Perhaps President Biden should have lunch with Ms. Hollub. LOL.
Friday, October 7, 2022
Here We Go -- October 7, 2022
With regard to Russia using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine I suggested folks might want to follow a few data points to predict when/if that will happen. One of those "things" I suggested folks follow was the distribution of iodine tablets to the Ukraine soldiers. From Common Sense with Bari Weiss this morning:
Two alarming data points: Government officials in Kyiv are reportedly distributing potassium iodine pills in the possible event of a Russian nuclear strike. And last night, at a Democratic fundraiser, President Biden said: “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis.”
Facing Armageddon in Ukraine, and picking a fight with Saudi Arabia (one he won't win), Biden has really stepped in it.
WTI: has been rising all night. Now, solidly over $89. Up 1.11%; up almost a dollar; now trading at $89.43.
CVX: up a bunch yesterday; flat so far in pre-market trading.
Nobel Peace Prize:
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski of Belarus and two groups, Memorial, a Russian human rights organization, and the Center for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian organization.
Saudi Arabia: in case you missed it. Link here. It should be noted that imported Saudi oil goes to California, now paying over $8/gallon for gasoline. Tea leaves: if Biden bans US oil exports, OPEC+ bans exports to the US. California may want to move its 2035 energy plan to 2023.
Off-shore drilling ban: yes, the Biden administration is one step closer. Pretty soon we can start calling Biden, "Merkel." Though he's becoming a huge friend of the Bakken. WTI: $89.33. Looking for $90 today.
US auto manufacturers: are going to get absolutely crushed during the transition to EVs. Absolutely crushed. Ford has "no choice" but to raise F-150 Lightning prices again" -- analyst. Still cheap at $52,000 for the base Pro model. And then all those tax credits and other incentives.
US auto manufacturers: are going to get absolutely crushed during the transition to EVs. Absolutely crushed. Link here.
US auto manufacturers: I drive pass one of the biggest Chevrolet dealers in the US everyday. The lot is about one-fourth full of pick-ups and a smattering of EV Bolts (or Volts or whatever Chevy EVs are called now -- "Revolts"?). And I never see any change -- it appears the dealership is receiving very few new vehicles to sell, and despite the shortage, they're not flying off the lot (in sales). Meanwhile, the Honda dealership looks like it's recovering nicely. Not sure. Need to check. They know me there. I'm looking to upgrade to a 2023 Honda Civic. Or a 2024 if I can hold out for one more year.
US auto manufacturers: but somehow, Ford will show great 3Q22 results.
OXY:
- clickbait, link here.
- not clickbait, link here.
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Family Notes
This is pretty funny. Sophia is participating in three after-school activities at a very high level of training: gymnastics, dance (ballet) and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
She had a fourth -- swimming -- but that stopped during the Covid lockdowns. The good news: she's an excellent swimmer and may take up "swim team" in middle school.
Gymnastics had/has always been her favorite activity. Then she was signed up for ballet and martial arts.
Without hesitation, she says jiu-jitsu is her absolute favorite. Wow, talk about her competitive spirit. She was selected earlier this week to fight in the end-of-practice select match -- two top performers face off for the match of the day. I believe she might have lost, but it was officially declared a draw, I guess. It was a bit confusing due to all the excitement from the other athletes watching.
Whatever.
So, earlier this week, she was a few minutes late to her weekly gymnastics course -- not her fault, not my fault. The mom that drove her there was delayed by work.
Sophia missed but a few minutes and I considered it a full work-out.
Because Sophia missed roll call, she was signed up for a make-up session later today. LOL. Sophia is so excited to get an extra gymnastics session. We're thinking of showing up five minutes late every Wednesday just to get that free make-up session.
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Family Covid
This is pretty cool.
About a year ago, The NYT ran a competition for children to submit entries for an upcoming book about the impact Covid had on them.
The book is now "out" and we have a copy.
Sophia's father got hit by Covid pretty bad. I honestly don't recall whether he was vaccinated at the time or not. I assume he was but perhaps not. [He is "fully" vaccinated now -- just received his most recent booster two days ago in anticipation of an overseas business trip.]
His respiratory symptoms were significant but he did not require hospitalization. However, his neurological symptoms were downright scary. He lost feeling and strength in his extremities and noted mild-to-moderate cognitive symptoms. There were questions whether he would get back to normal. Ever. It took about six months, but as far as I know he's pretty much back to normal.
No one else in the family has had Covid to the best of our knowledge, and they've all been tested multiple times.
Olivia took the photo and submitted that article that was published by the NYT.
The Underuse Of Covid Treatments Is Leading To Many Needless Deaths -- NYT -- October 7, 2022
The power of Paxlovid.
First, a programming note: This is my last newsletter before starting a book leave. I’ll be back in late January. Until then, other Times journalists will be writing The Morning, and I look forward to reading their work along with all of you.
A worrisome pattern has emerged with Paxlovid and other drugs that reduce the severity of Covid: Many people who would benefit most are not receiving the treatments, likely causing hundreds of unnecessary deaths every day in the U.S.
There seem to be two main explanations for the drugs’ underuse. The first is that the public discussion of them has tended to focus on caveats and concerns, rather than on the overwhelming evidence that they reduce the risk of hospitalization and death. The second explanation is that many Americans, especially Republicans, still do not take Covid seriously.
Today’s newsletter will dig into both issues.
“A large chunk of deaths are preventable right now with Paxlovid alone,” Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Covid response coordinator, told me. He predicted that if every American 50 and above with Covid received a course of either Paxlovid or a treatment known as monoclonal antibodies, daily deaths might fall to about 50 per day, from about 400 per day in recent months.
Dr. Rebecca Wang, an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, has said: “Never really in recent history for a respiratory virus can I think of an anti-viral medication being as effective, demonstrated in scientific literature, as what Paxlovid has shown.”
Dr. Robert Wachter, the chair of the medicine department at the University of California, San Francisco, told me that he thought the underuse of Paxlovid was already associated with thousands of preventable deaths in the U.S. “The public doesn’t seem to understand that the evidence around hospitalization and deaths is really powerful,” Wachter said.
Bad-news bias
By now, you have surely heard about the downsides and shortcomings of Paxlovid.
The drug can produce a metallic taste in the mouth. (One member of my family described it as among the worst tastes she had ever experienced.) Some research has also found that the drug might not cause a statistically significant reduction in hospitalization among younger adults. Most prominently, people who take Paxlovid can endure “rebound” Covid — as both President Biden and Jill Biden did — in which symptoms return after the five-day course of pills has ended.
All of this is true. It also does not change the big picture. Covid is a deadly virus, especially for older people, and Paxlovid reduces Covid’s severity. It does so by inhibiting the virus’s replication inside the human body, the same process that has made H.I.V. treatments so effective.
With Paxlovid, both randomized trials and data from electronic health records have pointed to its effectiveness. Some research finds an effect across all age groups, while other research finds one only among older patients. But that is not surprising. The Covid death rate for people under 50 is already so close to zero that reducing it in a statistically significant way is difficult.
“I think almost everybody benefits from Paxlovid,” Jha said. “For some people, the benefit is tiny. For others, the benefit is massive.” (People who can’t take Paxlovid because it interacts dangerously with another drug they’re taking can usually take monoclonal antibodies.)
A recent analysis of about 568,000 patients by Epic Research found that 0.016 percent of Covid patients over 50 who received Paxlovid died. The death rate for patients who did not get the drug was more than four times higher, or 0.070 percent. And yet the Epic data showed that only about 25 percent of patients eligible to receive Paxlovid actually did, even though the drug is widely available and free for patients.
Perhaps the most shocking statistic about Paxlovid’s underuse — and Jha used the word “shocking” when describing it to me — is that a smaller share of 80-year-olds with Covid in the U.S. is now receiving the drug than 45-year-olds with Covid, according to data he has seen. Many doctors are evidently worried about side effects or rebound cases among their more vulnerable patients.
Even in rebound cases, however, symptoms tend to be milder than they would have been without Paxlovid. After Dr. Anthony Fauci, another White House adviser, who’s 81, contracted Covid in June and then took Paxlovid, he experienced a rebound — and also believed that the drug kept him out of the hospital.
“Medicine is about weighing costs and benefits,” Wachter said. “The recommendation should be clear and unambiguous for people at high risk: The benefits of the drug outweigh the downsides.”
Red Covid
When I last wrote about “red Covid” — the concentration of Covid deaths in conservative communities because of vaccine skepticism — almost eight months ago, I explained why the partisan gap could eventually shrink: Republican communities might have built up more natural immunity through previous infections, and treatments like Paxlovid were becoming more widely available.
This spring and summer, the gap did narrow somewhat. But it has begun growing again in the past two months, according to an analysis by my colleague Ashley Wu.
Data through Oct. 4, 2022, excluding Alaska. | Sources: New York Times database, Edison Research
One possible explanation is that Paxlovid takeup rates appear to be lower in Republican areas, even though they are the very places where the drug could do the most good, because of lower vaccination rates. Government data shows that of the 20 states with the least Paxlovid use between late August and late September (per 100 diagnosed cases of Covid), 18 were won by Donald Trump in 2020.
One possible explanation is that Paxlovid takeup rates appear to be lower in Republican areas, even though they are the very places where the drug could do the most good, because of lower vaccination rates. Government data shows that of the 20 states with the least Paxlovid use between late August and late September (per 100 diagnosed cases of Covid), 18 were won by Donald Trump in 2020.
Paxlovid data is between Aug. 29 and Sept. 25, 2022. | Sources: White House; Edison Research
The shunning of Paxlovid seems to be part of a pattern in which Republican voters have wrongly dismissed Covid as little different from the flu. That mistake has had tragic consequences. A new study by three Yale University researchers found that the wide partisan gap in Covid deaths remained even after controlling for other factors, like age.
Solutions
Jha told me that the Biden administration was committed to increasing the use of Paxlovid and monoclonal antibodies nationwide. “We are going to go after this problem hard,” he said. “We have got to fix it, and we’ve got to fix it in weeks.”
What might make a difference?
Persuading more doctors of Paxlovid’s benefits would probably have the biggest impact. Wachter thinks that accelerating research about rebound Covid — including whether a longer course of Paxlovid would help — could also increase use, given the fear around the issue. He added that he was surprised that government, academic and private researchers had still not learned more about what causes a rebound and how to prevent it.
In coming months, this newsletter will follow up and see whether this country can do a better job of using a widely available treatment to save lives.
Three Wells Coming Off Confidential List Today -- October 7, 2022
#2 story of the day: I thought this would be the #1 story of the day. Then I saw the results of the NFL TNF game last night. LOL.
#2 story of the day. How in the world did the US manage to get into a fight with Saudi Arabia when Californians are paying $8 per gallon of gasoline? But even worse, the Biden administration moves closer to banning all off-shore drilling. Wow.
Saudi will cut production and raise the official selling price (OSP) for oil sold to California. Did I mention that Californians are now paying $8 per gallon?
No-brainer: if US Congress passes NOPEC bill, Saudi Arabia will take a line from Seinfeld: no soup for you. LOL. China can easily soak up all that Saudi oil.
As predicted: Russian production is now falling. Link here.
EIA: if, in fact, the government manipulated the "gasoline demand" data earlier this year, the revisions will significantly impact price of oil as early as ....
WTI: $89 this morning and most analysts now expect to see $100 before the eend of the year.
#1 story of the day: I went to bed early so I missed the end of the game. It was such an incredibly bad game, I went to bed at the half. In the NFL is a "tie" worse than a "loss"? Apparently not. Russell Wilson went for a loss in overtime, fourth-and goal, at the one-yard line with the game on the line. Wow. He won; he got the loss. Are you kidding me? At the one-yard line? Needs to be fact-checked.
#3 story of day: Biden blinks on student loans.
#4 story of the day: the lack of any reporting on the A-10.
#5 story of the day: US auto manufacturers are going to be crushed in the transition to EVs. Absolutely crushed.
#6 story of the day: the press is worried about US senators investing in the US stock market, and then we see stories like the one in the RBN Energy blog today. See below, in red.
Manchin takes home a base salary of $174,000 per year from his government service, but his other ventures make his yearly salary $700,000 per year, and his estimated net worth is $8 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. Manchin made his fortune as a founder of Enersystems, a coal brokerage firm.
Laser-focused on dividends: Between 2011 and 2020, he took home more than $5 million in dividends. In 2020 alone, he received $500,000 in dividends.
He has been listed as one of the 20 richest senators. Link here.
For the record: I have no problem with any of this. I want US senators to have skin in the game; but their investments must be made public in real-time.
#7 story of the day: CVX.
#8 story of the day: Ukraine.
#9 story of the day: flu season is here. At least in DC and Texas.
#10 story of the day: wow, wow, wow. I did not have a story to round out the top ten.
Then I went back to my e-mail and there, in my e-mail, the lead story from The New York Times. Covid. [Don't go to the link; it's archived. Might post it at this blog later.] Wow.
Yesterday, Bloomberg had an incredibly long article on Pfizer, also. I copied the entire story and archived it. For investors, an open-book test. Now today, The NYT follows up with another huge story that is one big advertisement for PFE.
So, two big positive stories on Pfizer in twenty-four hours: Bloomberg and NYT. An open-book test for investors.
Prediction: "the tent" will become the big story for the NFL this year. Before the year is over, upwards of 50% of starting NFL quarterbacks will visit "the tent."
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Back to the Bakken
The Far Side: link here.
WTI: $89.19. Up almost a full percent in pre-market trading. See #2 story of the day.
Natural gas: $6.761. I guess Europe's problem with natural gas will be next year (2023 - 2024) not this year (2022 - 2023). Unless the Biden administration bans LNG exports.
Monday, October 10, 2022: 21 for the month, 21 for the quarter, 466 for the year
38810, conf, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC Fantuz 3-13-24-158N-100W-MBH,
38398, conf, Hess, EN-J Horst 154-93-1112H-2,
Sunday, October 9, 2022: 19 for the month, 19 for the quarter, 464 for the year
38809, conf, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC Defrance 4-12-1-158N-100W-MBH,
38397, conf, Hess, EN-J Horst-154-93-1112H-1,
37846, conf, Whiting, Maki 11-27-2H,
Saturday, October 8, 2022: 16 for the month, 16 for the quarter, 461 for the year
38808, conf, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC Fantuz 4-13-24-158N-100W-MBH,
38820, conf, Crescent Point Energy, CPEUSC Defrance 5-12-1-158N-100W-MMBH,
36991, conf, Enerplus, Minnow 149-94-36C-25H,
35626, conf, Bowline Lee 151-101-8-5-4H,
RBN Energy: Appalachian hydrogen hub may have it all, including support from a key US sennator.
The U.S. Department of Energy has laid out a clear set of criteria for the six to 10 clean hydrogen hubs it will select next year to receive up to $8 billion in federal support.
For example, DOE wants at least one hub to use renewable energy to make hydrogen (California), another to use nuclear power (Tennessee), and another to use fossil fuels with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) (North Dakota).
It also wants diversity among hydrogen end-users — geographic diversity too (at least two hubs must be in areas with the greatest natural gas resources) (Appalachia) — and the department says it will give extra weight to proposals likely to create the most opportunities for skilled training and long-term employment.
Yet another factor that’s sure to boost the prospects for hydrogen hub proposals in the heart of the Marcellus/Utica Shale is the looming presence of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, the Energy & Natural Resources Committee chairman who helped make hydrogen hub funding — and the rest of last year’s $1-trillion-plus infrastructure bill (and this year’s Inflation Reduction Act) — a reality.
In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the hydrogen hub proposals now under development in northern West Virginia, western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Over the past few weeks we’ve been reviewing the DOE’s hydrogen hub selection process — now getting under way in earnest — as well as a number of what we see as the leading proposals.
We started with a look at the proposed Houston Hydrogen Hub, then followed that up with blogs on planned clean-hydrogen hubs in the Corpus Christi area and Southern California. Most recently, we examined plans for a regional hub in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas and reviewed the details in DOE’s September 22 Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), which officially launched the process of receiving and reviewing hydrogen hub proposals and, ultimately, deciding which proposals should receive federal dollars. As we said then, concept papers from hub proponents are due November 7, while full applications must be submitted to the DOE by April 7, 2023.
The department expects to notify the winners in the fall of 2023 and complete award negotiations with them in the winter of 2023-24. Most of the selected proposals would each receive between $500 million and $1 billion in federal support, though it is possible that a proposal could receive as little as $400 million or as much as $1.25 billion, again depending on its size and need.
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