Covid-19 Update; Last-Mile Delivery; And, Solar Power Hits A Snag In The Southwest -- June 4, 2021

Covid-19 deaths fall to lowest point since March 2020: link here. That's from today's WSJ. ZeroHedge was reporting this over a month ago, May 15, 2021. Link here: Covid deaths plummet as excess mortality falls to pre-pandemic levels.

CDC data: link here.

After a couple days with a significant drop in the number of vaccinations, we're back to 1.3 million vaccinations given in the past 24 hours. 

Regeneron; Covid-19 antibody now cleared by the FDA for simply injection, intramuscularly, a "jab," or a "shot." Much more convenient than intravenous infusion. Works better than Clorox. Link to The Wall Street Journal.  This "Covid-thing" will lead to so many incredible spin-off developments that some years from now, folks may agree that this pandemic was a huge positive, on so many levels.

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Solar Power's Land Grab Hits A Snag

Link at Reuters via Yahoo!Finance:

Walmart and Target are testing their own home package delivery services in the United States - stealing a page from Amazon's play book - as e-commerce demand strains traditional carriers like United Parcel Service, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service.

The move is just the latest example of how Walmart Inc and Target Corp are working to close the gap with Amazon.com Inc, the No. 1 online retailer. Amazon has recruited armies of small businesses to provide delivery services from vans emblazoned with the company's logo - an effort that has helped it control customer wait times and costs.

UPS, FedEx Corp and the USPS have been inundated with packages since the coronavirus pandemic hit U.S. shores last year - forcing retailers to seek new ways to get goods into the hands of customers while containing soaring delivery costs.

Walmart - a key FedEx delivery customer - has been trialing its first company-branded "last-mile" delivery vans, John Furner, Walmart's U.S. chief executive, said on the company's earnings call on Tuesday.

Since January, a small, electric van fleet has made package deliveries in the Bentonville and Rogers areas near Walmart's Arkansas headquarters, company spokeswoman Camille Dunn said. The drivers work for Walmart, which also employs its semi-truck drivers.

Retailers are dealing with a trucker shortage that threatens their ability to stock their stores. However, van drivers in theory should be easier to find because they don't require professional licenses like big-rig drivers do.

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Solar Power's Land Grab Hits A Snag

Link at The WSJ. 

This windswept desert community is full of clean energy supporters including Suzanne Rebich, an airline pilot who recently topped her house with 36 solar panels. About 200 homes generate their own solar energy and a quarter of the local electricity supply comes from hydroelectric power.

All the same, many here are dead set against a planned solar plant atop the Mormon Mesa, which overlooks this valley 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Slated to be the biggest solar plant in the U.S., the Battle Born Solar Project by California-based Arevia Power would carpet 14 square miles—the equivalent of 7,000 football fields—with more than a million solar panels 10 to 20 feet tall. At 850 megawatts, it would generate nearly one-tenth of Nevada’s current electric capacity.

“It will destroy this land forever,” Ms. Rebich, 33, said after riding her bicycle on the 600-foot high mesa.

Across the U.S., more than 800 utility-scale solar projects are under contract to generate nearly 70,000 megawatts of new capacity, enough to power more than 11 million homes, equivalent to Texas and then some. More than half this capacity is being planned for the American Southwest, with its abundance of sunshine and open land.