At Least 25 Killed In Kabul Bombing That Targeted Afghan Schoolgirls
Afghanistan stands on the brink of renewed chaos after a week of fresh fighting, following US troops staying past the May 1st exit deadline that had previously been agreed to under a Trump administration-Taliban deal inked in February 2020. Biden earlier announced an extension as well as a full and final planned withdrawal by Sept.11, which Taliban leaders have blasted as a serious breach of hard-fought terms, leading to threats of making things a “nightmare” for remaining Americans. So far this past week has seen fierce clashes between Taliban and national Afghan forces mainly in remote provinces, resulting in dozens killed on both sides.
But on Saturday suspected Sunni terrorist groups (whether Islamic State or the Taliban or others) carried out a string of bombings targeting the country’s Shia minority. The Wall Street Journal details that “Militants killed at least 25 people in three explosions targeting girls outside a school in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in Kabul, officials said, in an attack that could exacerbate sectarian tensions ahead of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
Recent months have witnessed a number of similarly sectarian-driven attacks in the Dasht-e Barchi area of west Kabul, which is dominated by the Shiite Hazara community, but this latest tragedy appears to be the highest death toll, after prior bombings stretching back to October has left dozens of civilians dead, including children.
Early reports suggest a car bomb was used in the attack, however it remains unclear whether it was a suicide attack or an IED detonated remotely, with no group claiming responsibility in the immediate aftermath. One top Taliban official issued a quick statement condemning the attack, however, leading security officials to look at the Islamic State in Afghanistan.
“In the past, Islamic State’s regional affiliate, which considers Shiites to have rejected Islam, usually took credit for attacks targeting Shiite civilians,” the WSJ report explains.
The report notes further that “While the Taliban harshly oppressed the Hazaras when the movement ruled most of Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Taliban now say they tolerate the Shiite minority. A Taliban spokesman tweeted to condemn Saturday’s attack, accusing Islamic State of being behind it.“
The satirist Ambrose Bierce once defined prophecy as the “art and practice of selling one’s credibility for future delivery.” Covid-19 has produced no shortage of doomsaying prophets whose prognostications completely failed at future delivery, and yet in the eyes of the scientific community their credibility remains peculiarly intact.
No greater example exists than the epidemiology modeling team at Imperial College-London (ICL), led by the physicist Neil Ferguson. As I’ve documented at length, the ICL modelers played a direct and primary role in selling the concept of lockdowns to the world. The governments of the United States and United Kingdom explicitly credited Ferguson’s forecasts on March 16, 2020 with the decision to embrace the once-unthinkable response of ordering their populations to shelter in place.
Ferguson openly boasted of his team’s role in these decisions in a December 2020 interview, and continues to implausibly claim credit for saving millions of lives despite the deficit of empirical evidence that his policies delivered on their promises. Quite the opposite – the worst outcomes in terms of Covid deaths per capita are almost entirely in countries that leaned heavily on lockdowns and related nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in their unsuccessful bid to turn the pandemic’s tide.
Assessed looking backward from the one-year mark, ICL’s modeling exercises performed disastrously. They not only failed to accurately forecast the course of the pandemic in the US and UK – they also failed to anticipate Covid-19’s course in almost every country in the world, irrespective of the policy responses taken.
Time and time again, the Ferguson team’s models dramatically overstated the death toll of the disease, posting the worst performance record of any major epidemiology model. After a year, some of the ICL predictions reach farcical territory. Their forecast of 179,000 deaths in Taiwan, which never locked down, was off by 1,798,000% (as of this writing, Taiwan has just 12 Covid-19 deaths). A similar story played out in other countries that eschewed the lockdown approach for the first year of the pandemic. Imperial overstated the predicted mortality of Sweden (392%), South Korea (17,461%), and Japan (11,670%) in the absence of heavier-handed NPIs than any of these countries actually imposed.
But what about the rest of the world? Most other countries experimented with some form of Neil Ferguson’s prescriptive advice over the last year, although for different degrees of severity and duration. Despite widely different mortality outcomes of their own, no other country provides anything approaching a clear validation of the ICL model.
The table depicts three modeled scenarios that were published in ICL’s report from one year ago (ICL also included a fourth scenario attempting to approximate focused protection of elderly populations; however this approach was not meaningfully attempted in any country).
The first scenario shows an extreme “suppression” model, triggered when a country reached 1.6 deaths per 100,000 residents. This strategy envisioned a stunning 75% overall “uniform reduction in contact rates” across the entire population. Even in the short term, this approach is akin to the harsh measures first implemented in the Wuhan region of China as distinct from the lesser lockdowns with “essential business” exemptions seen in most of the world. But ICL’s suppression strategy also assumed that this measure “will need to be maintained in some manner until vaccines or effective treatments become available” – basically a full year or more of uninterrupted lockdown.
No country on earth maintained a 75% suppression rate of all contacts for an entire year, making ICL’s first model an extreme hypothetical of what a “best case” aggressive policy response could attain rather than a predictive reflection of reality. Despite its hypothetical nature, ICL’s suppression model still managed to overstate the number of Covid-19 deaths in all but the 20 worst-afflicted countries – none of which used anything close to the scenario’s policy approach.
The second ICL strategy is closer to reality in most countries. This “mitigation” model envisioned mandatory population-wide social distancing with a primary aim of preserving hospital capacity to treat the disease – a “flattening of the curve” as the popular slogan maintained. Using the most conservative replication rate that they modeled, R=2.4, Imperial’s “mitigation” forecasts managed to dramatically overstate the number of deaths in every single country on earth. Using a higher R0 yields even more extreme overpredictions. But sticking with the 2.4 scenario is sufficient to show the systemic problem in the ICL model. Their “mitigation” numbers were too high by roughly 20-30% in hard-hit locations such as Peru, Mexico, and the Czech Republic – all countries that used stringent lockdown measures at several points in the last year. On the other extreme, ICL overstated the “mitigation” scenario’s predicted death toll by 100,000% or more in a dozen countries. All but about 20 of the hardest-hit countries had “mitigation” forecasts that ran high by 100% or more.
The third ICL strategy projected the results of an “unmitigated” pandemic in which governments did nothing at all. This is the scenario that famously predicted 2.2 million deaths in the United States, 500,000 in the United Kingdom, and similar catastrophic outcomes across the world. Although Ferguson’s team has a bad habit of falsely claiming credit for saving millions of lives premised upon these apocalyptic numbers, the truth is they all amounted to wild exaggerations from a fundamentally flawed model. At the 1-year mark, no country on earth approached anywhere near ICL’s “unmitigated” projections, and certainly not any of the countries that avoided heavy-handed lockdowns.
Although ICL did not release its full timeline of how the pandemic would play out under these scenarios, its modeling enterprise was built upon the assumption that the peak daily death toll for each country would hit approximately three months after the introduction of the virus. For most countries, that means a predicted peak sometime in the summer of 2020, with the overwhelming majority of forecast deaths to have occurred by the end of that wave. A year later, most countries have not even remotely resembled the tolls predicted under most of the ICL model scenarios.
Several questions remain.
Why is Ferguson, who has a long history of absurdly exaggerated modeling predictions, still viewed as a leading authority on pandemic forecasting? And why is the ICL team still advising governments around the world on how to deal with Covid-19 through its flawed modeling approach? In March 2020 ICL sold its credibility for future delivery. That future has arrived, and the results are not pretty.
Cyberattack Forces Shutdown Of Largest Gasoline Pipeline In United States
The largest gasoline pipeline on the East Coast, and the US in general, was shut down on Friday after its operator struggled to contain a cyberattack which threatened its systems. The 5,500-mile Colonial Pipeline, which is the single largest refined-products pipeline in the United States, halted transit as the company was forced to take “certain systems offline to contain the threat, which has temporarily halted all pipeline operations,” according to The Wall Street Journal on Saturday. It’s reportedly still offline into early Saturday.
Colonial’s network is responsible for supplying fuel that originates with refiners on the Gulf Coast to most of the eastern and southern US, accounting for over 2.5 million barrels per day in gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, or other refined products transferred, making up 45% of all the East Coast’s fuel supply. It spans from Texas through southern states and up to New Jersey.
“At this time, our primary focus is the safe and efficient restoration of our service and our efforts to return to normal operation,” the Alpharetta, Georgia-based company stated. “This process is already underway, and we are working diligently to address this matter and to minimize disruption to our customers.”
The disruption earlier in the day Friday saw Gulf Coast cash prices for gasoline and diesel push lower, though longer-term price effects will depend on just how long the lines remain shut. If the closure persists further into the weekend or even early next week, it’s very likely to send gasoline prices soaring.
The last time there was a significant shutdown of Colonial’s lines was during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, which shot spot Gulf Coast gasoline prices to a five-year high and diesel to near a four-year high.
This fresh cyberattack against vital American infrastructure has reportedly already seen federal agencies and law enforcement get involved, alongside a third-party cybersecurity firm brought in by Colonial to launch an investigation. Some of the early details of the investigation suggest a ransomware attack, which is being reported as follows:
The Washington Post reported that ransomware was used in the attack, citing two U.S. officials it didn’t identify. It wasn’t clear if the attack was carried out by foreign government hackers or a criminal group, the officials told the Post. In ransomware attacks, hackers typically encrypt an organization’s computer files and then demand a ransom payment to unlock the data.
Though there appears little in the way of culprits or suspected individuals or entities that may have carried out the attack at this early period of the investigation, we can expect the Biden administration to hold this up as a prime example of why his ambitious cybersecurity and power grid protection initiative is urgent and essential.
It also comes after the White House’s April 15 sanctions rollout targeting Russian officials and entities for alleged involvement in the SolarWinds hack. The need for an overhaul of cybersecurity and protections of US government and civil infrastructure networks has been a major theme of this administration, also stemming from leading Democrats quickly blaming Moscow for pretty much every hack which targets American companies or agencies for much of the past five years, despite cases often lacking any evidence as to responsible parties. The Iranians and Chinese have also increasingly brought in alongside the Russians as prime nefarious actors in terms of cyberthreats.
However, as was recently admitted in a Wired piece on the Oldsmar, Florida water supply systems hack wherein chemicals were added to the town’s water at dangerous levels, there’s also many instances of “unsophisticated” lone wolf hackers able to sometimes penetrate overly exposed systems.
As suspected, the Colonial Pipeline precautionary shutdown was due to ransomware. This is what I was hearing from sources as well. https://t.co/nNXocQPXYT
But there’s little doubt that in this major instance of the Colonial pipeline going offline, we expect any moment to hear screams of “Russians!” – even before any evidence is publicly made available, if it gets presented at all.
At Record Highs, Copper “Is The New Oil” & Could Be A Double From Here
On the heels of record highs in Iron Ore and Steel earlier this week, as commodity demand soars on the back of economies emerging from COVID lockdowns (demand) and various supply chain/operational issues (supply); copper prices surged to an all-time high this morning as Chinese investors unleashed fresh demand following a five-day holiday.
Source: Bloomberg
Bloomberg Intelligence strategist Mike McGlone said that “the reaction of copper to $10,000-a-ton resistance may set the inflation vs. deflation tone for years”
As Mining.com reports, the reopening of major industrial economies is sparking a surge across commodities markets from corn to lumber, with tin climbing above $30,000 a tonne for the first time since 2011 also on Thursday.
Copper has gained 28.1% since the end of last year and is up 114.9% from its 2020 low, hit in March of that year amid the global economic fallout as countries locked down their populations to contain the spread of covid-19.
“The long-term prospects for metals prices are ‘too good’ and point to higher prices in the next few years,” Commerzbank AG analyst Daniel Briesemann told Bloomberg.
“The decarbonization trends in many countries — which include switching to electric vehicles and expanding wind and solar power — are likely to generate additional demand for metals.”
Trading house Trafigura Group, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America also expect copper to extend gains.
“Copper could spike to $13,000 a tonne in coming months, partially over low inventories,” Bank of America said.
“Copper prices will remain strong as a continued rebound in global PMIs bolstered investors’ bullish sentiment,” Citic Futures Co. said in a note.
On the supply side, Peru reported a 19% jump in March copper output, potentially offering some relief to tight global supplies, but a bill to dramatically increase taxes in Chile, the biggest copper-producing nation, threatens to curtail future output and supercharged the metal’s rally even further.
And as OilPrice.com’s Tsvetana Paraskova notes, surging demand and insufficient supply of new copper projects could result in copper prices jumping to $20,000 per metric ton in a few years, double the current price of around $10,000 per ton which is the highest in a decade, analysts say.
Soaring demand for critical minerals to support the energy transition, including copper, has already made copper one of the hottest metals this year, with prices jumping to $10,000 per ton, double from the pre-pandemic levels due to the global push toward decarbonization and government support for electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable electricity generation.
Copper will be the key metal in the energy transition. But expected supply from existing mines and projects under construction is estimated to meet around 80 percent of the copper the world will need by 2030 in a scenario consistent with climate goals, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its new report ‘The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions’ this week.
“Electricity networks need a huge amount of copper and aluminium, with copper being a cornerstone for all electricity-related technologies,” the IEA said.
However, the copper projects are seeing a decline in resource quality over time. For example, the IEA says, the average copper ore grade in Chile declined by 30 percent over the past 15 years. Investments in copper projects are also lagging behind the expected surge in demand.
That’s why it’s no surprise that David Neuhauser, founder and managing director of U.S. hedge fund Livermore Partners, told CNBC this week that “copper is the new oil.”
“I think copper is the new oil and I think copper, for the next five to 10 years, is going to look tremendous with the potential for $20,000 per metric ton,” Neuhauser told CNBC.
A few days ago, Bank of America said in a research note that if inventories of copper deplete, the price of the key energy transition metal could hit $20,000 per ton as early as 2025.
ARKegos: Cathie Wood Admits Bill Hwang Seeded Her ETFs, As Questions Swirl About Trade Similarities
Just hours after we wrote an article titled “ARKchegos Looming” on Thursday, which compared ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood to Bill Hwang and started to ask some critical, pointed questions about how many times ARK can closely sheer the NASDAQ sheep from which it is making its living, the firm’s matriarch appeared on CNBC late on Friday for some urgent damage control an interview about the recent performance of her funds. Her flagship ARKK fund is now down about 31% off its 52 week and all time highs near $151 per share.
During Wood’s CNBC interview on Friday, she admitted on national television what we had been reporting weeks ago: that Bill Hwang was a backer of ARK Funds. Responding to a question about the Bloomberg report that first called her relationship with Hwang into question, Wood told CNBC: “I know Bill Hwang. I met him through church, we were both advisors to the Financial Services Ministry. That was in 2013. And on our way back from that event, we were exchanging stock ideas back then.”
Wood talked about how Hwang was interested in Netflix, one of the first names they discussed. “He hadn’t been involved at all in U.S. stocks, so he was very interested. We chatted a bit about media generally in the U.S.,” Wood said. Notably, media names like Viacom and Discovery were key parts of Hwang’s portfolio that were liquidated after it blew up.
Then, in a stunning revelation that had not been made public previously, Wood admitted that Hwang provided the seed capital for ARK: “So yes, he did provide the seed for our first four ETFs and we were very grateful to him.”
— CNBC’s Closing Bell (@CNBCClosingBell) May 7, 2021
“Bill was very intrigued with the stocks we were interested in, he was just beginning to learn about them” she continued. When asked about whether or not she had spoken to Hwang after his blow up, Wood said: “I have not spoken to him. I send him a note after the unfortunate events we witnessed.”
When asked if Hwang still had a position in any ARK funds, Wood replied: “To be honest, I have no idea. I never asked him if he kept the money in. We’ve never had that conversation.”
When asked about the volatility in her names, notable in her innovation fund, Wood showed no caution whatsoever. “Oh, I love this setup,” she told a bemused Wilfred Frost, although her shareholders who are down 30% in a few weeks probably don’t share her “setup” love.
“From our point of view, 5 year time horizon, nothing has changed but the price.” Of course, on Wall Street changing prices is all that matters and everything leads from there, as Bill will probably explain to Cathie after a few more church meetings.
Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood says the pullback in tech stocks is not a cause for concern, and that her long-term bets will continue to move higher. “I love this set up.” https://t.co/EJXjv0CnpFpic.twitter.com/n67p8wpeqn
She also predicted a 25% to 30% compounded annual growth rate over the next five years. When asked about outflows, she said: “First of all, I don’t have to worry about redemptions. The ETF ecosystem is a beautiful thing for portfolio managers, I highly recommend it. The ETF ecosystem – they are facilitating our flows. And they are doing it many ways with algorithms and derivatives. We have experienced no problems. There has been hardly a disturbance in our spreads.”
The admission of being so close to Bill Hwang drew some attention from FinTwit, who couldn’t help but speculate…
This has gotta be the icing on the cake. @CathieDWood admits doing business with Bill Hwang.
This strongly suggests the possibility that Cathie Wood’s “genius” is based upon Archegos buying out-of-the-money call options—using prime brokers as a front—on stocks in which Hwang was secretly but directly invested thanks to his seed funding of ARK. https://t.co/IZdXKN6mdD
Meanwhile, as we noted late last week, ARKK is “in the midst of its worst stretch since 2018”, according to Bloomberg, as the NASDAQ teeters back and forth, trying to decide how to react to what appears to be the end of an 18 month gamma squeeze, coupled with the widely accepted consensus that significant inflation is on its way.
ARKK’s plunge appears to mark the decoupling between real rates and riskier tech names. As real rates fell over the last week, NASDAQ names have not responded in the manner with which they had over the last 18 months (but for Friday), where stooping real rates would put a bid under risky names.
The change could be due to rising concerns about inflation. Matt Miskin, co-chief investment strategist at John Hancock Investment Management, told Bloomberg: “Even though the bond market is suggesting that tech should be doing better, commodities are what the equity market is listening to and that is causing less of a bid for technology. Commodities are whispering in the ear of the equity market and saying inflation is coming.”
This could fare terribly for Cathie Wood’s strategy, which has outperformed for years on the relationship between real rates and risky tech names.
This has also led to $785 million in outflows for ARKK over the last 6 days, according to Bloomberg. Hedge funds, during the same time, have cut their exposure to technology to the lowest since December, the report notes.
Dan Suzuki, Richard Bernstein Advisors LLC’s deputy chief investment officer, said: “With the data continuing to suggest a faster than expected recovery, the recovery/reflation trade is winning and expensive growth becomes a source of funds. The rising inflation expectations indicate that people’s confidence in the reflation trade is picking up.”
And we literally just noted – days ago – that prime brokers had begun to slash leverage as a result of the Archegos blowup. As momentum charged higher last year, riding a sea of liquidity, every stock market ‘guru’ bought the junkiest junk…
As a result, hedge fund leverage – both gross and net – hit record highs in late April, according to Goldman’s Prime Brokerage. And that has now prompted prime brokers to slash available leverage for their hedge fund clients:
…managers of small hedge funds who lack the negotiating clout of trading whales are grousing. For the little guy especially, the saga will make it harder to borrow money from banks to finance bets.
While specific measures will vary by bank and client – and in many cases are still being ironed out – the talks and tensions point to greater pressure on clients to reveal their biggest wagers, stricter margin limits on those positions, more frequent collateral adjustments and more rigorous audits. The deliberations were described by executives close to prime brokerage desks and money managers.
At its most extreme, Credit Suisse, which was the hardest hit among Archegos’ primes, drastically adjusted risk tolerances and practices, slashing lending to hedge funds by a third.
And so the analogues to Bill Hwang continue to be tough to not notice. In April, we pointed out the tie between Hwang, who had recently blown up, and Wood, noting that Wood could also be on the precipice of her own “Jesus Take The Wheel” style moment. We knew at the time that Bill Hwang was a mentor to Cathie Wood and that both investors had a penchant for bringing religion into their investing methodology, as we noted in a report we published earlier in April.
In that report, we shone light as to how close Wood and Hwang were in the investing world. A Bloomberg report released in April said Hwang was “on the same trajectory” as Wood. For example, in 2016, Hwang was invited to a weekend retreat put on by Princeton Theological Seminary that was set up to “connect Christians in finance”. The Saturday keynote dinner that weekend featured Wood, who was then a startup manager and and an adviser to the ministry.
After then, Hwang became an investor in Wood’s firms, and “Archegos and ARK collaborated on industry research,” the report noted. Hwang was/is “a backer” of Wood’s. Wood, like Hwang, holds Bible study meetings in her office.
And Wood’s risk management – like Hwang’s – might eventually be called into question. About a month prior, in March, we also noted when ARK Funds filed to allow for larger concentrations in names, including overseas ADRs.
ARK funds filed an amendment to its prospectuses for its ETFs in March, making some little recognized changes that were caught by @syouth1 on Twitter at the time.
First screencap shows language that was removed re ownership of ADRs, warrants, etc. (in red). Second shows language removed re limits on investing 30%+ of assets in a single firm and investing in 20+% of firm’s shares (also encircled in red). Source: https://t.co/yDVAHJTf6Ypic.twitter.com/ZJUlRSxQ5n
As the tweet noted, the ARK SEC filing did several things. First, on a perfunctory note, it specified risks related to investing in SPACs, noting that they are “subject to a variety of risks beyond those associated with other equity securities”.
But then the filing got very interesting – language was removed that allowed ARK funds to take even larger concentrations in names – in addition to over-the-counter traded ADRs, which are notoriously riskier products than normal equity.
The amendment removed ARK’s limit to invest 10% of its total assets in any active fund in ADRs that are traded over-the-counter.
The amended prospectus also removed language that formerly limited ARK to investing no more than 30% of a fund’s total assets into securities issued by a single company.
Another “rule” removed was language preventing ARK from investing in more than 20% of a company’s total outstanding shares.
The amendments portended ARK piling further into concentrated, high-risk names that dominated their respective funds, we noted at the time. And now, the time to pay the piper may have finally arrived. As we wrote in April:
Obviously, if a pin is finally going to prick the NASDAQ gamma bubble that has blown up over the last 12 months, the higher Wood’s concentration in speculative names, the more spectacular a crash would be for ARK funds.
Re-Entry Window Activated As Chinese Rocket Tumbles Back To Earth This Weekend
China’s Long March 5B Rocket is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere Saturday or Sunday, which we described earlier is driving fears that 20 tons of debris could fall on populated areas. The rocket will be one of the largest objects to descend from low Earth orbit in an uncontrolled re-entry.
The massive rocket – at 30 meters in length and weighing 22 tons – is likely to burn up in the atmosphere but could still unleash a dangerous rain of metal objects weighing up to 200 pounds, according to WSJ.
All week, the rocket has been steadily losing altitude, and the re-entry window appears to be open.
According to the Aerospace Corporation, the re-entry zone could happen as far north as Chicago, New York City, Rome, or Beijing, or as far south as New Zealand or Chile. The exact entry point into the Earth’s atmosphere can’t be pinpointed until within hours of re-entry.
On Friday, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry said that authorities are closely monitoring the rocket and played down the risks hyped up by western media.
“To my knowledge, the upper stage of this rocket has been deactivated, which means that most of its parts will burn up upon re-entry, making the likelihood of damage to aviation or ground facilities and activities extremely low,” spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters.
This is something which, though very rare, has happened in the recent past. In May of 2020, a Chinese Long March 5B made a similarly uncontrolled re-entry, resulting in debris raining down on inhabited areas of the Ivory Coast.
US Space Command said that it too is carefully tracking the rocket’s location during the uncontrolled re-entry, but stressed that it “cannot be pinpointed until within hours of its re-entry,” currently projected to happen on Saturday.
The US military went so far as to clarify that no, it does not have orders to shoot down the rocket at this time – though we can imagine plans would change if it were confirmed to be hurling toward New York City or Washington DC. “We have the capability to do a lot of things but we don’t have a plan to shoot it down as we speak,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Thursday.
The Long March 5B rocket was launched on April 28 to send key components to China’s new next-generation space station. Still, there are already ten more supply missions to the new space station planned, suggesting the likelihood of many more such scenarios to come.
Supply Chain Disruption Just Got Serious – Global Flower Shortage Strikes Ahead Of Mothers’ Day
Senior Biden economic officials are being peppered by complaints of supply chain disruptions, soaring inflation, and shortages. They seemingly have no solution in the short run as the ripple effects of COVID-19 continue wreaking havoc on global supply chains. The latest shortage is one that could break your mum’s heart this upcoming Mother’s Day as there appears to be a short supply of flowers.
CBS News spoke with florists who warn national strikes in Colombia and trucker shortages across the US have resulted in delayed or canceled shipments of hyacinths and other flowers from South America, Holland, Ireland, and Israel.
Seth Goldman, CEO of UrbanStems, a national flower delivery company, said the flower shortage began in the early days of the pandemic. Some floriculture farms reduced capacity during the pandemic while economies were locked down. Others went out of business.
There has also been volatile climate in Ecuador and Colombia, affecting various roses and accent flowers. The supply issue prompted UrbanStems to charter a commercial jet to import flowers to Miami from Quito, Ecuador, ahead of Mother’s Day.
“There’s a big, big shortage of flowers, and unfortunately, the demand for Mother’s Day is the highest it is all year,” said Larry Gramith, owner of the Chicago Flower Exchange, a wholesale distributor.
Gramith said consumers could expect to pay 25% more than they did in 2020. “If you want red roses, you might have to substitute red carnations,” Gramith said. “A bouquet of roses that last year cost $35 will now run $45 to $50,” he said.
Gramith warned: “It’s not only the shortage of flowers increasing the price, but it’s also the costs of getting them.”
Yet another shortage and soaring inflation appear anything but “transitory.”
Biden officials are caught in the awkward position of maintaining the narrative that inflationary pressures and supply chain disruptions don’t present significant problems to the current recovery. They justify printing more money by saying how there’s very little inflation. When inflation rises, they say it is transitory. The Federal Reserve cannot normalize policy even with the evidence of a robust recovery because Biden’s MMT spree to transform the economy into a green and socialist state would be derailed.
As for purchasing flowers ahead of Sunday, you’re likely going to be a lot more – enjoy the sweet smell of inflation. If you forget to buy flowers, you can now use the “flower shortage” card.
President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party may be in denial, but the truth is unavoidable. For all intents and purposes, the COVID-19 pandemic which has ravaged our country and our economy for fourteen months is over. As we prepare to close the book on the nightmare it has been, let’s pause for a moment with the Top Ten list for the Month of May to reflect on some of the most ridiculous aspects of the handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
#10 – One-way traffic rules in supermarket aisles –
At the beginning of the pandemic – when we were still making jokes about coronavirus and Corona beer – there was a lot of confusion. As the magnitude of COVID became clear, people were erring on the side of caution; fair enough. But over a year into this thing, we can still see signage in stores telling us which direction to push our carts. If anyone ever abided by these rules, it was only for a short while, and that was a long time ago. If you were one of those people who tried to scold me for going the wrong way down an aisle last June, to which I told you, “shut the hell up,” I’m still not sorry. Here’s a prediction: no one will bother to conduct a study on exactly how many lives were saved by one-way supermarket traffic. And if an accurate analysis does come along it will arrive at this conclusion: Zero.
It could’ve been sillier… they could’ve put in traffic lights
#9 – COVID is Trump’s fault –
Throughout the presidential campaign, the left and their media hammered away at this point. If Trump had acted properly, the pandemic never would have happened. Trump is responsible for every death. There are hundreds of thousands dead because of Trump. Somehow, a substantial portion of the electorate bought into the nonsense. It’s a virus, and a highly infectious one at that. Trump did what he could, and in fact initially received praise from just about every Democratic governor in the country. If anyone is to blame for COVID, it’s China and the World Health Organization. But perhaps nothing better illustrates the ridiculousness of this claim than when Joe Biden, less than a week after taking office, explained, “There’s nothing we can do” about the virus. Well, I’ll be darned.
“Remember all those times I said I was going to kick COVID’s ass? Well, I’m going back to my basement to hang out with Corn Pop now.”
#8 – Teachers can’t go back to work, but everyone else can –
From virtually the very beginning of the pandemic, it was clear that school-aged children were far less susceptible to infection and severe symptoms, and probably not vectors of transmission. Statistically, kids are the least in danger. But while the rest of us were back working in stores or driving trucks, and subjecting ourselves to genuine risks, teachers’ unions across the country continued to push the narrative that it’s too dangerous for teachers and kids to return to school. Like every other industry, at-risk kids and teachers could have been allowed to stay at home while the rest went back to normal. Instead, we inexplicably kept schools closed, gave students a significantly inferior education, and took away opportunities for social interactions that will never come again.
Finally parents became fed up with school closings, but far too many Americans nodded in agreement and played along
#7 – It was xenophobic for Trump to halt travel from China –
The media would prefer that we all forget their accusations, but we mustn’t. They called President Trump “xenophobe in chief” for his actions, and Nancy Pelosi went to San Francisco’s Chinatown in February to tell everyone how safe things were. Trump had suspended travel from China at the end of January, and in retrospect the only legitimate criticism you could make of Trump is that he waited too long. But to categorize his actions as xenophobic was absurd from the beginning. The virus came from China, and that’s a fact; and it’s not racist or xenophobic to point it out or to act accordingly.
If your policies don’t work, just call the other guy (who happens to be married to an immigrant) a xenophobe
#6 – Fifteen days to slow the spread –
The idea itself isn’t absurd at all, and in fact it originated with the Trump White House. We didn’t know the trajectory of the disease in mid-March 2020 when the initiative began; we didn’t want to overwhelm hospitals, and we needed to “flatten the curve.” It took closer to 30 days to reach the goal, but we succeeded, and we achieved those objectives. There wasn’t a location in the country where COVID patients couldn’t access care, and we indeed flattened the curve. What’s absurd is that the approach has continued for almost 400 days now in some places. Many states such as Texas, Florida and Mississippi have been essentially back to normal for months, but other states (mostly of the Blue variety) can’t bear to let go of that power, as lockdowns and mask-mandates continue.
Did we say 15 days? We meant to say 30… no, make that 90… no, no, we meant 400 days
#5 – President Joe Biden: “Help is on the way” –
The claim came in December before he took office, and much of the rhetoric was focused on the economic impact on COVID, but Biden repeatedly made assertions that he would “fix” the federal government’s handling of COVID. By the time Biden was inaugurated, there were already one million vaccinations occurring each day, and one of his first promises was to achieve 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days, which would have meant actually decreasing the trend graph for vaccines. Way to set the bar low, Joe. Essentially the only issue in which the Biden Administration has approached COVID differently from Trump is with their authoritarian fixation on masks. That’s it.
Rest easy America, Joe Biden is coming to save us
#4 – The response by The World Health Organization –
Prior to COVID, most Americans were only vaguely aware of the WHO and their efforts. If we heard, “The WHO,” we would immediately think of Roger Daltrey swinging his microphone and Pete Townshend smashing his guitar. Once we learned how they screwed the pooch with the early days of the pandemic, and of their coziness with China, everyone started paying attention. The virus likely originated at the lab in Wuhan – though probably unintentionally – and China thoroughly mishandled the initial infections. Once the virus began spreading, the WHO provided cover for the Chinese by downplaying the extent of the spread and China’s role in it. The organization which gets much of its funding from our tax dollars was in bed with China and covering up their incompetence. President Trump was absolutely correct in pulling our funding, and if Biden had an ounce of integrity he’d do the same thing.
Chinese President Xi Jinping pays a visit to his puppets at the World Health Organization
#3 – Blue states did it better –
The media spent the first six months of the pandemic essentially engaging in journalistic copulation with Democratic governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo, while simultaneously vilifying and openly rooting against Republican governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis. DeSantis would “have blood on his hands” they told us, while concurrently paving the way for issuing an Emmy Award for Cuomo. In reality, the performances were the exact opposite of their narrative. Cuomo was dreadful in his handling of nursing homes in New York, and it was clear from the beginning he was covering up the results; a scandal which may eventually result in his removal from office. Meanwhile DeSantis was stellar in managing the virus in a state with the second oldest population in the country. The worst four states in the country for deaths-per-million are all blue states (#1 New Jersey, #2 New York, #3 Massachusetts, and #4 Rhode Island), and Florida is in the bottom half of that list and going lower. Democrats, unsurprisingly, were absolutely horrible in their handling of COVID, whereas Republicans did pretty well overall.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (left) showed New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo the proper way of handling the COVID crisis
#2 – Get the vaccine, but keep doing all of the other stuff –
This is some of the most bizarre messaging we’ve ever seen. We were blessed with three miracles: the vaccines by Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J. All three are not only highly effective at stopping infections, with efficacies of between 75% and 94%, they’re almost 100% effective at preventing hospitalization and death in the unlikely scenario you are infected. So what did Biden and the Democrats do? They told everyone that even if you’re vaccinated you need to keep social distancing and keep wearing masks. Those communications begged the question: if I have to keep doing all that stuff, then why should I get the shots? None of it made any sense. If you get vaccinated: 1) it’s highly unlikely you’ll get infected, 2) you’re almost definitely not going to be hospitalized or die from it if you do, and 3) you will not be able to transmit the disease. In other words, if you get the vaccine you can go back to normal.
Democratic Party propaganda, brought to you by their sycophants in the media
#1 – Wear two masks –
The beginning of the pandemic was chaotic, and it would have been understandable if Dr. Anthony Fauci had simply made a mistake when he told us we didn’t need masks. But it wasn’t a mistake. He lied to us and admitted doing so. Fauci justified his deceit by claiming concern that masks might not be available for health care professionals. Then Fauci decided to stop lying to us and told us to wear masks, but wouldn’t even follow his own directive. Fauci threw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals opening game last year, and forget that he threw the ball like a little girl; which, if anything, is insulting to little girls. He was wearing a mask despite the nearest person being sixty feet away. He then proceeded to sit in the stands directly next to a friend, at which point he removed his mask. Then late last year Fauci decided that it would be best if we wore two masks, without any evidence to support his notion. Like lockdowns, there’s still no evidence that mask-wearing had a significant impact on the pandemic. Dr. Fauci has zero credibility at this point, and if you’re following this recommendation by wearing two masks, then you are a moron.
The estimable Dr. Anthony Fauci, in a scene worthy of The Sandlot
When President Trump in December 2019 created for the first time a sixth branch of the US military, the Space Force, it was met to a large degree with ridicule both among his domestic political opponents and in some countries around the world. And some like Russia and China, for example, expressed concerns that it would kick off a globally detrimental ‘weaponization and militarization’ of space.
Now there are new reports that some of America’s key allies are eyeing a similar military branch focusing on space. A new interview in Military.com quotes the head of the United Kingdom’s air force as saying it remains a possibility. “Never say never,” Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston responded when asked about the potential for a British Space Force somewhere in the near future, while expressing UK’s goals of deepening cooperation in this domain with its US ally.
The comments came after at the start of last month the UK established its own Space Command, which is to include members of Royal Navy, British Army, RAF and civil service in a “joint command” structure, similar to the US Department of Defense’s own Space Command (SPACECOM) which was established in 1985 to defend the US against any threat above 100km of mean sea level.
When the top UK commander was asked whether London will take the “next step” of an actual space-focused branch which people could join (akin to joining the Army), he responded:
“I don’t think we’re… at the scale of the U.S. space enterprise yet, and I think that would be a distraction at this stage, but again, I would say never say never,” Wigston said in an interview with Military.com last month.’
“We recognize that we’re going to have to be prepared to spend more time understanding what’s going on in space, and particularly the malign activity, and then be ready to protect against it,” he said. “I think the role of organizations like the Space Force or the U.K. Space Command is only going to grow as we make more use of space.”
But he explained that at the moment the Royal Air Force has other pressing priorities, for example: the development of autonomous drones capable of supporting conventional fighter jets while flying side-by-side. “The United States Air Force in particular is in exactly the same phase as the Royal Air Force as we begin to try and understand what that future force mix will look like,” Wigston said.
He explained: “I want to see [Project] Mosquito loyal wingman remotely piloted autonomous combat aircraft on the wings of Typhoon and on the wings of the [British] F-35 [Joint Strike Fighter] this decade.”
According to a ‘statement of purpose’ issued upon the UK Space Command’s April 1, 2021 founding:
The threat from adversaries in this rapidly evolving operational domain is real and it is here now. If we fail to understand how to operate in space, integrate space with all domains and integrate with Allies’ and Partners’ space capabilities, we lose our competitive edge.
As for the US Space Force in the post-Trump era, it’s recently announced that it is seeking to become the world’s first “fully digital” military service.
US Space Force recruitment video and commercial…
“The Space Force is a small, specialized service with an expansive mission. It is inherently more bound to and driven by technology than any other mission set,” its Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Maj. Gen. Kimberly Crider said this week after the rollout of its latest “vision document”.
“We must be committed in turn to providing them [Guardians] with the digital age knowledge, tools and processes they can use and enable and empower their peak performance and unlimited potential in advancing how we design, develop, field and operate space capabilities today and into the future,” Crider explained.
Upon the Space Force’s establishment under Trump, and with the transfer of 16,000 Air Force personnel to get it going, the newly tapped director Gen. John Raymond defended it by saying “This is not a farce. This is nationally critical.”
He said at the time: “We are elevating space commensurate with its importance to our national security and the security of our allies and partners.” In the coming years and decades as this still infant US military branch gets established and expands, the question will remain the degree to which US allies and partner countries view space as the “next warfighting domain”. This may in large part depend on China and Russia’s own actions and advances in this field.
The number of people dying of alcohol consumption reached a 20-year high during the CCP virus pandemic, official figures for England and Wales have shown.
According to new data released on Thursday by the Office of National Statistics (ONS), 7,423 people in England and Wales died of alcohol-specific causes in 2020.
2020 saw the highest annual total of alcohol-specific deaths registered since 2001.
Provisional data show there were 7,423 deaths from alcohol-specific causes registered in England and Wales in 2020 – a 19.6% increase compared with 2019 https://t.co/2FVLxanDjipic.twitter.com/mODk7kikEt
— Office for National Statistics (ONS) (@ONS) May 6, 2021
The number was 19.6 percent higher than in 2019, during which 6,209 people were killed by alcohol. It was also the highest annual death toll for the past 20 years.
The steep rise in alcohol-related deaths appears to have been related to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic.
The ONS said that from January to March 2020—before the first national COVID-19 lockdown began—the death rate from alcohol abuse was “statistically similar” to rates in previous years.
However, over the rest of 2020—after the lockdown began in late March—the death rate became “significantly higher” than in any other year since 2001.
One bottle of Riesling wine is left for sale on emptied shelves next to empty boxes that contained wine at a Sainsbury’s supermarket as the outbreak of the CCP virus intensifies in Chippenham, UK, on March 25, 2020. (Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)
Alarmingly, the difference between 2019 and 2020 kept increasing in each successive quarter. The age-standardised death rate from alcohol abuse in the first quarter of 2020 was 8.5 percent higher in the first quarter of 2019.
The rate was 17.4 percent higher in the second quarter, 21.9 percent higher in the third quarter, and 28.3 percent higher in the fourth quarter.
The ONS definition of alcohol-specific deaths includes only those deaths that are a direct consequence of alcohol misuse. Most of these are longer-term conditions associated with continued alcohol misuse.
The increased consumption of alcohol during the pandemic has been observed in multiple countries.
A survey conducted in September 2020 revealed that two in five Australians had been drinking more alcohol than usual since the pandemic began.
In the United States, hospitals across the country have reported dramatic increases in alcohol-related admissions for critical diseases such as alcoholic hepatitis and liver failure.
At Keck Hospital of the University of Southern California, admissions for alcoholic liver disease were up 30 percent in 2020 compared to 2019.
