Raphael Stevens

Dylan Sadiq became the College Cuber last year after he started creating mosaics of famous athletes using cubes.
Sadiq, 21, is a student in biomedical engineering at Rutgers University and started making cubed artwork during the pandemic.
He estimates he’ll generate $100,000 in sales of art this year.

Dylan Sadiq, known as “The College Cuber” charges $8,000 for his mosaics made of cubes. Pro teams including the NBA’s Detroit Pistons have purchased the artwork.
Courtesy: Dylan Sadiq | The College Cuber

It started with a portrait of his favorite basketball player, Luka Doncic. Then came fellow NBA star Damian Lillard. International soccer clubs like Manchester United and FC Barcelona took notice. A Major League Baseball team reached out, as did the National Football League.
Before he knew it, Dylan Sadiq was inundated with requests for his mosaics consisting of cubes (as in Rubik’s Cubes, but copycats). Sadiq, 21, is a student at Rutgers University, where he’s now known as the College Cuber.

Sadiq charges $8,000, and can make a cube portrait in under four hours. After getting traction on social media platforms and retweets on Twitter, teams including the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, National Hockey League’s New Jersey Devils and Major League Soccer’s Philadelphia Union and New York Red Bulls sought Sadiq’s work.
“This is not what I expected,” Sadiq told CNBC this week. While he was speaking, a new mosaic he created of Patrick Mahomes, the star quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs, was going viral.

Covid ruined everything

Sadiq is currently in his final semester at Rutgers and plans to graduate with a degree in biomedical engineering. But he doesn’t envision pursuing a career in the field.
His interests changed during the pandemic, as virtual schooling failed to keep him engaged.
“When I was in person, I was grinding and studying,” he said. “I was getting immersed in my education. But since we’ve been online, it’s nowhere near the same, and it’s sad. I feel like I didn’t learn much. If you put me in a situation to make an impact, I don’t even know how I can help.”

With no opportunities for in-person internships or hands-on experience in school, Sadiq took a detour. He combined his social media accounts and his interest in engineering to master the Rubik’s Cube.

Dylan Sadiq, known as “The College Cuber” charges $8,000 for his mosaics made of cubes.
Courtesy: Dylan Sadiq | The College Cuber

Sadiq likes to tell the story of how his brother, Brandon, challenged him at age 10 to solve the cube. His reward was Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty video game. Sadiq said it took him a week to complete the task.
In February 2021, Sadiq practiced solving cubes so he could get faster. Then he turned his newfound skill into an avenue for art creation.
Sadiq purchased $1,000 worth of cubes and figured out how to assemble 560 pieces to create a mosaic of Doncic, the Dallas Mavericks’ all-NBA guard. He posted it on Instagram in April, and the Mavericks noticed, sharing it with team’s followers. That sparked another mosaic of Lillard with similar results from the Portland Trail Blazers.
“I’m not sure Luka Doncic ever saw the mosaic,” Sadiq said. “And Mark Cuban, I’m not sure he saw it either,” he added.
Cuban, the owner of the Mavericks, told CNBC that he didn’t see it.
While Sadiq said he’s almost certain to forego potential jobs in engineering, he doesn’t consider his time at Rutgers, which can cost over $40,000 a year, as a waste. He said the university hires him for live events, including the football game against Ohio State in October and the inauguration of the new school president.
“That’s a huge part of the reason I’m the College Cuber,” said Sadiq. “Everything was ruined because of Covid. But where I feel valuable is through my artwork.”

Sadiq attended the Lions’ Ford Field last July to create a mosaic for the NFL club.
Courtesy: Dylan Sadiq | The College Cuber

Finding motivation in Detroit

In July, the Detroit Pistons became the first pro sports team to pay for a mosaic. Sadiq took a trip to the Motor City and created a portrait of Ben Wallace, the Pistons’ Hall of Fame center. While in town, he made the Red Wings a mosaic for their NHL draft party.
He also made sales to the NFL’s Lions and, for the MLB’s Tigers, he created a mosaic of slugger Miguel Cabrera. The team presented it to him to celebrate his 500th home run.
“I didn’t understand what I was doing,” Sadiq said of his experience in Detroit. “I was just trying to make an experience out of it.”
Wandering around Detroit, Sadiq said he became interested in the artwork that promoted Black pride in the city. That sparked an idea to expand the College Cuber.
“The artwork was amazing,” Sadiq said. “One of the things I imagined – I wish I could see the creation live. I felt like it deserved a crowd because artwork like that had a powerful message and looks beautiful. It’s colorful, vibrant – I wish I could see it being made in front of my eyes.”

Dylan Sadiq said Black artwork in Detroit motivated him to create live performances of the mosaics. He uses over 500 cubes to assemble the artwork in three hours.
Courtesy: Dylan Sadiq | The College Cuber

So Sadiq made it happen. He started charging up to $3,000 for a live performance and can create a piece of art in about three hours. For a flat fee of $8,000, clients can see the live event and keep the artwork.
Last September, Sadiq turned the College Cuber into a limited liability company. He said that of the $38,000 he’s generated in revenue since the Pistons became his first paying client in July, about $27,000 landed as profit. He keeps costs down through a deal with a toy wholesaler and pays no rent on the studio in his mom’s basement, where he makes his mosaics. 
“She’ll probably start charging me (rent) now,” he joked.
Sadiq projects he can exceed $100,000 in sales this year. So far, the Chiefs purchased the mosaic of Mahomes, and Titans running back back Derrick Henry is seeking a piece.
The NFL paid $8,000 for a mosaic of league commissioner Roger Goodell, after Joe Favorito, a well-knowns sports public relations guru and a sports business professor at Columbia University, saw a video of one of Sadiq’s mosaics. Favorito said he “was immediately blown away,” and coordinated an introduction.
“Creative talent, sometimes we take for granted,” said Favorito. “I think it’s our job to help amplify these young content creators who do something truly unique. His engineering and science background wire him in a particular way, and that’s how he’s able to do it. The fact he can almost do it in his head, and then know which pieces to set up and create something remarkable and unique in a few hours is a gift.”
It all started on the trip to Detroit.
“I learned so much from that experience,” said Sadiq. “I went from a kid making videos online to taking action. I would say that weekend in Detroit changed my entire life.”

Sadiq is shown creating a mosaic of NBA star Kevin Durant for soccer team Philadelphia Union. Durant co-owns the MLS franchise.
Courtesy: Dylan Sadiq | The College Cuber

Making money on social media

Sadiq isn’t the first person to monetize cubed mosaics. In 2019, CNBC profiled Italian artist Giovanni Contardi, who uses Rubik’s products to create art. Contardi sold a mosaic of the late Amy Winehouse for roughly $5,000 and gained social media attention for a piece on NBA star LeBron James. 
Sadiq has been in contact with Rubik’s for a brand deal. The company is owned by Canadian toymaker Spin Master, which trades on the over-the-counter marketplace.
“The pandemic was a problem for him, but it’s also created digital opportunities that he can take advantage of,” said Favorito.
Social media is central to the College Cuber’s business. His Instagram account became eligible for Facebook’s bonuses program, which pays creators to post reels. Sadiq said he’s made about $550 so far from Instagram. He also joined TikTok’s creator fund after his mosaic of Mahomes gained over 100,000 views.
For additional revenue, he’ll make mosaics and charge clients $750 for the video that companies can post in their advertisements.
But Sadiq doesn’t charge pro sports teams for the video post. Instead, he seeks retweets or reposts to build exposure. Manchester United and Barcelona have helped with soccer fans, and the NBA’s Orlando Magic also promoted the work on Twitter.
Sadiq said he plans to use the extra attention as a force for good.
Last year, he attended his first NBA game courtesy of the New York Knicks after creating a mosaic of all-star Julius Randle. Sadiq, a New Jersey native, said visiting Madison Square Garden was “life-changing” as he was able to understand further “the culture and the unity of [sports] fans.”
Sadiq now requests that teams that become clients provide free tickets to fans who have never attended a sporting event.
“That’s what I want to experience with my artwork – to bring the fans together,” he said.
Of building the College Cuber, Sadiq said, “It was just something that came to be, and I realize the value I bring to people.”
WATCH: This 24-year old makes portraits out of hundreds of Rubik’s Cubes More

Many observers don’t see that waiving intellectual property rights on Covid vaccines is an effective way to put a stop to the pandemic.
But waiver supporters argue the issue lies at the heart of the reason why vaccines are less accessible in lower-income countries.
Critics counter that patent waivers will not automatically lead to an improvement in global vaccine distribution.

It’s been well over a year since a landmark proposal brought the issue of patent waiver for the mRNA Covid vaccine to the spotlight. But many observers don’t see that waiving the intellectual property (IP) rights on Covid vaccines is an effective way to put a stop to the pandemic.
Supporters of patent waivers like Harsha Thirumurthy, associate professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, argue the issue lies at the heart of the reason why vaccines are less accessible in lower-income countries.

“It limits how much manufacturing there can be of that product or that vaccine,” said Thirumurthy, adding it keeps the price “artificially high enough that it limits the ability of other countries in the world.”
But critics counter that patent waivers will not automatically lead to an improvement in global vaccine distribution.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was among those who originally spoke out against the patent waiver, emphasizing that there are problems beyond patents that must be addressed first. Gates later reversed his stance and is now in full support of temporarily waiving the protections over coronavirus vaccine patents.
“Having a billion vaccines sitting in a warehouse of a lab that’s developing will do no good getting us back to normal,” said Heath Naquin, vice president of government and capital engagement at the University City Science Center, a nonprofit research organization, in Philadelphia.
“The patent waiver itself doesn’t actually solve that core issues in many developing countries, which are not related to the recipe, they are related to the way you get that out the door to people.”

However, experts on both sides of the debate seriously doubt whether a patent waiver on Covid-19 vaccines will ever come to be.
“I think we had the best hope of it last year when there was a proposal that was put forward at the WTO and the Biden administration had supported it,” said Thirumurthy.
“But we had European countries that objected to those patent waivers.”
Watch the video to find out more about why vaccine patents exist and the ongoing debate over their impact on the Covid pandemic.

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Monday – Friday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM ET

It’s that time again! “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer rings the lightning round bell, which means he’s giving his answers to callers’ stock questions at rapid speed.

AT&T: “Let me tell you how I feel about AT&T: I don’t hate it anymore.”
GrowGeneration: “Very, very rarely do I ever say this. It’s a stock whose time has come and went. They bought a lot of companies. They did a roll up, and then they did one roll up too many, and then I had to say goodbye, and that’s where it remains.”

InMode: “[The caller] Joe is absolutely right. This is a situation that’s a very good situation, but the mercurial nature of this market is not letting this InMode bottom. It’s trading as if it’s losing big money and not doing anything. I like InMode. I can’t tell you when it stops, but I do like InMode.”
GoodRx: “These are all no-go. They’re in a no-fly zone. You’ve just got to look at it like that.”
H&R Block: “They’re up against Intuit. That is literally bringing a knife to a gun fight. I can’t go there.”
Carrier Global: “Very much so. “Dave Gitlin is a terrific CEO. There’s a company, I would buy some at $40, some at $35 and some at $30. Meet that there, and when it does, you’ve got to be big because that’s a good company.”
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Monday – Friday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM ET

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Friday that technical analysis of Wall Street’s so-called fear gauge indicates the S&P 500 faces a challenging outlook in the near term.
“The charts, as interpreted by Mark Sebastian, suggest that the S&P 500 could remain in the house of pain through early February,” the “Mad Money” host said.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Friday that technical analysis of Wall Street’s so-called fear gauge indicates the S&P 500 faces a challenging outlook in the near term.
“The charts, as interpreted by Mark Sebastian, suggest that the S&P 500 could remain in the house of pain through early February,” the “Mad Money” host said.

However, Cramer said if the founder of OptionPit.com’s forecast proves correct, “you need to hold your nose and use this weakness to buy the stocks of quality companies that make real products or provide real services and generate real profits.”
Sebastian’s outlook is rooted in his analysis of the CBOE Volatility Index, which measures the implied volatility of S&P 500 options. The VIX stands at nearly 29 on Friday, a considerable increase from where it was just over a week ago, when it traded in the 17s.

Arrows pointing outwards

A chart showing the rally in the VIX (bottom) and the declines of the S&P 500 (top).
Mad Money with Jim Cramer

“It rallied relentlessly for the last three weeks,” Cramer said, which, according to Sebastian, “is bad news for the stock market.”
“When it rises like this, it means that traders have been buying protection for themselves every time the VIX tries to back off,” Cramer explained. “Even on days when the market manages to rally, they don’t move to unwind those hedges, they buy more insurance.”
Sebastian believes VIX futures also paint a troubling story, Cramer said. They have started to move into a state of backwardation, Cramer said. “In other words, the current volatility index is trading at a premium to the February VIX futures, and the February futures are starting to move above the March futures,” he said.

Arrows pointing outwards

VIX futures looking forward in 2022.
Mad Money with Jim Cramer

This rare development most recently occurred in March 2020, during the Covid pandemic sell-off, Cramer said. It also happened in October 2018, when Wall Street was rattled by Federal Reserve action.
“In short, pretty much every time the market sells off dramatically, Sebastian says the VIX futures tend to go into backwardation about a third of the way through the devastation. Then the selling continues for a few more weeks,” Cramer said.
“Unfortunately, that’s where he thinks we are right now, because we’re not dealing with a VIX spike, we’re dealing with a VIX swell, and those always last longer than you’d like,” Cramer added.
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Monday – Friday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM ET

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Friday he views the sell-off in Disney as a buying opportunity for investors.
“I want to own stocks that are brought down in a guilt-by-association fiasco and that’s exactly what happened to Disney today,” the “Mad Money” host said.
Netflix’s forecast of slowing subscriber growth caused its stock to plunge and also dented other streaming players like Disney.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Friday he views the sell-off in Disney as a buying opportunity for investors.
Shares of the media and entertainment giant fell 6.94%, hitting a fresh 52-week low during the session. However, the “Mad Money” host said he would not shy away from the stock because its steep decline appeared tied to Netflix’s forecast of slowing subscriber growth.

Netflix’s outlook — offered Thursday night when the company reported earnings — spooked investors, and the company’s shares plunged 21.8% Friday.
“I want to own the stocks of longstanding, great Americans that are brought down in a guilt-by-association fiasco, and that’s exactly what happened to the stock of Disney today,” Cramer said, while noting he was prevented from adding to his charitable trust’s position in Disney on Friday because he mentioned the stock on TV in the morning. Cramer’s ethics policy is that he waits 72 hours before executing a trade in a stock that he discusses on CNBC’s TV shows.
Cramer’s trust bought back into Disney in September, about three months after exiting its position entirely for the first time in 16 years. The trust added to the stock in late November and then again in December.
Cramer acknowledged Friday that he’s “been too early” on Disney, alluding to the fact the stock is trading lower than when the trust made its buys.
“But it’s time to stop conflating speculative stories with investment-grade stories. Many stocks that have bee annihilated here belong to companies that don’t have much in the way of earnings, companies that mostly trade on hype or hope,” Cramer said.

He said he sees a range of speculative assets — including cryptocurrencies and stocks that went public through a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company — that deserve to be struggling right now, as Wall Street prepares for likely interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.
“But you can’t just extrapolate the weakness of one company which has done very well, Netflix, with a whole host of other companies with great brand names that make fantastic products and generate good earnings, like Disney,” Cramer said.
“I am not saying that Netflix isn’t worth owning. At some price, it sure will be,” he added. “I am saying that there are plenty of high-quality companies that were poleaxed today because of Netflix, and those were the best ones to buy.”
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Monday – Friday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM ET

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday looked ahead to next week’s pivotal market events, including a busy slate of corporate earnings reports.
“We don’t know what’s going to cause the market to turn around,” the “Mad Money” host acknowledged after the Nasdaq’s worst week since October 2020.
“I am saying if you buy great American companies, not junk, you tend to do pretty well historically,” he said.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday looked ahead to next week’s pivotal market events, including a busy slate of corporate earnings reports and a meeting of the Federal Reserve’s policymaking arm.
The “Mad Money” host’s comments came after the Nasdaq Composite concluded its worst week since October 2020, falling 7.6% over the past five sessions.

Cramer said if investors pay attention to the companies he highlighted on next week’s earnings calendar, they may be “appropriately surprised at all the money these great American enterprises are making.”
“But as for the not-so-great American enterprises, like the SPACs or most of the recent IPOs, they’ll be stuck in the house of pain for the foreseeable future,” he said. “We don’t know what’s going to cause the market to turn around. I am saying if you buy great American companies, not junk, you tend to do pretty well historically.”
All earnings and revenue estimates are from FactSet.

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Jim Cramer’s game plan for the trading week of Jan. 24.
Mad Money with Jim Cramer

Monday: Halliburton, IBM

Halliburton

Q4 earnings before the bell; conference call at 9 a.m. ET Monday
Projected EPS: 34 cents
Projected revenue: $4.09 billion

Cramer said he believes Halliburton’s conference call is a must-listen for energy investors. Specifically, he said he’ll be looking for management’s commentary around drilling and whether the newfound discipline in the oil industry is starting to show cracks given the price of crude. That discipline was a key reason for the strength of energy stocks last year, he said, as well as their strong start in 2022.

IBM

Q4 earnings after the close; conference call at 5 p.m. ET Monday
Projected EPS: $3.30
Projected sales: $16.07 billion

Cramer said he’s expecting “very little” from IBM’s quarter, given the distinct circumstances surrounding the company’s spin-off of its infrastructure services unit, Kyndryl.

Tuesday: General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Lockheed Martin, American Express and Microsoft

General Electric

Q4 earnings before the open; conference call at 8 a.m. ET Tuesday
Projected EPS: 85 cents
Projected revenue: $21.31 billion

Johnson & Johnson

Q4 earnings before the bell; conference call at 8:30 a.m. ET Tuesday
Projected EPS: $2.12
Projected sales: $25.29

Both GE and Johnson & Johnson announced significant break-up plans last year and their respective stocks didn’t react well, Cramer noted. Considering that fact, along with the general negative sentiment hitting Wall Street right now, Cramer said investors can afford to take their time to analyze both companies going forward. “Neither one is going to run away from you,” he said.
Lockheed Martin

Q4 earnings before the open; conference call at 11 a.m. ET Tuesday
Projected EPS: $7.16
Projected revenue: $17.66 billion

Cramer said Lockheed Martin is favorite company reporting Tuesday morning because of the geopolitical situations involving both Russia and China. “Let’s see what CEO Jim Taiclet has to say,” Cramer said.
American Express

Q4 earnings before the open; conference call at 8:30 a.m. ET Tuesday
Projected EPS: $1.86
Projected revenue: $11.54 billion

Cramer said he’s a fan of American Express ahead of its quarterly results, citing a rebound for small and medium size businesses and the continued recovery of travel.
Microsoft

Q2 2022 earnings after the close; conference call at 5:30 p.m. ET Tuesday
Projected EPS: $2.31
Projected sales: $50.65 billion

Microsoft’s quarter is incredibly important, Cramer said. In particular, Cramer said investors will be focused on the tech giant’s Azure division and whether the cloud computing operation is continuing to grow.

Wednesday: FOMC meeting concludes; Boeing, Tesla and Intel earnings

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testifies during the House Financial Services Committee hearing titled Oversight of the Treasury Department’s and Federal Reserve’s Pandemic Response, in Rayburn Building on Wednesday, December 1, 2021.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

Federal Open Market Committee

The Fed’s policymaking arm’s first meeting of 2022 begins Tuesday and ends Wednesday
Fed Chair Jerome Powell set to hold press conference around 2:30 p.m. ET Wednesday

“Powell will talk about his schedule of rate hikes and as long as he doesn’t say he’s going to do it in lockstep, I bet we’ll be fine,” Cramer said, while acknowledging that some on Wall Street believe the market’s downturn is in anticipation of Powell’s scheduled press conference Wednesday.
Boeing

Q4 earnings before the bell; conference call at 10:30 a.m. ET Wednesday
Projected EPS: Loss of 35 cents
Projected revenue: $16.48 billion

Cramer said he’s setting expectations low going into Boeing’s print. “If you expect nothing, you’re never disappointed,” he said, noting that he owns the stock for his charitable investment trust.
“The aerospace cycle is too good to ignore, but the company is not well-managed,” he said.
Tesla

Q4 earnings after the close; conference call at 5:30 p.m. ET Wednesday
Projected EPS: $2.26
Projected sales: $16.99 billion

Cramer said he expects Tesla to deliver another good quarter. He noted that Tesla has a lot of updates to give, including on its first manufacturing plant in Germany.
Intel

Q4 earnings after the bell; conference call at 5 a.m. pm ET Wednesday
Projected EPS: 90 cents
Projected sales: $18.33 billion

Cramer said he’ll be listening for insight into how Intel plans to fund its big announcement Friday regarding plans to build semiconductor factories in Ohio.

Thursday: McDonald’s and Apple earnings

Epics | Hulton Archive | Getty Images

McDonald’s

Q4 earnings before the open; conference call at 8:30 a.m. ET Thursday
Projected EPS: $2.34
Projected revenue: $6.03 billion

The restaurant industry has faced a slew of challenges during the Covid pandemic, including inflationary pressures, Cramer said. “We are headed to a winner-take-all scenario, and the last man standing will most certainly be McDonald’s, among others,” he said.
Apple

Q1 2022 earnings after the close; conference call at 5 p.m. ET Thursday
Projected EPS: $1.89
Projected revenue: $118.74 billion

Cramer, whose charitable trust owns shares of Apple, said he thinks the iPhone maker’s earnings report could be “anticlimactic.”
“For the first time in ages, Apple’s stock won’t be coming in hot, which gives you a real chance to make some money on the company I always say you should simply own, not trade,” he said.

Friday: Chevron and Caterpillar

Chevron

Q4 earnings before the bell; conference call at 11 a.m. ET Friday
Projected EPS: $3.11
Projected revenue: $44.59 billion

Cramer said he believes Chevron, another holding in his charitable trust’s portfolio, “should be a monster,” calling it a “lean, mean oil machine.” He added he hopes the stock falls post-earnings so the trust can add to its position.
Caterpillar

Q4 earnings before the open; conference call at 8:30 a.m. ET Friday
Projected EPS: $2.26
Projected revenue: $13.17 billion

Caterpillar finds itself situation in “one of the more challenged industries because its raw costs are going up, but orders may or may not be able to override the impact,” he said.
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Two years ago, the CDC confirmed the first known case of coronavirus in the U.S.
A 35-year-old traveler had returned from Wuhan, China to Washington state and tested positive.
The virus has killed more than 860,000 people in the U.S. and infected more than 69 million.
With the emergence of omicron, the future course of the pandemic is unclear as experts struggle to understand how new variants emerge.

People wait in line to be tested for COVID-19 at Union Station on January 7, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.
Mario Tama | Getty Images

A 35-year-old man returned to the U.S. from Wuhan, China on Jan. 15, 2020 and fell ill with a cough and fever.
He had read an alert from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about an outbreak of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan and sought treatment at an urgent care clinic in Snohomish County, Washington four days later.

On Jan. 21, the CDC publicly confirmed he had the first known case of coronavirus in the U.S., although the agency would later find the virus had arrived on the West Coast as early as December after testing blood samples for antibodies.
The man said he had not spent time at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, where a cluster of early cases were identified in December. He was admitted to isolation unit at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Wash. for observation.

After confirming the Washington state case, the CDC told the public it believed the risk “remains low at this time.” There was growing evidence of person-to-person transmission of the virus, the CDC said, but “it’s unclear how easily this virus is spreading between people.”
Then President Donald Trump told CNBC the U.S. had it “totally under control.”
“It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine,” Trump told “Squawk Box” co-host Joe Kernen in an interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

However, Dr. Anthony Fauci would confirm the public’s worst fears on Jan. 31: People could carry and spread the virus without showing any symptoms. Dr. Helen Chu’s research team at the Seattle Flu Study started examining genomic data from Wuhan. It became clear early on that person-to-person transmission was happening, Chu said. By using the flu study’s databank of nasal swab samples, the team was able to identify another Covid case in a 15-year-old who hadn’t recently traveled, indicating it was spreading throughout the community.

CNBC Health & Science

In late February, a senior CDC official, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, warned that containing the virus at the nation’s borders was no longer feasible. Community spread would happen in the U.S., she said, and the central was question was “how many people in this country will have severe illness.”
In the two years since that first confirmed case, the virus has torn through the U.S. with a ferocity and duration few anticipated. The human toll is staggering, with more than 860,000 people dead and more than 69 million total infections. Hospitals around the nation have been pushed to the breaking point with more than 4 million admissions of confirmed Covid patients since August 2020, when the CDC started tracking hospitalizations. The hospital admissions are an undercount because they do not include the wave of cases that first hit the U.S. in the spring 2020 when hospitals were caught flat footed and testing was inadequate.
Though the U.S. now has effective vaccines and therapeutics to fight Covid, the future course of the pandemic remains uncertain as the virus mutates into new variants that are more transmissible and can evade vaccine protection. The highly contagious omicron variant has pushed infections and hospitalizations to record highs across the globe this month, a shock to a weary public that wants a return to normal life after two years of lockdowns, event cancellations, working from home and mask and vaccine mandates.
The rapid evolution of the virus and the dramatic waves of infection that would follow, from alpha to delta and omicron, came as a surprise to many elected leaders, public health officials and scientists. Dr. Michael Osterholm, a top epidemiologist, said the Covid mutations are the big unknown that will determine the future course of the pandemic.
“We don’t yet understand how these variants emerge and what they are capable of doing,” Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Minnesota, told CNBC. “Look at how omicron caught us as a global community surprised by the rapid transmission, the immune evasion. Look at delta and all the impact it had on disease severity,” he said.

As new infections started to decline in the spring of 2021 and the vaccines became widely available, the U.S. began to let its guard down. The CDC said the fully vaccinated no longer need to wear masks indoors. President Joe Biden proclaimed on July 4th the U.S. was closer than ever to declaring independence from the virus.
However, the delta variant was taking hold in the U.S. at the time and would soon cause a new wave of infection, hospitalization and death as vaccination rates slowed. Public health leaders have struggled for months to convince skeptics to get the shots.
More than a year after the first vaccine was administered in the U.S., about 67% of Americans older than 5 are fully vaccinated, according to CDC data. Tens of millions of Americans still have not gotten their shots, despite the fact that data has proven them to be safe and effective at preventing severe illness and death.
“We had no sense in January of 2020, the divisive politics and community reaction to this that were going to occur,” Osterholm said. “Who would have imagined the kind of vaccine hesitancy and hostility that’s occurred.”
Delta was more than twice as transmissible as previous variants and research indicated it caused more severe disease in unvaccinated people. The CDC would reverse its loosened mask guidance and encourage everyone, regardless of vaccination status, to wear masks indoors in public in areas of substantial transmission as delta spread.

The vaccines took a hit when omicron emerged in November. Though they still protect against severe illness and death, they are less effective at preventing infection from omicron. Chu said the U.S. relied primarily on vaccines to prevent transmission of the virus without equally emphasizing widespread masking and testing, which are crucial to controlling a variant like omicron that can evade immunity.
“We now know that, proportionately, you can be repeatedly infected, you can have vaccine breakthroughs, and that this virus will just continue to mutate and continue to evade us for a long time,” Chu said.
Katriona Shea co-leads a team of researchers who bring together models to forecast the trajectory of the pandemic. In their latest update, the omicron wave of cases and hospitalizations will likely peak before the end of the month. However, their most optimistic projection shows anywhere from 16,000 to up to 98,000 additional deaths from the omicron wave by April 2.
Currently, the U.S. is reporting an average of more than 736,000 new infections per day, according to a seven-day average of Johns Hopkins data analyzed by CNBC. While that is still far higher than previous waves, average daily infections are down 8% from the previous week. The U.S. is reporting more than 1,800 deaths per day as a seven-day average.
“It’s really, really frustrating and tragic to see people dying from a vaccine preventable disease,” Chu said.

The implications of omicron for the future course of the pandemic are unclear. In in the classic view, viruses evolve to become more transmissible and less severe, making it easier to find new hosts.
“There are lots of reasons to believe that might not be true because the jump to omicron was so massive, it suggests that there’s lots of space for it to change quite dramatically,” said Shea, a professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University. Omicron has more than 30 mutations on the spike protein that binds to human cells. The shots target the spike protein, and the mutations make it more difficult for vaccine-induced antibodies to block infection.
Doctors and infectious disease experts in South Africa, where omicron was first identified, said the variant peaked and started to declined rapidly, demonstrating a significantly different trajectory than past strains. The researchers also said ICU admissions and deaths were lower at Steve Biko Academic Hospital, indicating decreased severity.
“If this pattern continues and is repeated globally, we are likely to see a complete decoupling of case and death rates, suggesting that Omicron may be a harbinger of the end of the epidemic phase of the Covid pandemic, ushering in its endemic phase,” the researchers wrote.
Over time, the virus could become less disruptive to society as mutations slow and it becomes mild as greater immunity in the population limits severe disease, according to Jennie Lavine, a computational investigational biologist at the biotech company Karius.
However, the head of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, cautioned earlier this week that the pandemic is “nowhere near over,” warning that new variants are likely to emerge as omicron rapidly spread across the world.
“Everybody wants to get to this thing called endemic. I still don’t know what the hell that means,” Osterholm said, noting that he has 46 years of experience as an epidemiologist. “With variants, we can go for a period of time with relatively low activity, like we’ve seen in many places in the world, and then a new variant could change all that overnight. We don’t really understand our future yet.”

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GM’s new version of the Cadillac Escalade adds to its growing lineup of high-powered gasoline models ahead of the automaker’s push toward electric vehicles.
The 2023 V-Series resembles current models, but it’s expected to offer significantly more performance.
Automakers have increasingly been adding performance variants to their lineups as a way to beef-up profit margins.

DETROIT – General Motors has announced a new version of its flagship Cadillac Escalade SUV line, adding to its growing lineup of high-powered gasoline vehicles ahead of the automaker’s push toward full electrification by 2035.
GM on Friday said the 2023 Cadillac Escalade V-Series, like its other performance vehicles, will “encompass the peak of Cadillac performance, bold, distinguished design and innovative technology.”

The new V-Series resembles other current Escalade SUVs, but it’s expected to offer significantly more performance. The sound of the engine also mimics that of a sports car more than a full-size SUV, according to videos released by the automaker.
Cadillac’s “V” or “V-Series” designation has traditionally been used for performance cars. The Escalade V-Series is expected to be powered by a 6.2-liter V-8 that’s currently used in the CT5-V Blackwing sedan, according to media reports. That engine generates 668 horsepower and 659 foot-pounds of torque, which compares to the current Escalade with a 6.2-liter V-8 at 420 horsepower and 460 foot-pounds of torque.
A GM spokeswoman declined to provide more details about the new vehicle, saying more information will be available in the spring.

2023 Cadillac Escalade V-Series

Automakers have increasingly been adding performance variants to their lineups as a way to beef-up profit margins before they transition more to electric vehicles, which can offer high performance but lower margins than gas-powered cars.
Cadillac is expected to lead GM’s target to exclusively offer electric vehicles by 2035, with the Escalade line offering its EV-only fleet by 2030.   

2023 Cadillac Escalade V-Series

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