Juggling Dynamite

The more people COVID-19 infects, the more opportunity the virus has to evolve into new strains.  Variants originally found in the U.K. and South Africa have quickly become the dominant types in the countries where they were first detected.

As of late January, the UK variant had surfaced in 70 countries and territories including Canada and the U.S, and is on track to be the dominant North American strain by mid-March. See: COVID-19 variant in Barrie outbreak upends conventional wisdom of spread.

By late January, the South African variant had surfaced in 30 countries including Canada and America, and the Brazilian was detected in America.  See How Coronavirus Mutations Are Taking Over.

Preliminary estimates suggest the variant from the U.K. is 50%–70% more transmissible than earlier versions of the virus and early data suggests it could also be deadlier.

Scientists have also noted that the South African variant could be better at evading antibodies produced in response to natural infection and vaccination.  See New clinical trials raise fears the coronavirus is learning how to resist vaccines:

New data showing that two COVID-19 vaccines are far less effective in South Africa than in other places they were tested have heightened fears that the coronavirus is quickly finding ways to elude the world’s most powerful tools to contain it.

The U.S. company Novavax reported this week that although its vaccine was nearly 90% effective in clinical trials conducted in Britain, the figure fell to 49% in South Africa — and that nearly all the infections the company analyzed in South Africa involved the B.1.351 variant that emerged there late last year and has spread to the United States and at least 30 other countries.

…Researchers once believed it would take several more months, or even years, for the virus to develop resistance to vaccines. They said the speedy evolution is largely a result of the virus’ unchecked spread.

While vaccination programs are underway worldwide, effective distancing measures remain critical in containing COVID-19’s spread.  Read:  The Virus changed.  Now we must ‘Get to Zero’, or face catastrophe.

Between March 23 2020 and January 5, 2021, the US dollar index (greenback versus the Euro, Yen, Pound, Cdn$, Swiss franc and Swedish krona) fell 13.2% to test long-term support in the $89 area as shown below in my partner Cory Venable’s chart of December 31, 2020.

As the dollar fell, risk-assets on the other end of the global teeter-toter rose and dollar bears became ubiquitous with traders and asset managers the most dollar-short coming into January since 2006, as shown below.

When everyone agrees, something else tends to happen, of course, and since January 8, while the dollar index has quietly strengthened, stocks, commodities and cryptocurrencies have lost ground.

As shown below in Cory’s chart since 2000, at $90.50 starting February, if the oversold dollar (in red) continues to rise for a bit, the risk-on mania that has dominated since March should be in for its next round of comeuppance (S&P 500 price in blue).

As many as one in three COVID-19 survivors suffer from persistent health problems.  Lost productivity and an increasing burden on the sick-care system will compound and extend the pandemic’s costs globally.  See Managing COVID-19 long-haulers, in Barrie, what’s our plan?

A recent study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that one-third of patients with COVID-19 continued to suffer persistent symptoms. (1) Symptoms can include cognitive impairments described as persistent ‘brain fog’ (similar to the patient in the CBC exposé), headaches, severe fatigue, muscle and joint pain, paresthesias or tingling, shortness of breath, exercise intolerance, chest pain, anxiety, depression, elevated heart rate (tachycardia) and other cardiovascular issues. (2)

…What’s concerning is that this constellation of multisystem disease symptoms can arise even after a relatively mild acute exposure. (3)

…As confirmed cases of COVID-19 reach 100 million globally (4), the aftermath of this post-COVID disease will be catastrophic to already overburdened healthcare systems. These consequences are further magnified when the number of mild undiagnosed cases are also considered.

Taking proactive steps possible to avoid illness and improve personal habits remain the best strategies.  This includes a focus on the types of food and beverages we are ingesting.

Sugar and processed foods are two of the most widely abused drugs that are subsidized and encouraged by current policies and social norms.  According to Diabetes Canada, diabetes or prediabetes affects one in three Canadians, costing some $30 billion annually.  On track to get worse, one in two young adults are expected to develop diabetes in their remaining lifetime.

Alcohol has long been associated with major social problems.  What’s less understood is that ethanol, the type of alcohol we drink, is a Group 1 carcinogen, even at low levels of consumption.  Bummer, but fact.  See the Globe and Mail’s recent expose Canada’s drinking problem:  Why alcohol is the new cigarette:

Alcohol is an expensive and dangerous habit for society. Tally the cost of deaths, accidents, illness, lost productivity and criminal justice against the public dollars made selling alcohol, and, Canadian research shows, governments end up deep in the red. The heaviest drinkers cost the most, as individuals. But an overwhelming chunk of that cost comes from the much larger group of moderate drinkers – people having a couple vodka sodas each night after work, the parents regularly sneaking Baileys into their coffee mugs at the park. Adam Sherk, a postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria, crunched the numbers and found that Canadian provinces and territories were running a national alcohol deficit of $3.7-billion a year.