the gram rather than the ton. The war also matured existing resins: 32 times more polystyrene was being produced at the war’s end than at its outset. But polystyrene also shared base ingredients with another material crucial to modern, mechanized warfare—styrene-butadiene rubber, or SBR. Rubber made up tank treads. Bomber tires. The soles of the boots that soldiers wore.
How our miraculous transportation system turns water into brine --"Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink." The excerpt quoted above is from Coleridge's famous poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and refers to the mariner's desperate desire for drinkable water while floating on an ocean of salt water.We as a society are inching closer each year to bringing the ancient mariner's predicament on land because of our practice of salting roads in winter to make them safer for driving. The amount of salt we use for this purpose in the United States has gone from 0.15 metric tons per year in the 1940s to 18 million metric tons annually as of 2017.The result has been dangerously escalating salt concentrations in rivers, streams, lakes and ponds. Some urban bodies of water exceed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's standard for protecting aquatic life by 20 to 30 times. Humans, of course, aren't aquatic life, but the trend in the salinization of surface water is troubling given the important role those waters play in water supplies around the country and the world.The proposed solutions tend to emphasize substitutes—sand and beet juice (yes, really)—or more parsimonious use of road salt. What those proposing solutions do not explore is whether a road system serving over a billion motor vehicles—the vast majority of which consume petroleum and spew climate warming gases—is the best one for our needs. The assumption generally is that the current system cannot be changed and that all the problems attendant to this system have to be addressed without disturbing its basic structure.This is how we get lock-in to so many systems. We cannot imagine fundamentally restructuring them, so we think of all sorts of ways to fiddle with them on the margin. We are certainly doing that with our energy system. A fundamental restructuring of our demand for energy (vastly downward) and our supply (vastly less carbon intensive) is absolutely essential to avoid catastrophic climate change. But either our leaders refuse to do what is needed because their benefactors are the very corporations that would be hardest hit by a fundamental restructuring or, more ominously, the entire organism we call modern global society is simply incapable of such a change.
Mexico City Grapples With Acute Water Shortages, As “Day Zero” Approaches -Many residents of the working class barrio of Azcapotzalco, in the northwestern part of Mexico City, had a very dry Christmas this year. Water stopped flowing to many households on Christmas Day, allegedly the result of an outage of three power stations in an electrical substation that provides power to wells in the neighbourhood. Representatives of Mexico City’s Sacmex Water System said the situation would be resolved in a matter of hours. In the end, it took ten days, and only after local residents had forced the issue, in classic Mexican fashion, by blocking key roads in the neighbourhood. . Azcapotzalco is one of the municipalities that always lacks water; there are elderly people who live on the fourth floor of their buildings who have to carry the water up the stairs.” It is not just poor neighborhoods that are feeling the effects of Mexico City’s worsening water crisis. Whenever my Mexican wife and I come to her native city (where we are at the moment), we stay in a 13th floor apartment on the edge of the leafy, colorful middle-class barrio of Coyoacan, The apartment belongs to a generous, gregarious septuagenarian Argentinean emigree whom my wife regards as an adopted aunt. She and her neighbours are also having problems with water. At any moment, particularly in Spring, the supply can suddenly run dry and may not return for a number of hours or even until the next day. This has been happening for many years but it began occurring a lot more frequently when work began, in 2012, on a giant skyscraper complex a few blocks away called Complejo Mitikah. The complex features two office towers, one owned by We Work, both of which are overshadowed by Mitikah tower, a 67-floor apartment building that, once finished, will be Mexico City’s largest residential skyscraper. Naturally, the complex has massively increased the demand for water in the local neighborhood, but it is other local residents that are paying the price. More and more often, the underground water tanks that serve nearby residential buildings are running dry. This is particularly true in Springtime, just before Mexico’s rainy season begins. It can take hours or in extreme cases even days before water tankers arrive to refill the tanks. On public holidays or over long weekends the government can sometimes cut off water to residents in order to carry out much-needed maintenance work.
Extremely heavy rains cause deadly floods in Oman and Iran - Several days of heavy rains have caused severe floods across Oman and Iran in which more than 10 people lost their lives. Heavy rains have also affected United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.According to Oman's Civil Defence report issued on January 1, 2022, 6 people have been killed and 20 rescued in areas around the capital Muscat, Al Batinah South, and Ad Dakhiliyah.1Severe flooding worsened in Muscat on January 4, when 5 people had to be rescued after they were trapped in waterlogged areas in the Wilayat of Bawshar.According to data provided by Arab Weather, the Wilayat of Bawshar in Muscat received 110 mm (4.33 inches) of rain within just a few hours -- representing two months' worth of its average January rainfall. During the same period, Wilayat of Seeb recorded 108 mm (4.25 inches).2Extensive damage was reported across the guvernorate.Around 20 000 people have been affected in 17 provinces across Iran, with areas in Hormogozon, Sistan and Baluchestan, Fars, and Kerman the worst affected, the Iranian Red Cross (IRCS) reported on January 4. At least 6 people have lost their lives in Farab, Lamerd, and Beyram in Fars Province, Sirjan in Kerman Province, and Mehrestan in Sistan and Baluchestan Province.Severe flooding was reported in the United Arab Emirates and further east in Balochistan Province in Pakistan and Kandahar Province in Afghanistan, where helicopters were used to rescue stranded people.
Torrential rains cause severe flooding in Sumatra, forcing 24 000 people to evacuate, Indonesia -- Heavy rains affecting Indonesia's island of Sumatra over the past days have forced about 24 000 people to evacuate their homes and left at least 2 people dead in the province of Aceh, officials said Tuesday, January 4, 2022.According to Regional Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), torrential rains have been affecting the island for days, causing rivers to burst their banks and sending water levels surging in residential areas.1A resident from the village of Lhok Sukon in Aceh told AFP this is one of the most severe floods they've experienced. "Floodwaters just kept rising - at my house, they are up to my chest."According to the environmental NGO Walhi, the floods were exacerbated by deforestation to make way for Sumatra's expansive palm oil plantations.A weather forecast for Aceh Province issued by the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) calls for more heavy rain over the next week with which can be accompanied by lightning and strong winds.2Heavy rains have also been affecting neighboring Malaysia since December 2021, forcing around 70 000 people to evacuate and leaving about 50 dead.
Drop in temperatures after Muscat records 2 months' worth of rain within a few hours, Oman - Most of the Sultanate of Oman's governorates are experiencing a noticeable decrease in temperatures just days after capital Muscat received two months' worth of January rain within just several hours.Clear skies are expected over most of the governorates on January 6, 2022, with a drop in temperatures and chances of dust storms over desert and open areas, Oman Meteorology said.Today's maximum temperature in capital Muscat will be 22 °C (71.6 °F) and minimum 14 °C (57.2 °F). Saiq is expecting maximum temperature of 10 °C (50 °F) and minimum 1 °C (33.8 °F), Ibri 18 °C (64.4 °F) and 8 °C (46.4 °F), Rustaq 21 °C (69.8 °F) and 11 °C (51.8 °F), Haima 22 °C (71.6 °F) and 11 °C (51.8 °F) and Khasab 19 °C (66.2 °F) and 13 °C (55.4 °F).1This noticeable drop in temperatures comes just 2 days after the Wilayat of Bawshar in Muscat received 110 mm (4.33 inches) of rain within just a few hours -- representing two months' worth of its average January rainfall. During the same period, Wilayat of Seeb recorded 108 mm (4.25 inches).2Severe flooding and extensive damage were reported across the governorate.At least 45 people in Muscat were evacuated by rescue services. Teams from the Civil Defence and Ambulance Authority were called in to take 35 people from Al Ghubra to safety, as well as another five in Bausher and northern Al Hail.3All of those who have been evacuated are in good health.According to Oman's Civil Defence report issued on January 1, severe floods claimed the lives of 6 people in areas around Muscat, Al Batinah South, and Ad Dakhiliyah.
Cold still causes far more deaths than heat in India - A study of the correlation between temperature and mortality in the Indian city of Pune has found that cold, rather than heat, is by far the bigger killer. This is at odds with warnings and mitigating measures authorities have been taking in anticipation of climate change. Although South Asia is disproportionately affected by global warming, the finding is likely to remain true into the future. "Most studies and warning systems in India focus on heatwaves. Of course, heatwaves are a big problem and they kill a lot of people," says KAUST research fellow Vijendra Ingole. "But extreme cold and moderate cold kill a lotmore people than moderate or extreme heat. Public health strategies should reflect this." The team of statisticians looked at two sets of data for the city over the period spanning January 2004 to December 2012. The first was mean daily temperature and the second was daily registered deaths. Records included little information on the age or occupation of those who died, or the cause of their demise, so the analysis was only stratified by sex. Of deaths registered in the period, 6.5 percent were found to have been caused by nonoptimal temperatures, with 5.72 percent caused by cold and 0.84 percent caused by heat. This compared to 6.83 percent of deaths caused by cold and 0.49 percent caused by heat for India as a whole. Surprisingly, men were shown to be more vulnerable to cold or heat than women. Of male deaths, 7.37 percent were caused by suboptimal temperatures compared to 5.72 percent of women deaths. "Studies from the developed world usually show women are more vulnerable than men," says Ingole. "Our study calls for further investigation to include socio-economic factors and so forth. But the result might be down to Pune's large population of male migrant workers engaged in outdoor labor." Overall, the graph of relative risk of dying for both sexes versus temperature offers a clue to what might happen in a future of rising temperatures. From extreme cold (one in a hundred days were less than 17.2 degrees Celsius), risk drops gradually until it reaches the minimum mortality temperature, and rises steeply thereafter. This suggests that deaths caused by too much heat may increase faster than deaths caused by cold will decrease, although Ingole says the limited period of his study meant he could not draw such a conclusion.
Quick-hitting Southeast to Mid-Atlantic winter storm, nearly 500 000 customers already without power - A quick-hitting winter storm is bringing significant weather impacts across parts of the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic on January 3, 2022. Heavy wet snow and gusty winds are expected, causing dangerous travel conditions and power outages. Parts of the region could see up to 7.5 cm (3 inches) of snow per hour! A dynamic low pressure system will be the fuel for significant weather impacts across parts of the Southeast coast and Mid-Atlantic over the next day or so, NWS forecaster Kebede noted on January 3.1 A cold front associated with the deepening area of low pressure will be the focus for scattered showers and thunderstorms across the Carolinas and down into Florida today. A Slight Risk of severe thunderstorms is in effect for much of coastal North Carolina today as Gulf moisture streams into the region from the south and interacts with the approaching cold front from the west. Damaging winds and a few tornadoes appear to be the main concerns with this severe weather threat. Rain will changeover to snow across much of the Central/Southern Appalachians and Mid-Atlantic this morning as temperatures fall below freezing. Generally, a swath of between 10 - 20 cm (4 - 8 inches) of snow is possible from the Southern Appalachians through Washington DC and into southern New Jersey by this evening. Localized higher amounts between 20 - 30 cm (8 - 12 inches) are possible. The heaviest snow (5 cm / 2 inches per hour) along with thunder-snow is likely to occur right after the transition from rain this morning, which will make for tricky commutes to work. Heavy wet snow will also accumulate on power lines leading to power outages. Refreezing of any melted snow tonight may produce additional hazardous travel conditions, Kebede warned.At least 470 000 customers are already without power in North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee, as of 12:28 UTC. The worst affected is North Carolina with 169 583 customers without power, Georgia with 137 136, South Carolina with 100 749, and Tennessee with 61 006 customers.While the exact track and strength of the southern U.S. storm continue to change by the hour, the ingredients are in place for part of the mid-Atlantic to have snowfall at a heavy rate of 2.5 - 7.5 cm (1 - 3 inches) per hour for a time on Monday, AccuWeather warns.2
Snow storm batters US east, piling onto holiday chaos - After a bruising holiday week of flight cancellations and record surges in COVID-19 cases, a powerful winter storm Monday (Jan 3) further snarled US transport and shuttered the federal government and schools. Nearly 3,500 flights Monday, the first workday of 2022, were already cancelled as of 9.45am (1445 GMT), including 2,000 US flights or international ones starting or finishing in the United States, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware. Combined with 2,700 US flights scrapped Sunday and 2,750 grounded on Saturday, the latest cancellations compounded holiday travel misery. Further disruptions snowballed as a winter storm hammered the capital and other parts of the mid-Atlantic, with official forecasts of 12.7cm to 25.4cm of snow in Washington. "Heavy wet snow and gusty winds could bring dangerous travel conditions and scattered power outages," the National Weather Service reported in its latest alert, warning of possible "thunder-snow," which includes lightning and cracks of thunder. Federal workers in and around the capital were told to stay home. But with telework becoming routine during the two-year coronavirus pandemic, it was unclear how much of the government would be affected. Schools around the region were also closed due to snow.
Drivers Stranded Overnight After Winter Storm Shuts Down I-95 In Virginia - Some drivers said they have been trapped on the interstate for more than 20 hours amid freezing temperatures, forcing them to conserve gas to stay warm. Hundreds of vehicles were trapped overnight in Virginia on icy Interstate 95, in some cases for more than 20 hours according to some drivers, following a vehicle crash that shut down 50 miles of the roadway near Fredericksburg amid heavy winter snowfall. The massive logjam follows more than a foot of snow falling in the region just south of Washington, D.C., on Monday morning. Multiple crashes were reported along the interstate, including several tractor-trailers that jackknifed and became stuck, officials with the Virginia Department of Transportation said.The Virginia State Police said there are no reported deaths or injuries related to the traffic nightmare as of Tuesday afternoon.Marcie Parker, district engineer for Fredericksburg VDOT, said the snowfall was far more than VDOT anticipated and that the roadway had not been pretreated for the icy conditions because of heavy rainfall.“If they pretreated, it would have just washed away and wasted product and blocked traffic,” Parker said at a late-morning press conference, according to the local station WRIC. Gov. Ralph Northam (D) called the situation “incredibly unusual” and a “perfect storm” for the chaos that ensued.“We were prepared for the storm that was predicted, a few inches of snow, but instead Mother Nature sent over a foot,” he said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.Parker, who in an earlier statement similarly called the interstate shutdown “unprecedented,” said officials hope to reopen the interstate by Wednesday at the latest. This will follow all disabled vehicles being removed from the roadway so it can be cleared.Drivers, trapped with nowhere to go, have meanwhile shared photos and videos from the road with frustration at the extreme conditions.“There is absolutely no sign that this is going to change anytime soon. This is a complete parking lot on I-95 and the road is nothing but ice,” Jim DeFede, a reporter with CBS News in Miami, said in a video posted to Twitter late Tuesday morning.With temperatures continuously below freezing, DeFede said he takes turns running his car’s engine for about an hour to stay warm and then turning it off to conserve the half-tank of gas he has left.“I’m not sure but I think I now qualify for Virginia residency,” DeFede joked in an earlier post that showed vehicles with icicles parked around him.Among those trapped on the roadway was Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who shared a photo from the interstate Tuesday, where he said he has sat for 19 hours. Josh Lederman, a correspondent for NBC News who reported from his car with his dog on the interstate before being helped off the highway late Tuesday morning, said he saw people collecting snow to melt for water and children playing on the side of the road.
Winter storm leaves thousands without power across mid-Atlantic -- The biggest snowstorm for the mid-Atlantic since 2019 kicked off the first full week of the new year: More than a foot of snow fell across portions of Maryland, Delaware and southern New Jersey. Huntingtown, on Maryland's Eastern Shore, recorded what was possibly the largest total in the region, with an accumulation of 15.5 inches by mid-day Monday, according to the National Weather Service. In New Jersey, where Gov. Phil Murphy declared a state of emergency in five southern counties, he called the storm the "most significant" snow event in four years. Egg Harbor Township, north of Cape May, saw 13.5 inches by Monday night, the weather service reported. Earlier, accumulating snow fell across portions of northern Alabama, north Georgia, much of Tennessee and as far south as the Florida Panhandle. Thundersnow was reported in Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland. The severe weather appeared to be responsible for the deaths of two children. In rain-soaked Decatur, Georgia, a tree fell on a home and killed a 5-year-old boy Monday morning, fire officials told NBC affiliate WXIA. In snow-battered Townsend, Tennessee, a tree fell on a home and killed a child who had been in their bedroom, according to NBC affiliate WBIR. Three people in the Washington D.C., area were also killed when their SUV collided with a snowplow on Monday night, authorities in Montgomery County, Maryland, said. An investigation into the cause of the crash was still underway and it wasn't clear whether the snowplow was operating at the time, Montgomery County police spokeswoman Shiera Goff said. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power in the storm. By Tuesday morning, more than 375,000 had no service in the mid-Atlantic region. Virginia had the most outages, with over 281,000 customers still without power, according to PowerOutage.us, which aggregates data from utilities across the U.S. Tens of thousands more were without electricity in Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. The southern side of the mid-Atlantic snowstorm produced severe thunderstorms Monday morning across the eastern Carolinas. Monday morning featured a tornado watch for cities including Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and severe thunderstorms capable of damaging winds and isolated tornadoes charged through the eastern Carolinas. Flash flooding was also a concern. To add more shock to the biggest snowstorm in years, the snow came on the heels of spring-like warmth over the weekend. After highs Sunday soared into the 70s across the Southeast and 60s across the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, highs on Monday will be 20 to 30 degrees lower.
Record snow cuts off Seattle from Washington state, U.S. - Washington State Governor declared a State of Emergency on Friday, January 7, 2022, after a series of severe winter storms struck Washington State beginning on December 17, 2021, producing extensive rain and snow and causing hazardous driving conditions, flooding, and extended road closures on mountain passes and other roadways throughout the lowlands and high elevations statewide.Rain and snow hit the state in historic proportions again this week, setting the stage for swollen rivers and avalanche concerns Friday, the Seattle Times reports.1As a result, nearly all of the major road and train routes connecting Seattle the rest of the state and country were shut down, cutting off the city from Portland and Western Washington from Eastern Washington.The last time the region was cut off so much was in 1996 after an atmospheric river closed mountain passes and Interstate 5, NWS meteorologist Ted Buehner said.This time, the culprit was a warm front that stalled over Western Washington from Wednesday, January 5 to Friday, January 7, rather than moving past quickly, like usual, said NWS meteorologist Samantha Borth.The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) reported 66 cm (26 inches) of snow at Snoqualmie Pass, a major route across Washington's Cascades, from Thursday to mid-Friday, on top of 726 cm (286 inches) earlier this winter. The 5-year average season snowfall to January 7 is 376.4 cm (148.2 inches)."We are setting records," officials at WSDOT for I-90/Snoqualmie Pass traffic said.Low visibility, heavy snow and high avalanche danger forced officials to close the pass on Thursday, as well as Stevens Pass on U.S. 2, White Pass on U.S. 12, and Blewett Pass on U.S. 97.It's unusual - and maybe unprecedented - to have all four passes close simultaneously for more than a few hours, The Seattle Times reported.2
21 freeze to death after heavy snow traps thousands of cars in Murree, Pakistan - At least 21 people, including 9 children, have died of hypothermia overnight Saturday, January 8, 2022, after heavy snow trapped thousands of vehicles in Pakistan's mountain resort of Murree. The resort, located about 45 km (28 miles) N of the capital Islamabad, recorded more than 1.2 m (4 feet) of fresh snow overnight. More than 23 000 cars were evacuated from the area on Friday.According to Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, around 1 000 cars were still stuck on the mountain roads on Saturday after tourists flocked to the hill station in large numbers for the first time in 15 to 20 years, creating a big crisis.Ahmed added that administrations of both Rawalpindi and Islamabad, along with police, had been working to rescue stranded people, along with five platoons of the Pakistan Army, as well as Rangers and Frontier Corps.1According to a list issued by Rescue 1122, at least 21 people have been found dead, including 9 children.Officials hope to rescue all stranded people by nightfall."God willing, we will rescue 1 000 cars by evening today. We have decided to stop people on foot as well. It is no time for tourists to visit," Dawn said. More than 23 000 cars were evacuated from the area the night before. Heavy snowfall is expected to continue through January 9.
3 people missing, 991 homes destroyed and 127 damaged by catastrophic Marshall Fire in Colorado -- More than 1 000 homes have been destroyed or damaged and three people are missing, presumed dead, after a catastrophic wildfire erupted on December 30, 2021, and tore through the communities of Superior and Louisville, a suburban area between Denver and Boulder, Colorado. Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said Saturday, January 1, 2022, that three people are missing after a rare December wildfire destroyed 991 homes, and damaged 127 more.1In total, 553 homes were destroyed and 45 damaged in Louisville, 332 were destroyed and 60 damaged in Superior, while in incorporated Boulder County, 105 homes were destroyed and 22 damaged.This made it the most destructive wildfire on record for the state of Colorado.Sheriff Pelle said 2 people are missing in Superior and another in the Marshall area. "Each of their homes was lost to Thursday’s wind-driven wildfire," the sheriff said.The fire broke out in the middle of the day and was driven by wind gusts above 160 km/h (100 mph), forcing at least 33 000 people to evacuate with little notice.Pelle said investigators are still trying to find the cause of the blaze.Overnight dumping of snow and frigid temperatures on Saturday, January 1, compounded the misery of hundreds of Colorado residents who started off the new year trying to salvage what remained of their homes, ABC reported.2The snow cast an eerie scene amid the still-smoldering remains of homes destroyed. Despite the shocking change in weather, the smell of smoke still permeated empty streets blocked off by National Guard troops in Humvees.As of 13:00 UTC on January 1, the Marshall Fire has consumed 2 516 ha (6 219 acres) of land and 62% of the perimeter has been contained.3Approximately 200 fire personnel plus Team Rubicon, Xcel Energy, numerous law enforcement agencies, Division of Fire Prevention and Control, and Colorado National Guard are currently working on the fire and recovery efforts.The primary objective for managing this fire is public and firefighter safety while minimizing impacts to structures and repopulating communities as soon as conditions are safe to do so.Crews are working throughout the fire area to remove any remaining areas of heat along the fire perimeter, secure structures, and ensure that the area is safe for damage assessment teams and utility crews to continue with their work. Fire personnel will continue to support these important operations as well as respond to any possible increased fire activity.Areas of significant heat still exists around some of the impacted structures. These heat sources can flare up and may be visible especially at night. It will take firefighters some time to methodically go around each structure to ensure that they are out and pose no hazard to the fire perimeter or adjacent unburned structures.
Marshall Fire displaces thousands in worst wildfire in Colorado history -- The Marshall Fire is the most devastating in Colorado history, destroying over 1,000 homes and businesses and causing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes at a moment’s notice as the flames burned through over 6,000 acres of land (9.4 square miles). Devastation from the fire struck deep into the hearts of the suburban communities southeast of Boulder, leveling whole neighborhoods and large business centers, including a Target shopping mall, a Tesla car dealership, and a hotel. Following the disaster, residents have been struggling to stay warm. According to Alice Jackson, president of Xcel Energy, 1,600 people are still without electricity and 11,600 without gas as of Sunday. Gas utilities must be turned on individually for safety reasons, meaning that it could take days to return heating to the homes that remain standing. For those who lost their homes, bottled water and donated space heaters were handed out by the Salvation Army in the neighboring city of Lafayette and resources from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) have been deployed to the area. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but officials have stated that they have narrowed the source of the ignition to a single neighborhood where a shed was photographed in flames by a passerby on Thursday. Search warrants have been issued, but few details have been released as the investigation continues. Officials had suggested early on that the cause of the fire could have been downed power lines, but have since confirmed that no power lines were down at the time the fire began to spread. What made the Marshall Fire so destructive and astonishing was that the fire spread so quickly and so deep into a heavily populated area. Typical wildfires in Colorado occur further up in the foothills and in the mountains, often farther away from human settlement in what scientists call the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI), the space where human development and wild land meet. In previous decades the WUI was sparsely populated, making the threat of wildfires to human life relatively small. However, since the 1990s, suburban expansion in Colorado has continuously marched west and up into the fire-prone grasslands in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Both Louisville and Superior, around 20 miles northwest of Denver and just a few miles from Boulder, sit right next to areas that the Colorado State Forest Service considers to be of “Very High” risk for wildfires.
Xcel Energy has given out 20,000 portable heaters. Many are still without electricity and gas - On Monday, Xcel Energy Colorado President Alice Jackson updated reporters on recovery efforts and said 400 people are still without electricity inside the burn zone, an improvement from the100,000 customers affected in last week's Boulder Fires. The company anticipates it will complete restoring electric power, where possible, by the end of Thursday. Jackson said that 8,000 people are still without gas, but that Xcel has completed the first two steps necessary for restoring gas – manually cutting off meters and gas, and re-pressurizing the gas system to make sure the infrastructure is sound. The third step is going door-to-door to reignite pilot lights. The company’s technicians are knocking on doors from 7a.m. to 10 p.m. “If you’re not home … we’ll leave you a door hanger with instructions to contact us in order for us to be able to send a crew back to you,” Jackson said. Xcel said it has given out 20,000 portable heaters to customers without access to gas or electricity. And more are available. Separately, Comcast said service is restored to 40 percent of its customers affected by the fires, and most people will have service back today or tomorrow.
December in Texas hottest on record in more than 130 years - Last month Texas experienced its warmest December on record since 1889, said John Nielsen-Gammon, a regents professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University who also serves as the state climatologist. From Dallas through Abilene to Del Rio, temperatures averaged 5 to 9 degrees above normal, making it the warmest December in more than 130 years. "It's like the entire state moved south for the winter," said Nielsen-Gammon. "Amarillo got Dallas's normal temperatures, Dallas got Corpus Christi's normal temperatures, and Austin got Brownsville's normal temperatures. "Not only is it by far the warmest December since the beginning of comprehensive weather records, it will probably also turn out to be the warmest winter month, period," said Nielsen-Gammon. February 2017 holds the current record for warmest winter month in Texas, with an average temperature of 58.4 degrees. The official state record for warmest December is held by December 1933, at 53.3 degrees. The 20th-century average for December is 46.9 degrees, he noted. "Texas has never had any month more than 10 degrees above the 20th-century average until now," Nielsen-Gammon said. He thinks that when all the data are in, December 2021 will average nearly 12 degrees above the long-term average. Although data is limited, there does seem to have been one other December in recorded history with comparable warmth: December 1889. "Observing practices were different, but it's clear that December 1889 was an unusual month also," Nielsen-Gammon said. "The first decent cold front of that month was on Dec. 29." One bad result of the very warm weather—it has made Texas' drought situation even worse. The hot weather has exacerbated drought conditions throughout the state. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, more than two-thirds of the state is in drought, and 10 percent is in extreme drought. "In much of West Texas, it hasn't rained for over two months," Nielsen-Gammon said. "The high temperatures increase the rate of evaporation, drying out everything and leading to increased wildfire risk." Climate change has caused Texas seasonal temperatures to average about two degrees warmer than in the 20th century. "Global warming didn't cause this December to be record-setting, but it did contribute to the margin of victory," he said.
More than 40 percent of Americans live in counties hit by climate disasters in 2021 - The Washington Post -2021 ended as it began: with disaster. Twelve months after an atmospheric river deluged California, triggering mudslides in burned landscapes and leaving a half-million people without power, a late-season wildfire destroyed hundreds of homes in the suburbs of Denver. In between, Americans suffered blistering heat waves, merciless droughts and monstrous hurricanes. People collapsed in farm fields and drowned in basement apartments; entire communities were obliterated by surging seas and encroaching flames.More than 4 in 10 Americans live in a county that was struck by climate-related extreme weather last year, according to a new Washington Post analysis of federal disaster declarations, and more than 80 percent experienced a heat wave. In the country that has generated more greenhouse gases than any other nation in history, global warming is expanding its reach and exacting an escalating toll.At least 656 people died amid the onslaught of disasters, media reports and government records show. The cost of the destruction tops $104 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, even before officials calculate the final toll of wildfires, drought and heat waves in the West.While the Federal Emergency Management Agency identified fewer climate-related disasters in individual counties last year, it declared eight of these emergencies statewide — the most since 1998 — encompassing 135 million people overall. There is little doubt that the future will be worse. Steadily rising temperatures heighten the risk of wildfires, turbocharge rain storms, exacerbate flooding and intensify drought.Yet planet-warming pollution, primarily from burning fossil fuels, surged to near-record highs last year. The Build Back Better bill, which contains the biggest clean energy investment in U.S. history, stalled in Congress. The United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, produced pledges that putglobal average temperatures on track to rise about 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century — a degree of warming that would transform once unthinkable disasters into near-annual occurrences.2022 begins with two crucial questions still unanswered: Will the United States invest in ways to make extreme weather less destructive? And will the country lead the world in curbing warming before it becomes impossible for humanity to adapt?
‘Everything is a fight’: the island still reeling months after Ida battered Louisiana -David Sears spent six weeks sleeping outside on the splintered remains of his home on Grand Isle, Louisiana. The house was destroyed by Hurricane Ida at the end of August but Sears had nowhere else to go. So he returned to this barrier island, out in the gulf of Mexico, and lived on his front porch for over a month. Grand Isle, with its sweeping white sand beaches, rows of bobbing shrimp boats and 1,000 permanent residents, took the first punch from Ida, the category 4 hurricane that became one of America’s most powerful storms when it landed here in the summer. And four months later the scars have barely begun to heal. Debris still litters the roadways, destroyed homes line the beachfront and hundreds of residents remain displaced. This sliver of land, the last frontier of humanity before the open ocean, is used to taking hits from extreme weather. But Ida was the worst in the island’s history. Sears, a 70 year old with a white handlebar moustache, contracted pneumonia and staph infections in both his eyes after his six weeks living outdoors. He was rushed to hospital and told he may not survive. But after nine days of treatment, he made it out in mid-November. The retiree, who lives on social security payments, was one of the first to move into this row of temporary Fema homes, sheltering dozens of the island’s residents who have lost everything. With his long term prospects still uncertain, Sears was living day by day. “One day at a time,” he said. “I’m going to stay right here for now. I’ll save some money. And one day, hopefully, I can buy the trailer.” This post-storm purgatory was felt among many, who are preparing for an uncertain new year as Grand Isle continues to grapple with a gargantuan recovery effort. Adriane Cunningham, a patrol officer with the island police force, was living in a trailer a few down from Sears. Her home was crushed by two trees ripped from their roots by Ida. She had been living without insurance and had already spent over $3,000 just to remove the debris. She had no idea how much it would cost to rebuild or if she even could. “It seems like every time we do something with the house, something else goes wrong with it,” she said. “It’s just so much money.” For now, she splits her time between the trailer during the week and her sister’s house, three and a half hours away, at the weekend. Her five children have been withdrawn from the local school district and moved to a school outside of the state capitol, Baton Rouge. The family simply cannot fit inside the trailer.
Turkmenistan plans to close its 'Gateway to Hell' - Turkmenistan's strongman leader has ordered experts to find a way to finally extinguish a massive five-decade old fire in a giant natural gas crater in the Central Asian country, dubbed the "Gateway to Hell". Citing environmental and economic concerns, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov appeared on state television Saturday telling officials to put out the flames at the Darvaza gas crater in the middle of the vast Karakum desert. In 2010, Berdymukhamedov also ordered experts to find a way to put out the flames that have been burning ever since a Soviet drilling operation went awry in 1971. President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said that the man-made crater "negatively affects both the environment and the health of the people living nearby". "We are losing valuable natural resources for which we could get significant profits and use them for improving the well-being of our people," he said in televised remarks. Berdymukhamedov instructed officials to "find a solution to extinguish the fire". The crater was created in 1971 during a Soviet drilling accident that hit a gas cavern, causing the drilling rig to fall in and the earth to collapse underneath it. To prevent the dangerous fumes from spreading, the Soviets decided to burn off the gas by setting it on fire. The pit has been ablaze ever since and previous attempts to put it out have been unsuccessful. The resulting crater—70 metres (229 feet) wide and 20 metres (65 feet) deep—is a popular tourist attraction in the ex-Soviet country.
Eruption at Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai, Tonga - Eruption at Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano in Tonga started on December 19, 2021, and continued into 2022 although at a much lower intensity. The Aviation Color Code remains at Orange. Intermittent eruption with an ash plume rising up to 3 km (10 000 feet) above sea level was reported by Wellington VAAC on January 1 and during the first half of January 2. At 12:21 UTC on January 2, the center announced there is no more evidence of eruption in satellite imagery. In the first few days of the eruption, a massive gaseous cloud was rising to an estimated altitude of 18 km (59 000 feet) a.s.l., the island has grown up to 600 m (183 feet) to its eastern side and ash was falling within a 10 km (6.2 miles) radius. Plumes became intermittent by December 24, rising to 10.4 km (34 000 feet) a.s.l. and occasionally as high as 12.2 km (40 000 feet) a.s.l. Tonga Geological Services reported that on December 27 and 28 clouds of gas and steam drifted E across the ‘Otu Mu’omu’a Islands of Ha’apai at altitudes of 1 - 18 km (3 300-59 000 feet) a.s.l.1, 2 The agency warned residents to protect water reservoirs because rain may be acidic or contain traces of ash, though the plumes were predominantly drifting at high levels.
New eruption at Wolf volcano, Galapagos Islands - A new eruption began at Ecuador's Wolf volcano, Galapagos around 05:30 UTC on January 7, 2022. The last eruption of this volcano took place in 2015 (VEI 4) -- its first eruption since August/September 1982 (VEI 1). According to the Washington VAAC, the eruption is sending possible volcanic ash and gases up to 3.6 km (12 000 feet) above sea level, drifting W, and to 5.5 km (18 000 feet) a.s.l., drifting NNE. At this time, it is difficult to determine how much is volcanic ash and how much are gases.1 The eruption was witnessed by park rangers who were near the area carrying out various management activities of the protected area, as well as tour operators who sailed around the island of Isabela. Ash is heading north of the island, where there is no human population at risk. Animals at the park are currently not at risk. A sudden eruption of this volcano started at around 08:00 UTC on May 25, 2015 (VEI 4) after 33 years of sleep (1982 / VEI 1). A Volcanic Ash Advisory issued by the Washington VAAC at 12:35 UTC said volcanic ash was reaching an altitude of 14 km (45 000 feet) a.s.l., extending 250 km (155 miles) to the S of the summit, while volcanic ash to 15.24 km (50 000 feet) a.s.l. extended 250 km ENE of the summit.2
Asteroid 2022 AU flew past Earth at 0.83 LD - A newly-discovered asteroid designated 2022 AU flew past Earth at a distance of 0.83 LD / 0.00213 AU (318 643 km / 197 995 miles) at 03:03 UTC on January 2, 2022. This is the second known asteroid to fly past Earth within 1 lunar distance since the start of the year and the first 1 LD asteroid discovered this year.In 2021, a total of 145 asteroids flew past Earth within 1 lunar distance.Asteroid 2022 AU belongs to the Apollo group of asteroids.It was first observed at Mt. Lemmon Survey, Arizona on January 5, three days after it made its close approach to Earth.The asteroid has an estimated diameter between 4.3 and 9.6 m (14.1 - 31.5 feet).
The significant roles of anthropogenic aerosols on surface temperature under carbon neutrality - A new study finds that in the near future, the warming effect of anthropogenic aerosol reduction will superimpose on the cooling effect caused by the CO2 reduction, leading to greater surface temperature increase, delayed start of temperature reduction, and a decelerated cooling rate. This aerosol effect will not only extend the time required to achieve Paris Agreement targets, but also trigger a long-term cooling trend in the subpolar North Atlantic that is distinct from other regions. Though atmospheric CO2 makes an impact on surface temperature, the role of aerosols on the spatiotemporal changes of temperature cannot be ignored. A large reduction in anthropogenic emissions is needed to achieve carbon neutrality and the low-warming target, which means that the concentration of CO2 and aerosols in the atmosphere will jointly show a downward trend in the future. However, the same trends in aerosols and CO2 will cause opposite radiative effects. The warming effect produced by reduced aerosols works simultaneously with the cooling effect caused by reduced CO2. In addition, aerosols can also affect the dynamic processes from the surface to the deep layer in the ocean, thereby altering regional features of ocean temperature. To explore the impact of future reductions in anthropogenic aerosols on surface temperature, the researchers used the Community Earth System Model (CESM) to perform fixed-aerosol experiments over the 21st century under a low-emission scenario (RCP2.6) and compared the results with those in all-forcing simulations under the same scenario. They found that the additional warming effect caused by the continued decline of aerosols in the 21st century will make the global mean surface temperature increase for a longer period of time, rather than a decrease following the reduction of CO2 (after ~2050). They also found that under the low-emission scenario, when other regions have long-term warming trends in surface temperature, the subpolar North Atlantic (south of Greenland) shows long-term cooling trends. This phenomenon is dominated by aerosols while CO2 plays a secondary role. The regional inconsistency of temperature changes is mainly due to the weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Under the reduction of anthropogenic aerosols, the AMOC continues to weaken since the beginning of the 21st century, which causes the northward heat transport in the Atlantic continue to weaken. The anomalous cold signals gradually accumulate in the subpolar North Atlantic, leading to significant cooling trends in sea surface temperatures over this region in the second half of the century. The cooling of the sea surface further induces the local ocean to absorb more heat from the atmosphere through air-sea heat flux.
Europe ‘can eradicate energy poverty’ by quitting fossil fuels - While EU member states provide financial support to poor households affected by rising energy bills, the European Commission is focusing on long term solutions like energy efficiency and renewables, which have the potential to “eradicate energy poverty” once and for all, an EU official dealing with the issue has said. Energy poverty is “a pre-existing problem” to the current energy price hike, which is linked to the inability of people to pay their fossil fuel bills, said Adela Tesarova, an official at the Commission’s energy department. “We want to avoid that decarbonisation makes this problem worse,” she told a EURACTIV event held earlier this month, saying this is why the EU executive proposed creating a social climate fund worth €72.2 billion for the 2025-2035 period. The ongoing energy price crisis has put energy poverty in the spotlight, with EU governments scrambling to alleviate the burden on the most vulnerable households with short-term measures such as direct income support. Around 31 million Europeans are living in energy poverty and are unable to keep their homes adequately warm, according to Eurostat figures. Direct income support schemes, such as France’s energy vouchers, are supported by the European Commission, which put forward a “toolbox” of measures in October to address rising energy prices in the short term. For the long term, the Commission tabled “structural measures” to boost energy efficiency and renewables, which will reduce Europe’s dependence on fossil fuels, Tesarova said. “Moving away from fossil fuels is a way to eradicate energy poverty,” the official said, citing EU programmes helping people to insulate their homes and other initiatives to boost renewables. “Because if people are not dependent on fossil fuels, we will not have energy poverty,” she said.
Farmers resist pipeline land takeover -—The Solsma farm is instantly recognized by any regular motorist traveling Highway 18 east of Sanborn. Next to the corn-and-bean acreage is a rustic storefront that operates as a pumpkin patch in the fall and a fireworks shed ahead of Independence Day and New Year’s. Drive-by honks from friendly neighbors sing out daily. Solsma’s Punkin Patch and Fireworks also is right in the cross hairs of the Heartland Greenway pipeline. Amy Solsma is one of the leading voices in N’West Iowa against the proposed carbon-capture project. For her, it’s about stopping corporate greed digging through her land. “It’s a money grab,” Solsma said. “They’re going to make billions of dollars off of — well there’s 342 landowners in O’Brien County. How many is in Lyon, BV, all these? It’s the same kind of deal, thousands and thousands of farmers and landowners.” The 342 is the number of farms lying inside what the pipeline company, Navigator CO2 Ventures, calls the route corridor. Solsma received a letter from the Texas-based company saying her land is in the corridor, but she said she could not get specifics on where the pipe was planned to go through her farm or if she was even on the route at all. The whole thing is just too confusing, which Solsma said seems like an intentional tactic. “I don’t think there’s anything they could say to make us sign up with them.” “It’s a conundrum because there’s so much we’re up against. The pipeline companies have been working on this, obviously, for years. You don’t come up with this overnight,” she said. “And then we get that letter in November. And there’s a meeting two weeks later. And it’s all so fast. And you’re scrambling to figure out what’s even going on.” By law, Navigator is required to hold a public informational meeting in every county it wants to travel through. Those presentations are overseen by the Iowa Utilities Board, the state agency that has the authority to block the project or give it the green light. The gatherings are essentially the same as the ones Summit Carbon Solutions held weeks before Navigator. Summit has its own multistate carbon pipeline it calls the Midwest Carbon Express. The meetings are supposed to answer questions for landowners that the pipeline affects as well as provide them a venue to sign easements with the company.
Navigator plans to seek pipeline permit in May - Iowa Capital Dispatch - A Texas company that wants to build a pipeline to transport liquid carbon dioxide across the state has nearly concluded a series of informational, public meetings and plans to formally petition in May for permission to build it. “This is your land, and treating it with the utmost respect is the top priority for us,” Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, vice president of government and public affairs for Navigator CO2 Ventures, said during one of those meetings Thursday in Ames. The estimated $3 billion project would lay about 900 miles of steel pipe — ranging in diameter from 6 to 24 inches — in the soil of about a third of the state’s counties. Its main artery would bisect the state from northwest to southeast, and branches would stretch from it to ethanol and fertilizer plants. The idea is to capture carbon dioxide waste from those plants and pump it deep into the ground in Illinois. In doing so, those plants could also capture about $750 million annually in federal tax credits or perhaps significantly more if federal lawmakers increase the credit rate. The carbon sequestration credit was created in 2008 and significantly expanded in 2018. Its goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, and carbon dioxide is considered a key factor in human-caused climate change. Navigator is not the recipient of those tax credits; it would be paid an unspecified amount of money by about 20 ethanol and fertilizer plants based on the terms of 10-year contracts. Navigator plans to petition the three-member Iowa Utilities Board in May for a hazardous liquid pipeline permit, which might enable it to force some landowners to allow the pipeline’s construction on their property if voluntary easements aren’t obtained. Further, the network of pipes will require a handful of booster stations that would occupy 10 acres apiece. In order for the board to approve the permit, it needs to determine that the pipeline serves a “public convenience and necessity” under Iowa law.
Why can't wind turbines be placed further offshore in NJ? (AP) — As New Jersey races to grab the leading role in offshore wind energy projects on the U.S. East Coast, a commonly heard criticism is that people don’t want to see the structures on the horizon when they’re at the beach.On Wednesday, New Jersey energy and environmental regulators addressed those concerns, saying the farther away from the shoreline the turbines go, the more expensive the electricity they generate will be.During an interview with reporters from several media outlets, the state’s environmental protection commissioner, Shawn LaTourette, said the roughly 15-mile distance from shore envisioned for the state’s early projects is not set in stone.“The approach is not offshore wind at all costs,” said LaTourette. “We must ensure balance. If that means turbines being arrayed in a different way or at a different distance, then that’s what it means. It is not a fait accompli.”But Joseph Fiordaliso, president of the state Board of Public Utilities, cautioned that even though his board has the power to require the turbines to be placed farther offshore, cost is an important part of the equation in locating them.“This energy has to be transmitted back on shore,” he said. “The farther we go out, the more expensive it’s going to be to get that energy onshore. That certainly is a consideration.”Most of the turbines proposed for the three offshore wind projects approved thus far in New Jersey will be located about 15 miles from the coast, he said.“They are not going to be visual pollution,” he said. “Probably most people won’t be able to see them.”But several shore communities including Ocean City, perhaps the center of opposition to offshore wind projects thus far, say today’s turbines are much larger than those proposed in the past, and much more likely to be seen from shore.“We don’t believe them when they say they’re all going to be 15 miles offshore,” said Suzanne Hornick, a leader of Protect Our Coast-NJ. “The lease area is closer than that, and we know they will fill up that whole lease area. It could be as close as eight miles.”The group also cites environmental and financial concerns in opposing the projects.Thus far, New Jersey has approved three offshore wind energy projects: two by Danish wind developer Orsted, and one by Atlantic Shores.Those three projects combined aim to provide enough electricity to power over 1.6 million homes. New Jersey has set a goal of generating 100% of its energy from clean sources by 2050, and plans to solicit additional wind energy projects every two years until at least 2028.
Gas utilities push RNG and hydrogen to expand fossil fuel infrastructure - Energy and Policy Institute --Electric and gas utilities are increasingly targeting customers, regulators, and investors with the promise of “renewable natural gas,” or biomethane, and hydrogen gas. In their promotions, the utilities have claimed that these technologies will allow them to build gas-fueled power plants and gas pipelines today while remaining on a pathway toward “net-zero” emissions climate goals. But RNG and hydrogen are not excuses to build or expand fossil fuel infrastructure, according to reports and studies released in recent years. (Review the collection.) Zero-emissions solutions to power and heat our homes and businesses are available today. Industry representatives have acknowledged both publicly and privately that RNG and hydrogen have limited applications and significant drawbacks, and that they would not be available as major components of fully decarbonized gas and electric grids for decades, if ever. (Read the documents.) While hyping the promise of RNG and hydrogen, 16 of the largest investor-owned utilities across the country are telling their investors and Wall Street analysts that they plan to spend a combined$94.3 billion over the next five years in expanding and maintaining their gas grids. Several utilities have started to use the promise of green hydrogen and RNG as a justification to build a specific gas plant. (Review the list.) Investors want to continue financing these gas projects in contradiction to the net-zero goals and statements professed by many utilities, which will burden ratepayers since they will likely have to pay for these investments along with the rate of return through their utility bills.Expenditu Utilities recognize the existential threat of individual customers, cities, and states to reduce fossil fuel use in homes and businesses. A corporate disclosure from at least one investor-owned utilityacknowledged that the business model depends entirely on the continued sale of fossil gas: “A substantial reduction or the elimination of natural gas as an energy source in California could have a material adverse effect on [San Diego Gas & Electric’s], SoCalGas’ and Sempra Energy’s cash flows, financial conduction and results of operations.”
On climate change, Philly’s gas utility is working against the city that owns it - On issues ranging from gun violence to waste in our rivers to climate change, city officials must consistently contend with the efforts of elected officials from outside the city to diminish their capacity to lead. The external force presents a challenge to our leaders that Philadelphians see play out on a daily basis. More surprising and more devastating was the recent revelation that executives inside Philadelphia Gas Works quietly aided efforts to sabotage Philadelphia’s commitment to combating the escalating impact of climate change.PGW executives did so by trying to strengthen a piece of legislation called Senate Bill 275, which would ban municipalities across Pennsylvania from restricting or prohibiting utility services based on the types of energy they provide. The legislation, which is being pushed nationally by groups like the American Gas Association, has received criticism from Philadelphia City Council, which passed a resolution in April 2021 in opposition to it. Despite that opposition, PGW actively assisted legislators in Harrisburg in their efforts to craft Senate Bill 275. Put simply, PGW deliberately aided an ongoing legislative effort to directly subvert the authority of the very municipality that owns the company. Though it appears that the individual at the center of PGW’s efforts to support this legislation is set to retire on January 1, 2022, the damage done by PGW will extend far into the future and requires fundamental change within the company’s leadership ranks. As such, all responsible PGW executives must resign immediately including the President and Chief Executive Officer, Seth Shapiro. The proponents of the bill PGW supported, argue that it provides greater choice to Pennsylvanians. But as the city leaders who opposed it know, this legislation is nothing more than another attempt by the oil and gas industry to deepen our reliance on fossil fuels. PennFuture has testified that the bill is unconstitutional under Pennsylvania law. Clean Air Council noted that it is part of a broader effortby the fracked gas industry to strip cities of the basic freedom to update building codes and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Conservative Plot Against Green Investment -It all starts with an innocuous bit of jargon. “ESG pressures by national environmental groups [are] driving banks, insurance companies and investment managers to abandon fossil fuels,” argues a document sent via email from West Virginia Coal Association President Chris Hamilton to Republican West Virginia House of Delegates member Zack Maynard last February, outlining the group’s 2021 legislative priorities for the state. “ESG,” which stands for environmental, social, and governance, refers to some recently fashionable branding that vaguely defines a set of criteria by which investors might center their portfolios on firms with sustainable business practices, for which there is no formal taxonomy or regulations.The email was co-signed by representatives from Arch Resources, Alliance Resource Partners, and American Consolidated Natural Resource, formerly known as Murray Energy. “West Virginia coal-based electric manufacturing facilities are also highly exposed targets of ESG activists. We believe West Virginia’s Legislature should develop legislation to make it an unlawful, discriminatory practice for financial institutions or insurance companies to assess higher premiums, surcharges or interest based on a company’s fossil energy holdings.” That’s according to correspondence obtained through a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request by the nonprofit watchdog group InfluenceMap, and reviewed by The New Republic.Fifteen days later, on February 23, 2021, this precise sort of “anti-ESG legislation” was sitting in Maynard’s inbox, from Hamilton. On March 13, Maynard became the lead sponsor of a virtually identical bill, H.B. 3084.It’s one of several copycat measures being pitched in state legislatures around the country. Last month, the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture task force voted unanimously to back the Energy Discrimination Elimination Act at its States and Nation Policy Summit in San Diego. At some point later that month, the bill appears to have been stripped from ALEC’s website, though it can still be accessed through the Internet Archive. ALEC did not respond to a request for comment as to why the bill no longer appears on its site.The act is the brainchild of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which led the charge to pass that state’s version—Senate Bill 13. While language differs state by state, the bills direct state comptrollers to “sell, redeem, divest, or withdraw all publicly traded securities” of financial institutions that are found to “boycott energy companies,” per the model measure. Comptrollers are instructed to maintain a list of such companies, after reaching out to clarify if they are indeed boycotting energy companies. If they are, state officials are required to divest.
Standards Organization's Base Contract Is Central To Winter Storm Uri Litigation --In the aftermath of the massive Winter Storm Uri in February of last year and its impact on the natural gas industry, there has been a blizzard of civil and regulatory litigation. Whether it’s someone not providing contracted gas supply, not taking expensive must-take gas supply, or saying “not that contract, but this contract” where there was a big difference in pricing between the two, lawyers are having a field day with the meaning of two words: force majeure. To what extent was one party to an agreement protected from being in breach of contract because their deal said some things could be force majeure, or beyond their control? The purchase and sale of natural gas at issue in these contracts is overwhelmingly done through a standard base contract produced by the North American Energy Standards Board, or NAESB (pronounced “Nays-be,” not “Nazz-be”). In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the standard contract used for the vast majority of natural gas supply deals in the U.S. and how its provisions relate to the issues raised by last February’s Deep Freeze. Especially for folks in Texas, Winter Storm Uri was perhaps the most memorable event in a year full of real doozies. In fact, Terminal Frost, our blog on the gas-market havoc that Uri caused, got more hits than any other blog we posted in 2021. Without rehashing the mayhem that came with the Deep Freeze, suffice to say that many elements of Texas’s extensive gas and electric infrastructure failed to perform, mostly due to extreme frigid temperatures the likes of which few in the Lone Star State had experienced before. Gas demand spiked, gas supply tanked (due to well freeze-offs, pipeline-operating problems, and, most importantly, power being cut to supply facilities), wind turbines iced up and localized power interruptions morphed into a monstrous and sustained blackout affecting millions of customers … put simply, it was a mess. And when systems fail like that, lots of consumers don’t get their gas, supply-demand imbalances spike prices to stratospheric levels, a huge state goes without power with disastrous consequences, and everyone looks to limit their losses (or protect the massive profits they made). Enter the attorneys and their detailed reviews of what the contracts say and mean. Which brings us to NAESB’s base contract. Almost everyone uses it, and it contains the force majeure provision most often at issue in Uri-related litigation. NAESB, a voluntary membership organization, is the central business-practice standards group of both the natural gas and electric industries and carries enormous clout in terms of setting the rules. NAESB became the successor to the Gas Industry Standards Board, or GISB, when it was expanded to include wholesale electric, retail gas, and retail electric in 2002. The GISB, in turn, was created in 1995 to deal with dysfunction in the gas pipeline sector following the industry’s restructuring by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in 1993 (check out our Different Strokes series for more on how pipeline regulations have evolved). The GISB was created for the industry to voluntarily standardize how things were done, and to recommend to FERC that those standards become formal rules — which is exactly what FERC did in its No. 587 series of orders.
In an East Coast first, New Jersey will phase out diesel trucks -The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection earlier this week adopted a rule to phase out diesel-powered trucks – meaning anything bigger than a delivery van – starting in 2025. Based on California’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule, or ACT, New Jersey’s policy will require between 40 to 75 percent of new truck sales in the state be pollution-free, zero-emission by 2035. “New Jersey is already experiencing the adverse impacts of climate change, but we have the power and obligation to reduce its worsening in the years ahead by acting now to limit our emissions of climate pollutants,” Shawn LaTourette, the state’s commissioner for the Department of Environmental Protection, said in a press release about the new rule. Contributing to about 40 percent of New Jersey’s total carbon emissions, the transportation sector is the largest greenhouse gas source in the state. In turn, the almost 423,000 medium and heavy trucks that make up NJ’s fleet represent about 20 percent of vehicles’ greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, and Union of Concerned Scientists analyzing the benefits of implementing the rule. These vehicles are also responsible for large quantities of pollutants, including nitrogen oxide and particulate matter, which have been linked to multiple health issues like premature deaths, asthma, pulmonary cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Adopting the ACT rule can reduce ozone and particulate matter emissions by 43 and 13 percent, respectively, saving the state nearly $1 billion in public health costs over the next 30 years, found the NRDC and the Union of Concerned Scientists report.
How Zero-Emission Laws Will Reshape U.S. Trucking – Bloomberg - The U.S. trucking industry is set to be transformed by a handful of states adopting zero-emission vehicle requirements. Oregon, Washington, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts followed California in approving the Advanced Clean Truck (ACT) rule late last year, requiring a growing percentage of all medium- and heavy-duty trucks sold to be zero-emission starting in 2025. Manufacturers must increase their zero-emission truck sales in those states to between 30 and 50 percent by 2030, and 40 and 75 percent by 2035.
How the Chevy Bolt recall encapsulates GM’s struggle to go electric - The crisis involving the Chevrolet Bolt was a painful reminder for the auto industry that despite treating the electric vehicle era as essentially inevitable — a technical fait accompli — significant obstacles to manufacturing the cars, and especially their batteries, continue to threaten that future. “It’s a terrible thing that has happened,” Tim Grewe, GM’s general director for electrification strategy and cell engineering, said in an interview in September. It’s the kind of disruption GM can ill afford as it aims to scale up its production of electric vehicles to 1 million units per year by 2025. The company wants to have a global lineup of 30 EVs by that year. And it plans to shift production away from gasoline-powered cars entirely in the next decade and a half. Carmakers including Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and Ford also have announced plans to go all or mostly electric — chasing ambitions similar to GM’s deadline of 2035. Today, electric cars — plug-in hybrids, battery-powered vehicles and hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles — make up less than 5 percent of U.S. new-vehicle sales. But policymakers and automakers hope that by 2030, EVs will make up at least 40 percent of U.S. new-car sales. That would be a critical development in the nation’s strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency announced stricter fuel-efficiency standards this month aimed at propelling the nation closer to that goal by 2026, estimating that the new standard will result in electric vehicles gaining about one-fifth of market share by then.
Bitcoin: To Save Fossil Fuels -- January 3, 2022 -- From the DigiEconomist, in 2021: Bitcoin:
- consumed 134 TWh, comparable to electrical energy consumed by Argentina;
- related CO2 emissions: 64 metric tons, = to entire global net savings from deploying EVs
But there's good news: Tesla smashed expectations; delivered way more EVs in 4Q21 than analysts forecast.
Georgia Power dumps more coal-fired power - A decade ago, Georgia Power’s leaders resisted sharply shifting away from coal, its primary fuel for generating electricity, warning it could lead to increased prices and steep job losses. Pushed by economic realities and environmental worries, the company eventually did what it warned against. Coal plants supplied 75% of Georgia Power’s energy generation 20 years ago. By last year, it was down to 15%. The Atlanta-based company plans to cut that even more. It intends to shut five of its nine remaining coal-burning units at three plants no later than the end of 2028, according to a recent federal filing. The upcoming moves away from coal may set off a domino effect. Leaders have to figure out what replacement generation might be needed, whether big transmission line changes are required and how the shifts might affect consumers’ monthly electric bills. The company will lay out details of its plan by late January, when it gives state regulators its latest proposal for how to meet long-term electricity needs. But some see clear upsides. “We are encouraged,” said Neil Sardana, a local organizer for Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign. In communities near power plants, “people’s air and water has been contaminated from the use of coal for decades.” Shutting the units “gives a chance for these communities to start healing,” he said. It also cuts carbon dioxide emissions tied to climate change. And with Georgia Power’s early announcement of the closings, the affected communities and employees can take steps to prepare for potential jobs losses at the plants, hopefully with Georgia Power’s help, Sardana said.
Chart: US coal power generation rose in 2021, bucking a 6-year trend -- There’s no doubt that the U.S. coal industry is in trouble. Between dwindling demand, leery investors, increasingly unfavorable economics, aggressive phaseout schedules and mounting pressure from climate activists, it would seem that the sector’s days are numbered. But the weird year that was 2021 left us with one last unwelcome parting gift: a big lump of coal in our stocking.Although the final numbers haven’t yet been tallied, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that the U.S. will have seen 22% more coal-fired generation in 2021than in 2020, the first increase since 2014. The agency attributes this jaw-dropping reversal to a record surge in natural-gas prices, which more than doubled compared to last year. This prompted many utilities to revert to using coal as a fuel source, the price for which has remained relatively stable.The silver lining? The EIA holds that 2021 was a one-time blip for coal rather than the start of a sustained upward trend. As natural-gas prices dip back down and coal retirements continue, the agency’s analysts project a 5% decline in coal use for 2022. Let’s hope they’re right. And let’s hope the natural-gas trend line continues downward while the renewables line keeps ticking up.
Indonesia bans coal exports in January on domestic power worries - Indonesia has banned coal exports in January due to concerns that low supplies at domestic power plants could lead to widespread blackouts, a senior official at the energy ministry said on Saturday (Jan 1). The country is the world's biggest exporter of thermal coal, exporting around 400 million tonnes in 2020. Its biggest customers are China, India, Japan and South Korea. Indonesia has a so-called Domestic Market Obligation (DMO) policy whereby coal miners must supply 25 per cent of annual production to state utility Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) at a maximum price of US$70 per tonne, well below current market prices. "Why is everyone banned from exporting? It's beyond us and it's temporary. If the ban isn't enforced, almost 20 power plants with the power of 10,850 megawatts will be out," Ridwan Jamaludin, director-general of minerals and coal at the energy ministry, said in a statement. "If strategic actions aren't taken, there could be a widespread blackout." Ridwan said coal supplies to power plants each month were below the DMO, so by the end of the year "there was a coal stockpile deficit", adding that the ban will be evaluated after Jan 5. The Indonesian Coal Mining Association (ICMA) called on the energy minister to revoke the export ban, saying in a statement the policy was "taken hastily without being discussed with business players". The widespread export ban may disrupt monthly coal production volumes of around 38 million to 40 million tonnes, said ICMA chairman Pandu Sjahrir. In recent years, Indonesia has exported about 30 million tonnes of coal in the month of January. The association said it was also concerned about potential disputes with buyers if coal producers declared force majeure for not being able to deliver coal exports. "Ships sailing to Indonesian waters will also experience conditions of uncertainty and this would affect Indonesia's reputation and reliability as world's coal supplier," . "In the midst of this global uncertainty, the market often seeks the safest partners," he said. China's coal imports hit their highest level of 2021 in November, as the world's biggest consumer of the dirty fuel scrambled to feed its power system as the winter heating season kicked in. But Beijing had also ordered miners to boost production. 12:20 PM
World's Largest Coal Exporter Warns Of Energy Crunch, Imposes Export Ban Chinese coal futures rose on Tuesday on Indonesia's export ban over the weekend. Indonesia is the largest exporter of dirty fossil fuel, stoking fears of supply woes as the Northern Hemisphere winter is underway. Bloomberg Intelligence notes ever since China suspended coal imports from Australia in 2020, Indonesia has become an important source, making up 70% of China's total thermal coal imports. Indonesia's export ban sent the most active coal contract on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange soaring as much as 6% on Tuesday. On Monday, Indonesia's state utility provider warned the country was facing a "critical period" of supply woes. The export ban will enable power plants to restock domestic coal supplies to avoid rolling blackouts. "The move could potentially have knock-on effects in China and India, which are the usual destinations for Indonesian coal," said Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at ING. China has increased domestic production in recent months ahead of winter. Chinese coal miners should benefit from Indonesia's disruption as prices and sales increase. Indonesia's export ban will only last through January but could slash global seaborne supply by 45%. Indonesia is the largest exporter of coal in the world.
Xcel seeks change in Prairie Island nuclear waste storage -Xcel Energy is asking state regulators for permission to change how it stores radioactive waste at its Prairie Island nuclear plant in Red Wing, Minn. The Minneapolis-based utility says it’s not seeking to store more spent nuclear fuel at the plant than the amount it was authorized in 2009. But Xcel wants flexibility to use a different type of storage cask as long as the design is approved by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Changing the storage technology likely would cut costs and make it easier to transport the waste to a future storage site outside of Minnesota, said Pam Gorman Prochaska, Xcel's director of nuclear regulatory policy. “That's really the motivating factor behind this change request,” she said. “It's saving our customers money, and it's the ability to move the fuel off site sooner.” Xcel’s request comes amid ongoing debate over what to do with growing stockpiles of spent fuel at the nation’s nuclear reactors, which can remain radioactive for thousands of years. The federal government's past efforts to establish a permanent storage site at Yucca Mountain, Nev., stalled in the face of local opposition. The Biden administration recently announced plans to look for interim storage sites in communities that agree to accept it. Meanwhile, a private company recently received approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for an interim storage site in Texas, but it’s facing opposition from political leaders. A second interim storage site in southeast New Mexico is also seeking NRC approval. Xcel has said its two nuclear plants in Minnesota, at Prairie Island and Monticello, are key to achieving its goal of producing carbon-free electricity by 2050. Unlike fossil fuel-fired power plants, nuclear reactors do not produce direct carbon dioxide emissions, which exacerbate climate change. Xcel plans to continue operating the Prairie Island nuclear reactors through the end of their current licenses, which expire in 2033 and 2034. The utility says it hasn't yet decided whether to seek an extension.
Owner of closed nuclear plant faces security-violation fine (AP) — The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday it plans to fine the owners of the shuttered Oyster Creek nuclear power plant $150,000 for security violations at the New Jersey site. The agency would not reveal the nature of the violations, citing security concerns, but said the site’s overall security program “remains effective.”Holtec Decommissioning International LLC has 30 days to pay the fine or contest it. The company issued a statement saying that “protecting the security and safety of the public is the number one priority of Holtec International at all our facilities. We have taken steps to address the concerns and overall security performance at Oyster Creek and shared those learnings with our fleet to prevent a reoccurrence.”The plant, in the Forked River section of Lacey Township, on the Jersey Shore, shut down in 2018 and is being decommissioned, a process that involves removing and storing nuclear fuel that had been used at the plant.The nuclear agency said it conducted inspections between May and July and found “apparent violations” of security regulations.It notified Holtec of the violations in late July and met with the company about what it called a “pre-decisional enforcement conference” in October. The NRC said Holtec has taken steps to address the violations.
TEPCO slow to respond to growing crisis at Fukushima plant | The Asahi Shimbun: - Radioactive waste generated from treating highly contaminated water used to cool crippled reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has thrown up yet new nightmarish challenges in decommissioning the facility, a project that is supposed to be completed in 30 years but which looks increasingly doubtful. The continuous accumulation of radioactive slurry and other nasty substances, coupled with the problem of finding a safe way to dispose of melted nuclear fuel debris at reactors No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, has plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. frantically scratching around for ideas. One problem is that storage containers for the tainted slurry degrade quickly, meaning that they constantly have to be replaced. Despite the urgency of the situation, little has been done to resolve the matter. Fuel debris, a solidified mixture of nuclear fuel and structures inside the reactors melted as a consequence of the triple meltdown triggered by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster has to be constantly cooled with water, which mixes with groundwater and rainwater rainwater that seep into the reactor buildings, producing more new radioactive water. The contaminated water that accumulates is processed via an Advanced Liquid Processing System to remove most of radioactive materials. The ALPS is housed in a 17-meter-tall building situated close to the center of the plant site. The building houses a large grayish drum-like container designed especially to store radioactive slurry. The interior of each vessel is lined with polyethylene, while its double-walled exterior is reinforced with stainless steel. The use of chemical agents to reduce radioactive substances from the contaminated water in the sedimentation process produces a muddy material resembling shampoo. Strontium readings of the generated slurry sometimes reach tens of millions of becquerels per cubic centimeter. TEPCO started keeping slurry in special vessels in March 2013. As of November, it had 3,373 of the containers. Because the integrity of the vessels deteriorates quickly due to exposure to radiation from slurry, TEPCO and the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) predict that durability of the containers will reach the limit after exposure to an accumulated total of 5,000 kilograys of radiation--a level equivalent to 5 million sieverts. Based on that grim forecast, TEPCO speculated the vessels will need replacement from July 2025. But the NRA accused TEPCO of underestimating the impact of the radiation problem. It blasted the operator for measuring slurry density 20 centimeters above the base of the container when making its dose evaluation. “As slurry forms deposits, the density level is always highest at the bottom,” a representative of the nuclear watchdog body pointed out. The NRA carried out its own assessment in June 2021 and told TEPCO that 31 containers had already reached the end of their operating lives. Its findings also showed an additional 56 would need replacing within two years. The NRA told TEPCO to wake up and “understand how urgent the issue is since transferring slurry will take time.”
China switched on its nuclear fusion device that’s 5 times hotter than the Sun - This week, China switched on a nuclear fusion reactor. The “artificial sun” is known as the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (or EAST for short). After turning it on, China noticed record high levels for sustained temperatures. According to China’s state media, the EAST reactor ran five times hotter than the real Sun for over 17 minutes.China says its overall goal with the nuclear fusion reactor is to provide near limitless clean energy. The hope is that the reactor can mimic the natural reactions that occur within stars like the Sun. The idea is one that has been proposed for years. However, creating a working artificial sun has proven to be difficult, despite decades of research. This latest run, though, could help China break through the walls that have been holding back researchers for years.“The recent operation lays a solid scientific and experimental foundation towards the running of a fusion reactor,” Gong Xianzu, one of the experiment’s leaders and a researcher with the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said. (via The Independent)If China can continue work on its artificial sun, we could see more breakthroughs in the future. 17 minutes might not sound like long, but when you have something running at more than 70,000,000° C for that long, it’s pretty impressive, to say the least. Previously we’ve also seen other artificial suns reach upwards of 100 million degrees, another record level.
Dayton utility asks regulators to make electric shutoffs easier - Ohio Capital Journal - A Dayton area utility company has asked state regulators to relax the rules around shutting off power to customers who are behind on their electric bills.State regulations require utility companies, after filing written notices with customers who owe them money, to send an employee to make a final house call before cutting their power.AES Ohio, formerly known as Dayton Power and Light Co., filed a request with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio last month asking for permission to skip the final, in-person step in the disconnection process. The waiver would not apply to customers who require special medical care and provide “appropriate documentation.”Three organizations representing electric customers — Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, the Ohio Poverty Law Center, and the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel — asked PUCO to allow them to intervene in the case.They said the utility company charged customers $77.6 million for the new smart meters; now the utility is trying to use the “smart tech” meters against customers.“Just in time for the holidays, the cold Ohio winter and the surging pandemic, DP&L wants the PUCO to waive longstanding consumer protections from utility disconnections,” the three groups said.Mary Ann Kabel, an AES spokeswoman, said in a statement the proposal is consistent with disconnect procedures approved by the PUCO for other Ohio utilities. Customers will still receive four notifications before any disconnection, and customers can be reconnected remotely.
Ohio regulators dismiss pleas to investigate utility power shutoffs - Ohio utility regulators have dismissed a plea from consumer advocates to suspend and investigate service disconnections in the wake of roughly 195,000 electricity shutoffs in the months after a pandemic moratorium was lifted.The Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel joined with Ohio Poverty Law Center, Legal Aid Society of Southwest Ohio, Advocates for Basic Legal Equity and Pro Seniors last July to seek relief, especially from AEP Ohio. The company accounted for nearly two-thirds of the electricity shutoffs despite serving less than a third of the state’s residential electricity customers.The PUCO ruled against the groups on technical grounds, saying the purpose of the case was “merely to serve as a public receptacle for the disconnection reports.” Under state law, the regulators could open a new case to look into the issues. However, that seems unlikely in light of other language in the Dec. 1 order. The commission noted it had rejected similar pleas in other cases.The commission also said that it didn’t see merit in the challenges because the advocates’ filing didn’t establish that the companies had acted unlawfully. However, the regulators also didn’t give the groups any chance for formal pre-hearing fact-finding, called discovery.
Ohio advocates and lawmakers set sights on repealing subsidies for coal plants | WKSU - In 2019, Ohio lawmakers passed HB6, a sweeping energy law that created subsidies to bail out nuclear power plants and strengthened existing subsidies for coal plants owned by the energy company consortium known as the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation or OVEC. The subsidies go to two coal plants: Kyger Creek in Gallia County and Clifty Creek in Madison, Ind. The subsidies were first approved by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. The language in HB6 strengthened the subsidies by putting them into Ohio law, allowing the charge to appear on all ratepayer bills and the subsidies to continue for 10 years. Neil Waggoner with the Sierra Club's "Beyond Coal Campaign" says these subsidies put ratepayers on the hook to prop up struggling coal plants. "The reality is these plants have cost customers every single day since the [OVEC] bailout was first started by the public utilities commission. There has been no financial benefit to customers whatsoever," Waggoner said. Waggoner adds that OVEC could keep the plants going, but the subsidies allow energy companies to avoid dipping into their own profits. OVEC executives appeared before a Senate committee in June 2021 to testify against a bill that would repeal the coal plant subsidies provisions created through HB6. Amy Spiller with Duke Energy, part owner of the coal plants, told the committee, "In many respects is like an insurance policy to mitigate or offset the risk of unknown, unpredictable, unexpected costs." House Speaker Bob Cupp (R-Lima) was asked if the Ohio House would eliminate the OVEC rider. Cupp notes that the OVEC structure is unique since it's a collection of energy companies that entered into an agreement to provide power to a uranium enrichment plant in Piketon in the 1950s. "But it is a cost to the utility. They can't get out of it. And it appeared to be reasonable at the time they entered into it. So it's a much more complicated issue than just saying we’re supporting a coal plant in Ohio and Indiana," Cupp said.
Utica Shale Saves Eastern Ohio Counties from COVID Recession | Marcellus Drilling News - Economists are still analyzing the impact of the coronavirus pandemic from 2020, let alone assessing impacts from 2021. Cleveland State University researchers have run the numbers and have discovered something interesting. Of Ohio’s 88 counties, only 18 grew their economies in 2020. Of those 18, two counties stood head and shoulders above the rest for increases in economic activity. Both counties have something in common: Utica Shale drilling.The two counties that soared in 2020 due to Utica drilling were Monroe and Harrison. Other Utica-drilling counties were also on the list of 18 counties improving in 2020, including Belmont and Jefferson. Beginning to see a trend here?We laugh at anti-fossil fuel fools who yammer on that “there is no increase in jobs or economic activity from shale oil and gas drilling.” What planet do they live on?! The Utica pulled Ohio eastern counties’ bacon out of the fire in 2020, and (we suspect) in 2021 as well.Hydraulic fracturing has buoyed the economy in eastern Ohio.Two small eastern Ohio counties in the heart of Ohio’s natural gas country posted the biggest economic gains among the state’s counties in 2020.The big gains in Harrison and Monroe counties came even as COVID-19 plunged most of Ohio’s 88 counties and its biggest metro areas into a brief, but steep, recession. Only 18 counties had growth last year.Harrison and Monroe counties each posted a 20.5% increase in their economy in 2020, according to federal data released this month.Both counties are small so even a minimal increase in the economy can produce big change.Monroe County’s economic activity was measured at $1.9 billion in 2020, while Harrison’s was measured at $1.6 billion.Both counties have benefited from the surge in natural gas and oil drilling in Appalachia over the past decade that has helped offset the decline in coal use.Total investment in the region has hit $93 billion from 2011 through 2020, according to Cleveland State University researchers who track oil and gas spending in the region. Monroe County also has benefited from the redevelopment of the old Ormet aluminum smelter site in recent years that includes the new natural gas power plant at the Long Ridge Energy Terminal, which one day could run on hydrogen as well as gas.Harrison County also is developing a power plant.Monroe County’s gain follows a 23.7% increase in 2019 and 7.7% in 2018.Other counties in Appalachia also were among the 2020 winners.The county in between Monroe and Harrison, Belmont, had the fifth-highest growth rate in 2020, 5.4%. That county also has benefited from the natural gas boom.The economy of Jefferson County, north of Belmont County and also a benefactor of the energy investments, grew by 5.6% in 2020.In the northwest part of the state, Paulding County posted a 7.7% growth rate, the third highest in Ohio.
$40M Penalty Proposed for Gas Pipeline Builder After Spill | Ohio News (AP) — Federal regulators have proposed a $40 million fine against the builder of a multistate natural gas pipeline, the second hefty penalty sought against the company within the past year. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission accused the company of repeatedly using diesel fuel and other toxic substances while drilling under a river in Ohio four years ago. The proposed fine stems from an accidental spill of 2 million gallons (7.6 million liters) of drilling mud, some of which seeped into a protected wetland during construction. It comes after the commission last March proposed a $20 million fine against the company over the destruction of a historic farmhouse that stood in the pipeline’s path. Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners denied having involvement in using the diesel fuel for drilling. The company and its subsidiary Rover Pipeline LLC built the twin pipelines to carry natural gas from Appalachian shale fields to Canada and states in the Midwest and the South. The 700-mile (1,126-kilometer) pipeline crosses much of Ohio and stretches from Michigan to West Virginia. The $4.3 billion project was completed in 2018 following court battles with landowners and state and federal regulators who delayed the work after drilling mud spills. The federal commission in December told Energy Transfer Partners and Rover Pipeline to explain why it should not pay a $40 million civil penalty for alleged violations related to a spill near the Tuscarawas River in northern Ohio’s Stark County. Regulators said Rover Pipeline intentionally and routinely used diesel fuel and other toxic substances and unapproved additives in drilling mud while it was installing the pipeline under the river. The violations were the result of a corporate culture that emphasized finishing the work quickly over complying with regulations, the commission said. Energy Transfer Partners said in a statement that the commission has no evidence that anyone at the company knew diesel fuel was being used and that it did not tell anyone to do so. It said a rogue employee from an independent subcontractor said under oath that he made the decision on his own and then tried to hide it. The company has cleaned up and restored the area and will seek to recover any fines from the contractor in charge of the drilling, said spokesperson Alexis Daniels. Energy Transfer Partners has until the middle of March to file a formal response with the commission. Last March, the commission proposed a $20 million fine against the company, accusing it of not being truthful about its intention to demolish a 170-year-old farmhouse it had purchased. That matter is still pending.
Hilcorp Applies for 3 New Permits in Columbiana County – Youngstown Business Daily -– video - Hilcorp Energy continues to explore its interests in the Utica Shale play in Columbiana County.
Three New Horizontal Wells Sought for Columbiana County – Youngstown Business Daily -– Houston-based Hilcorp Energy Co. continues to display interest in unlocking natural gas and oil from the Utica-Point Pleasant shale formation in Columbiana County. According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the company has applied for permits to drill three new horizontal wells in Elkrun Township at the Wertz pad off Daner Road. The applications – filed on Dec. 28 – still need to be approved by ODNR. In 2021, Hilcorp was awarded 14 permits from ODNR…
Energy Transfer set to finish Mariner East pipeline in 2022 - Troubled Mariner East pipeline construction at Marsh Creek State Park in Chester County has restarted, leading Energy Transfer, the parent company of Sunoco Pipeline, to announce that it expects to finish the project in the first quarter of 2022. That announcement comes more than two years after the initial planned completion of the 350-mile-long natural gas liquids pipeline. Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection issued new permits allowing construction on the section of the pipe that had been halted since August 2020, after the company spilled between 21,000 and 28,000 gallons of drilling mud fluid into Marsh Creek Lake. That section is one of the last legs of the line left to be completed.The updated permits include a new route that allows open trench excavation rather than below-ground horizontal directional digging. Their approval came despite the filing of 48 criminal charges in October by the state Attorney General’s Office against the Texas-based company. From the outset, Mariner East’s construction has faced delays. It has caused dozens of drilling mud spills into wetlands and waterways across the state, led to dangerous sinkholes in Chester County, and polluted drinking water supplies across the entire length of the project. The company purchased at least five homes in Chester County after its work damaged the aquifer and created sinkholes. The DEP has issued more than 120 notices of violations to the company, which has paid more than $20 million in fines and assessments since construction began in February 2017. The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission temporarily shut down the operation of the Mariner East 1 pipeline in 2018 over safety concerns. Local residents and politicians say construction of this final section of pipe should be halted, at least until the company completes a cleanup of Marsh Creek Lake.
Appalachian Natural Gas Output Growth Said Threatened by Long-term 'Uncertainties --Higher natural gas prices were a positive for natural gas producers in the Appalachian Basin in 2021, but ongoing “uncertainties” threaten the industry’s long-term growth prospects. “These include a number of challenges at the federal level being pushed by the Biden administration and some members of Congress, such as a punitive methane tax, and statewide issues such as Gov. Tom Wolf’s continued efforts to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and a pair of rulemaking petitions by activist groups seeking to greatly increase the cost of well bonding,” President Daniel J. Weaver of the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association (PIOGA) told NGI Last year Wolf joined fellow governors in New Jersey and New York to support a permanent ban on hydraulic fracturing in the Delaware River Basin.Weaver also said PIOGA is concerned about state and federal rulemakings to control volatile organic compounds and methane emissions, along with “continued opposition to pipeline expansion projects that limit our region’s ability to deliver natural gas to markets where it is needed.”Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) President Dave Callahan told NGI that natural gas development remains a major driver of economic growth and job creation in Pennsylvania.“There are more than 102,000 direct jobs tied to the natural gas and oil industry, supporting more than 480,000 jobs statewide when accounting for supply chain and ancillary positions,” he said.A proposed $6 billion natural gas-to-liquids fuel plant in Luzerne County could add to the list of shale-driven investments that have helped to bolster Pennsylvania’s economy, noted Callahan.He noted the industry has generated more than $2 billion in revenue for Pennsylvania since 2012 via impact fees that unconventional natural gas producers pay the state. Callahan’s reference to how Pennsylvania government coffers generate revenue from unconventional gas producers segue into his broader point that “policies matter.” He said “embracing additional domestic energy production and use” could alleviate the impact of volatile energy prices.
Repsol Acquires Marcellus Assets in Rockdale Bankruptcy - Repsol SA is bolting on acreage in the Marcellus Shale after successfully bidding for 43,000 net acres in Northeast Pennsylvania in a bankruptcy auction. The Spanish energy company has agreed to pay $222 million, including $2 million in debt, for Rockdale Marcellus LLC’s assets in Tioga, Lycoming and Bradford counties, according to court documents. The sale has been approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Rockdale, which was formed through the acquisition of Shell plc’s Marcellus properties in northern Pennsylvania in 2017, filed for bankruptcy protection in September. Repsol has also reached a deal with UGI Energy Services LLC for gathering services on the properties, resolving a legal dispute between Rockdale and UGI. The 48,000 gross acres acquired in the sale produced 110 MMcf/d early last year, according to Rockdale. Repsol has factored the Marcellus into its 2021-2025 strategy, with plans to spend $600 million annually. Prior to the Rockdale acquisition, Repsol held 171,000 net acres in the Marcellus, mainly in Bradford, Susquehanna and Tioga counties. The company has focused on driving free cash flow and generating more value from its global exploration and production portfolio. It’s also focused on narrowing the portfolio by concentrating assets in key areas such as the Marcellus.
UGI expands Marcellus Shale gas pipeline network - In another sign of the ongoing demand for fossil fuels, UGI Corp., the Valley Forge energy company, is expanding its natural gas pipeline network in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale region. UGI Energy Services LLC announced Tuesday that it will pay $190 million to acquire Stonehenge Appalachia, a 47-mile pipeline in Butler County that transports natural gas produced from local wells to interstate pipelines. The acquisition is UGI’s third deal in recent years that has expanded its footprint in the shale-gas region northeast of Pittsburgh. The largest deal was the $1.3 billion acquisition in 2019 of Columbia Midstream Group LLC, a 240-mile system in Butler, Armstrong, and Indiana Counties that includes the Big Pine pipeline. UGI last year also bought a 49% interest in the Pine Run Midstream system, which like the Stonehedge pipeline, is interconnected with the larger Big Pine system. Together, the three pipelines form what is known as a “midstream system,” which connects gathering pipelines linked to individual wells to big interstate pipelines, which deliver fuel to distant, large customers, including power plants and local utilities. “When we acquired the assets of Columbia Midstream Group in 2019, we committed to additional investments to build or buy quality systems in the region,” Robert F. Beard, UGI’s executive vice president of natural gas, global engineering, construction and procurement, said in a statement. He said the Stonehenge acquisition “demonstrates our commitment to the Appalachian basin,” which produced record volumes of natural gas in the first half of 2021. Midstream pipeline systems, which have long-term customers under contract and largely operate outside public view, are stable generators of cash flow for companies such as UGI. “This investment is consistent with our strategy of delivering reliable earnings growth while continuing to rebalance our business activities with increasing investments in natural gas and renewables,” Roger Perreault, UGI’s president and chief executive, said in a statement. UGI also owns several gas and electric utilities, and distributes propane through its AmeriGas subsidiary. Its UGI Energy Services subsidiary operates about a dozen gas pipelines in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, as well as several liquified natural gas production plants, gas power plants, a gas storage facility and 21 solar farms. It was also the operator and 20% owner of the unsuccessful $1 billion PennEast Pipeline project, which was scuttled last year after public opposition and New Jersey regulators’ vow to block its construction to its terminus near Trenton. Despite pressure on policymakers to transition away from production of fossil fuels to curtail emissions of greenhouse gases, Pennsylvania operators have continued to produce prodigious amounts of natural gas from shale formations since the development of hydraulic fracturing technology, or fracking. Pennsylvania produces about one-fifth of the nation’s natural gas, and is the second largest gas producer behind Texas. Its wells produced a record 7.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in 2020, and were on pace to set a new record last year, according to production reports posted through October by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
New York City Natural Gas Price Jumps Fivefold From Thursday – A fast-moving winter storm on the East Coast is driving up demand for natural gas, and causing New York City prices to quintuple since Dec. 30. The spot prices mark the strongest start to a new year since 2018, according to New York-based hedge fund E360 Power LLC and broker data compiled by Bloomberg. The spot prices mark the strongest start to a new year since 2018, according to New York-based hedge fund E360 Power LLC and broker data compiled by Bloomberg. An unusually warm December “has bred a lack of respect for cold weather,” and the dropping temperatures are causing a scramble to secure more gas supplies, said James Shrewsbury, co-founder of E360 Power. “This isn’t crazy cold yet.” Natural gas for delivery on Monday in New York City was $20 per million British thermal units in trading this afternoon, the strongest prices for the start of a year in since they soared to $138 on Jan. 4, 2018.
New timeline: Nearly 100 S.I. families in NYCHA complex will wait until spring to get gas turned back on - -- An entire holiday season without a stove or oven to cook meals; this is the reality for 96 families in Stapleton, who haven’t had cooking gas since March of this year. It may be spring before residents of 181 Gordon St. in the Stapleton Houses can use their stoves and ovens again, according to the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), which owns and manages the apartment complex. A NYCHA spokesperson told the Advance/SILive.com on Tuesday that the construction work necessary to restore the gas is “expected to begin in early February and it will take approximately three months until the gas can be restored.” The spokesperson noted that the timeline is considered “tentative.” In the meantime, NYCHA has given residents one hot plate and one slow cooker per household to make due, according to the agency
Eastern Generation scuttles natgas plans in NYC --Eastern Generation LLC, which accounts for nearly 18% of New York City’s power generation capacity, is withdrawing its application to regulators to repower the Gowanus Generating Station with gas turbines. Instead, the company plans to install 350 MW of energy storage solutions. “Eastern Generation is well positioned to assist in the transition to a carbon free future, while continuing to provide a safe and reliable electric system,” said CEO Mark Sudbey. The move comes weeks after New York City’s city council voted to ban natural gas hookups in new buildings starting at the end of 2027. For buildings up to six stories tall, the ban would take effect at the end of 2023. Environmental lawyer Ramond Pomeroy told NGI that new natural gas infrastructure is unlikely in New York state. He said in October power plants in Astoria, Queens and Orange County had their permits rejected by regulators. In both cases, he said, “these were existing natural gas power plants looking to upgrade to more efficient units. And the state rejected both those permits because it was not consistent with the state’s climate goals.”
Lack of gas infrastructure sends New England’s power prices soaring --Electricity prices in New England jumped on Tuesday as a frigid start to the day spurred demand when the cost of natural gas used to fuel power plants soared. New England is frequently the most sensitive region to gas-supply constraints because it’s geographically at the end of the massive U.S. pipeline network. Attempts to build more pipelines to increase the flow have failed, and the region has to compete with places like Europe and Asia to lure cargoes of the fuel. Real-time power prices on the six-state grid in the U.S. Northeast averaged $141.90 a megawatt-hour as of 11 a.m., up fourfold from the same period on Monday, according to ISO New England data. Temperatures were at about 24 degrees Fahrenheit (-4 Celsius) in Boston at 11 a.m., spurring heating demand. Power is also more expensive this week because of a jump in natural gas prices, the main fuel for power plants. Spot gas prices on Enbridge’s Algonquin system that serves New England jumped 88% on Monday from the prior trading day.
Appalachia gas flows shift north, following higher prices - Larger spreads between spot gas prices in the US Northeast and Southeast has helped shift the direction of flows from Appalachia since Jan. 1, with higher prices in New England and New York attracting more molecules at the expense of southbound flows.Northbound flows from Appalachia have increased nearly 40% since Jan. 1 to reach 9.4 Bcf on Jan. 3, data from S&P Global Platts Analytics shows. This is more than 800 MMcf/d, or 9%, higher than the December average.Cash Algonquin city-gates was trading up $5.08 at $10.57/MMBtu in Jan. 3 trading for next-day flows, according to Platts preliminary settlement data. Other regional spot gas prices moved in a $7-9/MMBtu range.Iroquois, receipts and Niagara were the region’s sole hold-outs from the materially upward trend, likely reflecting how inflows from Canada nearly doubled Jan. 3 to 1.6 Bcf from Jan. 1 levels.Total Northeast gas demand across all sectors rose more than 9 Bcf/d, or 45%, since Jan. 1 to reach 29.5 Bcf Jan. 3, according to Platts Analytics data.Colder temperatures drove the increase, breaking a 10-day stretch of above-average temperatures and sluggish demand Dec. 24 – Jan. 2. The average Northeast temperature slid more than 20 degrees to 30 degrees Fahrenheit Jan. 3 from 53 F on Jan. 1, according to Platts Analytics and CustomWeather data.Flow data from Platts Analytics shows that Northeast production outflow capacity utilization to the Southeast fell to 4.9 Bcf Jan. 3, down from 5.2 Bcf Jan. 1 and a prior seven-day average of 5.2 Bcf/d (Dec. 27-Jan. 2).The lower outflow capacity utilization comes despite elevated Southeast gas demand, with Platts Analytics data showing materially higher residential-commercial and gas-fired power demand between Jan. 1 and Jan. 3, with further increases projected in the near term.Southeast res-comm demand increased 2.4 Bcf, or 75%, to 5.6 Bcf Jan. 3 from Jan. 1 levels, while gas-fired power demand rose 1.7 Bcf, or 19%, to 10.4 Bcf Jan. 3 from Jan. 1.Regional res/com demand is expected to jump around 650 MMcf/d on Jan. 4 and remain at the higher level Jan. 5. Similarly, Southeast gas-fired demand was projected to remain above 10 Bcf/d through Jan. 5.One driving factor of lower Northeast-to-Southeast capacity utilization despite higher Southeast gas demand could be the lukewarm Southeast prices.Cash Henry Hub fell to $3.58/MMBtu at preliminary settlement on Jan. 3, with other Southeast spot gas prices trading at a similar level of $3.40-$3.70/MMBtu. Regional spot gas prices weakened upon unusually mild temperatures in December that kept overall gas demand low. Cash Henry Hub averaged $3.71/MMBtu during December, down from $5.03/MMBtu in November.
State Appeals Court Dismisses Legal Challenge To Weymouth Gas Compressor – The State Appeals Court is throwing out yet another attempt to close or halt the natural gas compressor station in Weymouth. The court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the group known as the “Fore River Residents Against The Compressor StationGroup.” The court ruled that the citizens group did not have a right to a hearing or a review of state approval for the project. The $100 million compressor was built to pump natural gas through Weymouth into Maine and Canada. It officially went online in January after neighbors spent years protesting the project citing health and safety risks. Despite several unplanned releases of natural gas over the last year and a half, the facility, which is run by Enbridge, stands by its safety standards.
GlobalData: Natural gas production growth in Appalachia | LNG Industry - Natural gas production from the US’s Marcellus and Utica shale plays is forecast to cross the 42 billion ft3/d mark by 2025, according to GlobalData – assuming gas prices stay above US$3.5 per 1 million Btu. The leading data and analytics company notes that no new pipelines are expected to come online after 2023, despite the fact that North America is the largest gas producer and supplies approximately 40% of the total natural gas production in the US.Svetlana Doh, Senior Upstream Oil & Gas Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Environmental opposition in Pennsylvania, home to the majority of Appalachia basin production, created an onerous and exhausting approval process for pipeline operators. Pipeline projects in both the Atlantic Coast and PennEast were cancelled on environmental grounds, and it appears that getting approval is going to be challenging for any future major pipeline in the Northeast.”While the Appalachia basin has the potential to ramp up production to 47 billion ft3/d by 2030, pipeline and infrastructure limitations put the play at risk of curtailing production in the future based on the midstream factor alone.Doh continues: “The combined power of both current pipeline infrastructure and the 11 gas pipelines planned to be built in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia by 2023 will be able to support a mere 41 billion ft3/d of natural gas flowing capacity.”Doh adds: “With respect to LNG production, Marcellus and Utica could play an important role in driving demand for natural gas supply in the US, given their resource potential. However, it will require additional pipeline capacity to bring natural gas to the Gulf Coast, where most of the under-construction and approved plants are to be located.”Although there is additional natural gas from other plays such as Permian and Haynesville, with a combined growth of 6.9 billion ft3/d of natural gas by 2025, future LNG capacity can require much more. In only six years, US LNG capacity increased from zero to almost 11 billion ft3/d, and, currently, the pool of LNG approved projects totals 26.3 billion ft3/d. With natural gas demand worldwide expected to continue to increase, US LNG developers can have the economic incentive to accelerate the addition of new capacity.Doh adds: “The US has large accumulations of natural gas that could be developed in the current price environment, and coupled with additional LNG capacity, can further increase the US’s natural gas exporting capacity. Shale operators have generally recovered from the lows caused by demand destruction during the 2021 pandemic-related crisis and have also remained competitive. This means that even with the increase in Henry Hub prices, given natural gas prices in other world regions, US LNG exports are quite profitable.“With new LNG terminals launching next year, the US is on track to become the largest LNG exporter in the world and an important player to partially fill the demand gap in Europe and Asia.”
Ritchie County Economic Development Authority awarded $900K over wrongful trespassing by developer - Parkersburg News— The Ritchie County Economic Development Authority was awarded over $900,000 in damages last month against a Clarksburg developer for wrongful trespassing. In July 2002, Ron Lane, president and owner of Ronald Lane Inc., asked the EDA for help to obtain grant funding for a water and sewer extension on his property along U.S. Route 50 near Ellenboro, according to a press release from Windom Law Offices PLLC, Harrisville. Lane also asked members of the EDA to help him gain approval from the West Virginia Department of Transportation for “a break in the controlled access of Route 50 and the installation of a turning lane along the west-bound lane of the highway onto its property,” the release said. In exchange for the help, Lane claimed he would develop “several commercial attractions” on the property including a hotel, swimming pool, restaurant, convenience store, gas station, fast food restaurant, car wash, a retail strip mall and a tractor equipment sales store, according to the release. Instead of the proposed commercial retail project, RLI developed the Ritchie Center site into a pipeline storage yard which was leased to Dominion Energy.” From 2011 through 2016, RLI used the site for fracking and leased it for oil and gas industry purposes, the release said. RLI received $3,000 per acre per month for a term of three years, totaling more than $2.4 million, $1.166 million of which was paid to lease the 10.8 acres owned by the EDA. “Lane did not notify the RCEDA of the lease agreement or payment,” the release said. “He testified that he needed the advance payment to pay the $3 million development costs required to make the Ritchie County Industrial Park site lease property usable by the lessee, Columbia Gas.” The release said Lane said his company did site development work on the lease property and “RLI failed to produce the paid invoices to justify such expenses.” In February 2017, Lane and his son came to an EDA board meeting and asked for the re-conveyance of the 10.8 acre parcel of land, which Haught said was still being used as collateral for the loan intended for the water and sewer project, the release said. “Lane claimed the 10.8 acres ‘reverted’ to him because the RCEDA had not obtained additional government funding from the WVDOH for a separate access road to the adjacent Ritchie County Industrial property, which was vacant at the time,” the release said. Lane warned the RCEDA board that unless they deeded the 10.8 acres back to his company, he ‘would call in the big dog lawyers’ and take it back,” the release said. Attorneys from two law firms contacted the EDA’s counsel to demand the return of the land to RLI and after attempts to negotiate, a declaratory judgment was filed on behalf of the RCEDA against RLI in July 2018. “This is simply a case of Ron Lane wanting to eat his cake and have it, too,” Rod Windom of Windom Law Offices, PLLC in Harrisville, said. The suit required proof of the deed transfer for the 10.8 acres from RLI to the EDA “and to award it damages plus interest for the lease monies which were improperly paid to RLI,” the release said. Lane appeared before Third Judge Circuit Court Judge Timothy Sweeney and a six-person jury last month. “The RCED has filed a post-trial motion for the award of pre-judgment interest on the amount of the jury verdict from 2017 until the verdict,” Scott A. Windom, the EDA’s lead trial counsel said. “That was the amount of time during which RLI enjoyed the use and benefit of the RCEDA’s money and those dollars should be restored to the plaintiff. If granted, that interest will increase the total award to more than $1.2 million.”
West Virginia approves permit for 300-mile controversial natural gas pipeline - West Virginia on Friday granted a key permit for the construction of a controversial pipeline stretching for more than 300 miles into Virginia. The state's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) granted a water protection permit for the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), certifying the natural gas pipeline has met state standards for water quality.The news follows Virginia's certification of a water quality permit for the project earlier this month, but that move is being challenged at the U.S. 4th Circuit Court.The project has met stiff resistance in West Virginia from environmental opponents. Peter Anderson, the Virginia policy director for Appalachian Voices, an organization opposed to the pipeline, said the state has a "wretched environmental record" and that he did not trust the awarded permit met sufficient environmental standards."The West Virginia’s DEP has regrettably granted MVP new permission to pollute," he said in a Thursday statement. "We hope the Biden Administration listens to the thousands of members of the public who oppose this project and finds that more water pollution in service of an unneeded project is not in the public interest.”The $3 billion to $6.2 billion project comes from multiple companies, including Equitrans Midstream. It's expected to be built in 2022.The pipeline could impact up to 20,000 feet of streams and up to 12 acres of wetlands, the West Virginia News reported. West Virginia's approval along with Virginia's paves the way for the Army Corps of Engineers to next issue a stream-crossing permit for the pipeline.
Challenge filed to WVa permit for Mountain Valley Pipeline - The Washington Post — Opponents of the Mountain Valley Pipeline filed a legal challenge Monday to a West Virginia water permit for the natural gas project. The petition filed by environmental and community groups argues that the state Department of Environmental Protection violated the Clean Water Act in granting the permit. The Sierra Club was among the groups that filed the petition with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A challenge was filed last month involving a similar permit in Virginia. The 303-mile pipeline would take natural gas drilled from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations and transport it through West Virginia and Virginia. Attempts to kill the $6.2 billion project have so far failed. Five energy companies constructing the pipeline say it’s necessary to provide natural gas along the East Coast.
Sierra Club challenges West Virginia DEP's approval of MVP water permit -(WV News) — The Sierra Club has filed a lawsuit against the West Virginia Department of Environmental Projection, objecting to the DEP’s recent approval of a key water permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline project. The suit — filed by lawyers from Appalachian Mountain Advocates on behalf of the Sierra Club and a coalition of other environmental groups — argues the DEP’s approval violates the Clean Water Act. “MVP has repeatedly violated environmental safeguards, clean water protections and plain common sense in their construction of this fracked gas pipeline,” Sierra Club Senior Organizer Caroline Hansley said. The DEP approved the water protection individual permit Thursday, allowing the pipeline to proceed. The pipeline, which is 42 inches in diameter, is projected to permanently impact 1,276 feet of streams, as well as less than a half acre of wetlands. The DEP also determined that more than 20,000 feet of streams and about 12 acres of wetlands will be temporarily impacted during the pipeline’s construction. But the DEP determined the pipeline complied with state water quality guidelines. The Mountain Valley Pipeline will run from Northern West Virginia to Southern Virginia. It will go through Wetzel, Harrison, Doddridge, Lewis, Braxton, Webster, Nicholas, Greenbrier, Fayette, Summers and Monroe counties before crossing into Virginia.
Mountain Valley Pipeline faces another legal battle - Another round of litigation against the Mountain Valley Pipeline is revving up, this time over last week’s vote by the State Water Control Board allowing the infrastructure to cross streams and wetlands. The Sierra Club and eight other environmental and community groups filed a petition late Wednesday with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking the court to review the board’s decision. Legal grounds were not included in the two-page document; those will be spelled out in future filings. But pipeline opponents have long criticized the board and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, who they say failed to stop construction of the natural gas pipeline from harming natural resources — first in 2017, and more recently with a second permit. “MVP’s dirty, dangerous pipeline project has already impacted both air and water quality along the route, leading to major environmental degradation, as well as public health concerns for communities,” Caroline Hansley, a senior organizer for the Sierra Club, said in a statement. Opponents say Mountain Valley should not be allowed to continue its past track record of nearly 400 violations of erosion and sediment control regulations in Southwest Virginia. Mountain Valley contends that the problems, largely caused by heavy precipitation in 2018, have been corrected. “We believe the Court’s review of the work completed by the VA DEQ during the past year will find that the agency met or exceeded all legal and regulatory requirements, and that the agency’s action will be upheld,” company spokeswoman Natalie Cox wrote in an email. Joining the Sierra Club in the latest challenge are: Appalachian Voices, the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Preserve Bent Mountain, Preserve Craig County, Preserve Franklin County, Preserve Giles County and Wild Virginia. The Fourth Circuit has been a frequent pipeline battleground, with both Mountain Valley and the government agencies that regulate it often suffering setbacks. So far, however, there has not been a fatal blow to the $6.2 billion project. Five energy companies building the pipeline say it’s needed to provide 2 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas to markets along the East Coast.
EnCap's Paloma Takes Goodrich Private, Gains Estimable Shale Assets, Including Haynesville -An affiliate of private equity giant EnCap Investments last month took Houston-based Goodrich Petroleum Corp. private after completing a $23/share tender offer. Paloma Partners VI Holdings LLC, an entity of Houston’s Paloma Resources LLC, completed the estimated $480 million takeover, which was announced in November. Paloma, now active in Oklahoma, gained a broad set of assets across the Lower 48, including a substantial and growing business in the natural gas-rich Haynesville Shale. Goodrich has around 32,000 net acres in the Haynesville, 34,000 net acres in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale and 4,300 net undeveloped acres in the Eagle Ford Shale. The Haynesville has been the primary target, with its proved gas reserves making up 99% of the total 543 Bcfe at the end of 2020. Goodrich’s production climbed 7% sequentially in 3Q2021 to 166 MMcfe/d, 99% weighted to natural gas. During the quarterly conference call in November, CEO Gil Goodrich said the company’s current hedge position for natural gas prices provided “substantial downside protection while also giving us substantial exposure to higher unhedged prices as we execute our 2022 plans.” The company has an estimated 2.4 Tcfe of resource potential in Northern Louisiana, with 127 net potential drilling locations using 880-foot spacing. Goodrich has an 85% working interest in the core of the Haynesville position, with Chesapeake Energy Corp. holding 15%. Capital expenditures in 3Q2021 totaled almost $28 million, with most of it “spent on drilling, completion and facility costs associated with Haynesville wells,” COO Robert Turnham told analysts in November. “To date, we’ve only seen a small amount of service cost inflation, and our economics…are as good as we have seen them in the basin.” The Paloma Resources arm initially was sponsored by EnCap in 2014. Previous entities have created and sold positions in the Barnett, Eagle Ford and Utica shales.
Milestone Environmental Bullish On Growth in Haynesville, Permian - Milestone Environmental Services LLC has repositioned itself in the core of the Haynesville Shale by acquiring an energy waste disposal facility in East Texas from High Roller Wells LLC.“We believe the Haynesville will be a growing market given the increased global demand for natural gas as the world transitions its energy usage to lower-carbon sources,” said CEO Gabriel Rio.One exploration and production (E&P) company that is elevating its Haynesville profile is Southwestern Energy Co., which recently acquired about 700 drilling locations in the shale play. Through that and another deal in September, the company is boosting its access to the Gulf Coast liquefied natural gas export market.Another E&P adding Haynesville acreage is Paloma Resources LLC, which in November completed its takeover of Goodrich Petroleum Corp.Rio noted that E&Ps increasingly are having their energy waste streams professionally managed, requiring more infrastructure to meet growing demand.“Our decision to acquire these assets was a strategic one that supports Milestone’s growth while serving the environmental needs of E&P operators in major U.S. basins,” Rio said.The acquisition gives Milestone an active slurry injection facility with two injection wells in Shelby County, three miles north of Center, TX. The company called the facility “a cornerstone of the environmental infrastructure in place” for managing gas-focused E&Ps operating in the Texas and Louisiana Haynesville, adding that it “plans several upgrades to the location over time.”The High Roller transaction also included purchase options on two unconstructed energy waste landfill permits in Texas – one in the Haynesville and another in the Permian Basin. The permits are from state rather than federal regulators, a Milestone spokesperson told NGI.
US becomes world's top exporter of liquefied natural gas – CNN - The United States is now the world's leading exporter of liquefied natural gas as Europe's energy crisis and shortages in China send demand for American shipments soaring.LNG exports from the United States topped 7 million tonnes (7.7 million tons) in December, according to ship-tracking data from ICIS LNG Edge, narrowly edging out rival producers Qatar and Australia for the first time.The United States only shipped its first LNG cargo from the lower 48 states in 2016, and has risen to become the world's top exporter in just six years as a shale gas revolution boosted domestic production and turned the country into a powerful force in global energy markets.The United States will be the biggest exporter in the world through 2022 as a whole, according to forecasts from ICIS and the US Energy Information Agency. Demand is expected to remain high in Europe, where there are fears about natural gas supplies from Russia as tensions grow over a military buildup at its border with Ukraine.Gas prices in Europe surged to new records in late December as confidence in Russian deliveries waned and controversy swirled over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that could carry gas from Russia directly to Germany. The European Union gets about 40% of its imported natural gas from Russia, much of it piped via Ukraine.Wholesale prices were rising again Wednesday as the flow of gas in a pipeline from Russia to Europe was reversed for a 16th successive day, Reuters reported.US producers have responded by boosting LNG shipments to Europe, where prices are now higher than in east Asia. Prices in both regions far exceed those in the United States, suggesting that US LNG exports will continue to increase in 2022.
U.S. World's Top LNG Exporter in December With Deliveries to Europe Surging - The U.S. became the world’s No. 1 exporter of liquefied natural gas for the first time ever last month, as deliveries surged to energy-starved Europe. Output from American facilities edged above Qatar in December after a jump in exports from the Sabine Pass and Freeport facilities, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. Cheniere Energy Inc. said last month that a new production unit at its Sabine Pass plant in Louisiana produced its first cargo. A shale gas revolution, coupled with billions of dollars of investments in liquefaction facilities, transformed the U.S. from a net LNG importer to a top exporter in less than a decade. Gas production has surged by roughly 70% from 2010 and the nation is expected to have the world’s largest export capacity by the end of 2022 once Venture Global LNG’s Calcasieu Pass terminal comes online. But the U.S.’s position as top LNG shipper may be short-lived. Exports were just a hair above those from Qatar and Australia, and any production issues could affect the rankings. Looking further out, Qatar is planning a gargantuan export project that will come online in the late 2020s, which could cement the middle eastern nation as the top supplier of the fuel. “Qatar and the U.S. will be vying for being the largest LNG producers in the world over the next decade,” said Muqsit Ashraf, senior managing director of Accenture’s global energy practice. In the meantime, the jump in U.S. LNG exports will help ease a global supply crunch. Europe is facing a winter energy crisis as utilities grapple with seasonally low natural gas inventories. Overseas buyers purchased 13% of U.S. gas production in December, a seven-fold increase from five years earlier when most of the infrastructure required to ship the fuel out of the country didn’t yet exist. U.S. LNG export terminals sent out a record 1,043 cargoes in 2021, with Asian nations making up nearly half of the destinations and Europe making up one-third, ship tracking data compiled by Bloomberg shows.
U.S. claims title of world’s largest LNG exporter--The U.S. became the world’s No. 1 exporter of liquefied natural gas for the first time ever last month, as deliveries surged to energy-starved Europe. Output from American facilities edged above Qatar in December after a jump in exports from the Sabine Pass and Freeport facilities, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. Cheniere Energy Inc. said last month that a new production unit at its Sabine Pass plant in Louisiana produced its first cargo. A shale gas revolution, coupled with billions of dollars of investments in liquefaction facilities, transformed the U.S. from a net LNG importer to a top exporter in less than a decade. Gas production has surged by roughly 70% from 2010 and the nation is expected to have the world’s largest export capacity by the end of 2022 once Venture Global LNG’s Calcasieu Pass terminal comes online. But the U.S.’s position as top LNG shipper may be short-lived. Exports were just a hair above those from Qatar and Australia, and any production issues could affect the rankings. Looking further out, Qatar is planning a gargantuan export project that will come online in the late 2020s, which could cement the middle eastern nation as the top supplier of the fuel. “Qatar and the U.S. will be vying for being the largest LNG producers in the world over the next decade,” said Muqsit Ashraf, senior managing director of Accenture’s global energy practice. In the meantime, the jump in U.S. LNG exports will help ease a global supply crunch. Europe is facing a winter energy crisis as utilities grapple with seasonally low natural gas inventories. Overseas buyers purchased 13% of U.S. gas production in December, a seven-fold increase from five years earlier when most of the infrastructure required to ship the fuel out of the country didn’t yet exist. U.S. LNG export terminals sent out a record 1,043 cargoes in 2021, with Asian nations making up nearly half of the destinations and Europe making up one-third, ship tracking data compiled by Bloomberg shows.
First US LNG cargo from certified gas could set sail --Third-party gas certification that took off in 2021, particularly in the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana and East Texas, could lead to the first certified gas US LNG export cargo in 2022, market watchers say. The first US LNG cargo sourced entirely from certified gas could set sail as early as the second quarter of 2022, according to Project Canary CEO Chris Romer. “I think next year LNG buyers are going to start insisting on the methane intensity being measured at the well level, pad level, compressor station, all the way through to it being put on a ship and delivered to that foreign hub,” Romer said in a Dec. 14 telephone interview. Emmanuel Corral, a low-carbon gas analyst with S&P Global Platts Analytics, has also predicted the first certified gas US LNG cargo in 2022. “The more companies jump on this movement, the more confidence I gain that it will happen,” Corral said
Rio Grande LNG project final investment decision delayed to second half of 2022 - NextDecade has delayed an expected final investment decision related to its proposed Rio Grande LNG export project in Texas to the second half of 2022, an investor presentation posted Jan. 3 on the company's website said. The company had previously targeted a decision on a first phase consisting of at least two liquefaction trains by the end of 2021. The adjusted timing comes as NextDecade continues to seek sufficient supply deals with buyers to support the cost of construction. To date, it has secured a single long-term contract, with Royal Dutch Shell, covering 2 million mt/year of the about 11 million mt/year of supply that is expected to make up the first phase of the project in Brownsville. The full project, as currently proposed, would involve five trains and 27 million mt/year of capacity. During 2021, there was a flurry of commercial activity tied to current and proposed US LNG export terminals. The main beneficiaries were Cheniere Energy and Venture Global LNG, especially with Chinese buyers as high spot prices in end-user markets spurred new term deals that carry a lower fixed price. Two proposed US projects were scrapped during the year – Pembina's Jordan Cove in Oregon and Exelon-backed Annova LNG, which was to be built in Brownsville near NextDecade's site. In its new investor presentation, NextDecade said negotiations were "advancing with multiple counterparties in Europe and Asia" and that financing would "commence" upon execution of additional sale and purchase agreements. It did not elaborate. A company official did not immediately respond to a message seeking further comment. NextDecade has said it plans to advance a carbon capture and storage project shortly after it sanctions the first phase of the liquefaction terminal. NextDecade is also partnering with a Colorado company to measure and report the greenhouse gas intensity of the LNG to be produced at the export facility. The goal of the reporting initiative includes enabling the development of responsibly sourced natural gas from producers in the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford shale that will be fed to the terminal. In November, NextDecade pitched to US regulators a limited amendment to its federal authorization for the LNG terminal that would allow it to voluntarily capture and store CO2 produced at the facility. That proposal came as a federal appeals court found fault with the original Federal Energy Regulatory Commission authorization for the LNG project, remanding FERC's orders to the commission without vacating them. NextDecade expects to receive FERC approval in 2022 for the CCS project, according to the new investor presentation.
U.S. natural gas faces high volatility in 2022 --U.S. natural gas is in for another wild year as the insularity that once shielded North American energy consumers from overseas turmoil disintegrates. Benchmark American gas futures climbed almost 45% in 2021 for the strongest annual performance in half a decade after a deadly freeze that crippled output was followed by summer heatwaves that lifted demand and hindered efforts to stow away supplies for winter. As 2022 dawns, traders, explorers and utility operators are facing the prospect of continued volatility amid rising competition from buyers as far away as Poland and the Netherlands who are dealing with a crisis so acute that factories have shut down and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is warning there’s a “clear risk of running out of gas.” Overseas buyers purchased 13% of U.S. gas production in December, a seven-fold increase from five years earlier when most of the infrastructure required to ship the fuel out of the country didn’t yet exist. Prior to the advent of the American gas-export business, the U.S.-Canada market was a provincial sphere where prices were dictated by cold snaps in places like Pittsburgh and Chicago, and hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. But those days are long gone as brokers in Seoul and Rotterdam shell out record amounts to entice tankers laden with U.S. gas to sail their way. “We continue to expect more price volatility to be present in these markets relative to recent history, albeit at a more diminished level once exiting the peak demand season of winter weather,” said Natasha Kaneva, head of commodities research and strategy at JPMorgan Chase & Co. “This is particularly true in the U.S., where price volatility has long been absent.”
U.S. natural gas prices rise as cold freezes wells (Reuters) – U.S. natural gas prices rose more than 2% on Monday after production fell over the New Years weekend as cold weather froze some production wells in Texas, in New Mexico and Colorado, reminding the market of what can happen when temperatures drop.Last February, a severe winter storm named Uri killed more than 100 people and left an estimated 4.5 million homes and businesses in Texas without power or heat – some for days – after gas lines and gas pipes froze. power stations. The New Years weekend cold, however, was nowhere near as extreme as the frost last February. Well freezing occurs whenever temperatures drop enough to freeze the water and other liquids in a well or pipe and stop production. “Gas prices fell recently with the increase in production, but rose on Monday as freezes puzzled the market,” said John Abeln, senior natural gas research analyst at data provider Refinitiv .According to data from Refinitiv, gas production in the lower 48 U.S. states has fallen to an average of 94.8 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) so far in January, from a record 97.6 bcfd in December.Much of that drop in production occurred in Texas and occurred on Sunday.Low temperatures in the city of Midland, West Texas, dropped to a nightly low of 16 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 9 Celsius) on Sunday, but are expected to reach a near-normal nightly low of 32 F on Monday, according to the AccuWeather meteorologists.Midland is located in the Permian Basin, which is the largest oil-producing shale formation and the second largest producer of gas in the United States.Since the freeze last February, Texas has approved numerous laws and regulations that state officials say should improve the reliability of the electricity and gas markets and prevent price spikes and blackouts like those observed last winter.
Natural Gas Forwards Explode on Near-Term Cold, but Outlook Casts Doubt on Sustainability -Plunging temperatures, soaring demand and falling production resulted in stout price gains across U.S. natural gas forward curves for the Dec. 31-Jan 5 period, NGI’s Forward Look data showed. Dollar-plus price increases spread across Appalachia and the Northeast as output struggled to recover amid ongoing cold in the region. The reduction in supply – a whopping 1 Bcf according to estimates – occurred at the same time the biggest snowstorm of the winter hit the Mid-Atlantic. The storm resulted in whiteout conditions, extensive power outages and gnarly road conditions that left motorists on Interstate 95 in Virginia stranded for more than 24 hours. Amid the bullish backdrop, exacerbated by tight pipeline capacity in the Northeast, prices throughout the region surged week/week.Transco Zone 5 recorded the steepest climb, with February forward prices jumping $2.130 from Dec. 31-Jan. 5 to reach $8.832/MMBtu, according to Forward Look. Transco Zone 5’s premium over the Henry Hub also ballooned, edging up $1.810 to $4.950. Fixed-price increases were not nearly as stout further out the curve, but were notable nonetheless. March was up 31.0 cents to $4.535, while the summer strip (April-October) shot up 24.0 cents to $3.820, Forward Look data showed.Similarly, Cove Point climbed steeply on the week as export demand continued to run rampant amid the surge in domestic demand. NGI data shows feed gas deliveries to U.S. terminals continuing to hover around 12 Bcf/d since the final days of 2021, with volumes sitting at around 12.20 Bcf on Friday.Robust U.S. LNG exports have continued unabated since the summer as a dire supply outlook in Europe and steady building of inventories in Asia have left buyers clamoring for the super-chilled fuel. LNG capacity should ramp up further in the coming months as Sabine Pass continues to commission its sixth production unit and the Calcasieu Pass facility nears in-service.In Appalachia, prices swelled for the molecules still able to flow to market. February forward prices at Tenn Zone 4 200L – a new addition to the Forward Look suite of pricing locations – rose 39.0 cents from Dec. 31-Jan. 5 to reach $3.571. Summer prices averaged $3.110, up 26.0 cents during the period.The addition of Tenn Zone 4 200L enhances NGI’s coverage of the Utica Shale region. The pricing location incorporates transactions along Tennessee
U.S. natgas futures slide on forecasts for less cold weather - (Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures slid almost 3% on Tuesday after midday forecasts called for less cold weather and lower heating use over the next two weeks than previously expected. That U.S. price decline came even though the market expects a 24% jump in European gas prices will keep demand for U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports strong. In the last quarter of 2021, U.S. gas futures followed the rise and fall of global prices about two-thirds of the time as utilities around the world scrambled for LNG cargoes to replenish low stockpiles in Europe and meet surging demand in Asia. Front-month gas futures fell 9.8 cents, or 2.6%, to settle at $3.717 per million British thermal units (mmBtu). More than 330,000 homes and businesses located mostly in Virginia were without power early Tuesday after a snow and ice storm battered the U.S. East Coast from Georgia to Maryland on Monday. Although the snowstorm blew out to sea, cold weather blanketed the U.S. Northeast, causing next-day gas prices in New York City to soar from $3.60 per mmBtu for Monday to $8.50 for Tuesday. That was the highest daily spot price in New York since last winter's February freeze cut power and gas supplies in Texas and boosted energy costs to record highs in several parts of the country. Even though gas prices in Europe dropped by about half since hitting an all-time high near $60 per mmBtu in late December, global prices continue to trade around eight times higher than gas in the United States. U.S. futures followed that global gas price spike, reaching a 12-year high of more than $6 per mmBtu in early October, but have since retreated because the United States has plenty of gas in storage and ample production for the winter. Analysts have said European gas inventories were about 20% below normal for this time of year, compared with about 1% above normal in the United States. Data provider Refinitiv said well freeze-offs in several states -- including Texas, New Mexico and North Dakota -- earlier this week caused gas output in the U.S. Lower 48 states to drop to an average of 94.5 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) so far in January, versus a record 97.6 bcfd in December. With the weather expected to remain colder than normal through mid-January, Refinitiv projected average U.S. gas demand, including exports, would rise from 128.4 bcfd this week to 134.3 bcfd next week as homes and businesses crank up their heaters. The amount of gas flowing to U.S. LNG export plants eased to an average of 12.0 bcfd so far in January from a record 12.2 bcfd in December. With gas prices around $32 per mmBtu in Europe and $31 in Asia, compared with just about $4 in the United States, traders said buyers around the world would keep purchasing all the LNG the United States can produce.
Cash Prices, Natural Gas Futures Bounce Higher as Temperatures Drop - Strength in cash prices and expectations for ongoing blasts of frigid air over swaths of the Lower 48 sent natural gas futures higher on Wednesday. The February Nymex contract settled at $3.882/MMBtu, up 16.5 cents day/day. March gained 12.8 cents to $3.710. NGI’s Spot Gas National Avg. advanced 81.0 cents to $5.105, bolstered by freezing temperatures and elevated demand in the nation’s midsection. Though volatile to start 2022 – with weather models each day showing varying degrees of cold through most of January – the bottom line remains firm: Frosty winter weather and robust heating demand are in store this month. “The weather models have been bouncing between colder and warmer trends all week,” NatGasWeather’s forecasters said. However, they added, subzero temperatures in the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest early Wednesday were expected to advance down the Plains and to the East by Friday, generating “strong national demand.” After a brief break this coming weekend, “another frigid cold shot will sweep across the Midwest and Northeast early next week” with more freezing overnight temperatures, according to NatGasWeather. At the same time, winter conditions have curtailed production work in the Permian Basin in recent days, lowering total U.S. output on Wednesday to below 92 Bcf and putting it far from late 2021 highs around 97 Bcf. Meanwhile, demand for U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) is holding strong. LNG feed gas volumes hovered above 12 Bcf on Wednesday, according to NGI estimates. Analysts said robust demand from Europe could push those volumes to record levels above 13 Bcf/d this winter. The “nascent” storage surplus versus the five-year average may peak with the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) storage report for final the week of 2021, “Subsequent declines into a renewed deficit by mid-January — and a storage deficit rebuilding to triple digits by the end of the month — may provide additional near-term fundamental price support,” he said.
U.S. natgas futures rise as cold continues to reduce output -(Reuters) - U.S. natural gas futures edged up on Wednesday as freezing wells continued to reduce output in some producing regions and the weather was forecast to remain colder than normal through late January. Front-month gas futures NGc1 rose 5.3 cents, or 1.4%, to $3.770 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) at 8:17 a.m. EST (1317 GMT). In the spot market, next-day gas at the Waha hub in the West Texas Permian producing area rose over the U.S. Henry Hub NG-W-HH-SNL benchmark in Louisiana for the first time since September 2021 as cold weather continues to freeze wells and cause some gas processing equipment to fail. Over the New Year's weekend when overnight low temperatures dropped to the mid teens Fahrenheit (-9 C) in West Texas, well freeze-offs and equipment problems caused the state's gas output to fall by over 1 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) to its lowest since last February's freeze left millions without power and heat for days. Around the world, meanwhile, global gas prices have repeatedly reached all-time highs in recent months - most recently during the week before Christmas - as utilities scramble for liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes from the United States and elsewhere to replenish low stockpiles in Europe and meet surging demand in Asia. European gas prices were up about 5% on Wednesday. NG/GB U.S. futures, which followed prices in Europe about two-thirds of the time during the fourth quarter of 2021, jumped to a 12-year high of more than $6 per mmBtu in early October. Since then, however, U.S. prices have retreated because the United States has ample production and plenty of gas in storage for winter. Analysts have said European inventories were about 20% below normal for this time of year, compared with about 1% above normal in the United States. Global gas was currently trading about eight times higher than in the United States. Data provider Refinitiv said average gas output in the U.S. Lower 48 states dropped from a record 97.6 bcfd in December to 94.5 bcfd so far in January due to well freeze-offs and other cold weather-related equipment problems in Texas and other producing states this week. Refinitiv projected average U.S. gas demand, including exports, would rise from 128.4 bcfd this week to 134.0 bcfd next week as homes and businesses crank up their heaters. The forecast for next week was a little lower than Refinitiv's outlook on Tuesday. The amount of gas flowing to U.S. LNG export plants eased to an average of 12.0 bcfd so far in January from a record 12.2 bcfd in December.
Natural Gas Futures Stumble as Stockpiles Hold Above Historic Average - Natural gas futures faltered on Thursday after the latest government inventory report showed ample supplies and relatively modest early-winter heating demand. The February Nymex gas futures contract fell 7.0 cents day/day and settled at $3.812/MMBtu. March dipped 4.0 cents to $3.670. NGI’s Spot Gas National Avg., in contrast, jumped $1.155 to $6.260. Next-day prices in the Northeast surged and fueled the overall gain. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Thursday reported a withdrawal of 31 Bcf natural gas from storage for the final week of 2021. The result missed expectations by a wide margin. Prior to the report, major polls showed analysts expecting a pull in the low 50s Bcf. NGI’s model predicted a 50 Bcf withdrawal. What’s more, expectations were modest relative to historic norms for late December. In the year-earlier period, EIA recorded a 127 Bcf withdrawal, while the five-year average is a 108 Bcf pull. Analysts noted that production was elevated during the week and weather-driven demand was seasonally paltry, given much warmer-than-normal temperatures over most of the Lower 48. Commercial and industrial demand eased as well during a week that spanned the Christmas holiday and New Year’s Eve. The draw for the Dec. 31 period lowered inventories to 3,195 Bcf. Stocks were 154 Bcf lower than a year earlier but 96 Bcf above the five-year average of 3,099 Bcf. The Midwest posted a decrease of 25 Bcf to lead all regions. The Pacific followed with a withdrawal of 16 Bcf. EIA recorded a 10 Bcf pull for the East and an 8 Bcf decrease for the Mountain region. The South Central, meanwhile, posted an increase of 27 Bcf. Despite the disappointing finish in terms of supply/demand balances to end 2021, Bespoke noted that weather shifted notably colder early in January, particularly in the Midwest and stretches of the East, boosting heating demand. Another round of wintry conditions is expected by mid-month. The firm also noted reduced production levels this week amid freezing temperatures in the Permian Basin. Bloomberg estimated output at 91.5 Bcf on Wednesday, about 3 Bcf below the level of the prior week. Bespoke projects triple-digit pulls with each of the next three EIA storage reports.
U.S. natgas rises as winter storm boosts demand to near record high - U.S. natural gas futures rose almost 3% to a one-week high on Friday as a major winter storm blanketed the Northeast in snow, driving overall gas demand to its highest in a day since hitting a record in 2019. As homes and businesses in New York and New England cranked up their heaters, next-day power and gas prices in the region jumped to their highest since January 2018. European gas futures fell 14%. U.S. gas futures followed European gas prices about two-thirds of the time during the fourth quarter of 2021 as utilities scrambled for liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes to replenish low stockpiles in Europe and meet surging demand in Asia. Front-month gas futures rose 10.4 cents, or 2.7%, to settle at $3.916 per million British thermal units (mmBtu), their highest since Dec. 29. That increase put the front-month up about 5% for the week after it held steady last week. Lingering cold since New Year’s Day has continued to cause well freeze-offs and other weather-related equipment problems in several regions, including the Permian in Texas and New Mexico, the Bakken in North Dakota and Appalachia in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. Data provider Refinitiv said those weather-related problems, which are normal during winter months, have cut average output in the U.S. Lower 48 states to 94.5 bcfd so far in January, down from a record 97.6 bcfd in December. With colder weather coming, Refinitiv projected average U.S. gas demand, including exports, would rise from 128.8 bcfd this week to 134.3 bcfd next week, before easing to 131.1 bcfd in two weeks with the weather expected to turn less cold. The forecasts for this week and next were higher than Refinitiv’s outlook on Thursday. On a daily basis, Refinitiv projected total U.S. gas demand plus exports would reach 147.9 bcfd on Friday, its highest since hitting a record 150.6 bcfd on Jan. 30, 2019. That would top the 147.2 bcfd hit on Feb. 12, 2021 just before Winter Storm Uri left millions without power and heat for days after freezing gas wells and pipes in Texas and other U.S. Central states. The amount of gas flowing to U.S. LNG export plants has averaged 12.0 bcfd so far in January, down from a record 12.2 bcfd in December. With gas prices around $30 per mmBtu in Europe and $34 in Asia, compared with less than $4 in the United States, traders said buyers around the world would keep purchasing all the LNG the United States can produce. Still, the United States only has the capacity to turn about 12.2 bcfd of gas into LNG.29dk2902l Global markets will have to wait until later this year for some of the 18 liquefaction trains under construction at Venture Global LNG’s Calcasieu Pass in Louisiana to start producing LNG. The plant has been pulling in small amounts of feed gas since around September as it prepares to begin operating.
Energy expert says Texas should weatherize natural gas to prevent future blackouts - Some regions of the state have seen below freezing temperatures over the last few days, leaving some Texans worried the electrical grid could fail, as it did last February. After that winter storm left millions freezing and in the dark, Texas lawmakers pressured both the gas and electrical power systems to make their infrastructure more resistant to cold weather. Even though 2022 has kicked off with chilling temperatures, UT Austin professor and energy expert Micahel Webber said people shouldn’t be too worried about the power grid failing since the recent winter weather wasn’t as severe as last year’s. “The grid held up, there weren't major problems with gas production. So it's not really surprising that this winter storm we've endured the last couple days didn't really test the system the same way, because it wasn't the same kind of storm,” Webber said. Unlike in Feb. 2021, the winter weather isn’t consistently at or below freezing all across Texas. Webber said that means the energy system isn’t as strained as it was last year. “It was below freezing for many hours at a time and never got above freezing for some days at major population centers,” Webber said. “So that storm in February 2021, was just much worse, much colder for much longer across a much wider area of Texas. The last few days were cold, but not that cold, not as long and it kind of warms up during the day.” The real test for the power grid will be when demand is high, and supply is low, Webber said. Senate Bill 3 mandated that energy facilities be prepared for “weather emergencies” moving forward. While the legislation helped reform ERCOT and its regulator, the Public Utility Commission, it had few requirements for weatherizing natural gas fuel facilities. Webber also pointed out that ERCOT only controls the electrical system, not the gas system. It was the gas system, which is regulated by the Texas Railroad Commissioner, that primarily failed during last year’s storm. “The legislature is not giving gas the same kind of attention or scrutiny or expectations of reliability that the power sector gives to its power plants,” Webber said. “So that's part of the challenge in Texas is the way we experienced the outages at home was with a blackout. That blackout was triggered primarily by gas system failure, and people don't know that. So, we have to look at the whole problem to really get it improved.”
State says Xcel's inoperable gas plants added tens of millions to February storm costs - Peaking plants can be the unsung hero of natural gas systems, firing up to provide vital reserves during an emergency like the historic storm last February. But Xcel Energy's three Minnesota peaking plants were inoperable then, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in costs for customers in the state, the Department of Commerce concluded in a report to state utility regulators. The department is recommending that the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) disallow $127 million of the $179 million Xcel wants to charge Minnesota ratepayers for extraordinary gas costs from the February storm. Peaking-plant issues account for two-thirds of that $127 million. "Thus far, Xcel has not shown it prudently operated or maintained" the plants, said the report from the Commerce Department, filed last week with the PUC. Xcel's largest peaking plant in Inver Grove Heights was mothballed in early January after it malfunctioned and twice leaked gas. A cautious Xcel then closed two smaller peaking plants. State pipeline safety regulators are still investigating the leaks. Xcel, in a statement, said it "strongly" disagrees with the Commerce Department's conclusions and will file a detailed response with the PUC in January. The company said it adjusted its gas-supply plans last winter to account for the loss of the peaking plants, "making sure we could continue to serve our customers reliably without those facilities."
Life after Deepwater Horizon: the hidden toll of surviving disaster on an oil rig - On the morning of 21 April 2010, Sara Lattis Stone began frantically calling the burn units of various hospitals in Alabama and Louisiana. She was searching for news about her husband, Stephen, who worked on an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico where a massive explosion had occurred. The blast took place the day before Stephen was scheduled to return home from his latest three-week hitch on the rig, a semisubmersible floating unit called the Deepwater Horizon. ... Eventually, Sara received another call from Transocean, informing her that although the blowout had caused multiple fatalities, Stephen was among those who had managed to escape from the burning rig. The survivors were now being transported by ferry to a hotel in New Orleans, she was told. The following morning, at about 3.30am, she got a call from Stephen, who told her he was on his way to the hotel where she and other family members had gathered to wait. “Are you OK?” she asked him. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. Later, when she saw him shuffle through the hall that had been cordoned off for surviving crew members, she knew immediately that he wasn’t fine. His expression was blank and, like the other survivors, he looked shell-shocked and traumatised. “When he walked in, from the look in his eyes, it was obvious that something horrible had happened,” she recalled. There were also human costs, which Sara sought to capture in her art. She painted a portrait of Chris Jones, whose brother, Gordon, was one of 11 workers killed in the disaster. In Sara’s portrait, Jones’s lips are pursed and his face, painted ash blue, is creased with anguish. Titled Survivors, Sara’s paintings were stark and vivid, capturing the raw grief that filled the room at the congressional hearing on the Deepwater spill in Washington. But the portrait she drew of Stephen captured something different. Based on a photo that was taken during his testimony at the congressional hearing, it shows a bearded figure with a vacant, faraway expression in his eyes. He does not look grief-stricken so much as bewildered and unmoored. The bewilderment was still apparent when I met Stephen several years later, at a bar not far from where he and Sara were living at the time. Stephen was in his late 20s, with a shaggy mop of chestnut-coloured hair and languid, downcast eyes. At the bar, he was taciturn, nodding occasionally at something Sara said while straining to keep his gaze from drifting off. Unlike some of the workers on the Deepwater Horizon, he had managed to escape from the rig without sustaining any burns or physical injuries. But as I would come to learn, the absence of visible wounds was a mixed blessing, prompting friends to wonder what was wrong with him and exacerbating the shame he felt for struggling to move on.
Lime Rock Adds Austin Chalk, Upper Eagle Ford Prospects to Lower 48 Portfolio -Houston-based Lime Rock Resources said it recently spent $271.3 million to pick up a bundle of oil and gas prospects in the Austin Chalk formation and Upper Eagle Ford Shale. The deal with an undisclosed seller coincided with an $87.3 milion acquisition of Williston Basin assets from Abraxas Petroleum Corp., management said. In the past four months, the private equity-backed company said it has spent more than $850 million on oil and gas acquisitions.“We have been patient, acquiring only one small overriding royalty interest in the two years before this past October,” CEO Eric Mullins said. “We believe that the nearly $1 billion of acquisitions in the last several months testifies to changing market dynamics, a robust opportunity set, and our ability to work with sellers over many months on transactions that work for all parties.” The Austin Chalk and Upper Eagle Ford deal included producing properties on about 46,000 contiguous net acres in Burleson, Milam, and Robertson counties. The properties recently were producing an estimated 7,700 boe/d. The Abraxas transaction included 3,500 acres in McKenzie County, ND. The Lime Rock team has been an active operator in the Williston since 2014, and it said it now manages about 19,400 boe/d net. Lime Rock has a portfolio of Lower 48 projects under development, with a focus in the Midcontinent, Permian and Williston basins, along with the Gulf Coast. Natural gas properties include the Cedardale-Laverne play in northern Oklahoma, Denton Creek in the Barnett Shale of North Texas and in the Arkoma, an East Texas property.
NexTier stock jumps as frac demand swells revenue--NexTier Oilfield Solutions Inc. soared more than 20% after the frac provider disclosed higher-than-expected quarterly sales, signaling an acceleration in U.S. shale drilling. The Houston-based provider of pumps that blast water, sand and chemicals underground to crack open oil-soaked rocks said fourth-quarter revenue more than doubled to at least $500 million, almost 3% above the average of analysts’ forecasts in a Bloomberg survey. The shares jumped to $4.64 at 10:14 a.m. in New York for the biggest intraday gain since November 2020. “We expect many others also experienced this trend during Q4,” analysts at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. wrote Tuesday in a note to investors. The improved performance was “likely driven less by pricing gains and more by better-than-expected activity levels through the holiday weeks/months into year-end.” While activity in U.S. oilfields typically slows during the final three months of the year, explorers are racing to frack wells in the Permian Basin and elsewhere before an expected uptick in costs in coming months. NexTier also said in a late Monday statement that worker absenteeism is on the rise as the latest Covid-19 variant spreads.
Fed survey shows oil and gas firms planning a modest 2022 comeback --The Dallas Federal Reserve Bank published results of a new poll this week showing that almost half of 131 oil and gas firms surveyed plan to increase oil and gas production during 2022. It’s a finding that will no doubt cause a great deal of consternation among ESG investor groups and the climate alarm lobby. The finding comes at the end of a year, 2021, during which the prevailing watch words in the oil and gas U.S. upstream sector were “capital discipline,” “debt reduction” and “maximize returns to investors.” Those three overarching objectives, along with the creation of free cash flow, certainly appeared to dominate the shale landscape throughout the year, as companies scrambled to focus on demands from the investor community, with a strong emphasis on their ESG-related goals. Given the past history of the shale sector during times of rising commodity prices, it seemed a remarkable display of maintaining discipline by the hundreds of E&P companies that drill for oil and gas in the U.S. One potential wild card in this finding is that the Fed does not provide information breaking down the companies surveyed between corporate producers and those that are privately-held. ESG investor group concerns would certainly carry more weight in the corporate sector, especially related to their governance-related objectives. Another finding in this poll that ties into companies’ plans to increase production in 2022 is that 75% of the respondents plan to increase capital spending, with 31% saying they are planning to increase spending “significantly.” The natural bias among the core functions within E&P companies – engineering, geophysical, operations and drilling – is towards investing capital and drilling wells. This is the essential reason why E&P companies even exist, after all. So, a full year of being told they must exercise capital discipline in order to meet goals designed largely to placate a subset of a company’s investors has no doubt left many professionals inside these firms champing at the bit to get back to doing what they do best.
Fed energy survey finds intensifying cost pressures - Continued expansion of the state’s oil and gas sector was obvious in the Fourth Quarter Energy Survey issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. But what was also obvious in responses from the survey is that companies are facing intensifying cost pressures. Those cost pressures are the theme of the fourth quarter survey, Kunal Patel, business economist with the bank, told the Reporter-Telegram in a telephone interview. “The survey shows costs are rising. The question is how will the industry manage that?” he said. The survey found costs rose sharply for a third-straight quarter, with input costs for oilfield service firms climbing to a record 69.8 from the record high of 60.8 set in the third quarter. Only one of 44 service companies participating in the survey reported lower input costs. For exploration and production firms, finding and development costs rose to a record 44.9 from 33 in the third quarter while lease operating expenses jumped to a record high of 42 from 29.4 in the previous quarter. Patel noted that service firms reported improvement across the board, though the pace of growth for some indicators slowed. For example, the index of prices received for services was positive but fell to 30.3 from 42.2 while equipment utilization edged up to 51.1 from 47.8. Operating margins also remained positive but sank to 11.6 from 21.8 in the third quarter. One service company representative responded that the company is seeing an across-the-board increase in demand for services but “we are fighting to get back to acceptable margins for our products and services.” Inability to hire qualified workers was a frequent comment from respondents, though the labor market showed further growth in the fourth quarter. The employment index remained positive, though it dropped to 11.9 from 14 in the fourth quarter. Service sector hiring continued to dominate. Patel noted employees are working more hours, though the employee hours index was essentially unchanged at 18. The wages and benefits index did move to a record high of 36.6 from 30.3 in the third quarter. Positive news in the survey was that business activity rose to 42.6, pointing to strong growth, and six-month corporate outlooks improved. Respondents forecast West Texas Intermediate prices will end 2022 at $75 a barrel – price forecasts ranged from $50 to $125 – and Henry Hub gas prices will end the year at $4.06 per MMBtu. Approximately 75 percent of respondents expect to increase capital spending slightly (44 percent) or significantly (31 percent) in 2022. Patel pointed out that the number of respondents expecting significant increases in spending was higher than in the fourth quarter of 2020. Despite the positive outlooks, Patel stressed that uncertainty remains among industry executives, who cited uncertainty over demand, the COVID-19 virus and the regulatory environment. “There were more comments this time about the regulatory environment,” he said. Takeaways from the survey’s special questions:
- • A majority of firms are using an oil price at or above $60 for budgeting purposes. The average response across all firms was $64.
- • Forty-nine percent of exploration and production (E&P) companies said that growing production was their primary goal for 2022.
- • Almost two-thirds of large E&P companies reported having plans to reduce carbon and methane emissions. Larger firms, which make up a sizable amount of U.S. oil production, are much more likely to have these plans in place than smaller firms.
- • On average, support service firms expect the price of their primary service or product to increase by 8.5 percent in 2022 while input prices are expected to rise roughly 10 percent. Increasing demand for their service or product was cited as the main factor that will influence the change in their firm’s selling price.
- • Ninety-five percent of executives said they believe countries will be unable to meet their 2030 commitments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
A Ban on U.S. Crude Oil Exports Would Not Lower Gasoline Prices at the Pump – Dallas Fed - High gasoline prices have stimulated interest in what the Biden administration can do to lower the price at the pump. We argue that there is little policymakers can do to address this concern. Calls for a U.S. crude oil export ban, in particular, appear counterproductive.High U.S. fuel prices in October 2021 prompted the Biden administration to consider a variety of policy measures to reduce the prices at the pump after OPEC+ (consisting of OPEC and its oil-producing allies such as Russia) declined to raise its oil production further. Most prominent among these measures have been calls for a release of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) and for a U.S. crude oil export ban.In late November 2021, the administration announced that the Department of Energy would release 50 million barrels of medium-grade crude from the SPR in an effort to lower the price of gasoline, hoping that OPEC+ would not offset this release by cutting its production targets.The 2021 SPR release accelerates to early 2022 an 18-million-barrel sale of crude oil authorized by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 for the fiscal years 2022–25. The release also includes a 32-million-barrel SPR exchange that allows refiners to borrow crude oil starting in December 2021. This oil must be returned with “interest”—in the form of additional barrels of oil—over the following three years.It is unclear what the demand for this oil will be, given that SPR exchanges are designed to deal with temporary supply shortfalls rather than persistent gasoline price increases driven by higher demand. Indeed, there are concerns that oil prices may surge, starting in 2023, when rising demand after the COVID-19 pandemic confronts inelastic supplies following years of underinvestment in oil production.Hence, evidence for the success of previous SPR releases intended to offset temporary oil supply shortfalls (as discussed in “Does Drawing Down the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve Help Stabilize Oil Prices?”) provides little insight about the effects of the latest SPR release, which was prompted by persistent supply shortfalls. Another important concern is how much appetite there will be among U.S. refiners for additional sour medium crude of the type made available through the SPR, given that many refineries typically process other types of oil.While the effectiveness of the recent SPR release on the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil will continue to be debated, the emergence of the COVID-19 Omicron variant after the SPR release in November 2021 led many forecasters to lower their global demand outlooks for 2022, resulting in a substantial decline in the oil price. As a result, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, who had broached the subject of an oil export ban in October 2021—describing it as another possible tool—recently signaled that such a measure was off the table. Although the idea of a U.S. crude oil export ban has been shelved for now, it is useful to reflect on its economic merits because this idea may reemerge if pump prices rise again in the coming months.'
U.S. oil producers plan to boost output despite rising costs - Companies in the heart of the U.S. oil patch plan to keep boosting production this year despite rising costs. The Dallas Fed's fourth-quarter 2021 survey of oil-and-gas execs finds that "costs rose sharply for a third straight quarter." However, most expect to keep boosting output as prices and demand have recovered from the pandemic. The Dallas Fed's quarterly survey takes the pulse of companies in the region that includes the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico. Anonymous comments take stock of the changing landscape. "The political pressure forcing available capital away from the energy industry is a problem for everyone. Banks view lending to the energy industry as having a 'political risk,'" one respondent said. The big picture: The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates domestic crude production will average 11.8 million barrels per day (bpd) this year, exceeding 12 million bpd late in the year. That remains below the pre-pandemic peak of around 13 million bpd.
Permian giant Pioneer removes 2022 hedges in bullish oil outlook -- Pioneer Natural Resources Co., the biggest oil producer in the Permian Basin, closed out almost all its hedges for this year, indicating a bullish outlook for crude prices. The move will cost $328 million spread over the course of 2022, Pioneer said in a filing Wednesday, but leaves the company well positioned to bank any uplift in oil prices. The company also said it bought back $250 million of its own shares during the fourth quarter. “The hedge monetization strategically positions PXD for further strength in 2022 oil prices,” RBC Capital Markets analysts Scott Hanold said in a note. U.S. shale drillers use financial instruments like swaps and options to hedge oil and natural gas production and make sure they have enough cash to cover drilling costs and debt payments. The strategy that paid off handsomely during 2020’s crude-price collapse turned painful in 2021 as the market surged. Pioneer incurred losses valued more than $2 billion last year as crude prices rose and hedges acquired during the early days of the pandemic moved underwater.
Pioneer CEO sees oil above $100 as a net negative for shale --Bosses for some of the biggest oil explorers in the Permian Basin say their industry could be hurt if crude climbs above $100 a barrel. With an expectation that oil demand exceeds supply by later in the year or in early 2023, Scott Sheffield, chief executive officer at Pioneer Natural Resources Co., said he sees oil prices to be in the range of $75 to as much as $100. “I hope it stays there,” he said Wednesday in a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. energy conference webcast. Sheffield added that “$110, $120 oil or higher, like what Europe is seeing, is not going to help our industry.” While activity in the U.S. showed no sign of slowing down at the end of last year, public explorers in the world’s biggest shale patch are continuing to preach the new mantra of restricting production growth so they can send more profits back to investors. Diamondback Energy Inc. and Devon Energy Corp. executives said on the same webcast panel that they’d need to see shareholder sentiment change to increase output again. The global oil industry has yet to fully climb back from the boom era of $100 oil since tumbling more than seven years ago. Ed Morse, global head of commodities research at Citigroup Inc., said Wednesday in a Bloomberg Television interview that even if crude climbs back to those levels, it wouldn’t stay there long. Travis Stice, chief executive officer for Diamondback, agreed that oil higher than $100 wouldn’t be good for the industry as it could be seen as a signal for production growth again. But right now, he said shareholders are still saying they don’t want to see oil explorers boost output. “Eighteen months ago, we were in a global apocalypse for the energy sector, and now you’re talking about outsized returns,” Stice said. “We should all pause and recognize the Tectonic shifts that is in capital allocation.”
US oil, gas rig count rises one on week to 707: Enverus data - The US oil and gas rig count rose by one on the week to 707, energy analytics and software company Enverus said Jan. 6, as the eight largest domestic plays experienced flattish activity in the first days of 2022. Oil-directed rigs dropped one for the week ended Jan. 5, leaving 537, while rigs chasing natural gas gained two for a total 170. "I think it's fair to assume that the lack of change in the last couple weeks can be explained, at least partially, by end-of-year seasonality," Taylor Cavey, senior analyst-supply and production for S&P Global Platts Analytics, said. "[But] we're expecting similar growth to 2021 through this year." The domestic oil and gas rig count, which started 2021 at 406 rigs, gained an even 300 rigs over the year. However, "we're starting to see a shift in the rate of rig additions," Cavey said. "Since the beginning of September, majors have increased rigs by 24%, large-cap independents by 17%, small/mid-caps by 19% and privates by 10%. That said, private operators have added the most rigs during this time." Rig counts within individual basins moved little during the week ended Jan 5, with virtually all ticking up or down a single a rig or remaining the same. The biggest change came from the gas-prone Haynesville Shale in East Texas/Northwest Louisiana, which added two rigs for a total 65. Two other basins – the SCOOP-STACK of Oklahoma and the Marcellus Shale largely in Pennsylvania and West Virginia – added one rig. Marcellus rigs now total 38. But the SCOOP-STACK's rig add pushed that play's total to 40, where it had been twice in late 2021 (once at 41). Apart from that, SCOOP-STACK rig levels haven't been above 40 since the first week of March 2020. Two other plays shed one rig apiece – the Permian Basin of West Texas/New Mexico and the DJ Basin mostly in Colorado. That left the Permian at 299 rigs and the DJ at 16 rigs. Three other plays, the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas, the Bakken Shale of North Dakota/Montana and the Utica Shale mostly sited in Ohio, remained at prior-week activity levels. That left the Eagle Ford at 57 rigs, the Bakken at 32 rigs and the Utica at 10 rigs. This is the third consecutive week for the Eagle Ford and the Utica at those levels.
Strong Earthquakes Spell Trouble For America’s Oil Heartland -A week ago, an earthquake with a 4.5 magnitude struck Texas in the most prolific shale play in the country—the Permian. Days later, another quake shook America’s oil heartland. And seismic activity might eventually force drillers to curb production.The December 27 quake was the strongest in Texas for the last ten years, the Midland Reporter-Telegram reported at the time. It happened at a depth of 4.3 miles near Stanton. And it followed a series of earlier quakes in December.In the middle of December, the U.S. Geological Survey reported four earthquakes in the vicinity of Midland that occurred within 24 hours. The magnitude of these quakes ranged from 2.9 to 3.7, which is not a whole lot, but the number was concerning, especially since it came after more tremors were detected by the University of Texas at Austin’s Bureau of Economic Geology earlier in the year. And after the stronger quake, regulators have stepped in.The Texas Railroad Commission banned the injection of wastewater from well drilling into deep wells just before the big quake. After the big quake, the commission sent out inspectors to the field as the quake had occurred in an area already under investigation for wastewater disposal in deep wells.According to Reuters, if the inspection results in a halt of wastewater disposal in the area, this could lead to the shutdown of some 18 disposal wells that pump a combined 9,600 barrels of wastewater. And if drillers cannot dispose of wastewater, then they cannot really drill.That hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, causes increased seismic activity has been one of the main weapons in the arsenal of anti-fracking activists. Indeed, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the practice of splitting shale rock formation to extract the oil contained in it does cause increased seismic activity. Only it’s not the fracking itself. It’s the wastewater.Fracking requires enormous amounts of liquid, and this liquid, called wastewater but in fact, a mixture of water and chemicals, needs to be disposed of. Disposal usually takes place in disposal wells, some of them quite deep to hold more wastewater. It is these underground wastewater reservoirs that have been linked to increased seismic activity in some oil regions.Five years ago, for instance, Oklahoma drew media attention because of the significantly increased frequency of earthquakes since the start of the shale boom. The state, one of the big oil producers in the U.S., had negligible seismic activity before 2009 when fracking really took off. By 2016, Oklahoma was recording an average of two quakes a day—what was earlier the average for a year. To date, quakes are just as frequent. According to website Earthquake Tracker, there have been 10 earthquakes in Oklahoma in the last seven days, 68 quakes in the past 30 days, and 2,063 quakes in the past year. Of course, most of these are minor, but due to their increased frequency, they can still cause—and have caused—material damage. The issue even led to litigation seeking insurance coverage against the effects of wastewater disposal from oil wells. Unfortunately for the plaintiffs in this case, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma this month ruled that no insurance coverage exists for bodily injury or property damage caused by wastewater disposal-related seismic activity.
Bureau of Land Management Takes Next Steps to Protect Chaco Canyon | Bureau of Land Management -The Bureau of Land Management today formally proposed to withdraw approximately 351,000 acres of public lands surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park. This action, published today in the Federal Register, follows President Biden’s announcement on November 15 of the Department’s new efforts to protect the Chaco Canyon and the greater connected landscape, and to ensure that public land management better reflects the sacred sites, stories, and cultural resources in the region.The proposed withdrawal of federal lands within a 10-mile radius around Chaco Culture National Historical Park would bar new federal oil and gas leasing on those lands. The two-year segregation and potential withdrawal would not affect existing valid leases or rights and would not apply to minerals owned by private, state, or Tribal entities. In additional to today’s proposed withdrawal, the BLM is initiating a 90-day public comment period and will be hosting several public meetings as well as undertaking formal Tribal consultation. The public may submit comments on the proposed withdrawal until April 6, 2022. Comments may be submitted through ePlanning at: https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/2016892/510 In early 2022 the BLM and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) will also be initiating a broader assessment of the Greater Chaco cultural landscape to explore ways the Interior Department can manage existing energy development, honor sensitive areas important to Tribes and communities, and build collaborative management frameworks toward a sustainable economic future for the region.
BLM hosts roundtable discussion about federal funding for orphaned wells - Randy Pacheco, the chief executive officer of the San Juan Basin-based A-Plus Well Service, said the state’s workforce needs to be built up to address the orphaned oil and natural gas wells that dot the landscape in many states including New Mexico. Pacheco was one of the panelists who participated in a roundtable-style webinar discussion about the federal orphaned well program and the Bureau of Land Management’s efforts to implement it. The bureau hosted the webinar, which drew hundreds of people, on Thursday. The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that was signed into law in November provided $4.7 billion for clean-up, remediation and restoration at orphaned well sites. That led to the U.S. Department of the Interior releasing initial guidelines on Dec. 17 for states to apply for funding. The states had until Dec. 30 to notify the department if they were interested in applying for a formula grant, which is one of three types of funding opportunities the law made possible. According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, this garnered overwhelming interest and 26 states submitted notices of intent to apply for formula grants. New Mexico was one of those states. A preliminary analysis from that notice of intent process revealed that there are more than 130,000 documented orphaned oil and gas wells in the United States, Interior announced this week. That number is more than two times more than previously estimated. Steve Feldgus, deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management for the Department of the Interior, said that is “roughly twice the amount of documented orphan wells from just a couple years ago. And that’s not even including the countless numbers we don’t know.” Jason Walsh, the executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, also emphasized the need for a skilled workforce to address the orphaned wells. He said one of the goals of plugging the abandoned wells is to stop them from emitting methane into the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change. “If we actually want to achieve the methane reduction goal of this program, we need to make damn sure that the workers who were doing the work are skilled enough to actually cap these wells effectively and that we’re not, we’re not seeing any leaks,” he said.
Interior: US has twice as many abandoned oil and gas wells as previously thought -- The U.S. has more than double the amount of abandoned oil and gas wells than previously thought, according to a preliminary analysis by the Interior Department. In a memo Wednesday, the department said there are currently more than 130,000 documented abandoned, or orphaned, wells. Comparatively, a 2019 report from the Interior documented a total of 56,600 orphaned wells across 30 states. Across the entire country they found that the number of abandoned wells in that report ranged from zero to 13,226. The bipartisan infrastructure bill President Biden signed into law in November of last year includes $4.7 billion to restore and plug orphaned wells. In December, the department released guidance on state applications for grants under the program. Since then, the majority of states, 26, have submitted notices of intent to apply for the grants, according to the memo. Nearly every state documented contained orphaned wells. States applying for funding included Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming, according to the memo. The Interior Department is set to publish the full amount of grant funding each state is eligible to receive in the months ahead, according to the memo. On Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management will host a presentation on its orphaned-well reclamation program. Plugging orphaned wells has been top priority for Interior Secretary Deb Haaland since her nomination. The White House’s budget request for fiscal 2022 also included a proposal to more than double the enacted 2021 budget for orphaned well cleanup and reclamation, which the administration said would create 250,000 union jobs. The White House’s more ambitious climate and social spending bill — which has not passed either chamber of Congress — would also put $41 billion toward environmental remediation, including reclamation of orphaned wells. Its path forward remains unclear after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said in December that he would not back the package.
Oil and gas drilling is getting dangerously close to our national parks | TheHill - Millions of Americans are spending more time exploring the waters we fish, the national parks we enjoy and wild places near and far. The benefits of these activities are numerous and they breathe life into the many local economies that depend on booming outdoor recreation — this year more so than ever. At the same time, many of these same public lands have long been important to America’s energy portfolio. We believe that communities thrive when energy development is responsibly done, and balanced with the need for healthy lands, thriving fish and wildlife populations, and quality outdoor recreation experiences. Unfortunately, outdated policies prioritize oil and gas development over other public land uses. Spurred by antiquated federal leasing policies — some of which are over a century old — recent energy development proposals threaten the landscapes Americans from all walks of life cherish. While the Biden administration has undertaken a long-overdue review of the federal oil and gas program, we are still grappling with the mistakes of the past and policies that have opened iconic landscapes to drilling and exploration. In two special landscapes — a prized mountain range in southwestern Montana and a unique national monument in eastern Utah — this reality is playing out today. They are case studies for the larger problems with antiquated oil and gas policies for public lands. In southwestern Montana, the Forest Service is weighing an exploratory drilling proposal in the Tendoy Mountains. Oil and gas drilling is not normally associated with this region. Its streams support populations of native Westslope cutthroat trout — the state fish — and are the headwaters of the Beaverhead River, which attracts anglers from around the nation. Moreover, water in the Beaverhead Valley is vital for agricultural operations that, along with outdoor recreation, support the local economy. But that could all change. Several years ago, despite objections from local anglers and hunters, the Bureau of Land Management issued a block of leases in the Tendoys. Some of the leases sold for the minimum allowable bid — just $2/acre — while others sold “noncompetitively,” which means they didn’t sell at auction and were later issued for just $1.50/acre. Meanwhile, in eastern Utah, the Bureau of Land Management is evaluating a proposed drilling project less than half a mile from the western boundary of the National Park Service’s Dinosaur National Monument long after the leases should have expired. The outcome could remove a “no surface occupancy” restriction, allowing for the construction of roads and well pads on public lands that are rich in cultural sites, fossils and wildlife habitat. Energy development here not only poses a direct threat to those resources and Dinosaur National Monument, but could also contribute to air pollution and to water shortages in the Colorado River Basin. The agency estimates that nearly 1 million gallons, approximately three acre feet of fresh water, is needed to drill wells here. Apart from conservation values, there are other good reasons oil and gas leasing near national parks and monuments has sparked controversy. These crown jewels of our public land system generate billions of dollars in revenue every year from outdoor recreation. Further, protected public lands are often the centerpiece of much larger landscapes, providing secure habitat for fish and wildlife and scenic vistas that bring in millions of visitors every year. These drilling proposals underscore fundamental flaws with the federal oil and gas leasing system. When public lands can be leased for as little as $1.50/acre, it’s time to take a step back, scrutinize federal policies and evaluate whether oil and gas development is the highest and best use of our most valuable public lands. This is especially true where there are little to no economically viable reserves of oil and gas. Evaluating the federal oil and gas program is long overdue. Oil and gas development is one of the multiple uses of our public lands — but only one — and public policy that made sense a century ago doesn’t necessarily make sense today. This is critical in light of the administration’s recent decision to resume leasing on public lands because of a court order. Nor can the administration ignore circumstances on the ground, where development proposals threaten places like the Tendoy Mountains and Dinosaur National Monument.
Pipeline expert testifies that state agency is downplaying Line 5 tunnel explosion risk - An oil and gas pipeline expert testifying in a permitting case involving Enbridge’s Line 5 says state energy staffers are downplaying the risk of a potentially catastrophic explosion within a proposed tunnel that would carry oil and propane beneath the Straits of Mackinac.Richard Kuprewicz, the president of Washington-based Accufacts Inc. who has been retained by Indigenous tribes and environmental law firms, provided formal testimony on behalf of Bay Mills Indian Community last month in a permitting case before the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC).Kuprewicz disagrees with MPSC staff and other consultants who have said the risk of Line 5 products entering the Great Lakes would be “negligible and unquantifiably low” if housed within the proposed tunnel. The tunnel project, first negotiated under former Gov. Rick Snyder, has been held up by supporters as a fail-safe alternative to Line 5 that currently sits exposed along the lakebed. “From an engineering standpoint, there is a potential for a release into the Straits from the tunnel by way of a catastrophic explosion,” Kuprewicz said in written testimony filed on Dec. 14. “While a risk of release in this manner may be considered low, it is not negligible and, in my opinion, should not be downplayed in such a way by the (MPSC) Staff.”MPSC staff have testified that a tunnel would virtually eliminate the risk of an oil and gas release into the Great Lakes by sheltering the pipeline from anchor strikes and providing an additional layer of protection in the event of a pipeline spill. Kuprewicz countered: “This testimony fails to recognize that both propane and crude oil are highly hazardous and volatile substances and there is always a risk of explosion when handling these substances. When transporting these substances through a pipeline enclosed in a tunnel, the risk of an explosion is enhanced which in turn enhances the probability that the secondary containment vessel will fail.”
Komatsu apologizes for oil spill on Menomonee River An official at manufacturing giant Komatsu on Friday apologized and told Milwaukee elected leaders that the company should have communicated more quickly in the wake of an oil spill on the Menomonee River in early December. "The spill itself is something that should never have happened," said John Koetz, Komatsu's president of surface mining. "We should have done a better job communicating more promptly the details to the stakeholders." Koetz said the company had been focused on communicating with regulators and "putting in place an action plan to address the cleanup." Immediate calls to local entities could have helped limit the oil's spread and mitigate the damage, city officials and others said during a meeting of the Public Safety and Health Committee Friday. City officials urged immediate communication with not only the Mayor's Office and Common Council but also the Port of Milwaukee and 911. Port Director Adam Tindall-Schlicht said the port, other city entities and "community partners" were not notified until about a week after the spill. While Komatsu had to bring in two contractors to respond, Tindall-Schlicht said the port can act immediately with boats and staff that regularly train for such incidents. Fire Chief Aaron Lipski also said the Fire Department should have been contacted, saying by not calling 911 the company missed "an enormous step." "If you have any sort of material release, please call us. Doesn't matter how big or how small, please call us," he said. "This could all have been avoided." The Dec. 3 spill at Komatsu's facility on West National Avenue allowed about 400 gallons of oil to enter a storm drain that goes to the Menomonee River, the state Department of Natural Resources said previously. The spill happened while oil was being transferred between two tanks, Koetz told the committee. The DNR and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency were alerted that day, he said. Efforts to clean up the oil have included launching three or four boats onto the water each day along with a crew on land running a "vacuum truck" to get rid of the sheens and oil pockets while groups of employees have walked the shores to find any areas where residue remains, Koetz said.
Iowa State study shows slow yield recovery after Dakota Access Pipeline construction — Recovering yield production after a pipeline project is a slow process, say researchers at Iowa State University who have been able to watch the process firsthand. When the Dakota Access Pipeline route crossed an ag research area at Iowa State in 2016, it provided a unique opportunity to study the effects of pipeline construction, especially soil compaction caused by heavy machinery, on crop yields. The Iowa State team found yields in the 150-foot pipeline right-of-way were reduced by an average of 25% for soybeans and 15% for corn in the first two crop seasons after construction, compared to undisturbed fields. "Recovering crop yields is a slow process," said Mehari Tekeste, an assistant professor in the Iowa State Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering. In addition to compaction, mixing of the topsoil and subsoil also had negative effects.
New research shows sustained damage to agricultural land near pipelines - Before it began digging into the earth to bury its two-and-half-foot-wide, 1,172-mile-long pipeline in the ground, Dakota Access, LLC promised to restore the land to its previous condition when construction was finished. The pipeline company signed that pledge in its contracts with landowners stretching from North Dakota to Illinois, and the project was approved by the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission under that condition. But farmers in the path of the pipeline have a different story to tell – one of broken promises and sustained damage to their land. Now, there’s data to back them up. Researchers at Iowa State University found that in the two years following construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline corn yields in the 150-foot right-of-way declined by 15 percent. Soybean yields dropped by 25 percent. One of the selling points that energy companies often tout is that pipeline infrastructure is seemingly invisible, buried and forgotten over the long run. The new study, published in the journal Soil Use and Management, seems to contradict that claim.The scientists said the major issue is that soil is compacted by heavy machinery during pipeline construction, and that topsoil and subsoil are mixed together. Taken together, the damage “can discourage root growth and reduce water infiltration in the right-of-way,” Robert Horton, an agronomist at Iowa State and the lead soil physicist on the project, said in a statement. He and his colleagues also found changes in available water and nutrients within the soil. The findings are important for a number of planned pipelines across the Midwest. In one instance, the planned Midwest Carbon Express would be built on land already used for the Dakota Access pipeline, leaving farmers reeling from double impact on their crops.It also adds to other new research on the long-term effects of pipelines on agriculture. In Ohio, using data collected from 24 different farms, researchers recently announced that corn and soybean yields were still being negatively affected three years after the construction of a series of smaller pipelines. “Every pipeline site is going to be slightly different, but there is a general trend of degradation overall,” Theresa Brehm, one of the researchers and a graduate student at Ohio State University, told Grist.For corn, yields were down an average 23.8 percent. “That means [farmers are] losing almost a quarter of the productivity of that land,” Brehem said, adding “it’s not just a 23 percent decrease from one year. There’s actually a longevity impact of that.”
Challenge to Biden Keystone XL revocation dismissed as moot - A federal judge in Texas dismissed a challenge to Biden’s decision to revoke a key permit for the Keystone XL pipeline — saying that the case is moot since the project has already been canceled. Judge Jeffrey Brown cited a brief from pipeline owner TC Energy confirming that it was starting to remove the pipeline’s border-crossing segment and was expected to have done so by November. “The court takes TC Energy at its word that Keystone XL is dead. And because it is dead, any ruling this court makes on whether President Biden had the authority to revoke the permit would be advisory,” the Trump appointee wrote. “Thus, the court has no jurisdiction and the case must be dismissed as moot,” he added. On his first day in office, President Biden revoked a border crossing permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. The move spurred cheers from environmentalists who had long despised the project, which was slated to bring carbon-intensive tar sands oil from Canada to the U.S. But Biden’s move was criticized by numerous Republicans, who argued that it was an attack on fossil fuels. More than 20 states with Republican attorneys-general sued over the decision, but their suit was ultimately rejected on Thursday. .
Judge dismisses lawsuit alleging police used excessive force at Dakota Access Pipeline protest -A federal judge has taken the side of police in a civil lawsuit brought by Dakota Access Pipeline protesters who alleged officers from Morton and Stutsman counties used excessive force on them during a demonstration in 2016. U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Traynor dismissed the case Wednesday, Dec. 29, finding that officers acted reasonably during an hourslong standoff with protesters near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation on Nov. 20, 2016. Protesters alleged that police fired rubber bullets, tear gas and exploding munitions into the crowd, injuring more than 200 in attendance. Officers also sprayed water over protesters on the frigid winter night, according to news reports.. Lawyers representing the Morton County Sheriff's Department, Stutsman County Sheriff's Department and Mandan Police Department said outnumbered officers were worried for their safety and had to use force to disperse the protesters they believed were trespassing. Morton County Assistant State’s Attorney Gabrielle Goter said the defendants are pleased by Traynor's dismissal of the case, adding,"law enforcement was permitted to use less lethal force to protect themselves and others from violent protestors."
Federal oil lease sale planned for early 2022 in North Dakota, Montana after yearlong pause -Oi l and gas leasing on federal lands is expected to resume early this year in North Dakota and Montana after the Biden administration halted the process nationwide almost one year ago. The federal Bureau of Land Management is planning a lease sale for the first quarter of 2022 with 6,850 federally owned mineral acres up for grabs in western North Dakota and eastern Montana. The agency has not yet announced a date, nor has it finalized details of the sale. Oil and gas companies will bid to secure federal leases during the event, and those that are successful will have a 10-year window to obtain a federal permit allowing them to drill. President Joe Biden halted the leasing process upon taking office last January when he issued an executive order announcing a review of the program “to restore balance on America’s public lands and waters to benefit current and future generations.” While that now-concluded review took place, oil- and gas-producing states including North Dakota and Montana sued to try to force leasing to continue.They scored an early victory in June 2021 when a court order required the federal government to resume the sales. The ruling came in a lawsuit joined by a number of states, including Montana. North Dakota filed a separate legal challenge, and a hearing is scheduled for Jan. 12 at the federal courthouse in Bismarck.
Alaska oil and gas regulators fine Hilcorp more than $50,000 for violations -- The state agency that oversees Alaska oil production has upheld two fines against Hilcorp totaling $64,000, for violating requirements needed to prevent spills or leaks in fields in the Cook Inlet region in Southcentral Alaska. The penalties, issued Dec. 29, come on the heels of a $10,000 fine issued against Hilcorp in late November for a violation at the giant Prudhoe Bay fields on the North Slope. The agency called that violation, involving a spill-prevention safety valve that was shut down during oil production, part of Hilcorp’s “substantial history of noncompliance.” In the new orders, the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission continued to express concerns about Hilcorp’s record. Hilcorp, based in Houston, Texas, operates Alaska’s largest oil field at Prudhoe Bay. Hilcorp is also the leading oil and gas producer in Cook Inlet in Southcentral Alaska. Hilcorp said in a statement on Monday it is taking action to prevent similar violations. Hilcorp has been credited for helping stabilize production at aging oil fields, including at Prudhoe Bay, where it took over as operator from BP in 2020 in a $5.6 billion deal. But critics have said the company is prone to environmental accidents, like gas leaks in Cook Inlet in recent years. Hilcorp has rewarded employees with large bonuses for boosting oil production and the value of the company. In one of the newly issued orders, the three-member commission levied a $39,000 penalty against Hilcorp Alaska for violating three requirements associated with a well drilled in September at the Swanson River field. After the company began drilling the well, it failed to provide the agency with a 24-hour notice so regulators could witness two tests designed to help ensure the safety of the well, according to the three-page order. One of the tests the agency was not able to witness involved the integrity of steel pipes placed inside the well. Hilcorp also did not provide the agency with data about one of the tests, as required, until the agency requested it, the order says. The agency’s concerns included “Hilcorp’s lack of good faith in its attempts to comply with the clearly stated conditions on the (drilling permit),” the potential seriousness of the violation, and the company’s “track record of regulatory non-compliance,” according to the order. Hilcorp did not challenge the penalty, after the agency issued a notice in November. Hilcorp said it would work with its crews to prevent future violations. It said it would inform engineering staff about “differences in processes” involving North Slope and Cook Inlet permits, the order said. The agency took issue with those proposed improvements. It said Hilcorp’s statement about different North Slope and Cook Inlet permitting conditions is “inaccurate” and “troubling.” “Hilcorp’s compliance issues can only be addressed by reading the conditions of approval attached to each permit — regardless of where in the state of Alaska the permitted work occurs,” the order says. Also on Dec. 29, the agency upheld a $25,000 proposed fine against Hilcorp, for failing to conduct a required test associated with blowout-prevention equipment, according to that three-page order. Such equipment is used to prevent an oil spill or gas leak. That violation came at a well in the North Cook Inlet field, during work designed to extend the well’s operational life. Hilcorp did not dispute the agency’s findings. It said it would communicate with workers to prevent future violations.
Will Biden's oil plans unleash an Arctic 'carbon bomb'? - - The Biden administration is facing a critical test about oil drilling in a vast region of the Arctic with so much crude it has been called a “carbon bomb.” The Interior Department has declared that it may stymie drilling in the well-known Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) — suspending leases pushed through at the end of the Trump administration. But it’s unclear what it may — or can — do in the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A). The decisions that the administration make in the reserve will help shape the future of the Alaska oil and gas industry, which state leaders and industry advocates argue remains vital to the state’s economic well-being. Environmentalists counter any more drilling could irreparably damage a priceless landscape and cause a major uptick in emissions. Yet industry and greens agree on one aspect of NPR-A’s future: They don’t know what to make of the White House’s strategy. “Policies out of the gate, you know, have been a little bit mixed,” said Kara Moriarty, president of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association. President Biden moved quickly in calling for a review of NPR-A’s management plan, called an “integrated activity plan.” Penned with guidance from pro-oil Alaskans during the Trump administration, it expanded oil’s potential for leasing to 82 percent of the reserve, up from 52 percent previously. It also carved into special protections around the Teshekpuk Lake, a coastal wetland treasured for its beauty, rich avian life and herds of caribou. Laura Daniel-Davis, principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management, said in a September memo that the plan was “inconsistent” with the Biden administration’s priorities and warranted greater attention. But she also made it clear that the administration has yet to decide whether to revoke the old management plan. As a stopgap, Interior has frozen the sale of new leases in areas opened by the Trump-era plan. Raising the stakes on what comes next is the oil potential maturing in the NPR-A. The region’s future is under scrutiny with high oil prices and recent efforts by the administration to increase oil supplies. The reserve also has pivoted in recent years from a quiet expanse of federal lands with limited oil activity to the new hot spot on the North Slope. Recent oil and gas discoveries in the reserve — located like ANWR on the Arctic Coast — have driven talk of a renaissance for Alaska’s declining North Slope oil fields.
European court to decide if Arctic drilling violates human rights--The European Court of Human Rights is asking Norway to respond to charges by activists that allowing new oil and gas drilling in the Arctic during an environmental crisis may breach fundamental freedoms. In a document seen by Bloomberg, the court will give the Norwegian government an April 13 deadline to comment, in writing, on the merits of the case which it said may potentially be designated an “impact” case, meaning it could have broad ramifications beyond Norway. Such a designation would substantially shorten the length of time to a ruling, which now can take as long as six years, and could provide climate activists with a new route for holding governments accountable. The move by the court is a victory for the environmental groups and climate activists who filed the application for consideration after repeated defeats in Norwegian courts. “The Court’s request to the Norwegian Government is a significant development, as just one out of ten cases reach this point,” Cathrine Hambro, the lawyer representing the applicants in the case, said in a statement. “A judgment from ECtHR would be important not just for Norway, but also for the pan-European application of the European Convention on Human Rights in climate cases.” An attorney for the government said it maintains that no human rights have been violated. “We look forward to presenting the views of the Norwegian authorities on the case, and to reiterate the legal assessment of the national Supreme Court that the granting of licenses as such do not constitute a breach of any individual rights under articles 2 and 8 of the Convention,” Henriette Busch, a lawyer in the office of the Attorney General for Civil Affairs, said in an emailed response to questions. Climate activists are increasingly turning to the courts to force companies and governments to pay for the damage that lax regulation has caused and to prevent future threats to the environment. Germany’s top court has given national leaders until the end of this year to specify how they plan to limit global warming after finding efforts so far have failed.
Defying U.S. sanctions, Venezuela doubles crude oil exports --Oil exports from Venezuela doubled in December from a year earlier as the country raises production of revenue-generating hydrocarbons in defiance of U.S. sanctions. Shipments averaged 619,000 barrels a day in December. The OPEC-founding member increased exports for a third straight month with the support of ally Iran, which boosted the supply of a key ingredient that aids production. Output touched the crucial mark of 1 million barrels on a single day in December, state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA said. Production averaged 625,000 barrels a day during the entire month of November. Exports are rising after benchmark Brent oil rose 50% last year, the largest gain since 2016, as global demand bounces back from the pandemic. The increase also comes at at time when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies may boost supplies amid a tighter first-quarter surplus than initially expected. Still, it’s unclear if the spike in shipments is sustainable because China, the biggest buyer of Venezuelan oil, continues to crack down on the energy sector. Private fuelmakers in the Asian nation are at the center of allegations of tax violations and non-compliance with environmental rules. There are already signs of problems. Supertankers laden with Venezuelan oil that have sailed to Asia end up floating off the coasts of Singapore and Malaysia for months waiting for Chinese buyers. The U.S. amped up sanctions against the regime of President Nicolas Maduro in 2017, cutting off the South American nation’s access to U.S. refiners. Crippled by the move and with buyers in India and Spain also shunning its oil, Venezuela resorted to unorthodox tactics. It has been disguising and rebranding the oil in order to hide its origins and circumvent sanctions.
Gazprom misses 2021 gas export targets, straining European markets--Russian gas giant Gazprom PJSC missed its own “conservative” target for 2021 exports to Europe, and those capped flows contributed to the continent’s worst energy supply crunch in decades. Gazprom delivered 185.1 billion cubic meters to its main clients abroad, including Turkey, China and Europe, excluding the former Soviet Union nations, Chief Executive Officer Alexey Miller said in a statement on Sunday. That’s 3.2% above 2020 levels, but lower than 2018 and 2019, which were around 200 billion cubic meters. Deliveries to Europe and Turkey were about 177 billion cubic meters last year, according to calculations by Bloomberg News and BCS Global Markets based on Gazprom’s data. That fell short of Gazprom’s forecast for exports to Europe and Turkey of as much as 183 billion cubic meters -- an estimate it stuck to since the spring and maintained at the end of October, even as Europe clamored for more supplies. While Gazprom’s flows to Europe and Turkey were seen below Gazprom’s outlook, they were in line with recent estimates from BCS Global Markets, said Ron Smith, the company’s senior oil and gas analyst in Moscow. “It was clear in recent weeks that high prices had caused a reduction in nominations from its European customer base,” he said. Flows to Europe and Turkey could be even lower -- at some 175.4 billion cubic meters last year, based on assumption that Gazprom’s daily flows to China were more than a third above its contractual volumes in November and December, according to Mitch Jennings, an energy analyst at Sova Capital. Gazprom’s exports have been closely scrutinized as tight supplies in Europe recently sent prices soaring to records. With winter setting in and the region’s stockpiles dangerously low, the Russian company has been sending only as much gas to EU clients as it’s obliged to under long-term contracts, and for months hasn’t offered spot cargoes going into early 2022. It’s unclear why Gazprom has been reluctant to offer spot gas to Europe. While the company has pointed to demand destruction as a result of surging regional prices, European officials say the Russian producer is intentionally withholding in hopes of speeding up approvals for the contentious Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Gazprom doesn’t break export data down by country, making it difficult to estimate 2021 flows to individual markets. However, Miller said that the largest growth in deliveries was to Germany, Turkey and Italy. Flows to China exceeded Gazprom’s contractual obligations throughout 2021, according to Miller.
Gas prices surge in Europe over tight Russian supplies (Reuters) - European gas prices soared more than 30% on Tuesday after low supplies from Russia reignited concerns about an energy crunch as colder weather approaches. A pipeline which normally delivers gas from Siberia to Europe was sending flows from Germany to Poland on Tuesday for the 15th successive day, instead of the usual westward flow into Europe. Supplies of Russian gas from Ukraine to Slovakia were also subdued. Russian energy exports have been in the spotlight during a broader standoff https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/biden-putin-hold-second-call-this-month-ukraine-tensions-simmer-2021-12-30 between Russia and the West, including over a Russian troop buildup near neighbouring Ukraine, which is trying to forge closer ties with NATO. Ambassadors from the NATO military alliance and Russian officials are scheduled to meet next week as both sides seek dialogue to prevent open conflict over Ukraine. Some European Union lawmakers have accused Russia, which supplies more than 40% of the bloc's natural gas, of using the crisis as leverage. They say Moscow has restricted gas flows to secure approval to start up the newly built Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will supply gas to Germany. Russia has denied the allegations, and says the pipeline will boost gas exports and help alleviate high prices in Europe. It has said it is meeting its contractual obligations on gas deliveries. Moscow also denies U.S. assertions that it is planning an invasion of Ukraine, which it accuses of building up forces in the east of the country. Gas flows via the Yamal-Europe pipeline jumped on Tuesday in the eastward direction, data from German network operator Gascade showed. The benchmark Dutch front-month contract was up 23.20 euros at 95.20 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) by 1429 GMT, with the day-ahead contract up 29.00 euros at 95.50 euros/MWh. Expectations for colder weather in Europe were contributing to upward pressure on prices, but the low Russian gas flows were the main driver, a trader said.
Another LNG cargo appears to divert to Europe -- Traders may have diverted another cargo of liquefied natural gas to Europe instead of China amid the continent’s energy crunch. The vessel Hellas Diana sharply changed course from Tianjin and is likely headed to Europe, according to Mathew Ang, an analyst at Kpler. The ship, which left Corpus Christi, Texas, around Nov. 27, U-turned near Hawaii and is traveling toward the Panama Canal, Bloomberg shipping data showed. At least seven other cargoes originally bound for Asia have been diverted to Europe, where rapidly falling temperatures and energy shortages pushed Dutch TTF prices to record highs last week. The region is attracting more supplies as Asia’s biggest buyers are opting to use their inventories this winter instead of procuring more. Japan-Korea benchmark prices are trading at a rare discount to European rates.
EU NatGas Rally Continues Amid Russian Shipment Plunge; More LNG Tankers Come To Rescue -- European natural gas prices soared for the third consecutive session as Russian shipments to the fuel-starved continent remain muted. Elevated gas prices have slapped a hefty price premium, opening up massive arbitrage opportunities for international commodity traders. Dutch month-ahead gas, the European benchmark, has rallied as much as 42% this week from 65 euros a megawatt-hour to 92 euros on slumping pipeline supply from Russia. For context, this shift is the BTU/Barrel of oil equivalent of a move from $100 to a $180 barrel of oil... On Monday, we first discussed this issue in a commodity note titled "European NatGas Prices Soar As Supply Constraints From Russia Build." Three days later, Russian supplies via Ukraine remain curbed, while the Yamal-Europe pipeline is flowing in the reverse direction from Germany to Poland, according to Bloomberg. Russia's ability to control the European gas market comes as the continent has mismanaged its power grid through green initiatives. With cold weather returning, Europe will deplete even more gas inventories. This may suggest gas is headed back over 100 euros. Europe's energy crisis has been a boon for energy traders who have access to liquefied natural gas (LNG) and LNG cargo vessels. We first reported a flotilla of US LNG tankers were headed to Europe a few weeks ago. Now shipping data from Kpler and Bloomberg show 13 LNG carriers from the U.S. and West Africa are rerouting to Europe instead of Asia. Gas prices in Europe are more expensive relative to Asia, which is why LNG ships are being rerouted to collect a hefty premium. It's called arbitrage.
Gas prices surge again in Europe, leaving some business owners 'terrified' for the future— Europe is facing continued volatility in its wholesale gas markets, prompting concerns across the region that an energy crisis could be about to get even worse. The front-month gas price at the Dutch TTF hub, a European benchmark for natural gas trading, was around 5% higher by 1 p.m. London time on Wednesday, with the price reaching 93.3 euros per megawatt-hour. Contracts for March and April delivery were also up by 5% on Wednesday, according to New York's Intercontinental Exchange. Meanwhile, the European day-ahead price increased to 94 euros per megawatt-hour, according to data from Reuters. While a far cry from the peak of around 182.3 euros seen in December, Wednesday's activity still marked a significant price rise from the end of 2021, when prices dipped below 70 euros per megawatt-hour. Wednesday also saw German day-ahead baseload power prices gain more than 50%, while their French equivalents increased 17% during early trade, according to Reuters. It comes after European benchmark gas prices surged 30% on Tuesday, amid concerns about a cold winter, low gas inventories and Russia constricting supply to Europe. Over the course of 2021, European wholesale gas prices rose by more than 400%, setting new records. "Into January, the price of gas has resumed its ascent, again with the prospect of colder weather driving increased demand for heating and very, very low supplies from Russia, especially via two important pipelines through Poland and Ukraine," Hansen added. "Whether Russia is deliberately keeping supplies down due to Nord Stream 2 pipeline approval delaysand the Ukraine border crisis is difficult to say. But it highlights failed energy and storage policies in Europe and the U.K., which has left the region very dependent on imports of gas, especially given the still unreliable level of power generation from renewable sources." Front-month natural gas contracts in the U.K. were up almost 6% on Wednesday, with contracts for April delivery gaining more than 7%. Meanwhile, day-ahead prices at the National Balancing Point, the U.K.'s benchmark for natural gas trading, rose more than 10% to around £2.25 per therm. The U.K. is particularly reliant on natural gas as an energy source, with more than 22 million households connected to the country's gas grid. Britain's largest single source of gas is the U.K. Continental Shelf, which made up around 48% of total supply in 2020. However, the UCS is a mature source, meaning it has to be supplemented with gas imported from international markets. 'Frightening' prices for U.K. businesses The U.K. has limits on how much suppliers are able to charge consumers for energy, with price caps reviewed by the government every six months. The next review is due in February. Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the government was "not ruling out" measures such as tax cuts to keep energy prices stable, although he questioned the efficacy of such a move. Trade body Energy U.K. told the BBC in December that it expected energy bills in the country to rise by up to 50% in the spring. The soaring cost of wholesale gas led to the collapse of a number of British energy suppliers last year. Several U.K.-based small and medium sized businesses told CNBC on Wednesday that higher energy bills would deal a fresh blow to their already struggling companies.
Russia’s weak December oil production signals lack of capacity --Russia failed to boost oil output last month despite a generous ramp-up quota in its OPEC+ agreement, indicating the country has deployed all of its current available production capacity. With OPEC+ meeting in two days to consider output policy in the face of the fast-spreading omicron variant, Russia’s lack of growth highlights the limits of the group’s attempt to boost supply if demand continues to recover. Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the UAE can raise output, but others such as Angola, Nigeria and Kuwait are struggling to meet their quotas. Russian companies pumped 46.11 million tons of crude oil and condensate last month, according to preliminary data from the Energy Ministry’s CDU-TEK unit. That equates to 10.903 million barrels a day -- based on a 7.33 barrel-per-ton conversion rate -- and is flat to November. It’s difficult to assess Russia’s compliance with the OPEC+ deal, as the CDU-TEK data don’t provide a breakdown between crude and condensate -- which is excluded from the agreement. If condensate output was the same as in November -- some 930,000 barrels a day -- then daily crude-only production was around 9.973 million barrels, about 37,000 barrels below its December quota. Until recently, Russia ramped up production by restoring operations at wells that were shut-in or idled in spring 2020 as the pandemic shattered global demand. Now any further growth in output will mostly come from newly drilled wells, officials at Lukoil PJSC and Gazprom Neft PJSC said late last year. OPEC+ will meet Jan. 4 to discuss output plans for February as uncertainty remains over the impact of the omicron strain on energy consumption.
Shell sends seismic vessel home after South African court loss- The vessel hired by Royal Dutch Shell Plc to look for potential oil and gas fields is on course to leave South African waters after community groups won a court case to temporarily halt the activity. A judge on Dec. 28 granted local activists an interim interdict blocking any seismic surveys until a ruling can be made on whether further environmental authorization is required. No date was set for that decision, and just a few days later the vessel named the Amazon Warrior headed back around the Cape of Good Hope, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. “Shell has decided to terminate the current contract for the survey vessel early,” a company spokesperson said, citing ongoing legal hearings and a limited weather window to conduct the work. The company said it is considering how it will proceed in the longer term. Protests against the activity started in South Africa in November with the arrival of the Amazon Warrior. It was set to explore an area known as the Wild Coast, a relatively untouched coastline where whales are frequently spotted.
ExxonMobil tallies two new discoveries offshore Guyana– ExxonMobil announced two oil discoveries at Fangtooth-1 and Lau Lau-1 in the Stabroek block offshore Guyana. The Fangtooth-1 well encountered approximately 164 feet (50 meters) of high-quality oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs. The well was drilled in 6,030 feet (1,838 meters) of water and is located approximately 11 miles (18 kilometers) northwest of the Liza field. The Lau Lau-1 well encountered approximately 315 feet (96 meters) of high-quality hydrocarbon-bearing sandstone reservoirs. The well was drilled in 4,793 feet (1,461 meters) of water and is located approximately 42 miles (68 kilometers) southeast of the Liza field. These discoveries will add to the previously announced recoverable resource estimate for the block, of 10 billion oil-equivalent barrels. “Initial results from the Fangtooth and Lau Lau wells are a positive sign for Guyana and continue to demonstrate the potential for the country’s growing oil and gas sector, ExxonMobil and our co-venturers in the Stabroek block,” Fangtooth was drilled by the Stena DrillMAX, and Lau Lau was drilled by the Noble Don Taylor, which are two of six drillships supporting exploration and development drilling across three blocks operated by ExxonMobil offshore Guyana. Separately, progress continues on infrastructure for future field development. The Liza Unity floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel is undergoing hookup and commissioning after arriving in Guyanese waters in October 2021. The Unity is on track to start production in the first quarter of 2022 and has a target of 220,000 barrels of oil per day at peak production. The hull for the Prosperity FPSO vessel, the third project on the Stabroek block at the Payara field is complete and topside construction activities are ongoing in Singapore for planned production start-up in 2024. The Field Development Plan and Environmental Impact Assessment for the fourth potential project, Yellowtail, have been submitted for government and regulatory review. These new projects continue to drive investment in Guyana’s growing economy. More than 3,200 Guyanese are now employed in supporting project activities, and ExxonMobil and its key contractors have spent more than $540 million with more than 800 local companies since 2015.
Damaged pipeline cuts Libya’s oil output by 200,000 barrels per day--Libya expects its oil production to drop by another 200,000 barrels a day over the next week as workers try to fix a damaged pipeline. The latest outage comes less than two weeks after militias shut down the OPEC member’s biggest field, Sharara, causing output to fall by around 350,000 barrels a day. Together, the closures will reduce Libyan production to about 700,000 barrels a day, the lowest in more than a year. Any sustained drop from Libya, which sits on Africa’s biggest oil reserves, could counter efforts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners to boost exports. OPEC+ meets on Tuesday and is likely to proceed with another monthly increase of 400,000 barrels a day, according to a Bloomberg survey, as it restores supplies halted during the coronavirus pandemic. Libya’s state-owned National Oil Corp. said late Saturday that the main pipeline linking the eastern Samah and Dhuhra fields to the country’s biggest export terminal, Es Sider, will be shut for maintenance. It said the pipe will be working again in a week. Libya pumped 1.2 million barrels a day on average last year. The NOC has warned it lacks the funds needed to sustain that level of production, let alone reach its target of 2 million barrels per day within six years. The government is trying to attract billions of dollars of investment from foreign energy companies, including France’s TotalEnergies SE and Italy’s Eni SpA. Oil facilities can no longer be properly run because of “the large number of leaks” and “the consequences of illegal closures in the past years,” the NOC said in a statement. It also blamed lawmakers for failing to sign off on a budget for the company for the past two years. Fighting between rival factions in the country, which has been at war or in chaos for much of the past decade, has hindered efforts to increase output. Last month, Libya delayed a presidential election meant to end political divisions and help stabilize the energy sector.
Struggling African producers put OPEC output pledges into question--OPEC made only part of its planned production increase last month, with supplies hampered by disruptions in two of the group’s African members. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries added just 90,000 barrels a day in December, as a boost by Saudi Arabia was offset by losses in Libya and Nigeria, according to a Bloomberg survey. The OPEC+ coalition led by Saudi Arabia and Russia has been restoring production halted during the pandemic, and on Tuesday agreed to press on with further increases at a rate of 400,000 barrels a day. But the process has been hindered as some members struggle with investment constraints and internal instability. The coalition’s travails are helping to support oil prices even as global markets tip back into oversupply, with Brent crude futures trading near $80 a barrel in London on Wednesday. Libya’s production is in turmoil again after the country enjoyed a year of recovery and stabilization. Output began to falter after militias shut the country’s biggest oil field, Sharara, ending the month down by 70,000 barrels a day at 1.06 million. With the outage dragging on -- and compounded by damage to a pipeline connecting the largest export terminal -- production is sinking to just 700,000 daily barrels. In Nigeria, Royal Dutch Shell Plc warned of difficulties with shipments of crude oil from its Forcados terminal -- one of the country’s largest -- during the last 10 days of the month. The Bonny terminal, also operated by Shell, has also had trouble loading cargoes. The country’s output was down 110,000 barrels a day to 1.42 million. Ten of OPEC’s 13 members were permitted to add roughly 250,000 barrels a day last month under the terms of the group’s accord with the wider coalition, but their combined hike amounted to only 150,000. While Angola managed a modest recovery last month, its output is down almost three times the amount required by the agreement.
Iraq approves sale of Exxon oil field to state-owned firm --Iraq approved a state company’s potential purchase of Exxon Mobil Corp.’s interest in a huge oil field in the south of the country. The cabinet on Wednesday approved a proposal for Iraq National Oil Co. to start the process of acquiring the stake, Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar said in a statement. He didn’t say if INOC had made a formal offer to Exxon or if it had been accepted. Exxon entered into an agreement to sell its 32.7% stake in the West Qurna-1 field to Chinese firms PetroChina Co. and CNOOC Ltd. in January last year, but failed to get the Iraqi government’s support for the deal. An Exxon spokesperson said via email that the company doesn’t comment on commercial matters. While West Qurna-1 is one of the world’s biggest oil deposits, with expected recoverable reserves of more than 20 billion barrels, it needs billions of dollars of investment. Exxon was among the first Western oil explorers allowed into Iraq in 2010 as the Middle Eastern nation sought to rebuild its energy industry following the fall of Saddam Hussein and years of conflict. Before that, Iraq’s crude bounty had been mostly off limits to foreigners for around 40 years. But the company soured on West Qurna amid tough contractual terms, OPEC supply constraints and ongoing political instability.
OPEC+ agrees oil output hike from February as omicron Covid cases soar --An influential group of some of the world's largest oil producers agreed on Tuesday to stick to its planned increase in oil production from February as energy investors weigh the potential impact of soaring omicron Covid cases. OPEC and its non-OPEC allies, known collectively as OPEC+, decided to raise its output target by 400,000 barrels per day from next month. The move had been broadly expected given U.S. pressure to boost supply and no major new Covid restrictions. Led by OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia and non-OPEC leader Russia, the energy alliance is in the process of unwinding record supply cuts of roughly 10 million barrels per day. The historic production cut was put in place in April 2020 to help the energy market after the coronavirus pandemic cratered demand for crude. "Oil prices are still hovering around $80 a barrel, that's probably higher than what [U.S. President] Joe Biden wants," Herman Wang, managing editor of OPEC and Middle East news at S&P Global Platts, told CNBC's "Street Signs Europe" on Tuesday. "And then you look at the resilience of the market so far to the omicron variant, which OPEC, of course, has dismissed as mild and short-lived. So, there's a lot of optimism around what demand is going to do even though there are these predictions of looming oversupply in the first quarter," Wang said. "I think we are going to look for OPEC+ to continue with their 400,000 barrel per day increase at this meeting. What they are going to do at the February meeting and the March meeting, that is a problem for another time." International benchmark Brent crude futures traded at $79.87 a barrel during afternoon deals in London, up around 1.1%, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures stood at $76.89 a barrel, roughly 1% higher. Oil prices climbed more than 50% last year, with energy investors optimistic that the highly infectious omicron variant may be less severe than feared. That's despite Covid infections reaching new record highs, with the U.S. reporting a global daily record of over 1 million infections in just 24 hours.
OPEC to increase oil output as 2022 demand confidence grows--OPEC and its allies are expected to revive more oil supplies when they meet next week, underscoring the group’s optimism in the outlook for global demand. The 23-nation alliance led by Saudi Arabia and Russia is likely to proceed with another modest monthly hike of 400,000 barrels a day as it restores production halted during the pandemic, according to a Bloomberg survey. Several national delegates also said they expect the boost -- due to take effect in February -- will go ahead. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners see global demand continuing to recover this year, taking only a “mild” hit from the omicron variant. Their confidence is being validated as busy traffic across key Asian consuming countries and dwindling crude inventories in the U.S. buoy international prices near $80 a barrel. “The market can take the extra oil, as long as omicron or a macro downturn don’t crush demand again,” said Bob McNally, president of consultant Rapidan Energy Group and a former White House official. Fifteen of 16 analysts and traders surveyed by Bloomberg predicted the output increase will be approved when the coalition gathers online on Tuesday. Indicators on fuel consumption suggest the barrels can be absorbed, with all but one major Asian country registering a rise in mobility month-on-month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg using Apple Inc. statistics to Dec. 27. Adding supplies would also show that Riyadh continues to be mindful of the inflationary risks afflicting their biggest customers, having acquiesced last month to U.S. President Joe Biden’s calls for extra production to cool runaway gasoline prices. While that surprise move was initially read as bearish by traders, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman helped to shore up market sentiment by resolving that OPEC’s meeting would remain technically “in session” -- allowing it to reverse the output increase at short notice if needed.
Oil bulls return as the threat from Omicron recedes: Kemp (Reuters) - Portfolio investors have started to rebuild bullish positions in the oil market, reassessing earlier fears about the likely impact of the Omicron variant of coronavirus on major economies and passenger aviation in 2022. Hedge funds and other money managers purchased the equivalent of 54 million barrels in the six most important petroleum futures and options contracts in the week to Dec. 28 (https://tmsnrt.rs/3JE0yqq). Funds have purchased a total of 70 million barrels over the two most recent weeks, after selling 327 million over the previous 10 weeks, according to records published by regulators and exchanges. Last week's buying was the fastest since August, and among the most rapid rates for more than a year, signalling a sharp turnaround from previously bearish investor sentiment. Purchases were split fairly evenly between the establishment of new bullish long positions (+32 million barrels) the closure of previous bearish short ones (-22 million). The ratio of long to short positions climbed to 4.86:1 (in the 64th percentile for all weeks since 2013) up from 3.83:1 (47th percentile) two weeks earlier. In the most recent week, funds were major buyers of Brent (+33 million barrels) and NYMEX and ICE WTI (+15 million) with smaller purchases of European gas oil (+7 million). There were only small purchases of U.S. heating oil (+1 million barrels) and small sales of U.S. gasoline (-2 million). The pattern of buying, with its concentration on crude and middle distillates, is consistent with a continued upswing in the macroeconomic cycle despite the rapid spread of Omicron. Funds are calculating the pessimism about the impact on the global recovery and international quarantines that pressured oil prices in November and early December is no longer justified. Portfolio managers are calculating the continued recovery in oil consumption, including jet fuel, coupled with limited production increases by OPEC, its allies, and U.S. shale firms, will keep prices trending higher in 2022.
Oil Futures Up Early Monday - In early activity on the first trading day of 2022, oil futures nearest delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange and Brent crude traded on the Intercontinental Exchange powered higher, lifting the international benchmark above $78 per barrel (bbl) amid reports suggesting Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia-led partners expect the omicron-led disruption to global oil demand to be isolated to the first quarter amid better mitigation efforts to soften the pandemic's impact on the economy and public life. Oil complex kicked off 2022 on firm footing despite ongoing challenges surrounding the fast-paced spread of the Omicron variant over the holiday weekend. U.S. airlines cancelled more than 2,000 flights on Saturday and Sunday, bringing the total cancellations over the past ten days to nearly 14,000 due to shortfalls in staffing crews and severe winter weather in parts of the country. Flight data published by Transportation Security Administration showed 1,616,316 passengers were able to pass through domestic airports on the first day of 2022 -- about 30% below pre-pandemic levels. Fueling labor shortages is the rampant spread of the new COVID-19 variant announced in late November that appears to be less lethal but more transmittable compared with previous strains. The United States recorded more than 400,000 new daily COVID infections over the holiday weekend, shattering the previous record. The same trendline is seen across European Union where new infections set daily records in the United Kingdom, France, and Italy, although hospitalizations have not yet shown a marked increase. Despite this backdrop, OPEC+ is reported to be optimistic about a demand recovery in 2022 with the group's technical panel releasing a document showing the Omicron impact is likely to be short-lived. Manufacturing and service sectors across advanced and emerging economies have effectively weathered the previous waves of COVID-19 pandemic, with the public less likely to pullback on economic activity the way it did during the first outbreak. Additionally, U.S. and European governments rolled-out vigorous booster programs and at-home rapid testing that should help elevate the pressure on hospitals. That is one of the many reasons why OPEC+ is expected to increase production by 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) next month in line with the previously agreed quotas. The group meets on Tuesday (Jan. 4). In early trade, West Texas Intermediate February futures advanced $0.26 to trade near $75.47 bbl and March Brent gained $0.41 to near $78.19 bbl. NYMEX February RBOB futures rallied 1.5 cents to $2.2396 gallon, with the new front-month ULSD contract adding 1.95 cents to $2.3448 gallon.
Oil Settles Higher on 2022 Demand Optimism (Reuters) - Oil settled higher on Monday on hopes of further demand recovery in 2022, despite OPEC+ looking set to agree to another output increase and persistent concerns about how rising COVID infections might affect demand. OPEC and its allies, or OPEC+, are expected on Tuesday to agree to the output hike. The Omicron coronavirus variant has brought record case counts and dampened New Year festivities worldwide, with more than 4,000 flights cancelled on Sunday. "The monthly OPEC + meeting that will be developing during the next couple of days is more likely to prove bullish than bearish since several of the OPEC members are having difficulty achieving assigned quotas," Brent crude settled up $1.20, or 1.5%, at $78.98 a barrel at 12 p.m. EST (1700 GMT), having earlier risen as high as $79.05. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude settled up 87 cents at $76.08 a barrel. "Infection rates are on the rise globally, restrictions are being introduced in several countries, the air travel sector, amongst others, is suffering, yet investors' optimism is tangible," Many U.S. schools that would normally welcome students back to classrooms on Monday are delaying their start dates, scrambling to test pupils and teachers and preparing, as a last resort, to return to remote learning as record numbers of COVID-19 cases from the Omicron variant sweep the country. Oil gained some support from an outage in Libya. Oil output will be cut by 200,000 barrels per day for a week due to pipeline maintenance.
WTI, Brent Futures Add to Gains - Oil futures nearest delivery continued higher early Tuesday after the technical committee for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries signaled tighter supply-demand fundamentals for the first quarter as unplanned supply disruptions in a number of smaller oil producers, including Libya and Ecuador, offset a tsunami of Omicron infections in major oil-consuming countries. Multiple sources have indicated OPEC+ ministers are set to agree today on a 400,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) production increase for February -- in line with their roadmap drafted in July last year to restore output they shut-in in response to the global pandemic. The agreement envisaged monthly increases of 400,000 bpd through April, and then at 432,000 bpd every month until all of the 9.7 million bpd they cut two years ago is returned. The increases must be approved each month and can be paused or deepened should market conditions warrant an adjustment. This month, the consensus is calling for the group to go forward with their agreement despite record-breaking numbers of Omicron infections in oil-consuming behemoths, like the United States and European Union. The Omicron tsunami have triggered severe disruptions to global air travel that is impacting jet fuel demand, with over 14,000 flights have been grounded recently in the United States alone. OPEC+ technical committee, however, expects those disruptions to be transient as governments around the world have learned how to cushion the blow from the pandemic and consumer spending remained solid at the end of 2021. This has been joined with underproduction by a number of African oil producers that have struggled to raise their output in line with agreed quotas and unplanned supply disruptions in countries like Libya and Ecuador. Libya, in particular, has recently seen its oil production drop sharply, with over 300,000 bpd from the country's largest oil field at Sharara shut-in by an insurgency and another 200,000-bpd shut-in over the weekend due to a leaking pipeline that carries crude to the nation's crude oil terminal El Sider. Combined, these closures have reduced Libyan oil production to about 700,000 bpd -- the lowest in more than a year. In Ecuador, soil erosion caused by deforestation in the Amazon have closed the nation's two major oil pipelines that carry crude oil across the Andes. . In Africa, Nigeria and Angola have consistently underproduced their OPEC quotas, seemingly unable to raise production further, with operations plagued by years of underinvestment and political turmoil. This underproduction could become increasingly problematic going forward, and lead to sharply higher oil prices later this year or in 2023, especially if Omicron's dent to global oil demand remains limited to jet fuel as the most recent estimates and analyses show occurred at the end of 2021. The internal document released by the OPEC+ technical committee already showed a much smaller surpluses at the beginning of 2022 compared with the previous projections. The committee pegged the first-quarter surplus at 1.4 million bpd, down markedly from a 3.1 million bpd oversupply seen last month when data on Omicron was still limited. In 2022, the committee put the surplus at 1.4 million bpd, down from its previous forecast of 1.7 million bpd. Near 7:30 a.m. ET, West Texas Intermediate February futures gained $0.25 to $76.33 per barrel, and March Brent added $0.26 to trade near $79.23 per barrel. NYMEX February RBOB futures surged 1.48 cents to near $2.2713 gallon, with the front-month ULSD contract trading near $2.3760 gallon, 1.87 cents higher on the session.
Oil prices rise on skepticism of OPEC’s production plan--Oil climbed amid skepticism about whether OPEC and its allies can successfully raise output as much as they intend. Futures in New York rose as much as 2% and the global benchmark traded above $81 a barrel on Wednesday. OPEC+ on Tuesday stuck to its plan to add 400,000 barrels a day next month after it cut estimates for a surplus in the first quarter. However, recent history shows the group has been severely limited in how much it can boost output -- adding just 90,000 barrels a day in December, according to a Bloomberg survey. “Outside of Saudi Arabia, OPEC is seeing a challenge in increasing production,”. “The more months we roll forward and OPEC is unable to demonstrate adding 400,000 barrels a day of supply, it could start to spook the market.” Adding to worries about supply constraints, U.S. crude stockpiles fell 2.14 million barrels last week, according to a Energy Information Administration report on Wednesday. Inventories dropped for a sixth straight week. Oil ended 2021 on a strong footing as a string of global supply outages boosted sentiment. Consultant Facts Global Energy said the disruptions -- which in recent weeks have included Ecuador, Libya and Nigeria -- totaled close to 1 million barrels a day. Though concerns about the hit to demand from the omicron virus variant have eased and major economies continue to rebound from the pandemic, there’s still some uncertainty in Asia. Hong Kong announced tighter curbs on Wednesday. Earlier this week, the small Chinese city of Yuzhou went into lockdown after a few virus cases, while Xi’an has seen prolonged restrictions after a flare-up. “The market is clearly concentrating on the price supportive news,” said Barbara Lambrecht, an energy analyst at Commerzbank AG. “Whether the optimism will suffice to ignore the looming supply surplus in any lasting fashion will presumably depend chiefly on the omicron wave.” West Texas Intermediate for February delivery rose $1.52 to $78.51 a barrel at 1:08 p.m. in New York. Brent for March settlement added $1.30 to $81.30 a barrel. The actual volume that OPEC+ adds to the market in February could be less than planned, due to some members struggling to hit production targets. Energy Aspects Ltd. co-founder Amrita Sen predicts the alliance will increase output by 250,000 barrels a day next month.
Oil ends up at $80/bbl as OPEC+ sticks with Feb output hike - Global benchmark Brent crude jumped on Tuesday to $80 a barrel, its highest since November, as OPEC+ agreed to stick with its planned increase for February based on indications that the Omicron coronavirus variant would have only a mild impact on demand. Brent futures settled up $1.02, or 1.3%, at $80 a barrel, almost back to the level they were at on Nov. 26 when reports of the new variant first appeared, sparking a more than 10% decline in prices on that day. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose 91 cents, or 1.2%, to $76.99. "The oil market is bullish today as a result of optimism sourced from today's monthly OPEC+ meeting, which is helping oil prices trade higher," said Rystad Energy's head of oil markets, Bjornar Tonhaugen. OPEC+, comprising of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, agreed to stick to its planned increase of 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) in oil output in February. Its decision reflects easing concerns over a big surplus in the first quarter, as well as a wish to provide consistent guidance to the market. Crude stockpiles in the United States, the world's top consumer, were forecast to have dropped for a sixth consecutive week, analysts polled by Reuters estimated ahead of weekly industry data due at 4:30 p.m. EST (2130 GMT), followed by the government's report on Wednesday. The White House welcomed the decision by OPEC+ to continue increases in production which will help facilitate economic recovery, a spokesperson said. "It appears that the market is making the bet that Omicron is the beginning of the end of COVID-19," said Scott Shelton, an energy specialist at United ICAP. In Britain, people being hospitalised with COVID-19 were generally showing less severe symptoms than previously. While in France, the finance minister said some sectors were being disrupted by the surge of the fast-spreading Omicron variant, but there was no risk of it "paralysing" the economy and stuck to a forecast of 4% GDP growth in 2022.
Oil Futures Waver on Mixed API Data -- Nearby delivery month oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange and Brent crude traded on the Intercontinental Exchange edged higher in early trade Wednesday after the American Petroleum Institute reported a larger-than-expected drop in U.S. commercial crude oil inventories during the final week of 2021 accompanied with massive builds in gasoline and distillates fuel supplies amid early signs of Omicron-led destruction to domestic fuel demand. DTN Refined Fuels Demand data showed gasoline demand in the United States slumped 18.4% from the previous week during the final week of 2021, while sliding more than 9% below pre-pandemic level in 2019. On Monday, United States recorded more than one million new COVID-19 infections, a global record high during the pandemic declared in March 2020. Exponential growth offers more evidence that Omicron is better at infecting people who have been previously vaccinated or infected with earlier strains of the SARS-2 virus, which is giving it a larger pool of people to infect. A similar trend is found in diesel consumption, with DTN's Refined Fuels Demand data showing demand for the middle of the barrel fuel declining more than 20% during the week-ending Dec. 31, although up 6% relative to the same week in 2019. Continued rebound in domestic manufacturing, surging imports and popularity of online shopping have offered solid support for diesel demand throughout the pandemic. The data also showed distillate inventories jumped 4.38 million bbl, well above calls for a gain of 400,000 bbl. Commercial crude oil inventories tumbled 6.432 million bbl during the week ended Dec. 31, more than twice calls for a 3 million bbl drop. If realized in Energy Information Administration data to be released later this morning, the draw would press domestic crude oil inventories to about 10% below the five-year average. Separately, overnight data from Eurozone showed economic activity across the 19-nation bloc dropped to a nine-month low 53.3 reading in December that, while still showing growth, resumes a downtrend seen at the start of last year due to renewed COVID shutdowns. In early trade, West Texas Intermediate February futures gained $0.30 to $77.28 bbl, and March Brent added $0.34 to $80.35 bbl. NYMEX February RBOB futures edged higher to $2.2779 gallon, with the front-month ULSD contract gaining to $2.4211 gallon, 1.20 cents higher from Tuesday's settlement.
WTI Slides Back Below $78 As Gasoline Demand Plunges -Oil prices extended their recent gains overnight with WTI topping $78 after very mixed data from API. The recent rally comes as OPEC+ continue to drip-feed production output at 400,000 barrels a day, as the cartel estimates a crude surplus in the first quarter.Concerns about the Covid-19 omicron variant effect on demand may be somewhat overblown if it broadly continues to yield less-severe illness, which bodes well for crude-oil demand in the long term.Still Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Energy Analyst Vince Piazza may face near-term headwinds from U.S. monetary policy. API
- Crude -6.432mm (-3.65mm exp) - biggest draw since Aug 2021
- Cushing +2.268mm
- Gasoline +7.061mm - biggest build since April 2020
- Distillates +4.38mm - biggest build since June 2021
DOE
- Crude -2.144mm (-3.65mm exp)
- Cushing +2.577mm - biggest build since Feb 2021
- Gasoline +10.128mm - biggest build since April 2020
- Distillates +4.418mm - biggest build since June 2021
Airline staffing shortages and weather disruptions forced thousands of flight cancellations over the past two weeks appear to have impacted product inventories dramatically, along with the plunge in gasoline demand.. US gasoline demand fell by the most since April 2020... Graphs Source: Bloomberg Cushing crude stocks grew another week, making it now two months of growing inventories at the commercial storage hub. The storage depot is now sitting at the largest volume since July, after the biggest increase since February.Crude production was flat week over week, at its highest since May 2020...
Oil rallies even as OPEC+ boosts output, US fuel demand dips - Oil prices rose on Wednesday, extending gains even after OPEC+ producers stuck to an agreed output target rise for February and U.S. fuel inventories surged due to sliding demand as COVID-19 cases spiked. Brent crude futures ended up 80 cents, or 1per cent, to US$80.80 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures closed up 86 cents, or 1.1per cent, to US$77.85. The market pared gains late in the day after the release of minutes from the latest U.S. Federal Reserve meeting that showed policymakers may have to raise rates more quickly than markets anticipated. Oil dropped, following other risk assets like stocks. U.S. crude stocks dropped by 2.1 million barrels, owing in part to tax incentives for producers to reduce inventories before year-end. However, gasoline inventories jumped by more than 10 million barrels, and stocks of distillates rose by 4.4 million barrels. Analysts cited soft demand during the last week of 2021 as people hunkered down due to the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. [EIA/S] The United States reported nearly 1 million new coronavirus infections on Monday, the highest daily tally of any country in the world and nearly double the previous U.S. peak set a week earlier. Overall product supplied, a proxy for demand, fell sharply, though the last four weeks has seen stronger demand than the same period two years ago before the pandemic's onset. "Implied product demand – particularly for gasoline – slumped, suggesting that the public were cautious about travel in the wake of surging cases of the Omicron variant. These fears are likely to persist for a few weeks yet," OPEC+ producers, which include members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries along with Russia and others, on Tuesday agreed to add another 400,000 barrels per day of supply in February, as they have done each month since August. Still OPEC+ will probably struggle to reach that target, as members including Nigeria, Angola and Libya face difficulties ramping up production, Barclays analysts said in a note. Even as the group boosts targets, "actual incremental supplies are likely to be much smaller, similar to the demand effect from Omicron," the bank wrote.
Oil slips from one-month high after US fuel inventory surge - Oil prices lost ground on Thursday, falling from their highest levels in more than a month after U.S. fuel stockpiles surged amid declining demand. The global benchmark Brent crude futures fell 63 cents, or 0.8%, to $80.17 a barrel, as of 0727 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures lost 58 cents, or 0.8%, to $77.27 a barrel. U.S. crude oil stockpiles fell last week while gasoline inventories surged more than 10 million barrels, the biggest weekly build since April 2020, as supplies backed up at refineries due to reduced fuel demand. “Implied product demand – particularly for gasoline – slumped, suggesting that the public were cautious about travel in the wake of surging cases of the Omicron variant,“ Caroline Bain, chief commodities economist at Capital Economics said in a note. “These fears are likely to persist for a few weeks yet.” The United States reported nearly 1 million COVID-19 cases on Monday, setting a global record as the spread of the Omicron variant showed no signs of slowing, while heavy snow also disrupted traffic. As well, minutes from a U.S. Federal Reserve meeting that showed policymakers may raise rates more quickly than markets anticipated weighed on riskier assets such as oil. On Wednesday, Brent and WTI futures climbed to their highest since late November as a decision by OPEC+ to increase supplies signalled easing concern of a big surplus in the first quarter. OPEC+, a group that includes members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other producers, agreed on Tuesday to add another 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) of supply in February, as it has done each month since August. “Our reference case now assumes the alliance will fully phase out the remaining 2.96 million bpd of oil production cuts by September 2022,“ JP Morgan analysts said in a note. “With signs of demand withstanding the Omicron variant, low stocks and increasing market vulnerability to supply disruptions, we see the need for more OPEC+ barrels,“ the bank said. JP Morgan forecast Brent prices to average at $88 a barrel in 2022, up from $70 last year.
WTI, Brent Up 2% on Kazakhstan Turmoil, Alberta Deep Freeze -- Oil futures nearest delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange and Brent crude traded on the Intercontinental Exchange settled higher for the fourth consecutive session Thursday, finding strong buying support from political unrest in non-OPEC+'s second largest producer, Kazakhstan, where antigovernment protests halted operations at the nation's key oil fields along with supply disruptions in a number of Africa's oil producing nations that undermine the ability of OPEC+ to raise supply quotas. Kazakhstan's antigovernment protests that were sparked by soaring fuel prices reached the nation's largest oil field, Tengiz, on Thursday, affecting nearly 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) in daily crude oil production. Contractors disrupted train lines and halted operations in support of protests taking place across the central Asian country. Dozens of people were killed Thursday at the capital, Almaty, and Russia's President Vladimir Putin sent military troops to quell protests that turned violent overnight. The situation in Kazakhstan is becoming increasingly tense. The country produces around 1.6 million bpd and was called out at this week's OPEC+ meeting for low compliance with output quotas. For February, the quota for Kazakhstan is 1.589 million bpd, per the group's decision. Further supporting the oil complex, a Bloomberg survey published Thursday morning found OPEC added only 90,000 bpd in new production in December against a quota to increase output by 250,000 bpd last month, which the cartel is entitled to under their deal with Russia-led producers. The output has been severely limited by Africa's largest producers Nigeria and Angola, that combined underproduced to a tune of 250,000 bpd in recent months. Furthermore, Libya's crude production declined sharply at the start of a new year, with over 300,000 bpd from the country's largest oil field at Sharara shut-in by an insurgency and another 200,000 bpd shut-in over the weekend due to a leaking pipeline that carries crude to the nation's crude oil terminal El Sider. Combined, these closures have reduced Libyan oil production to about 700,000 bpd -- the lowest in more than a year. Also on Thursday, TC Energy said it has resumed operations at its 590,000 bpd Keystone oil pipeline following two days of unplanned maintenance amid frigid temperatures affecting western Canada. Temperatures in Alberta plunged to minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit Wednesday night. Most of Alberta is under an extreme cold warning that is expected to last until the weekend. Canadian heavy crude prices tightened as traders anticipated oil sands production issues relating to the cold snap. On Wednesday, Western Canada Select heavy blend crude narrowed its discount to WTI futures to $12.10 barrel (bbl). On the session, front-month West Texas Intermediate futures rallied $1.61 to $79.46 bbl settlement -- a fresh 6 1/2-week high. International crude benchmark Brent for March delivery advanced $1.19 to $81.99 bbl. NYMEX February RBOB futures surged 1.22 cents to $2.3043 gallon, with the front-month ULSD contract gaining to $2.4777 gallon, up more than 3 cents on the session.
Oil Rallies on Kazakhstan Turmoil - Oil futures nearest delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange and Brent crude traded on the Intercontinental Exchange extended higher in early trade Friday following overnight reports that antigovernment protests in Kazakhstan, the second largest non-OPEC oil producer in OPEC+, disrupted operations at the nation's key oil fields, while investors in the United States are waiting for the last month's employment data for clues on the economy's performance at the end of last year. In early trade, front-month West Texas Intermediate futures advanced $0.57 to $79.45 per barrel (bbl), and international crude benchmark Brent for March delivery was up $0.67 to $82.69 bbl. NYMEX February RBOB futures surged 2.26 cents to $2.3329 gallon, with the front-month ULSD contract gaining to $2.4939 gallon, up more than 1.51 cents on the session. WTI, Brent futures rallied to pre-Omicron levels this week amid political turmoil in one of the world's largest oil producer, Kazakhstan, that have disrupted production from the nation's largest oil field, Tengiz. Kazakhstan currently produces around 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd) and was called out at this week's OPEC+ meeting for low compliance with its output quotas. For February, the quota for Kazakhstan is 1.589 million bpd, per the group's decision. Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered security forces this morning to "kill without warning" to crush the protests that have paralyzed the former Soviet republic and reportedly left dozens dead. Further supporting the oil complex, a Bloomberg survey published this week found OPEC added only 90,000 bpd in new production in December against a quota to increase output by 250,000 bpd last month, which the cartel is entitled to under their deal with Russia-led producers. The output has been severely limited by Africa's largest producers Nigeria and Angola that combined underproduced to a tune of 250,000 bpd in recent months. In outside markets, investors are waiting for the release of U.S. employment report that is expected to show 400,000 new jobs were added by the labor market last month. Hiring is expected to have picked up before the latest surge in Omicron-related infections meaningfully impacted the labor market. The unemployment rate is expected to slip 0.1% to 4.1%, a new pandemic-era low. ADP's December employment report, which measures the change in employees on private companies' payrolls, said that 807,000 jobs were added last month, significantly above the 400,000 expected by economists. .
Oil slips, but set for weekly gain on Kazakh, Libyan concerns -- Oil prices settled lower on Friday, as the market weighed supply concerns from the unrest in Kazakhstan and outages in Libya against a U.S. jobs report that missed expectations and its potential impact on Federal Reserve policy. Brent crude settled down 24 cents, or 0.3%, to $81.75 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was down 56 cents, or 0.7%, at $78.90 a barrel. Brent and WTI were on track for gains of about 5% in the first week of the year, with prices at their highest since late November, spurred on by the supply concerns. "Employment data injected a question mark into where we are going from here and Omicron fears have crept back into the market," said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital Management. In Kazakhstan's main city Almaty, security forces appeared to be in control of the streets and the president said constitutional order had mostly been restored, a day after Russia sent troops to put down an uprising. The protests began in Kazakhstan's oil-rich western regions after state price caps on butane and propane were removed on New Year's Day. Production at Kazakhstan's top oilfield Tengiz was reduced on Thursday, its operator Chevron Corp said, as some contractors disrupted train lines in support of protests taking place across the central Asian country. Production in Libya has dropped to 729,000 barrels per day from a high of 1.3 million bpd last year, partly due to pipeline maintenance work. A barrel of oil for delivery in March was selling at a discount of as much as 70 cents to a barrel for delivery in February, the highest since November. Both benchmarks were up $1 earlier in the session but oil, along with stock markets and the dollar, came under pressure after U.S. employment figures missed expectations. U.S. employment in the country increased less than expected in December amid worker shortages, and job gains could remain moderate in the near term as spiralling COVID-19 infections disrupt economic activity. Meanwhile, supply additions from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and allies - together called OPEC+ - are not keeping up with demand growth. OPEC's output in December rose by 70,000 bpd from the previous month, versus the 253,000 bpd increase allowed under the OPEC+ supply deal which restored output slashed in 2020 when demand collapsed under COVID-19 lockdowns. Government data this week also showed that crude inventories in the United States, the world's top consumer, have fallen for six consecutive weeks by the end of the year to their lowest since September. Extreme frigid weather in North Dakota and Alberta is also expected to hurt production in the region and led operators to shut the 590,000 bpd Keystone Pipeline for a short period of time earlier in the week. U.S. oil rigs rose one to 481 this week, their highest since April 2020, energy services firm Baker Hughes Co said in its closely followed report.,
Afghanistan Has Become the World’s Largest Humanitarian Crisis Four months after the Biden Administration withdrew U.S. troops, more than twenty million Afghans are on the brink of famine. On a recent afternoon in a Kabul hospital, seventeen babies lay beside one another on small beds, their bony elbows touching. Some of them, pink and a little plumper, cried and wriggled as nurses rushed by. Others, their pallid skin shades of blue and gray, were still—save for their skeletal rib cages silently rising and falling. The infants often weigh less than four pounds when they arrive in the neonatal intensive-care unit. Pregnant women across Afghanistan are increasingly malnourished, and their bodies, unable to carry their babies to full term, give birth prematurely. Meagre diets then leave new mothers unable to breast-feed. “A lot of babies are premature,” Abdul Jabad, a pediatrician in his late twenties, told me. “Some survive. Some not.” Two or three infants occupied I.C.U. beds meant for a single child, owing to a surge in cases, Jabad, who stood in a white coat in the center of the ward, explained. As a result, most babies contract infections. On the day I visited, some of the sheets on the I.C.U. beds were stained with feces. Exhausted mothers stood next to the beds and stared wide-eyed at their babies. One leaned over, sang lullabies, and gently kissed her child’s cheek. Others paced in the hallway outside. About a third of the children who arrive at the unit do not survive. A month after the Biden Administration pulled U.S forces out of Afghanistan, only seventeen per cent of the country’s more than twenty-three hundred health clinics were functional. Doctors in the hospital in Kabul told me that they hadn’t been paid since the Taliban seized power, in August, and that medicine is in short supply. The new government is struggling to feed the country’s thirty-nine million people, and the chance that an Afghan baby will go hungry and die is the highest in twenty years. Half of the country’s population needs humanitarian assistance to survive, double the number from 2020. More than twenty million people are on the brink of famine. The United Nations Development Programme projects that by the middle of this year Afghanistan could face “universal poverty,” with ninety-seven per cent of Afghans living below the World Bank-designated international poverty line of $1.90 a day.
'Absolutely unprecedented': Massive protests in Kazakhstan are making international shockwaves - Over the span of just two days, what began as protests over spiking fuel prices have snowballed into the most serious unrest the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan, a major energy producer and long a symbol of stability among the former Soviet states, has faced in decades. "I've never seen anything like this in Kazakhstan," Maximilian Hess, a Russian and Central Asian expert and fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told CNBC on Thursday. "It's absolutely unprecedented." Dozens of protesters are reported to have been killed, according to Kazakh media. On Wednesday, protesters lit government buildings in the business capital of Almaty ablaze and took over Almaty airport, which was retaken by military forces by the end of the night. The internet has been suspended by the authorities, and by Wednesday evening, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev had requested support from Russia, which has responded by deploying forces from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Moscow-led military alliance of former Soviet states. Russian paratroopers have now rolled into the country, which for many brings back chilling memories of Kazakhstan's days under Soviet rule. Videos on social media showed demonstrators facing off against hundreds of security forces in riot gear, and crowds pulling down the statue of longtime strongman and former President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Nazarbayev, who stepped down from the presidency in 2019 but still holds significant power, was removed on Wednesday from his position as head of the country's powerful Security Council by Tokayev — his hand-picked successor. Kazakhstan's entire Cabinet has resigned, but this has not quelled the protesters. Unrest began after Kazakhstan's government announced it would lift price controls on liquefied petroleum gas, which is what the majority of Kazakhs use for their cars. Suddenly letting the market dictate LPG prices meant that most Kazakhs were paying nearly double for their gas during the new year period. The impact was particularly acute in Kazakhstan's western Mangystau province, where despite residing in a country rich in oil and gas, living standards are low. Monthly salaries average a few hundred dollars per month, and price increases in a basic amenity like gas are painful. Kazakhstan, a country of nearly 20 million people about four times the size of Texas and the second-largest oil producer among the ex-Soviet states in the OPEC+ alliance, has always been seen as operating under an authoritarian system. Upon taking up the presidency in 2019, Tokayev pledged political and economic reforms — but critics and country analysts say that has been slow to come. The government pulled the fuel price hikes in an attempt to appease the public. But protests sparked by anger over the lifting of the LPG price controls are now taking an increasingly political tone, with reports of demands for democratic change. "The protesters' slogans went well beyond objecting to recent loosening of price controls for transport fuel to challenging the country's leadership," said Nick Coleman, a senior editor for oil news at S&P Global Platts who spent several years living in Kazakhstan. "In that regard the concerns are not dissimilar to those in a number of other ex-Soviet countries over the years." Kazakh authorities are having none of it. Tokayev has already accused the protesters of being part of a foreign terrorist plot, and has pledged to be "as tough as possible" in the face of the demonstrations. Some Russian state media outlets have already accused the West of being behind the unrest.
Kazakhstan's deadly protests hit bitcoin, as the world's second-biggest mining hub shuts down -As the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan plunged into chaos this week, an internet shutdown hit the world's second-biggest bitcoin mining hub, in yet another blow to miners searching for a permanent and stable home. Less than a year ago, China banished all of its cryptocurrency miners, many of whom sought refuge in neighboring Kazakhstan. But months after these crypto migrants set up shop, protests over surging fuel prices have morphed into the worst unrest the country has seen in decades, leaving crypto miners caught in the middle. After sacking his government and requesting the aid of Russian paratroopers to contain the fatal violence, president Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered the nation's telecom provider to shutter internet service. That shutdown took an estimated 15% of the world's bitcoin miners offline, according to Kevin Zhang of digital currency company Foundry, which helped bring over $400 million of mining equipment into North America. As Kazakh miner Didar Bekbau put it, "No internet, so no mining." Bitcoin dropped below $43,000 for the first time since September in trade on Thursday, falling over 8% at one point. The price move followed the release of hawkish minutes from the Federal Reserve's December meeting. Castle Island Ventures' Nic Carter thinks the supply delta from changing the pace of mining is minimal and that the falling price of bitcoin is more a function of the Fed and "general risk-off behavior." Internet service was briefly restored in the country, but data from monitoring group NetBlocks Internet Observatory shows that connectivity levels continue to flatline at just 5% of ordinary levels across the country. "It's now Friday morning in Kazakhstan where internet has been shut down for some 36 hours, placing public safety at risk and leaving friends and family cut off," NetBlocks wrote in a tweet. The entire episode lays bare two significant facts about the state of the bitcoin mining industry. For one, the bitcoin network is resilient to the point that it doesn't skip a beat, even when a substantial portion of miners are unexpectedly taken offline. Second, the U.S. may soon see a fresh influx of crypto miners looking to avoid future disruptions.
China slashes fuel export quotas in first 2022 tranche--China slashed its fuel export quota by more than half in the first batch of allocations for 2022, highlighting the nation’s strategy of progressively limiting overseas sales. A total of 13 million tons were issued, including both general trade and tolling issuances, according to refinery officials who have direct knowledge of the matter. That’s 56% less than 29.5 million tons in the same batch for 2021. Last year, the overall fuel export quota was 36% lower than in 2020. The Ministry of Commerce didn’t immediately reply to a fax seeking comment. The world’s biggest oil importer has been slow giving out this year’s crude import and fuel export quotas amid a slew of challenges. Complex tax investigations of some refiners, rising competition between private and state-owned firms, and the uncertainty caused by the pandemic caused the delays, according to several traders. Beijing is also thought to be considering limiting both the import and export allowances to cut carbon emissions, they said. “Looks like this year’s total fuel export quota will keep declining,” said Yuntao Liu, analyst with Energy Aspects Ltd., adding that a smaller issuance may boost competition between state refiners and independents. Traditional teapots just received a reduction in their crude oil import quota for 2022 last week. Of the general-trade allocations, Zhejiang Petroleum & Chemical Co. received 1.34 million tons of compared with 2 million tons in the first batch 2021, while Sinopec saw the largest cut, getting 2.71 million tons of general-trade quota versus 9.67 million tons last year. Separately, refiners got 6.5 million tons of low-sulfur bunker fuel export quota, 30% more than the same period in 2021. There’s speculation that China may eliminate product exports by 2025. Should that happen, Asian fuel exporters -- in Northeast Asia, Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei -- stand to benefit as regional margins will have to rise to make up for lost Chinese barrels
Global arms sales rise amid pandemic -While the coronavirus pandemic is running rampant, hospitals are overcrowded and thousands of people are dying of COVID-19 every day, arms exports are exploding worldwide. This is according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) report published in December. According to the report, the 100 largest arms companies sold $531 billion worth of weapons in 2020—a 1.3 percent increase in sales compared to 2019.The defence industry has been largely immune to the economic impact of the pandemic. While the global economy shrank by 3.1 percent in 2020, most of the 100 largest defence companies increased their sales. Only 15 companies in the top 100 saw their sales decline by a few percentage points.“The industrial giants were shielded from losses by sustained state demand for military goods and services,” SIPRI researcher Alexandra Marksteiner noted. “In much of the world, military spending has increased, and some governments have accelerated payments to the arms industry to cushion the impact of the crisis.”Leading the way in arms sales is the United States, which accounts for 41 of the hundred largest arms producers, who increased their exports by 1.9 percent and achieved total sales of $285 billion last year. This corresponds to 54 percent of the world total. As of 2018, the top five arms companies are all based in the US.The Chinese arms industry stands far behind the US in second place, selling $66.8 billion worth of defence goods. Since Chinese arms companies were first included in the SIPRI rankings in 2015, their arms sales have increased by 17 percent.The 26 European arms companies account for 21 percent of sales, or $109 billion, according to SIPRI. The UK alone reported record sales of $37.5 billion, a 6.2 percent increase. The UK's largest arms manufacturer BAE Systems, the only European arms manufacturer in the top 10 of the SIPRI ranking, increased its arms exports by 6.6 percent to $24 billion.
End of Easy Money: Monstrous Money-Printer Bank of Japan Stops Printing Money, Cuts Government Securities Below July 2020 Level By Wolf Richter The Bank of Japan – which engaged in QE for longer than any other central bank and leaped into monstrous QE when its new national economic religion of Abenomics took effect in early 2013 – began tapering QE in late 2020, and ended QE altogether in May 2021. Since February 2021, the BoJ has actuallyreduced its holdings of Japanese government securities, the primary driver of QE and the largest category on its balance sheet (72% of total assets), by 3.5%. As of its balance sheet for the end of December, released today, the BoJ reduced its holdings of Japanese government securities to ¥521.1 trillion ($4.5 trillion), below where they’d been in July 2020. I started pointing at the end of QE with the release of the August balance sheet when it became apparent what was going on: The fluctuations of these holdings are associated with large long-term bond issues on the BoJ’s balance sheet. When an issue matures, the BoJ gets its money back, but it doesn’t purchase the replacements until a month or two later.At the end of December, these government securities consisted of ¥507.8 trillion of Japanese Government Bonds (JGB) and ¥13.3 trillion of short-term Japan Treasury bills. The decline in the BoJ’s holdings of government securities since February was concentrated on these Treasury bills.In the US financial media, the most-hyped aspects of the BoJ’s QE were its purchases of Japanese stock ETFs. But in the end, those purchases, which ended in 2020, were minuscule: Just ¥36.7 trillion, about 5% of the BoJ’s total assets.The BoJ marks its stock ETFs to current market value. The Nikkei 225 index has risen about 8% over the past 12 months. Over the same period, the BoJ’s stock ETF holdings have ticked up only 2%.In addition, the BoJ also bought Japanese REITs, corporate paper, and corporate bonds, in even smaller quantities. All combined, stock ETFs, Japanese REITs, corporate paper, and corporate bonds, amounted to ¥48.7 trillion, just a tad below the peak in February 2021. They account for only 6.7% of the BoJ’s total assets:
South Africa Recalls New Isolation and Quarantine Rules (Reuters) - South Africa has recalled rules that no longer required people without symptoms of COVID-19 to isolate or test if they have been in contact with a positive case, the government announced on Tuesday, saying an amended circular will be re-issued. Last week the health ministry said that asymptomatic individuals who had been in contact with a case of COVID-19 no longer had to isolate but should monitor for symptoms for 5-7 days and avoid attending large gatherings. It had added that only those people who developed symptoms needed to get tested and that those with mild symptoms should isolate for eight days and severe cases for 10 days. It had also revised protocols on quarantine, saying all quarantine facilities outside the home would be stopped, while contact tracing efforts would also be scrapped aside from in specific scenarios such as cluster outbreaks. The reason for the revision was based on a number of scientific factors including the fact that, most people have vaccinated with at least one vaccine dose and developed some level of immunity. This has contributed to the current low hospitalisation and high recovery rates, the department said. Now all those protocols will be recalled after the Department of Health was inundated with media, stakeholders and public enquiries and comments following the release of the revised regulations. "In line with the principles of transparency and openness, the department has decided to put the implementation of the revised policy changes on hold, while taking all additional comments and inputs received into consideration," it said in a statement. "This means the status quo remains, and all prior existing regulations with regards to contact tracing, quarantine and isolation remain applicable." The country has led the continent in terms of COVID-19 cases and deaths as well as vaccinations, with 3.42 million cases reported and 90,854 fatalities. Its experience has been closely watched around the world after it was among the first countries to identify the more transmissible Omicron variant. Cases started declining this week, with 7,216 new cases and 25 deaths reported in the past 24 hours.
As Omicron infections soar, Europe’s governments force the sick back to work - The tidal wave of Omicron infections is exposing the urgent necessity of mobilizing the working class against the criminal policies of the ruling elite. Europe recorded its 100 millionth case of COVID-19 over the New Year holiday as much of Europe posted infections at record levels. Yet governments across Europe are slashing isolation periods for people infected with or exposed to the virus, ensuring that sick, contagious individuals will return to work and school. Europe has posted about a third of the world’s confirmed cases as global infections quadrupled over the last two weeks to around 2 million, driven by the Omicron variant. On January 1, despite reduced holiday testing, France found 219,126 cases and Italy 141,353, both records, and Britain posted a near-record 161,692. Countries posting record infections as 2021 ended included Spain at 161,688, Greece 40,560, Portugal 30,829, Ireland 23,281, and Denmark at 22,023. Denmark, an early European epicenter of Omicron, has the world’s highest percentage of its population confirmed sick with COVID-19, with a seven-day incidence rate of 2,514.9 infections per 100,000 inhabitants. This figure is 1,976 in Britain, 1,679 in France, 1,418 in Portugal, 1,414 in Greece, 1,234 in Spain and 1,128 in Italy. The infection statistics massively underestimate the spread of the virus, however, due to insufficient testing. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that a pandemic is out of control if over 5 percent of tests come back positive, as this shows testing is too small compared to the size of the outbreak. In last year’s Delta outbreak in India, this test positivity rate peaked at 22.3 percent. This rate has risen to 49.7 percent in Ireland, a seven-day average of 24.5 percent in Britain, 15.8 percent in France, and between 24.7 and 50.1 percent in various Spanish regions. Statistician David Spiegelhalter told the BBC that given these data, daily infections in Britain alone are actually around 500,000, calling it an “unprecedented wave of infection and very daunting.” Reporting of COVID-19 cases is also downplayed in central and eastern Europe, where the Omicron wave is believed to be only in its early stages. Test positivity rates in late December were 18.6 percent in Germany, 15.74 percent in Poland, and 19.83 percent in Ukraine, where the 7-day moving average of reported cases yesterday were 28,451, 11,085 and 4,202, respectively. German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach gave a similar estimate last week as Spiegelhalter in Britain, saying infection statistics underestimate actual cases by a factor of two to three. This would mean that actual daily infections across Europe are well into the millions. European governments are nonetheless pouring fuel on the fire, following the example of Britain and Spain in slashing COVID-19 isolation periods to force infected people back into schools and workplaces.
Macron launches obscene rant against the unvaccinated as COVID-19 soars - On Tuesday evening, in a live-chat interview to Le Parisien on the 2022 presidential elections and the COVID-19 pandemic, French President Emmanuel Macron launched an obscene rant against the unvaccinated. “Well, now, the unvaccinated, I really want to cover them in sh*t,” Macron said, using the phrase ‘emmerder.’ Denouncing the unvaccinated for being irresponsible, he added: “An irresponsible person is no longer a citizen.” He rejected lockdowns and social distancing measures key to halting infections, even as France posted a record 271,686 COVID-19 infections Tuesday and 332,252 yesterday. He said, “our line is simple: it’s vaccination, vaccination, vaccination and a vaccine pass,” referring to his government’s attempt to get the National Assembly to adopt legislation creating a document to deny access to bars, theaters, cinemas or restaurants to anyone who is unvaccinated. “The idea is to place many constraints on the unvaccinated and, collectively, to encourage behaviors to limit spread.” Macron’s degraded outburst was a statement of intent to let the virus spread unchecked, no matter the cost in lives. French hospitals’ emergency wards are already 73 percent full, even as over 600,000 people in France and 2.4 million in Europe were diagnosed with COVID-19 in the last two days. Yet, long after scientists have confirmed that vaccinated individuals can catch and spread the disease, showing the urgent need for social restrictions, European governments all advocate a vaccine-only policy and washing their hands of any attempt to halt the wave of death. As COVID-19 is transmitted through the air, relying on individual behavior like mask wearing and staying one meter away from others will not reliably prevent contagion. The Macron government, demanding that workers in non-essential production go to work and that students return to classes or sit by the hundreds in crowded exam rooms, is simply creating conditions for countless super-spreader events in France and across Europe. To distract attention from the predictable results of his irresponsible policy, Macron tried to stir up hatred against those most obviously vulnerable amid mass infection: the unvaccinated. Vaccination against COVID-19 is an essential public health measure, substantially cutting the risk of dying or getting seriously ill with COVID-19, and which should be universally adopted in line with professional medical advice. However, it is apparent that the Macron government itself bears heavy responsibility for the fact that several million people in France are still not vaccinated against COVID-19. As Macron ranted against the unvaccinated, he ignored the fact that millions of those he was denouncing as he consigns them to mass infection are very young children who cannot legally obtain the vaccine. Sixty-four children in France are currently on life support, fighting COVID-19. Other unvaccinated people are elderly residents of remote areas who, partly due to Macron’s cuts to rural train services, find it difficult or too costly to get to a vaccination center.
German police raid far-right antivaxers who planned a series of murders - On December 15, police in the East German state of Saxony carried out a large scale raid. Led by the state criminal police, 140 officers entered the homes of six suspects and seized evidence. The suspects, five men and one woman, are accused of preparing a “serious crime endangering the state.” They are alleged to have planned the assassination of the leader of Saxony’s state government, Michael Kretschmer (Christian Democratic Union), and other state politicians. The German TV investigative program Frontal had reported on the assassination plans a week earlier. Two of its reporters infiltrated a chat group of radical vaccination opponents where the murder plans were being discussed. The reporters then secretly filmed meetings of group members. The Telegram group Dresden Offlinevernetzung has over 100 members and is part of the far-right “Querdenker” movement, which plays down the danger of the COVID-19 pandemic and aggressively opposes mitigation measures, as well as vaccination. It maintains close links to anti-Semitic, esoteric and fascist circles. Quotes from Adolf Hitler and anti-Semitic hate posts were regularly shared within the group. The six accused, who live in the cities of Dresden and Heidenau, are between 32 and 64 years old. Three crossbows, weapons and weapon parts as well as mobile phones, computers, storage media and other “substances” were seized by police in their raid. No arrest warrants have been issued so far. According to the state criminal police, most of the weapons found did not require a permit. However, further proceedings have been initiated against individual suspects for violations of the Weapons Act, the Explosives Act and the Narcotics Act.
Dutch to reopen schools despite high infection rates - The Netherlands, under a strict COVID-19 lockdown for the past two weeks, will reopen primary and secondary schools on Jan 10 despite coronavirus infections remaining high, the government announced on Monday (Jan 3). The government stressed that hospital admissions were down considerably since the country went into a lockdown in December, which included schools closing a week earlier than planned for winter holidays. "This is good news for students and it's important for their development and their mental well-being that they can go to school," Education Minister Arie Slob said at a press conference. Vocational schools and universities will not reopen, but instead, have online classes until at least January 17. Last week the Dutch health authorities said Omicron has become the dominant variant in the country. Infections have dropped somewhat from record levels seen in November but remain high with more than 14,000 new cases recorded in the past 24 hours. "Unfortunately, despite our strict measures we are seeing a rise in infections and that means we are concerned about what will happen in the weeks ahead," Health Minister Hugo de Jonge said. On Dec 19 the Netherlands closed all but essential shops as well as restaurants, hairdressers, gyms, museums and other public places. A ban remains in place on gatherings outside of more than two people. The measures will be reassessed on Jan 14. More than 85per cent of Dutch adults are vaccinated, but the country's booster campaign was slow to ramp up. As of Wednesday just over 24per cent of adults has had a booster, though De Jonge said the percentage may double by the end of this week.
Secondary schools requested to provide on-site Covid-19 test for pupils on return to school --All secondary schools have been asked to provide one on-site test for pupils ahead of their return to the classroom this term to help reduce the transmission of Covid-19.Education staff and college students are being asked to self-test at home before they return, and were sent home with tests ahead of the Christmas break.Schools and colleges ordered tests before Christmas and have received these in advance of pupils returning, and will continue to be able to order additional tests through a separate supply route. Schools and colleges made test kits available to pupils before the end of term and they will have access to more as needed.Students returning to university have also been advised to test before they t ravel back to campus.Secondary, college and university students and education staff and early years staff should then continue to test themselves twice a week, and more frequently if they are specifically asked to do so, such as in the event of an outbreak.12-15 year olds are encouraged to get fully vaccinated (two doses), to ensure they are protected. 16 and 17 year olds are now eligible for boosters and are being strongly encourage to take up this offer when invited to do so, along with university students.
Atlas of Endangered Alphabets - If something is important, we write it down. Yet 85% of the world’s writing systems are on the verge of vanishing — not granted official status, not taught in schools, discouraged and dismissed. When a culture is forced to abandon its traditional script, everything it has written for hundreds of years — sacred texts, poems, personal correspondence, legal documents, the collective experience, wisdom and identity of a people — is lost. This Atlas is about those writing systems, and the people who are trying to save them.
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