Weakening Wednesday – 543,415 New Covid Cases Hard to Ignore

267,305.

That is our new 7-day average of infections, beating the old high of 250,512 set back on January 12th.  On Monday, there were 543,415 infections and 380,751 yesterday and the trend is not our friend as the rate of infection has been doubling every two weeks since we were at 70,000 per day in early November.   

For perspective, the entire World shut down in the Spring of 2020, when we peaked out at just over 30,000 cases per day in the US – that is 1/18th as many cases as we had on Monday alone.  Does it make sense to you that the "messaging" you are getting from the Government and the Corporate Media is now to just grin and bear is as the virus spreads completely out of control.  As we suspected would happen on Monday, already the Government is "solving" the problem by officially telling people they only need 5 days of isolation instead of 10 days – because they want everyone to get back to work.

And, of couse, in Washington, DC, home of the anti-vaxxers and their staffs, things are completely out of control with 7 TIMES more infections per day than they had at their peak last fall and the entire Northeastern US is running more than double the rate they were at last January.  

Can the markets keep ignoring this surge in cases?  Certainly not if we're talking 1M cases per day next week.  Even if Omicron were as mild as the flu – having 7M people per week get sick would be damaging to the economy.  At the moment, "THEY" keep pointing out that hospitalizations and deaths are not maching the record highs – but that's because those are LAGGING indicators that FOLLOW the infections.  Yes, that's very obvious but, unfortunately, you have to actually say these things out loud to cut through the BS that's pumped out by the Corporate Media.  

I think I'm going to get a bit more hedged into the weekend, while the shorts are cheap.  We just did our Short-Term Portfolio Review (STP) on Dec 14th and determined we had $580,000 worth of downside protection against a 20% drop but our Long-Term Portfolio has popped up…

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