Headlines on Tuesday were dominated by the UK’s vaccine rollout (the first among western nations), another Brexit cliffhanger, and, obviously, the state of play with the virus, which is now killing roughly as many Americans each day as it did during the April peak.
Speaking during a television interview, Boris Johnson called Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine “a shot in the arm for the entire nation.” The UK received 800,000 doses initially, enough to vaccinate 400,000 people, starting with inpatients at hospitals, care-home staff, and outpatients who are at least 80 years old.
“It’s important for people to understand that the virus is, alas, still rising in some parts of the country,” Johnson warned. “We can’t afford to relax now.” No, “we” really can’t. And the visual (below) shows you why.
A 90-year-old named Margaret Keenan became the first person to get the vaccine. “At the moment I don’t know how I feel — just so strange and wonderful, really,” she said after receiving the shot at a hospital in Coventry. “This is for a good cause and I’m so pleased I had it done,” she added, calling it “the best early birthday present I could wish for.” Keenan turns 91 next week and thanks to the shot, plans to start seeing her family again in 2021.
“Eliminating COVID-19 isn’t an objective that will occur overnight, even if the initial progress is encouraging as medical science has managed a novel solution for a novel coronavirus,” BMO’s Ian Lyngen wrote Tuesday. “The US is still several months (if not quarters) away from beginning the transition back to any version of normal [but] for now, financial markets appear content with the progress, even if the vaccine rollout met little fanfare — after all, it was simply the logical progression of events in a timeline announced weeks ago.”
For folks who might be scared of the vaccine, Johnson said “don’t be.” “There is nothing to be nervous about,” he added, before saying that in his judgment, anyone who objects to a vaccine “politically, or for ideological reasons” is “totally wrong.”
Speaking of “totally wrong,” Mitch McConnell was still reluctant to throw his support behind a $908 billion bipartisan stimulus bill in the US, urging Democrats to “drop the all or nothing tactics.” That is absurd. It’s a bipartisan bill. And while I understand that “bipartisan” is a foreign concept to McConnell and may not even be in his vocabulary, it means that some Republicans back the deal too.
And it’s hardly “all or nothing.” Democrats have come down from $3.4 trillion (with a “t”) in May to now $908 billion (with a “b”). McConnell has been stuck at $500 billion since September. His attempts to put this solely on Democrats have moved beyond the realm of the silly and into territory where he’s just being obstinate for the sake of obstinance. That, as hospitalizations continue to hit records, fatalities trend higher, and health officials caution the worst for the US is yet to come.
McConnell is still holding out for more sweeping protections for employers. Essentially, he doesn’t want businesses to be sued, and a six-month moratorium included in the bipartisan deal isn’t good enough for him. He’s using that as a bargaining chip for acquiescing to aid for state and local governments. If that sounds somewhat irresponsible to you, you’re not alone.
This comes as lawmakers continue to haggle over broader spending legislation to keep the government funded.
Maybe McConnell could learn something from Margaret Keenan. Take the medicine, Mitch. “This is for a good cause” and you’ll be “so pleased” to have “it done.”
Meanwhile, Brexit hangs in the balance, with Boris set to go to Brussels and chat in person with Ursula von der Leyen. On Tuesday, he said this is a very “tricky” moment for the talks and admitted that a deal may not be possible past a certain juncture. Still, he insisted the UK remains “very hopeful.”
“The most extreme call option on GBPUSD of notable size reported with a strike of 1.4000, while the most bearish is for 1.2300 — though on a much smaller notional,” Bloomberg’s Ven Ram wrote, describing the state of play in the options market for the pound.
“Such outlying options tend to be a cheap way of speculating on the outcome of Brexit trade talks, and were likely structured many weeks prior,” he added, noting that by contrast, “pricing in the volatility markets [shows] cable is priced to settle between 1.2737 and 1.3950 in a scenario encompassing about 95% of all probabilities.” That’s still a pretty wide range.
