The fifth wave of COVID is here, but you’d hardly guess that if you look at the markets. Stocks marched to a record close today before the markets close for the Christmas holiday tomorrow. 🏆
Over the last week, as the S&P 500 marched 73.29 points (or 1.58% to 4,725.79), the Coronavirus looked like it would continue its own march. The 7-day average number of worldwide cases on Dec. 20, the most recent day for reported data, was 667,197. However, case numbers for the last few days have been on the higher end of 700,000.
By and large, the U.S. is the leader in new cases (243,676). Those figures helped push America’s total cases to over 50 million in the last week, which has been accompanied by another grim milestone: over 800,000 deaths. That’s so bad that it actually prompted a sharp reduction in U.S. life expectancy, and it also means that 1 in ~412 Americans have died of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. That might seem high, but that figure will probably crawl higher — only 61.7% of the country is “fully vaccinated.“
This week, the FDA approved two antiviral pills which hope to keep COVID at bay, one by Pfizer and another by Merck. The market reacted well to both drugs’ approval just in time to arrest Omicron’s impact. It’s a good thing, too, because hospital capacity is starting to rise again in most states. As of today, 77.4% of inpatient beds are in use (at least from the hospitals tracked by the HHS.)
The real question on everyone’s mind is: when does this end?? Will we have to go back to lockdowns? How does this impact the economy? Ultimately, the Coronavirus was very lucrative for the stock market (because of the monetary policy it created.) We have a labor shortage almost entirely because of the large number of seniors and folks over the age of 50 who retired early thanks to their 401(K) and IRA gains. You can assume most of the lucrative growth is behind us, especially as we roll into 2022.
In that sense, Covid is more of an inconvenience than a meaningful disruption.
One thing is certain, though. The current administration has no desire to go back to the early days of the pandemic. 🙅 We won’t attempt another unsuccessful lockdown campaign, nor will politicians offer more stimulus checks/SBA relief. While COVID is still here, over a fifth of people have already gone back to their pre-pandemic lives. It’s unlikely the virus will ever fully go away, but people’s tolerance to continue living restrained lives absolutely will. 🚨 🚨