“We have no time to waste”
This week the odds of additional stimulus are looking even better. Biden and his team recently announced a $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” that includes much of what we discussed last week, including direct payments to households, extending and increasing unemployment benefits, eviction and foreclosure moratoriums, and rental relief. Like the best laid plans of mice and men, this still must go through Congress. Biden’s copywriters note that Congress “should act expeditiously to help working families, communities, and small businesses persevere through the pandemic” and commentators are optimistic that the plan “has enough in it to make it palatable to lawmakers across the political spectrum”.
“Currently unclear”
To the question of the potential consequences of the new COVID-19 strains, including the recently announced strains from Ohio, the answer is it is still unclear. The bad news is it appears that one of the strains “first identified in the U.K.”, which “doesn’t appear to cause more severe illness” but “is more contagious than the currently dominating strain of the coronavirus”, “is likely to become the dominant strain circulating domestically in March”. This strain, combined with “Covid fatigue”, leads the folks at Epsilon Theory to worry that a series of “Ireland events” will happen in the US “over the next 30-45 days”.
However, the good news is that it appears new strains will not completely negate the utility of the various vaccines. There’s preliminary research showing that mutations in the spike protein (which allows the virus to enter cells) do not necessarily allow the virus to escape neutralization by previously generated antibodies. Additionally, recent research on the sera of patients who have received an mRNA vaccine shows that their antibodies are still relatively effective against the new mutants. A recent study also indicates that immunity following infection lasts “at least five months”. All of this research may however be of little comfort to those watching as incoming data seems to indicate the vaccines are less effective than advertised and a number of other new strains make headlines.
