Quietly

Quietly the Covid numbers begin to move in the right direction.  Not the headline numbers of new cases and mortalities.  Those are still depressingly high.  27 million Americans have now been diagnosed with Covid-19.  Over 463,000 of us have died from the disease.  Folks, that's equivalent to losing the entire population of Miami. These numbers will continue to climb in the months ahead and we are well on our way to losing a half million of us by sometime in March.  People tried in the beginning to compare Covid to a bad flu season.  But in a bad year the flu kills between 60-80,000 people in the US.   Covid kills at a much higher rate than the flue.  Nor will the headline numbers be better when looking at vaccination rates.  These are still too slow, while vaccine production hasn't yet caught up with demand.  The Biden Administration has hoped to put 100 million doses into peoples arms in his first 100 days in office.  That is unlikely at the rate we're currently vaccinating.  Yet quietly and slowly the numbers are starting to change and even now we can start to see that the virus will soon start to run out of targets.  Stay with me  as I go through the numbers and on where I'm going with this.

Slightly under 10% of Americans have received their first dose of some form of the Covid vaccine.  That's over 41 million doses.  Roughly 10 million people have also had a 2nd dose.  That's about 3% of the population.  Now add the 27 million Americans that have already had the virus and that adds up to 68 million of us who likely have some form of immunity to the virus. That then gets us to over 20% of the population that likely has some form of coverage against Covid.  Now I know what you're going to say about now.  I know that a single dose of either of the two vaccines currently on the market doesn't confer immunity.  I also know that nobody has an answer to how long antibodies remain in the system for those who've recovered from the disease.  I also know that being vaccinated doesn't give you a 100% probability of immunity from the virus.  But we're moving in the right direction even if you've only had one dose and your odds of you becoming severely ill or dying should you be exposed to the virus are lowered.  Most importantly these numbers will only improve in the weeks ahead.  Right now we're giving something like a million shots a day.  If those delivery numbers stay constant then by the end of March we'll have administered something like an additional 51 million doses and with probably somewhere around 20 million people having both shots.  These numbers only assume we maintain the current vaccination schedules.  They don't account for increases in production or take into account the one dose injection coming soon from Johnson and Johnson.

And the numbers don't take into account the following.  Nearly 60% of Covid fatalities have occurred in people over the age of 65.  It's this population that has been targeted in most states as a priority to receive the vaccine.  We've also just had yesterday with the Super Bowl our last big opportunity for a national super spreader event.  We're going to see in the next few weeks if Americans have learned their lessons and either watched the game at home or limited gatherings to a few trusted friends.  After the big game there's really nothing on the calendar now until we can go back outside that historically calls for millions of Americans to gather together.   Finally Mother Nature may have given us a break as it's bone chillingly cold in much of the country right now, with that weather expected to last much of the next two weeks.  Snow and sub-zero temperatures don't encourage large gatherings.  In any event what large gatherings that may occur in the coming months:  St. Patrick's Day parades, Mardi Gras celebrations, Lent, Passover, Easter, the NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments and the Kentucky Derby are likely to be muted affairs this year, if not cancelled.   

By Memorial Day it's likely we'll see that 100 million people vaccinated, with a sizable percentage of those folks having two jabs in the arms.  I believe Memorial Day should be the target for when enough of us have some form of protection that we can start opening things up.  That faint whiff of whatever will pass for normality in the air right now is likely one of the primary reasons the stock market has been doing well here in the start of February.  Winter & Spring are likely to be no picnic but quietly things are starting to turn for the better.

*Johnson & Johnson is an equity component of certain ETFs we hold for both clients and in personal accounts.