Dow dropped 137, decliners over advancers better than 3-2 & NAZ went climbed 88 to a new record. The MLP index fell 6 to 190 & the REIT index was off 2+ to the 448s. Junk bond funds fluctuated & Treasuries were heavily purchased. Oil pulled back in the 73s & gold added 2 to 1780.
AMJ (Alerian MLP index tracking fund)
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Senator Rob Portman said that the bipartisan infrastructure deal can move forward, following Pres Biden's clarification that he’ll sign the bill even if it comes without a reconciliation package. The pres had said last week that he'd refuse to sign the deal unless the 2 bills came in tandem, a remark that angered and surprised Rep lawmakers. After backlash from Reps including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Biden released a lengthy statement walking back the comment & reiterating full support for the deal. “We were all blindsided by the comments the previous day, which were that these two bills were connected,” Portman said. “I’m glad they’ve been de-linked and it’s very clear that we can move forward with a bipartisan bill that’s broadly popular not just among members of Congress, but the American people,” Portman added. He continued with there's been “good faith” from both parties throughout negotiations. The 2nd bill, called the American Families Plan, would have spending for Dem-backed issues like climate change, child care, health care & education. It would be passed thru reconciliation, a process that doesn't require Rep votes to pass thru Congress.
GOP senators say bipartisan infrastructure deal can move forward after Biden clarifies position
The US is “never going to have zero” new daily Covid cases, Dr Scott Gottlieb said. “We’re always going to have some level of spread,” the former FDA chief said, predicting infections will become endemic, meaning they will remain present in the American population. Seasonal flu, for example, is an endemic respiratory illness. His comments come as concerns increase about the Covid delta variant, first discovered in India & now wreaking havoc in the UK. It's starting in the US, threatening to cut into the nation's hard-earned progress in reducing virus prevalence through mass vaccinations & other public-health strategies. Gottlieb said that while spread of the delta variant will continue to increase in the US, the response to new cases there may not follow the blueprint being used in other parts of the world. He pointed to Israel as one example. That country, which garnered acclaim for the success of its vaccine rollout, recently reinstated its indoor mask mandate, less than 2 weeks after first lifting it. “Israel is a poor proxy in terms of what they’re doing relative to our situation here, because Israel is really going for a situation where they want zero Covid,” said Gottlieb. “We’re not going to try to get this down to zero cases a day” in the US. “Israel is trying to get it down to zero cases a day, so that’s why you see them taking different kind of measures than us,” he added. “Hong Kong is trying to keep it out completely; that's why they're banning travel.” Despite predicting the US will have “persistent infection,” Gottlieb said the nature of the cases, in both scale & geography, will vary significantly from earlier stages of the pandemic, which is defined as an epidemic gone global. “I don’t think we’re going to have a situation like we did last winter, where there’s 200,000 cases a day. I think we’re talking about tens of thousands of cases, perhaps, a day, here in the United States as it starts to take hold across the country,” said Gottlieb, who led the Food & Drug Administration from 2017-2019.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb says daily new Covid cases in the U.S. won’t ever go to zero
Vaccines are working against Covid-19, including the highly contagious delta variant — but the challenge is in getting enough people inoculated, according to a professor of preventive medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “Leaving it in the refrigerator doesn’t help, that won’t prevent disease. You have got to move that vaccine into arms,” William Schaffner said. Data collated by online scientific publication, Our World In Data, showed around 22.6% of the world’s population have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine — but most of them are in high-income, wealthy countries in North America & Western Europe. Less than 1% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose. It remains unclear if those vaccinated against Covid-19 would require booster shots down the line. A group of Centers for Disease Control & Prevention scientists recently said there isn' enough data at the moment to support recommending booster shots to the general population but that more vulnerable groups, such as elderly people or transplant recipients, may need an extra dose. Schaffner said the need for booster shots would depend on 2 things. “The duration of protection of our current vaccines, still to be determined but so far so good, and the other is, whether new variants develop that can evade the protection of our current vaccines,” he said, adding that such variants have yet to appear. “We just have to get (Covid vaccines) more accepted in the population.”
Vaccines work against Covid but not enough people are getting shots: U.S. doctor
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