Oxford University Says “No Evidence” Vaccines Won’t Protect Against Severe Disease Caused By Omicron
After careful consideration, readers could be forgiven for believing the omicron variant is really just an early Christmas present for mRNA vaccine makers, who are pounding the alarm about the purported risks, likely because they see dollar signs. The South African scientists who initially discovered omicron (the latest in a string of variants first identified in South Africa) have already attached a giant caveat to their initial warning. They said early this week that while omicron might spread more easily than delta, early data suggest it isn’t as deadly, and that the sickness it causes is less intense.
Vaccine-makers have long been waiting for these reports about a new killer mutation that might enable them to sell millions more vaccine doses in the US and around the world. Apparently, the drive to boost their top-line sales growth to meet Wall Street’s increasingly lofty expectations has overridden their purported obligation to “the science”.
But in case you, dear reader, were wondering: “the science” hasn’t yet decided. Dr. Gottlieb, who is on Pfizer’s board of directors, said early Tueday that there’s reason to be optimistic that boosted jabs will provide “meaningful protection” against the omicron variant (the opposite of what Moderna wants us to believe).
There’s reason to be optimistic current boosted vaccines will provide meaningful protection against #Omicron – based on both evaluation of new sequence, prior experience with strains with some immune escape, as well as emerging clinical feedback from RSA. https://t.co/COoKevrBm5pic.twitter.com/XYCT0CMLbP
Gottlied cited a recent study out of Israel to help bolster his argument.
Data show vax can maintain clinical effectiveness against strains w/immune escape even when neutralization declines a lot in test tube studies. Breadth, diversity of antibodies also matter. Boosters broaden antibody response, generating antibodies that target more sites on virus. pic.twitter.com/BJdPI66nTH
But beyond Gottlieb, the University of Oxford, which helped develop the UK’s AstraZeneca COVID jab, said Tuesday that data on omicron and its efficacy remains “limited”, and that it would “carefully evaluate” the impact of the variant on its own shot, echoing an AstraZeneca statement from last week. Oxford also pointed out that the first generation of vaccines has remained effective despite a parade of new variants that have emerged over the past year.
Reuters cited some excerpts from Oxford’s statement.
“Despite the appearance of new variants over the past year, vaccines have continued to provide very high levels of protection against severe disease and there is no evidence so far that Omicron is any different,” it said in a statement. “However, we have the necessary tools and processes in place for rapid development of an updated COVID-19 vaccine if it should be necessary.”
Bloomberg picked up on Oxford’s latest statement a few minutes ago.
Via @TheTerminal, the University of Oxford says it is evaluating the implications of Omicron’s appearance on vaccine immunity, but also says vaccines have been effective against all variants so far and “there is no evidence so far that Omicron is any different.”
In other words: public health authorities shouldn’t panic about the omicron variant. It’s time for us all to take a deep breath and wait for more data to trickle in over the next two weeks.
Watch Live: Powell, Yellen Weigh In On Omicron, Debt Ceiling During Senate CARES Act Testimony
With the new year just weeks away, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will testify before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, part of routine testimony required by the CARES act.
Just two weeks ago, investors could be forgiven for writing off Tuesday’s testimony as a likely snoozefest now that Powell has been nominated for his second term as Fed chairman. But over the last week, the emergence of the omicron variant has (according to some) thrown the recovery timeline out of whack. After the release of Powell’s prepared remarks last night, markets eagerly priced in a more dovish outlook at the Fed.
But hours later, warnings from Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel sent markets back into turmoil, as investors struggled to decide who to trust more: the “science” (ie trial data which haven’t yet been gathered or released), or the authoritative executives who have been talking their book this entire time (whether the market realizes that or not is unclear).
In yet another indication of just how confused Wall Street has become, Deutsche Bank described Powell’s prepared testimony as “hawkish”, an assessment that we (and plenty of investors, judging by the market reaction) would strongly disagree with. Although DB specifies that the only hawkish aspects of Powell’s statement pertained to inflation.
We would agree with DB that nobody cares much about the pair’s prepared remarks. The “real fireworks” – as DB put it – will likely land during the Q&A, where Powell and Yellen will be grilled by Senators of both parties.
Fed Chair Powell set to appear before the Senate Banking Committee at 15:00 London time, where he may well be asked about whether the Fed plans to accelerate the tapering of their asset purchases although it’s hard to believe he’ll go too far with any guidance with the Omicron uncertainty. The Chair’s brief planned testimony was published on the Fed’s website last night. It struck a slightly more hawkish tone on inflation, noting that the Fed’s forecast was for elevated inflation to persist well into next year and recognition that high inflation imposes burdens on those least able to handle them. On omicron, the testimony predictably stated it posed risks that could slow the economy’s progress, but tellingly on the inflation front, it could intensify supply chain disruptions. The real fireworks will almost certainly come in the question and answer portion of the testimony.
Keep in mind: regardless of what Moderna CEO Bancel says, only a tiny minority on Wall Street actually expect omicron to be a major issue a few weeks from now.
But that still presents some difficulties for the central bank as it weighs whether to continue tapering asset purchases, as well as what it should signal regarding the pace of rate hikes.
Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, members of the Committee: It is a pleasure to testify today. November has been a very significant month for our economy, and Congress is a large part of the reason why. Our economy has needed updated roads, ports, and broadband networks for many years now, and I am very grateful that on the night of November 5, members of both parties came together to pass the largest infrastructure package in American history.
November 5th, it turned out, was a particularly consequential day because earlier that morning we received a very favorable jobs report– 531,000 jobs added. It’s never wise to make too much of one piece of economic data, but in this case, it was an addition to a mounting body of evidence that points to a clear conclusion: Our economic recovery is on track. We’re averaging half a million new jobs per month since January.
GDP now exceeds its pre-pandemic levels. Our unemployment rate is at its lowest level since the start of the pandemic, and our economy is on pace to reach full employment two years faster than the Congressional Budget Office had estimated. Of course, the progress of our economic recovery can’t be separated from our progress against the pandemic, and I know that we’re all following the news about the Omicron variant.
As the President said yesterday, we’re still waiting for more data, but what remains true is that our best protection against the virus is the vaccine. People should get vaccinated and boosted. At this point, I am confident that our recovery remains strong and is even quite remarkable when put it in context. We should not forget that last winter, there was a risk that our economy was going to slip into a prolonged recession, and there is an alternate reality where, right now, millions more people cannot find a job or are losing the roofs over their heads.
It’s clear that what has separated us from that counterfactual are the bold relief measures Congress has enacted during the crisis: the CARES Act, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, and the American Rescue Plan Act. And it is not just the passage of these laws that has made the difference, but their effective implementation. Treasury, as you know, was tasked with administering a large portion of the relief funds provided by Congress under those bills. During our last quarterly hearing, I spoke extensively about the state and local relief program, but I wanted to update you on some other measures. First, the American Rescue Plan’s expanded Child Tax Credit has been sent out every month since July, putting about $77 billion in the pockets of families of more than 61 million children.
Families are using these funds for essential needs like food, and in fact, according to the Census Bureau, food insecurity among families with children dropped 24 percent after the July payments, which is a profound economic and moral victory for the country. Meanwhile, the Emergency Rental Assistance Program has significantly expanded, providing muchneeded assistance to over 2 million households. This assistance has helped keep eviction rates below prepandemic levels.
This month, we also released guidelines for the $10 billion State Small Business Credit Initiative program, which will provide targeted lending and investments that will help small businesses grow and create well-paying jobs. As consequential as November was, December promises to be more so. There are two decisions facing Congress that could send our economy in very different directions. The first is the debt limit. I cannot overstate how critical it is that Congress address this issue. America must pay its bills on time and in full. If we do not, we will eviscerate our current recovery. In a matter of days, the majority of Americans would suffer financial pain as critical payments, like Social Security checks and military paychecks, would not reach their bank accounts, and that would likely be followed by a deep recession. The second action involves the Build Back Better legislation.
I applaud the House for passing the bill and am hopeful that the Senate will soon follow. Build Back Better is the right economic decision for many reasons. It will, for example, end the childcare crisis in this country, letting parents return to work. These investments, we expect, will lead to a GDP increase over the long-term without increasing the national debt or deficit by a dollar. In fact, the offsets in these bills mean they actually reduce annual deficits over time. Thanks to your work, we’ve ensured that America will recover from this pandemic. Now, with this bill, we have the chance to ensure America thrives in a post-pandemic world. With that, I’m happy to take your questions.
Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey, and other members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
The economy has continued to strengthen. The rise in Delta variant cases temporarily slowed progress this past summer, restraining previously rapid growth in household and business spending, intensifying supply chain disruptions, and, in some cases, keeping people from returning to work or looking for a job. Fiscal and monetary policy and the healthy financial positions of households and businesses continue to support aggregate demand. Recent data suggest that the post-September decline in cases corresponded to a pickup in economic growth. Gross domestic product appears on track to grow about 5 percent in 2021, the fastest pace in many years.
As with overall economic activity, conditions in the labor market have continued to improve. The Delta variant contributed to slower job growth this summer, as factors related to the pandemic, such as caregiving needs and fears of the virus, kept some people out of the labor force despite strong demand for workers.
Nonetheless, October saw job growth of 531,000, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.6 percent, indicating a rebound in the pace of labor market improvement.
There is still ground to cover to reach maximum employment for both employment and labor force participation, and we expect progress to continue.
The economic downturn has not fallen equally, and those least able to shoulder the burden have been the hardest hit. In particular, despite progress, joblessness continues to fall disproportionately on African Americans and Hispanics.
Pandemic-related supply and demand imbalances have contributed to notable price increases in some areas. Supply chain problems have made it difficult for producers to meet strong demand, particularly for goods. Increases in energy prices and rents are also pushing inflation upward. As a result, overall inflation is running well above our 2 percent longer-run goal, with the price index for personal consumption expenditures up 5 percent over the 12 months ending in October.
Most forecasters, including at the Fed, continue to expect that inflation will move down significantly over the next year as supply and demand imbalances abate. It is difficult to predict the persistence and effects of supply constraints, but it now appears that factors pushing inflation upward will linger well into next year. In addition, with the rapid improvement in the labor market, slack is diminishing, and wages are rising at a brisk pace.
We understand that high inflation imposes significant burdens, especially on those less able to meet the higher costs of essentials like food, housing, and transportation. We are committed to our price-stability goal. We will use our tools both to support the economy and a strong labor market and to prevent higher inflation from becoming entrenched.
The recent rise in COVID-19 cases and the emergence of the Omicron variant pose downside risks to employment and economic activity and increased uncertainty for inflation. Greater concerns about the virus could reduce people’s willingness to work in person, which would slow progress in the labor market and intensify supply-chain disruptions.
To conclude, we understand that our actions affect communities, families, and businesses across the country. Everything we do is in service to our public mission.
We at the Fed will do everything we can to support a full recovery in employment and achieve our price-stability goal.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
The big question now: will Powell sound dovish, or hawkish, under questioning? What’s more, investors should be on the lookout for Yellen’s comments on the debt ceiling – particularly anything she says about the timing for when the Treasury might run out of funds.
A new COVID-19 variant is sparking calls for the same old pandemic restrictions and mandates. It’s been less than a week since the World Health Organization (WHO) labeled the omicron variant of the virus, first identified in South Africa, as a “variant of concern.” Politicians and public health officials have snapped into action with advice—and requirements—to mask up and vaccinate.
On Monday, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio urged even fully vaccinated New Yorkers to return to wearing masks indoors.
“It’s time to remind people and double down and say, ‘Even if you started to move away from masks before, we’re telling you to get those masks back on now,'” the mayor said at a press conference.
We remain vigilant in New York City as we prepare for the #OmicronVariant. We've fought back against this virus before and we have the tools in place already to do it again.
An advisory issued by New York City’s health commissioner urges, but doesn’t require, people to wear masks in building lobbies, offices, and retail stores.
De Blasio also expanded the city’s vaccine mandate to include all staff at city-funded day cares, which the Post reports covers about 102,000 workers.
National Institute of Health Director Francis Collins has issued similar advice at the national level, telling CNN‘s Dana Bash on Sunday that people should continue to wear masks when indoors around the unvaccinated and continue to socially distance.
“We have to use every kind of tool in our toolbox to keep [Omicron] from getting in a situation that makes this worse,” he said.
Over in the U.K., masks are once again being required in most public settings in England, a measure Prime Minister Boris Johnson said would “buy us time in the face of this new variant.”
President Joe Biden has already issued a travel ban for non-citizens and non–permanent residents coming from South Africa and a number of other southern African nations.
That provoked some mild criticism from the WHO, which has historically been critical of travel bans to fight pandemics. Other critics have lambasted Biden for being too timid.
New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufecki has called for travel to be restricted from any countries where the omicron variant is known to be spreading, and for those restrictions to apply to U.S. citizens as well. She also recommended stricter testing and quarantine requirements for inbound passengers.
Meanwhile in TheWashington Post, Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University, similarly recommended a quarantine and testing regime for all international travelers. She also urged the Biden administration to impose a vaccine mandate for domestic air travel and interstate train travel, and for localities to bring back mask mandates.
Biden on Monday urged people get vaccinated, get a booster shot, and mask up. So long as people did those things, “there is no need for the lockdown” he announced.
The president said that he was also working closely with pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson to swiftly approve and rollout a modified vaccine if necessary.
Vaccines have been the most effective tool for protecting people from the worst consequences of COVID-19 thus far. Hopefully, they will remain effective or can be easily modified to fight the omicron variant.
In a Tuesday-published interview with the Financial Times, Moderna’s CEO said there will likely be a “material drop” in current vaccines’ effectiveness.
Everything else that politicians are currently doing, from masking to porous travel bans, feels like so much political theater. It’s a well-worn script that officials are apparently committed to following every time a new COVID variant pops into existence.
REASON WEBATHON
Reason‘s annual webathon starts today! Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward makes the case for why people who like free minds, free markets, and free content should donate today:
People who are upset that Kyle Rittenhouse isn’t going to prison are also pretty steamed that he’s going to college. Rittenhouse recently told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that he would like to attend Arizona State University (ASU) soon. That’s not sitting well with a coalition of left-wing student groups at the school, who have demanded that Rittenhouse—who was recently acquitted of multiple charges related to his shooting of three people in Kenosha, Wisconsin—be barred from attending.
“Even with a not-guilty verdict from a flawed ‘justice’ system, Kyle Rittenhouse is still guilty to his victims and the family of those victims,” the coalition declared in a statement posted on Friday, according to the Washington Examiner. “Join us to demand from ASU that those demands be met to protect students from a blood-thirsty murderer.”
ASU, for its part, says that Rittenhouse is currently not enrolled in any classes.
FREE MARKETS
The African nation of Senegal’s ban on single-use plastic products is producing a backlash.In January 2020, the Senegalese government announced a plastic ban. A grace period during the pandemic is now coming to an end, so the prohibition will now start to be enforced.
Bloomberg CityLab reports that this isn’t sitting well with Sengalese merchants, many of them women, who sell clean drinking water in now-banned plastic sachets:
the new rule has drawn attention to another problem: access to clean drinking water and the women who make a living filtering, packaging and re-selling tap water in plastic bags across Senegal’s biggest cities. An estimated 30,000 jobs are at risk, according to the Collective of Filtered Water Actors (CAES), a union that represents the industry’s manufacturers and sellers….
Women and girls took to the streets in Dakar at the beginning of September to protest the ban. Their business thrives on the demand for inexpensive water in the Sahelian climate. One 14-year-old reseller said she can buy a pack of multiple sachets for 750 CFA francs and sell it for 1,500 CFA francs.
QUICK HITS
A bill introduced in the New Jersey Legislature would make it harder for local governments to ban the construction of accessory dwelling units, or granny flats. Similar reforms in California have produced a substantial amount of new housing.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R–Co.) made some pretty bigoted remarks remarks about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.). A phone call meant to patch things up has done the opposite.
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo is under fire again for advising his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, on how to respond to the sexual harassment allegations that eventually led to his resignation earlier this year.
Jack Dorsey, the extend-o-bearded CEO who co-founded Twitter and whose fame grew with that of his increasingly powerful platform during the Trump years, resignedyesterday. His departure is the latest plot point in a long-developing Internet tragicomedy, which has seen what was supposed to be a historically democratizing technological tool transformed into a dystopian force for censorship and control.
The departure of Dorsey, the rare CEO who not only has a conscience but appears to consult it more than once every few years, is bad news for those who already had complaints about the company, which during his tenure came to occupy a central role in what’s left of American intellectual culture.
Twitter under Dorsey suffered from working too well. Specifically, society responded to Donald Trump’s Tweet-driven 2016 presidential campaign as if it revealed a defect in the platform that needed fixing when actually Trump’s election was proof that Twitter was working much as intended. Our political establishment just wasn’t looking for that sort of functionality.
The original concept of Twitter was egalitarian, flattening, and iconoclastic: “To give everyone the power to create and share ideas, instantly, without barriers.” That mantra fit with then-CEO Dick Costolo’s 2010 claim that “We’re the free speech wing of the free speech party.”
Prior to 2016, elite mouthpieces bragged about acting as gatekeepers to political power. Someone like then-ABC writer Mark Halperin could write boastful pieces about how a “Gang of 500” in Washington really decided the presidency. These were “campaign consultants, strategists, pollsters, pundits, and journalists who make up the modern-day political establishment,” as the New Yorker put it. When political debates were held, a handful of analysts on television told you who won. We, reporters, told you who was “electable” and who wasn’t, and people mostly listened, even if “electability” was a crock that mostly measured levels of corporate donor approval.
Then came 2016. Trump didn’t get the big Republican donor money (it went to Jeb Bush), he didn’t get the support of his party’s bureaucracy (which at various times pulled out stops to try to “derail” his candidacy for the nomination), and even conservative media locked arms against him early in the race (the National Review published an unprecedented “Conservatives Against Trump” mega-piece featuring a slew of famed mouthpieces, who aimed to forestall the “crisis for conservatism” Trump’s presence threatened). Trump throughout his political career benefited from free corporate media coverage, but by the time of his first nomination, he had universally negative editorial treatment in mainstream media and even serious detractors on stations like Fox.
Once, that would have been fatal to a politician, which is why Nate Cohn could write with confidence in the New York Times that Trump had “just about no chance” to win the Republican nomination in 2016 — because, he said without embarrassment, it is “the party elites who traditionally decide nomination contests.” Such commentators didn’t figure on the power of the Internet, and especially Twitter.
Trump didn’t need the news media to amplify his message. He was expressing himself in a way that defied contextualization, on a Twitter account that essentially became the country’s most-followed media network. Between January 2015 and January 2016, Trump’s number of followers doubled, but beyond that, the average number of retweets went from 79 to 2,201, which as Politico noted, meant that his power of dissemination increased by a factor of 28 in that single year. Twitter’s unique ability to exponentially increase the messaging force of a single individual had never been dealt with by institutional America before.
One of the first things I wrote about Trump was about his unique knack for the platform:
Trump will someday be in the Twitter Hall of Fame. His fortune-cookie mind – restless, confrontational, completely lacking the shame/fact filter, monosyllabic, and rarely asleep when it should be – is perfectly engineered for the medium.
Whether he was being dumb or smart, petty or cutting, incoherent or inscrutable, Trump had a way of expressing himself that automatically gave his tweets superior reach to news stories about his tweets. This put him permanently ahead of the news cycle. Even just misspelling a basketball star’s name while stepping over a few racial decorum lines created fractal-like ripples of unpredictable headlines:
With this power, a politician was now able to communicate directly with voters, and even the collective displeasure of the entire self-described political establishment could not stuff that genie back in the bottle. Moreover, Twitter itself now decided things like who won debates. Pundits were often reduced to reporting the platform’s mood, in place of the previous practice of telling populations how to feel.
People will focus on the fact that it was bad bad Donald Trump who got elected that year, but that was really incidental. The real problem Trump represented for elite America had less to do with his political beliefs than the unapproved manner of his rise. Twitter, seen as a co-conspirator in this evil, became a target of establishment reprisal after Trump’s win.
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Risk Assets Don’t Have A Central Bank Superhero This Time
By Michael Read, Bloomberg Markets Live commentator and reporter
Why hasn’t risk bounced?
Why hasn’t there been a large troupe of dip buyers at the ready after Friday’s rout?
There are three main factors behind the underwhelming price action so far this week:
The emergence of previous variants has come as central bankers were roughly midway through an easing program: there was a backdrop of asset purchases and dovish forward guidance to placate an angsty market. This time not so much, and while policy makers may tweak their speeches to stress fresh downside risks from omicron, there will be no new easing response. We clearly have more robust vaccine pathways and far more sophisticated health care protocols than at the start of the pandemic, but markets remain conditioned to respond to central banks.
We’re closing in on year-end and the risk-reward metrics are likely skewed toward taking some money off the table after a healthy year of equity returns. With so much uncertainty around the severity of the latest variant, this isn’t the time for portfolio heroes.
We just don’t know enough yet, and we won’t for several weeks. Reports of ‘mild‘ omicron cases may be broad, or regionally anecdotal; vaccines may remain effective or they may be less so — unfortunately you need a solid data set to make accurate assertions. Risk assets will remain at the mercy of speculative comments.
The above doesn’t necessarily suggest a big fat “SELL”, but does add a large dose of caution into the mix.
And that uncertainty will not have a central bank superhero to underpin sentiment.
US Home Price Acceleration Slowed Very Modestly In September
According to the latest data from Case-Shiller indices, home prices in America’s 20 largest cities soared at 19.05% YoY in September (from +19.65% YoY in August) – but notably this is the second straight month that the home price surge has decelerated…
Source: Bloomberg
This is still well above the previous peak growth in 2004.
And on a national scale, Case-Shiller’s National Home Price Index rose 19.51% YoY in September – a smidge slower than the all-time record high from August at +19.79% YoY…
Source: Bloomberg
“If I had to choose only one word to describe September 2021’s housing price data, the word would be ‘deceleration,’” Craig J. Lazzara, global head of index investment strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in statement.
“Housing prices continued to show remarkable strength in September, though the pace of price increases declined slightly.”
Finally, the question for Jay Powell is – explain how this is “transitory”?
“The forces that have propelled home price growth to new highs over the past year remain in place and are offering little evidence of abating,” Matthew Speakman, and economist at Zillow Group Inc., said in a statement.
“The number of available homes for sale remains historically small, particularly given the elevated demand for housing.”
Maybe somebody will ask him today during the CARES Act hearings?
Bitcoin, Ethereum Surge After India Walks Back Private Crypto Ban
While the rest of the market turmoils on renewed Omicron variant anxiety, cryptos are bucking the trend, accelerating higher as tech stocks are sold.
The catalyst for the decoupling is unclear but headlines from India overnight coincided with a renewed bid across the crypto space as CoinTelegraph reports that former finance secretary of India Subhash Garg clarified that “it is misleading to say that private cryptocurrencies will be banned.”
The creator of India’s crypto bill, former Finance Secretary Subhash Garg, dismissed the notion of banning “private cryptocurrencies” as a misinterpretation while highlighting the enormous potential of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.
The parliamentary discussions around a controversial crypto bill sparked fears around the ban on cryptocurrencies, with no clear indication about the ban’s scope. As Cointelegraph reported, an episode of panic selling among Indian investors followed the announcement. In an interview with local news channel News 18, Garg clarified:
“[The description of the crypto bill] was perhaps a mistake. It is misleading to say that private cryptocurrencies will be banned and to intimate the government about the same.”
He believes that the Indian government should formulate a bill after discussing it with stakeholders and crypto investors.
This sent Bitcoin back above $58,000…
And Ethereum outperformed significantly, back above $4600 at two-week highs…
Ethereum remains positively supported by forward inflation expectations, which have come back down to earth in recent days…
Additionally, we note that it is also month-end, and as pseudonymous Twitter analyst “Rekt Capital,” suggested, November’s price action for BTC is a retest of the newly established support zone near $58,750.
And longer-term analogs still hold…
Update on the 3 #BTC models I am currently tracking:
1⃣ 2017 #BTC anchored & aligned from 1.272
Late Dec – $150K
2⃣ 2017 #BTC anchored & aligned from 1.618
Early Feb – $200K
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Maxwell Trial: Testimony Of “Lolita Express” Pilot Continues Today
The first witness called in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial yesterday was the pilot of the infamous “Lolita Express”, which flew Epstein and whoever he was palling around with at the time to the disgraced financier’s private island.
The list of those who flew with Epstein reportedly includes Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew.
The pilot, Lawrence Paul Visoski Jr., was hired by Epstein in 1991. He was asked Monday about Epstein’s relationship with Maxwell, which he called “couple-ish”, but not romantic.
“I wouldn’t even categorize it as romantic,” he said during direct examination on Monday.
According to the NY Post, Visoski said that he never witnessed Maxwell or Epstein hold hands or kiss, and testified that Maxwell “managed Epstein’s many households”, including hiring staff and decorating the residences.
During opening statements, prosecutors characterized Maxwell as a “lady of the house” who was “involved in every detail of Epstein’s life.”
Prosecutors will continue to try and make the case that Maxwell was crucial to Epstein’s scheme to sexually abuse underage girls on Tuesday.
Reason‘s motto is “free minds and free markets.” But we also believe in free content. You read our website for free. You listen to our podcasts for free. You watch our videos for free. You get our newsletters for free.
We believe it’s so important to get the word out about ways that individual liberty makes the world a better place that we do labor- and resource-intensive journalism every single day, and then we toss it into the ether for you to enjoy while you’re goofing off at work or driving to soccer practice or sitting on the toilet.
All that great stuff costs money to make. And that’s where you come in.
Between now and December 7, we’re going to be asking you to donate to Reason to support the creation of the content you enjoy. We’ll be reminding you about why it’s important to donate with some posts like this one, and we’ll be hitting you with some pop-up ads. (What’s that? You hate pop-up ads? You can make them go away by—you guessed it—donating!) There will be a special video episode of The Reason Roundtable podcast where you can ask Nick Gillespie, Matt Welch, Peter Suderman, and me anything you want. (Submit your questions before 5:00 today to podcasts@reason.com.)There will be swag!
To give you an idea of what your donation buys, I’ve helpfully matched the giving levels with the kind of vital work, gear, and services your money would help pay for:
If you hit us with $50, you’ll get a temporary Reason tattoo. You’ll also buy coffee for the D.C. office for a week. This is important. There’s nothing worse than Christian Britschgi in caffeine withdrawal; he just starts stabbing people with plastic straws like he’s a vampire and we’re a bunch of human Capri Suns.
Donate $100 and we’ll add a Reason magazine digital subscription (which includes access to archives of more than 50 years of Reason magazine). That donation pays for a robot to transcribe the many, many interviews we conduct, not just for our podcasts and videos, but also for the reporting that goes into short web stories and involved print features alike. This used to be a task for interns, but at Reason we are always looking for ways to do our jobs cheaper and faster, so as soon as the robots got smart enough we were delighted to hand over the job.
Upgrade to $250 and we’ll toss a Reason 2022 calendar on the pile, letting you spend a little extra time with us every day. That’s enough to buy a plane ticket go to a conference or a hearing or a prison or a party. We haven’t been able to get on as many planes as we would have liked for the last year and a half, but we’re back on the road and looking for stories.
Throw down $500 and you’re getting all of the above, plus a signed copy of Tech Panic by Senior Editor Robby Soave. With your cash, we can buy books for our authors to do research, keep an eye on the competition, and expand their minds so they can help expand yours.
Your gift of $1,000 gets you a private lunch in Washington, D.C., with a Reason editor (pick me, I love food! Or pick Suderman, he loves drinks!) and an invitation to Reason Weekend 2022. That kind of money buys a computer for our next cub reporter when he shows up on his first day clutching a duct-taped Chromebook.
At $5,000, you’re picking up all of the above, plus a ticket to Reason Weekend for first-time givers. That kind of money helps pay for the frankly alarming amount of gear that the Reason video team needs to do their job, but especially for the enormous number of absurd costumes that it takes to keep Remy happy enough to dance in front of a green screen for the Bragg Brothers.
And at $10,000, you pull everything you see here plus two tickets to Reason Weekend for first-timers. Confession time: This giving level is our real weekly coffee budget. Thank you and we’re sorry we’re like this.
I hope you’ll consider donating to Reason in whatever form you prefer. (If you’re in a shopping mood, why not use Reason as your entry point to Amazon? We’ll get a tiny kickback every time you buy something.) Nick Gillespie will be here tomorrow to explain a fun new way to donate that we’re trying this year. But in the meantime, we hope you’ll hit us with crypto, cash, or credit to support the work that we do all year and then give away for free.
