2021-11-30

Omicron Fears Reignite Overnight

Maybe this will fade by the AM, but crude is near its lows from Friday so maybe not... FT: Moderna chief predicts existing vaccines will struggle with Omicron
Stéphane Bancel said the high number of Omicron mutations on the spike protein, which the virus uses to infect human cells, and the rapid spread of the variant in South Africa, suggested the current crop of vaccines may need to be modified next year.

“There is no world, I think, where [the effectiveness] is the same level . . . we had with Delta,” Bancel told the Financial Times in an interview at the company’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He added: “I think it’s going to be a material drop. I just don’t know how much because we need to wait for the data. But all the scientists I’ve talked to . . . are like ‘this is not going to be good’.”

The Moderna chief executive’s comments come as other public health experts and politicians have tried to strike a more upbeat tone about the ability of existing vaccines to confer protection against Omicron.

See the first two links in this post to get a worse-case scenario: ADE. There's speculation that the omicron variant uses the antibodies made by the vaccine to evade the immune system. Nt worst case because so far cases are mild, but it could panic markets and the nervous nellies to find out the vaccinated are more at risk of infection and the vaccines don't work at all. a sane, ratinal person would look at mild cases and end everything immediately, but we have insane, paranoid neurotic ppower-mad cowards in charge. Who knows what the poolicy response will be, but odds are the policies will range from bad to worse.

There's about 100 points for NQ to slide before a challenge of the Friday lows comes into the conversation. Powell testifies tomorrow and Wednesday. He probably will say something dovish, but who knows how the markets take it. As I've discussed before, if the Fed does hint at easing, are investors going to panic this time, or will they front-run the inflatin? Gold is currently up a bit...

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