Headed into 2022, the US was averaging 300,000 new COVID cases per day, more than last year’s winter wave.
As the calendar flipped, I called the surge “unfathomable,” noting that within weeks, the country could easily see as many as a million new infections over a given 24-hour reporting period.
Just two days later, the US did indeed log a million new cases in a single day. 1,062,000 cases to be more precise, although I’m sure that’s not the actual number. It’s probably higher considering unreported cases and at-home testing. The figure (below) is quite something.
It’s possible holiday distortions played a role. Monday’s print (which topped every national news outlet’s front page on Tuesday) came from Johns Hopkins. Daily deaths remained relatively subdued, at around 1,700.
It goes without saying that Monday’s dramatic case count was the highest for any nation on any day of the entire pandemic. The US set a new record just a few days previous with nearly 600,000. Outside of the US, India holds the record for daily cases. The country logged more than 410,000 daily infections during its macabre battle with the Delta variant.
As detailed here, the decision calculus for economic actors involves weighing much higher odds of transmission against the rollout of booster shots, the introduction of effective oral therapeutics and evidence that suggests the new strain is less likely to cause severe disease. Wall Street was forced to delay plans for a return to offices as cases spiraled in New York City (figure below).
Mayor Eric Adams is determined to keep the city’s schools open. “We want to be extremely clear: The safest place for our children is a school building,” he said Monday. It’s not obvious why that’s the case, and at least some parents don’t seem convinced.
“About a third of city parents did not send their children back to classrooms on the first day after the holiday break,” The New York Times noted, adding that at “just over 67%” attendance was only “slightly higher than the low point of 65% the system reached on the day before winter break.”
Some parents have resigned themselves to what they clearly view as the inevitable. “He could get the virus outside of school,” one mom told the AP, of her 9-year-old son. “So what can you do?”
Even if the worst case scenario — i.e., surging deaths and a wave of severe disease — is averted, there’s ample scope for the Omicron wave to create problems. Already, “the results are canceled flights, closed schools and offices, overwhelmed hospitals and strangled supply chains,” Bloomberg wrote Tuesday, summing things up in one sentence.
Some suggested market participants are taking the view that Omicron is more likely to be inflationary than deflationary. 10-year breakevens hit 2.66% on Monday, the highest since November and more than 30bps above local lows (figure below).
Be careful in your interpretation, though. 10-year reals jumped seven basis points Monday. When the dust settled on the worst opening day of any year for Treasurys in a decade, 10-year breakevens were just four basis points higher.
“One key aspect of Monday’s price action was that the bulk of the move in nominal yields was also reflected in reals, indicating the shift was more about an improving growth outlook rather than higher inflation concerns,” BMO’s Ian Lyngen and Ben Jeffery wrote.
“Given that the Fed is poised to commence hiking this year, it follows that higher breakevens will become incrementally more difficult to achieve as any acceleration in the real economy not only cements the argument for higher outright yields, but it simultaneously increases the probability the Fed hikes sooner rather than later,” they added.
Omicron feels like the variant that can finally push us into herd immunity. More transmissible but less deadly than Delta but also provides antibodies against Delta. I get the feeling that this is the beginning of the end of the pandemic. Republicans will of course claim they were right all along with their anti-vax/anti-mask propaganda. But the death toll being higher than any other country in the world despite being the richest and not the most populous still doesn’t jive with their logic. It’s almost like Covid-19 isn’t deadly enough for Darwin’s theory to work.
Looks to me like Darwin got it right. Look at the variations already. Remember, the virus doesn’t evolve to help us, it evolves to protect itself. A virus is more like a parasite than anything else. It has to find a host with cells it can infect for it to become living tissue. Omicron is one more step to perfection, highly transmittable but not so strong that it easily kills its host. The common cold (also a SARs type virus) has been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years. It is unlikely to kill its host, but by making you miserable it can continue to propagate itself indefinitely. It can’t really be stopped or cured so no one is immune. I have noticed that as I have aged my colds have changed with me. Totally different now that when i was young. It is clear that there will be no end to COVID-19. Hopefully, it will continue to evolve in our favor, as well as its own.
Declaring an end to the pandemic at this point is premature. Maybe the Omicron wave with buttress herd immunity. But maybe not- apparently Delta infection does not give much protection to Omnicron. There could be another variant. Hope not. But who knows?