We're Overdue for a 'Return to Normal'

It's time for the COVID-19 restrictions to end... Large economic reasons to do this... We're overdue for a 'return to normal'... Immunity rising... Omicron may have ended the pandemic... Inflation and politics...

Let's stop the insanity...

A few months ago, a private school in Miami told parents that any student who has been vaccinated could not attend school for 30 days after getting the shot... Administrators feared the vaccine would get others infected.

Really?

On a trip through three national parks last year, my family was required to wear masks while riding in open boats on lakes in the Rocky Mountains...

What?

Traveling to London this past holiday season required facing several COVID-19 testing procedures... I (Thomas Carroll) looked into it for my family.

Once international passengers landed at Heathrow Airport, they had to go through immigration as normal, and add another big step... at a mass COVID-19 testing center at the airport.

Then after being tested, you had to quarantine at a hotel until your test result came back negative, even if nonsymptomatic. Some stranger would contact you with your results...

If the result happened to be a false positive? Too bad... It would result in confinement and a new set of testing hoops to jump through, all at a cost to the traveler.

Gee, thanks. That's not exactly an incentive to plan a trip, for personal or business reasons.

As I will share in today's Digest, it's time for all of this to stop... Specifically, I mean all the pandemic-related restrictions. Two years on from the start of the pandemic, they are simply not needed anymore – for several reasons.

Don't get me wrong, though...

I'm not an anti-vax, no-mask, COVID-19 denier. And I'm certainly not insensitive to people with compromised immune systems or underlying health conditions. Quite the opposite...

My father died of COVID-19 in 2021... He had no underlying conditions nor a compromised immune system. But he refused to get vaccinated. He showed symptoms then died seven days later. As such, I have perspective...

I've also spent the bulk of my professional life working in health care services research... I went to public health school for my graduate-school work... and I have paid close attention to each twist and turn of the pandemic.

And as I'll detail in today's Digest, there are a variety of medical reasons why it's time to "return to normal," or at least arrive at a new normal...

Importantly, there's also a large economic motivation to do this... which, fortunately, might actually convince politicians seeking election this November to go along with my suggestion... I'll get into that today too.

First, let's remember where we started...

Two years ago, the "novel" – or new – coronavirus and responses to it upended life as we knew it... At the time, it made sense to restrict contact with people and see what the virus was going to do.

We needed to learn more about it... and how to handle it. But now we have, and many pandemic-related policies – like forcing kids to wear masks in gym class – are not making sense anymore.

Rules and restrictions have "jumped the shark"... I have found myself using this phrase with every "COVID conversation" I've had these days. It fits perfectly...

Why? For three reasons...

• There is a safe, effective, and widely available vaccine.

• Millions of people have taken the vaccine and are protected.

• The Omicron variant is very contagious with mild symptoms for most... and those infected (which is a lot) have strengthened their immune system's ability to fight future COVID-19 infections.

None of the above existed two years ago, so it made sense to be more careful back then... But now, for heaven's sake, let's use some common sense.

It really was 'Operation Warp Speed'...

The global pharma effort has crushed it... The industry that takes so many hits from politicians and the media did its job with COVID-19 and did it very well.

COVID-19 vaccine development was one of the best, most successful examples of public-private partnership ever seen.

Between Operation Warp Speed and billions in private investment, a safe and effective vaccine was developed in record time.

The U.S. reported its first COVID-19 cases in January 2020 only to see exploding cases in the coming months... Sandra Lindsay, an intensive-care-unit nurse in New York City, received the first U.S. vaccine on December 14, 2020.

In less than a year, the virus was identified, a vaccine was developed and tested, then administered to the first patient. Regular people like me began to get vaccinated in March 2021... just 15 months after first cases were reported.

Previously, the fastest any new vaccine had been developed was four years.

It is also one of the safest vaccines ever developed. The new technology creating it – using mRNA techniques – is actually not that new... It has been in the works for decades.

Dr. E. John Wherry, director of the Institute for Immunology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, said the following about the vaccine in an article for Penn Today...

What's clear is that these vaccines are amazing. In terms of the immunological response they induce, they're among the best vaccines we've studied.

While there were some rare reports of blood clotting and a slightly increased risk of the neurological condition Guillain-Barré syndrome, overall the vaccine is projected to be extremely safe.

As of now, it is expected that researchers will not find anything really bad that happens to more than 1 in 500,000 people... The odds say there is no or little reason to fear this vaccine.

Plus, it is widely available in developed area like the U.S. and Europe, and it is also getting to poorer countries as well.

COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access ("COVAX") – a program of the World Health Organization that buys vaccines from rich countries – shipped 111 million doses last October... In November and December, COVAX was expected to have another 900 million in the pipeline. Vaccines are getting out there globally.

If you really want one, you can likely find it...

Hundreds of millions have been vaccinated...

More vaccinations mean less disease... It also means less severity if reinfected.

As of yesterday, 214 million people in the U.S. have been fully vaccinated with two doses. That is about 64% of the U.S. population. Another 92 million have received a booster shot...

Worldwide, 10.4 billion doses have been given. This equates to almost 62% of the Earth's population. And almost 28 million doses are now being given daily...

But forget vaccinations...

The human body's own immune system creates the best vaccination in the world. Once infected and recovered, the immune system remembers COVID-19 and can fight future infections.

Our own David "Doc" Eifrig – head of our Retirement Millionaire franchise – has been saying this since the start of the pandemic... And he is spot on.

Almost 78 million people in the U.S. are confirmed to have been infected with COVID-19 as of February 13, 2022... The real count is likely much higher.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University believe three out of four people in the U.S. will have been exposed once the Omicron surge is done.

That means a lot of people have natural immunity...

The news gets better... People who had COVID-19 and then got vaccinated or had a breakthrough case after vaccination have what scientists are calling "hybrid immunity" – also known as super immunity.

Their bodies rapidly create protections effective against known variants as well as showing protection for new variants.

Between vaccination and regular infection, we are rapidly achieving herd immunity. The Mayo Clinic cites 94% infection or vaccination for herd immunity to exist... Other sources suggest 70%.

Given the numbers and what I'm about to explain about the Omicron variant, we are well on our way.

The vaccine is safe, effective, and readily available... If you do not want yourself or your family vaccinated for whatever reason, that is your right. But if you get sick, that is on you.

Less severe and more contagious...

Omicron, the latest COVID-19 variant responsible for 95% of current confirmed infections, will help end the pandemic that has been ruining our way of life.

Why? It is less severe and massively contagious, giving more people immune system responses to COVID-19.

Overall, this is a good thing if you're interested in living in a world without the pandemic...

Researchers found Omicron's death rate to be lower than Delta and lower than the original variant... In South Africa, where Omicron was first discovered, adults were 29% less likely to be hospitalized than previous variants.

And during recent earnings announcements from U.S. health insurers, medical-claims data analysis suggested lower severity of illness. This information is where the rubber meets the road.

Omicron is also more contagious. It created more infections than either of the two primary variants tracked by researchers around the globe.

My belief is that many more people than confirmed cases have been exposed to the Omicron variant. If so, then even more people than the "official counts" have super immunity.

Now, this doesn't mean 'it's all over' just yet...

You might have heard that viruses become less deadly as they mutate over time, like what has happened with the Omicron variant...

But this trend is actually not always true, despite what appears in the media.

Examples include Bird Flu and norovirus mutating to more virulent versions of themselves... In fact, the 2014 to 2016 Ebola outbreak in Africa killed 90% of those infected despite the virus' first discovery in 1976.

A quick call to my infectious-disease expert friend Dr. Robert Bollinger at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine also confirmed this...

So, I'm not saying we need to forget that COVID-19 exists... just that the era of restrictions like we're still living in the early days of the pandemic should be finished...

We have moved from pandemic to endemic...

Endemic means the illness will continue to circulate throughout the world. But it will not create havoc. Those at risk or infected will take care of themselves... We will live with it.

This is where we are with the flu, common cold, and many other coronaviruses currently circulating...

Many will still wear masks in confined places like airplanes and take other precautions. If you've been to or through China in the years before the pandemic... you likely saw people wearing masks.

Similar coronaviruses have been circulating in Asia for decades and even much longer. The rest of the world is now catching up with these behaviors.

Additionally, there will likely be lasting benefits of our new behaviors...

For example, the pandemic has improved personal hygiene for many. Things like handwashing and wiping down desks should limit the spread of everyday colds, virus, and the flu.

I wrote about this in American Consequences in August 2021. You can read that here.

We have to 'live with it' because the cost of 'trying to eliminate it' is high...

I'm talking here about the costs to the economy... and people's livelihoods... and how you and I go about living our everyday lives.

At this point, when a school or daycare facility makes kids stay at home for a week or two after a positive COVID-19 test, that creates a cascade of unnecessary consequences.

Who watches the children?... Does a parent or guardian have to take off from work?... Do they even want to work now given the policies that are in place?... Scenarios like this keep people out of the workforce.

And it also disrupts the normal flow of business and goods and services, leads to supply shortages, and ultimately... inflation.

People still want stuff, but there's not enough of it to go around... so higher prices...

Tech and retail giant Amazon (AMZN), for example, just raised its monthly rate for its Prime membership, from $12.99 to $14.99 a month... or about $25 per year.

The good thing for Amazon is that many subscribers will simply just keep paying the higher price because of the "essential" nature of quick delivery of seemingly anything anyone could ever want.

But not everyone, or any industry or company, can afford a world with higher prices and limited in-person contact. The restaurant and travel industries, for example, have been crushed – and it's time for it to stop...

We're getting closer...

Thankfully – and hopefully because of what I'm describing here – idiotic restrictions are beginning to be lifted...

New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, Oregon, and California all had or have plans to remove indoor mask mandates in February and March. I'd love to see more announced soon... and we might for one more reason: Politics.

It's a midterm election year, and there will be key races across the country that could swing the balance of party power in America. Popularity means a heck of a lot... and politicians will do anything to get reelected.

If things play out as they should, this means a period of sustained economic growth hopefully by the summer...

We are already seeing this in the inflation numbers. The U.S. economic engine is firing back up. We are hopefully at the start of a long, real recovery that has no need for government stimulus... or intervention like we've seen for two years.

We're well overdue for that.

New 52-week highs (as of 2/22/22): Altius Renewable Royalties (ARR.TO), Enstar (ESGR), and United States Commodity Index Fund (USCI).

In today's mailbag, feedback on the new StansberryResearch.com... Have you seen it yet? Let us know what you think. Send your comments or questions to feedback@stansberryresearch.com.

"To everyone at Stansberry Research,

"I don't know exactly who to address this to, so I decided to address it to everyone. I would imagine that everyone had a hand in producing the new website. Yes, everyone. You have done a fantastic job. Understand that I am not just an Alliance user. I was a web developer at IBM for 17 years, so I am very critical.

"After being with Stansberry for at least a decade, I have gotten to watch it grow along with my wealth. I started with the Investment Advisory and have gone up the line to becoming an Alliance member a few years ago. Money well spent. Reading time well spent. And so on.

"I would like to thank everyone of you for all that you have done for me and my family." – Stansberry Alliance member Jeff S.

Good investing,

Thomas Carroll Baltimore, Maryland February 23, 2022