What A Month It Was

January, 2022. 

What a month it was.

A year ago the vaccines were beginning to go into people's arms and we were told that normalcy was just around the corner.

The vaccines were the answer.

In the last year over 10 billion doses of Covid vaccines have been administered around the world.

Cumulative Covid vaccines doses administered worldwide

What a month it wasn't in January for anyone who was still claiming that this was a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

In Australia there were 6 times more Covid cases in January, 2022 than in the previous two years of the pandemic combined.

Cumulative confirmed Covid cases in Australia

There were also more Covid deaths in Australia in January than in the first 18 months of the pandemic in total.

In Israel, there were more Covid cases in January than in the previous two years of the pandemic.

Cumulative confirmed Covid cases in Israel

Again, all of this took place in one month compared to the previous two years.

There have been 88% more deaths from Covid in Israel since the vaccines were introduced compared to the period when they were not available. A surge in deaths in January contributed to this total.

Cumulative confirmed Covid cases in Israel

You get a sense of what a month it was by looking at this chart of global Covid cases.

Daily Global New Covid Cases

This is after 10 billion doses of "highly effective" vaccines?

In the United States there were over 20.2 million confirmed cases of Covid reported in January alone.

That is equal to the total number of cases in the entire year of 2020 and is almost 60% of the entire amount of confirmed cases for the full year of 2021.

Cumulative confirmed Covid cases- United States

It wasn't all bad news in January in the United States.

New York saw Covid cases go down in January almost as quickly as they increased in December.

New Reported Cases in New York
Credit: The New York Times

New daily cases in New York dropped from 81,077 on January 1 to 9,688 on January 31---an 88% reduction in one month.

Wisconsin saw the 7-day average in new cases increase 3.5x between January 1 and January 18. Cases then dropped 72% over the next 13 days ending January 31.

New Reported Cases in Wisconsin
Source: The New York Times

It was almost an Omicron rocket roundtrip in Wisconsin during the 31 days of January.

Having money in the stock market proved to be a rough ride in January.

The NASDAQ narrowly avoided its worst January in history. It finished down 8.99% after a closing rally on January 31 that kept the month from going in the record books.

The S&P 500 and Dow both had their worst performing months sine the pandemic began.

Do you also remember all of the hullabaloo back in November when Joe Biden stated that he was going to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to drive down oil prices and gas prices at the pump?

I wrote at the time that this action was nothing but political theater. It would have no impact on prices. All it would do would deplete the oil reserve and require us to replenish it at higher prices and/or put us at risk when we had a real emergency,

When Biden implemented this policy WTI crude oil was selling at $75.50/ barrel.

It was priced at $74.88 on December 31, 2021.

The price advanced to $86.84 on January 31, 2022---a 16% increase in the month of January alone.

It was trading at $88.28 on February 2.

January, 2022 was clearly not a good month for Joe Biden.

Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/crude-oil

We still don't know what January's inflation numbers (to be released February 10) will look like but the increase in oil prices will not help.

We also await January's unemployment numbers that are due out on Friday.

The numbers we will see will most likely not look good as Biden's Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, claimed on Monday that 9 million people were out sick with Covid the week of the job survey, and many of these will be considered as unemployed as a result.

Psaki suggests in the press briefing remarks that if someone is out with illness and does not receive sick pay from their employer they are considered "unemployed."

Credit: https://twitter.com/mrctv/status/1488218347883933698

If you are sick you are now considered unemployed? 

However, this is not how the Bureau of Labor Statistics technical documentation states how an ill employee is supposed to be counted.

An employee who is ill, whether of not being they are being paid, are to be counted as employed if they have a job whether or not they worked that week due to illness.

This is an excerpt from the BLS Technical Documentation.

If BLS is not following this standard, they are violating their own rules and the precedent for prior years.

In any event, considering how the White House is trying to front run the employment numbers, you can expect that there is more bad news coming about January, 2022 when the unemployment numbers are released. 

January, 2022.

...What a month it was.