Wanted: Someone To Serve These Drinks
Activity in the US services sector is robust, but perhaps cooling at the margins.
That's one takeaway from this week's only top-tier (or pseudo-top-tier) data release in the US.
ISM services printed 60.1 for June (figure below), a considerable downside miss. The market wanted 63.5. The range, from five-dozen economists, was 61 to 65.5, so the actual print trailed even the most pessimistic guess.
This comes on the heels of a (slightly) disappointing ISM manufacturing report last week.
The h
Is this as good as it gets?
“Israel was an early success in the rush to vaccinate its residents but has fully vaccinated just 57% so far, according to Johns Hopkins University, and has primarily used the vaccine developed by Pfizer and German partner BioNTech. That vaccine uses mRNA technology that is also used in the Moderna vaccine, both of which are authorized in the U.S.
The Israeli health ministry said it now believes the vaccine is just 64% effective at preventing symptomatic infections, which compares with the efficacy rate of about 95% in clinical trials back in 2020, it said in a statement posted on Twitter. The vaccine remains roughly 93% effective at preventing hospitalizations and death, the ministry said. Experts have repeatedly warned of the need to vaccinate at least 70% of the world’s population to prevent new variants emerging that may prove resistant to the existing vaccines.”
I was very concerned about Pfizer’s rush to brag about it’s clinical trial efficacy when it had no idea how many participants were actually exposed to Covid. While it was a great headline for the CEO to sell off his shares at a record high to, it was essentially George W. Bush saying “Mission Accomplished” when the Iraq insurgency was just getting started.
These types of announcements reduce faith in vaccines and they create a glaring blind spot for pharma companies to realistically evaluate themselves so that they can produce the most effective medicine possible.
And so here we are with maybe half of the world choosing to get vaccinated with a vaccine that is only marginally higher than that at preventing symptoms. Seems you are right, this is as good as it gets.
I suggest offering a small tax rebate to vaccinated people. I bet that would get vaccine hesitant Republicans to the doctor in droves… 🙂
Brilliant, and make it a felony to lie/forge a vaccine card so they lose their right to vote or own a gun if they caught.
OOOH. I like the “lose the right to own a gun”. No other penalty but that one would sting… Far more than the doc’s syringe… 🙂
Tax credit makes total sense given the cost of treating Covid across economic and health domains … great suggestion …
Thanks. Hopefully someone in the Biden administration take our suggestion up… 🙂
Or a small tax rebate to people working in office (“not from home”)
Something I’ve been looking into: long Covid’s possible effect on labor force participation. Data is only starting to come in, from smaller observational studies and so on, but it looks like anywhere from 10% to 30% of persons recovered from Covid have long-lasting symptoms, with fatigue, neuro, GI, all being reported. If 100 million Americans have gotten Covid (official tally 34 million cases), granted that many or most were not in the labor force (being young or old, etc), that could still be several million Americans with some degree of residual effects that might delay or disrupt their return to work, especially physically demanding jobs.
Resurrecting’s this thread in light of an interesting story from Vanity Fair.
People Get Upset: A Mass Labor Shortage Is Leaving Hamptonites to Fend for Themselves
Sky-high rental costs, a ban on temporary work visas, and an exploding population due to COVID have forced East Enders to mow their own lawns, iron their own sheets, and forego salon appointments. “Everyone’s going for the natural look this year,” says one resident.
BY STEPHANIE KRIKORIAN
JULY 8, 2021
One interesting quote touched on an argument about the dearth of servers raised by our Dear Leader now & then:
“I know a lot of restaurant people who took that time to start doing what they originally wanted to do,” she said. “We all slowed down and remembered that those jobs aren’t who we are. A lot of people I know started doing stuff from home. Small businesses. Online work. Things that can’t be shut down again.”
The story is a little snarky, but it sheds light on something more relevant to investors. Who “summers” out there? Well, it includes the Wall Street strategists who we breathlessly follow. They listen to their family and neighbors gripe about the labor shortage and costs and then suffer from slow service when awaiting their $45 chicken salad sandwich. It colors their world view and gets reflected in their weekly missives.
“Inflation is rampant!” Labor shortages everywhere!” “Everyone is buying a Peleton!”
That said, biased or not, this perspective often dictates market direction.