Raphael Stevens

President Joe Biden puts his hand on a man’s shoulder during a visit to a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccination site at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S., April 6, 2021.Kevin Lemarque | ReutersThe Biden administration is preparing for the potential need for Covid-19 vaccine booster shots, though nothing is certain, a top U.S. official said Friday.”Requiring additional shots in the future is obviously a foreseeable potential event,” Andy Slavitt, senior advisor to President Joe Biden’s Covid response team, told reporters during a press briefing Friday. “I want to emphasize that while there is certainly speculation about this, that is far from saying that is what’s going to happen.”Should Americans require booster shots, the U.S. government would likely need to make arrangements with the drugmakers to supply additional doses and make plans for vaccine distribution.Slavitt said Friday the administration has thought about the need to secure additional doses.”I can assure you that when we do our planning, when the president orders purchases of additional vaccines as he has done and when we focus on all the production expansion opportunities that we talk about in here we very much have scenarios like that in mind,” he said.Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, in comments that were aired for the first time Thursday, said people will likely need a third dose, or booster shot, of a Covid-19 vaccine within 12 months of getting fully vaccinated. Bourla also said it’s possible people will need to get vaccinated against the coronavirus annually, like for the seasonal flu.”A likely scenario is that there will be likely a need for a third dose, somewhere between six and 12 months, and then from there, there will be an annual revaccination, but all of that needs to be confirmed. And again, the variants will play a key role,” he told CNBC’s Bertha Coombs during an event with CVS Health.”It is extremely important to suppress the pool of people that can be susceptible to the virus,” he added.Pfizer and Moderna have both said their two-dose Covid-19 vaccines, which use similar technology, remain highly effective six months after the second dose. However, researchers still don’t know how long protection against the virus lasts after six months of being fully vaccinated, though health experts do expect protection to wane after some time.On Thursday, the Biden administration’s Covid response chief science officer, David Kessler, said Americans should expect to receive booster shots to protect against coronavirus variants. He told U.S. lawmakers that currently authorized vaccines are highly protective but noted new variants could “challenge” the effectiveness of the shots.”We don’t know everything at this moment,” he told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.”We are studying the durability of the antibody response,” he said. “It seems strong, but there is some waning of that, and no doubt the variants challenge … they make these vaccines work harder. So I think for planning purposes, planning purposes only, I think we should expect that we may have to boost.”Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel told CNBC on Wednesday that the company hopes to have a booster shot for its two-dose vaccine available in the fall. More

A paramedic transfers a patient to an emergency room at Hackensack Meridian Health Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen, New Jersey, on December 11, 2020.Kena Betancur | AFP | Getty ImagesDr. Paul Offit, a physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said he is now seeing more patients with a rare inflammatory condition, a complication of Covid-19, than he has ever witnessed since the pandemic began.In Texas, Dr. James McDeavitt, dean of clinical affairs at Baylor College of Medicine, said he and his colleagues are noticing a rise in admissions of young people with Covid-19, though he did not have hard data yet to back up the anecdotal evidence.Both doctors attributed the rise in hospital visits of teens and young adults, at least in part, to B.1.1.7, the coronavirus variant first identified in the U.K. that public health officials say is now the most common strain circulating in the U.S. The variant is highly contagious, thought to be about 60% more transmissible than the original strain of the virus.”I think they’re getting infected more frequently because of the contagiousness of the virus,” said Offit, a health expert in the fields of virology and immunology, who has also served on advisory panels for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. “So for that reason, I think you will see and are seeing more disease” in children and young adults.CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said earlier this month hospitals are seeing more and more younger adults being admitted with Covid-19 as new, more contagious variants of the virus spread faster than ever before. Nationwide, the number of 18- to 64-year-olds visiting emergency departments with Covid is increasing while the number of visits among patients 65 and older is declining, according to a slide presented by Walensky during a news briefing last week.”Cases and emergency room visits are up,” Walensky said. “We are seeing these increases in younger adults, most of whom have not yet been vaccinated.”In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said last week the state is seeing the Covid positivity rate rise among people ages 18 to 24. In Michigan, where Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are rapidly increasing, case rates are at an all-time high for those age 19 and younger, according to state data published April 6. Hospital admissions are increasing for all age groups, with the greatest increase seen in people between the ages of 40 and 49, according to the state’s data.Health experts say the issue is multifaceted: Older teens and young adults were among the last prioritized to get the Covid-19 vaccines and many of them have yet to get the shots. In addition, young adults are thought to be involved in more high-risk behaviors such as playing close-contact sports, going out to bars, attending unmasked get-togethers or traveling.Those factors coupled with the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant is likely driving a surge in young people going to the hospital, health experts say.We are seeing “less disease in the elderly, due to vaccination, so proportionally we will see more disease in young adults now,” said Dr. Stephen Schrantz, an infectious disease expert at UChicago Medicine, adding it is still unclear how much of this increase is due to the B.1.1.7 strain alone.Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto, said there’s emerging evidence that indicates B.1.1.7 causes more symptoms and more severe disease. He said health officials in the U.S. and in other countries where the strain is prevalent might see a shift towards unvaccinated young people ending up in hospitals or even in the ICU.”There are things that are not working in our favor right now, which is B.1.1.7 and other variants of concern,” he said.Even though more young people may get sick, Schrantz of UChicago said he doesn’t expect many of them to get severely ill, especially school-aged children. He said young adults with comorbidities such as obesity, hypertension and diabetes, are likely the most at risk.”The severity of the disease is based predominately on two factors — the virus and the host,” he said.”While the virus is changing, I do not believe the mutations in the spike protein will have an increased virulence in kids because their bodies, and more specifically their immune systems, just react less severely to the virus. In other words, I think the host is the more important variable compared to changes in the virus,” he said.Offit said he expects things to improve as the U.S. vaccinates more adults, regardless of age, adding it will become more difficult for the virus to spread from one person to the next as more people have antibodies.As of Thursday, more than 125 million Americans have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to data compiled by the CDC. That’s roughly 37% of the total U.S. population.Young people are “living in the herd,” Offit said. “The more the herd is vaccinated, the less the virus can spread.” More

President Joe Biden responds to a question after delivering remarks on the COVID-19 response and the state of vaccinations in the South Court Auditorium at the White House complex on March 29, 2021 in Washington, DC.Drew Angerer | Getty ImagesThe Biden administration announced Friday it will allocate $1.7 billion toward tracking the highly infectious coronavirus variants that now pose a major threat to the United States’ fight against the pandemic.The funds, taken from the $1.9 trillion Covid relief plan signed into law last month, will be used to help improve the detection, monitoring and mitigation of “new and potentially dangerous strains,” the White House said in a press release.The Covid variants now comprise about half of all cases in the U.S., according to the White House. The mutations can be up to 70% more transmissible than the original strain, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said.Their continued spread “makes the race to stop the transmission even more challenging and threatens to overwhelm our health-care system again in parts of this country,” Walensky said at a press briefing.She noted that B.1.1.7, the variant originally identified in the United Kingdom, accounted for 44% of U.S. Covid circulation during the week of March 27.The spread of variants is contributing to a “very concerning” rise in cases, hospitalizations and emergency room visits, Walensky said. Average daily deaths have increased for the third day in a row to more than 700, she said.The White House said $1 billion of the administration’s latest coronavirus investment will be used to help the CDC and other health officials expand genomic sequencing, which will help them identify mutations.”The emergence of variants underscores the critical need for rapid and ongoing genomic surveillance,” Walensky said.The White House said $400 million of the remaining funds “will fuel cutting-edge research into genomic epidemiology” through the establishment of six “centers of excellence” that will form partnerships between health departments and academic institutions.The final $300 million will go toward strengthening so-called bioinformatics infrastructure, “creating a unified system for sharing and analyzing sequence data in a way that protects privacy but allows more informed decisionmaking,” the White House said.An initial $240 million tranche of funding will be disbursed to U.S. states and territories in early May, with California, Texas and Florida receiving the largest amounts. The White House said more of the money will be invested over a period of several years.Health experts continue to push Americans to get vaccinated for Covid.Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said Thursday in a congressional hearing that B.1.1.7 is “very well covered by the vaccines that we are using,” and that even with other variants, “if the vaccination doesn’t protect against initial infection, it protects against severe disease.””We are in a race between vaccinating as many people as quickly and as expeditiously as we possibly can, and the threat of the resurgence of viruses in our country,” Fauci said. More

As millennials begin to turn 40 in 2021, CNBC Make It has launched Middle-Aged Millennials, a series exploring how the oldest members of this generation have grown into adulthood amid the backdrop of the Great Recession and the Covid-19 pandemic, student loans, stagnant wages and rising costs of living.Five years ago, older millennials were 40% poorer than previous generations were at the same stage of life. That wealth gap has shrunk in recent years, but it’s still too soon to tell if obstacles such as student loan debt burdens, rising living expenses and the effects of the Covid pandemic will push this generation permanently off course. The oldest millennials are turning 40 this year, and yet the average older millennial born in the 1980s still hasn’t managed to squirrel away the same level of wealth as previous generations accumulated at the same age.Looking back five years, in 2016 the average older millennial was 32, earning a median income of $57,500 and had a net worth of approximately $27,900. But based on wealth rates previous generations recorded at similar ages, the typical millennial should have been earning a median salary of $65,900 with a net worth around $46,600 in 2016, according to calculations by the St. Louis Fed’s Institute for Economic Equity, based on the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances.This means that older millennials essentially had a wealth gap of about 40% in 2016 compared with previous generations.In the last three years, however, older millennials made significant gains in their wealth and are now only 11% below expectations.Here’s a look at why that wealth gap is starting to close and whether older millennials could catch up to their parents as they approach middle age. Why did older millennials fall behind?When it comes to tracking wealth, net worth is a good yardstick. This is essentially all of a person’s assets, including cash in checking and savings accounts, financial investments and the value of any real estate or vehicles owned minus all their debt, including credit card balances, student loans and mortgages.Debt and homeownership can be significant stumbling blocks for millennials trying to build wealth. The number of American households with student loan debt doubled from 1998 to 2016, Pew Research Center found. In 2016, the median amount of student loan debt that millennials carried was $19,000, significantly higher than Gen Xers’ balance of $12,800 at the same age — just one generation earlier.”Every generation has its own set of unique challenges. But at the same time, you can’t work full time and put yourself through college the way you could perhaps 30 or 40 years ago,” says Ana Hernandez Kent, a senior researcher with the St. Louis Federal Reserve’s Institute for Economic Equity.Those born in the 1980s were also slower than their parents to move out, marry and buy their own homes, all of which affects household net worth.The Great Recession also significantly impacted millennials by limiting job opportunities for many. Before the downturn, about half of college graduates had a job offer by the time they left school in 2007. Two years later, fewer than 20% did. Millennials also lag behind other generations in terms of wages. Despite more millennials earning college degrees, they earn 20% less than baby boomers did at the same stage of life, according to a 2019 report from the nonpartisan think tank New America.Across the U.S., although wages have risen 18.3% since 2006, when inflation is factored in, real wages have actually fallen 8.3% overall, according to The PayScale Index. Among older millennials ages 33 to 40, real wages have fallen 10.3%, according to data PayScale provided to CNBC Make It. “There’s a lot of secular changes that have occurred that have made it more difficult to accumulate wealth,” Kent says. That includes higher tuition costs, rising costs of living and sluggish wage growth.Millennials are finally catching upPrior to the pandemic, older millennials were making strides in catching up to other generations’ wealth benchmarks, likely thanks to trends like the long-running bull market, low unemployment rates and increased homeownership.In fact, 59% of those born between 1981 and 1988 are homeowners, a recent survey conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of CNBC Make It found.As of 2019, the average millennial, now 34, has a median net worth of $51,400. That’s just $6,400 off from what economists project those born in the 1980s should have accumulated at this point, according to the St. Louis Fed’s Institute for Economic Equity.Among ages 33 to 40, more than half of older millennials have escaped the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, according to the survey from CNBC Make It and The Harris Poll. About 22% say they never run out of money in their budget before payday while about 30% say they seldom have issues.Moreover, about 29% of older millennials say they have a lot of disposable income left in their budget each month after expenses such as housing, car payments, utilities and food are paid. Like many older millennials, April Franklin, 35, says she has gained a lot of financial momentum during the past four years. She finally earned her bachelor’s in 2017 after working to attain a degree for over a decade. She has also been able to move on from Section 8 housing assistance and food stamps and even landed a full-time job last year after juggling part-time gigs for years.April Franklin, 35, vowed to raise her children without the financial instability that plagued her own childhood.Source: April FranklinIt’s a long way from the unstable surroundings Franklin grew up in. Her mother had children at a young age — Franklin has three siblings — and struggled to keep the family together and financially afloat. “We stayed with relatives or in shelters. We were evicted multiple times. It was hard,” Franklin says. They didn’t always have health insurance and received dental care through a neighborhood outreach program, she adds.Franklin vowed to do things differently for her two children, taking advantage of every opportunity that has come her way. “Hopefully, I’m on my way to something different,” Franklin says. “When you live in poverty, you qualify for a lot of resources, and it can be a good thing. But sometimes those programs can keep people locked in their socio-economic status.”Not all millennials are seeing gains Franklin’s achievements are perhaps even more laudable when compared with the data, which shows that disparities in wealth break down, among other things, along racial lines. Wealth among white families was just 5% off expectations in 2019, according to data analyzed from the St. Louis Fed. Yet Hispanic wealth was still down 10% from projections and, perhaps most alarmingly, Black families were 52% below wealth expectations.Among older millennials, white families had roughly $88,000 in median wealth, while Hispanic households had $22,000 and Black families had $5,000 in 2019, according to the St. Louis Fed’s Institute for Economic Equity.”It’s incredibly concerning because it’s not like we’re seeing a positive trend that they’re making up for that lost ground. If anything, it appears to be the opposite, that they’re losing and they’re falling further and further behind,” Kent says. This lagging wealth could have a ripple effect beyond just Black and Hispanic households considering the millennial generation overall is more diverse than the generations that came before it. About 57% of older millennials identify as white, compared with 81% of families born in the 1940s. “The fact that millennials are not reaching their expected financial potential may be related to their greater racial and ethnic diversity and the fact that predictions are based on all generations, the vast majority of whom are older and whiter,” St. Louis Fed economists wrote. Unless trends dramatically shift, economists say, these disparities will likely persist, especially when taking into account that Black and Hispanic workers suffered disproportionate levels of unemployment over the past year. That wealth deficit among Black and Hispanic families could make it harder for all older millennials to close the wealth gap.Will millennials fully close the gap?Experts say there are reasons to be both optimistic and doubtful that older millennials will close the wealth gap. On the positive side, older millennials have gained ground in recent years. And that momentum may continue thanks to higher education levels among this generation and steadily rising homeownership rates, two factors tied to increased wealth accumulation. “When we talk about the millennials, we always say, ‘yeah they’ve had these difficulties, but it is, of course, the most educated generation ever.’ The highest share of people have college degrees,” says St. Louis Federal Reserve economist Bill Emmons.Typically, more education leads to higher lifetime earnings and more job stability. Last year, even as Covid-19 swept the country, those who graduated from high school brought in median weekly earnings of $789, compared with $1,416 for college graduates, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But as this generation ages, the wealth gap becomes more difficult to close. “The oldest are reaching into their 40s now,” Kent says. “There’s less time if they are still behind.”Making that more difficult is the fact that many millennials are still carrying student loan debt. About 68% of those ages 33 to 40 have outstanding loans. That makes saving and building wealth more challenging, particularly as prices for consumer goods rise.  The effects of the Covid recession on millennials could also stall or even erode some of the gains the oldest cohorts have made when it comes to their wealth. The pandemic significantly impacted employment rates among younger workers. About 30% of those ages 30 to 40 and 35% of those 18 to 29 reported that they, or someone in their household, lost their job amid the pandemic, according to Pew Research Center.”The biggest declines in labor force participation have been among younger households, among communities of color,” says Reid Cramer, a senior fellow at New America. Women and those in retail and service sectors also experienced widespread unemployment.Income is the driving source of a lot of wealth, especially when you’re still on the road to middle age. With the pandemic causing widespread job losses among millennials, it could push this generation even further behind and stall the little growth they have achieved, Cramer says.For Franklin, the pandemic brought challenges and opportunities. In September, she was promoted to a full-time position with a $48,500 salary after working part time for years. The new gig meant she was able to give up working two jobs and increased her benefits, but she also had to rethink her budget because she’s earning a bit less overall now.”I used to think the middle class was rich, and now I guess I’m middle class,” Franklin says. But sadly, that doesn’t mean she feels rich today.CNBC Make It will be publishing more stories in the Middle-Aged Millennials series around student loans, employment, wealth, diversity and health. If you’re an older millennial (ages 33 to 40), share your story with us for a chance to be featured in a future installment. More

In this articleGESBIGLIDOXOngoing stimulus, the vaccine rollout and a reopening economy have consumers in a spending mood.Retail sales in March soared nearly 10%, the second best increase on record.Retail heavyweights like Amazon and Walmart aren’t the only ones that could benefit. CNBC’s “Trading Nation” asked traders what under-the-radar retail stocks they’re watching.”We are looking at pent-up demand meets unsold inventory and that leads us to the liquidators,” said Gina Sanchez, CEO of Chantico Global and chief market strategist at Lido Advisors.Sanchez said Thursday that liquidators like Ross Stores and TJ Maxx traded well during the pandemic with strong growth, and that has pushed up the valuations for these stocks. There is one stock that still offers “growth at a reasonable price,” she sad.”Big Lots is an interesting name. They had actually very strong revenue growth last year,” said Sanchez. “Their expectations are still extremely strong, but they’re trading at 11.5 times forward earnings relative to an industry average of 30 times, so we think this is an interesting opportunity.”Big Lots has surged 60% this year, better than the 44% growth for the XRT retail ETF. Shares have pulled back 5% from an all-time high set in March.Craig Johnson, chief market technician at Piper Sandler, pinpointed Guess as a stock with potential.”Here’s a stock that’s really not on a lot of people’s radars, it’s got a $1.75 billion market cap, and only a handful of analysts are following this company fundamentally,” Johnson said Thursday.He said the stock is breaking out to highs not seen since 2018 in a “consistent trend” upward. Shares have climbed 22% this year.Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwards”The stock is trading at 15.5 times forward numbers, and that’s well below where some of its peers are trading at like Abercrombie & Fitch and Gap and Levi,” he said. “So we think this is kind of one of those little gems out there that … we think that should be that we would be buying.”Disclaimer More

In this articleLGAC.FKRX300LGLGM CEO and chairman Mary Barra speaks during an “EV Day” on March 4, 2020 at the company’s tech and design campus in Warren, Mich., a suburb of DetroitGMGeneral Motors and South Korea’s LG Chem will invest more than $2.3 billion in a second U.S. battery cell plant for electric vehicles in Tennessee, the companies announced Friday.The plant for their Ultium Cells LLC joint venture will be to support production of GM’s upcoming Cadillac Lyriq crossover and other future EVs at a nearby assembly plant.The supply and production of battery cells are crucial for automakers pivoting to electric vehicles. The joint venture for the new plant while its first is still under construction in Lordstown, Ohio, underscores that.Construction on the approximately 2.8 million-square-foot facility will begin immediately. The plant is scheduled to open in late 2023 and will create 1,300 jobs, the companies said.”The addition of our second all-new Ultium battery cell plant in the U.S. with our joint venture partner LG Energy Solution is another major step in our transition to an all-electric future,” GM CEO Mary Barra said in a release.The announcement comes amid a 100-day review ordered by President Joe Biden of the U.S. supply chain for advanced batteries, pharmaceuticals, critical minerals and semiconductors. He ordered the review amid an ongoing global shortage of semiconductor chips that has significantly impacted U.S. auto production in 2021.GM confirmed last month that it was evaluating a second location in the U.S. to produce battery cells for electric vehicles with LG. Reuters reported details of the announcement Wednesday.LG Energy Solution President and CEO Jong Hyun Kim said the new facility will allow the companies “to build solid and stable U.S.-based supply chains that enable everything from research, product development and production to the procurement of raw components.”Some analysts, specifically Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas, have warned of a potential shortage due to cell capacity compared with the amount of new EVs expected to come to market in coming years.”In our opinion, GM’s formation of Ultium/Ultium Cells LLC will prove to be a critical point of strategic differentiation that will ultimately drive value creation for shareholders,” he said Wednesday in a note to investors.Ultium is GM’s next-generation batteries and platform, which are expected to debut this year in the GMC Hummer EV pickup. The first vehicles are not expected to include Ultium battery cells from the Ohio plant that’s under construction.An undated handout photo shows the new Cadillac Lyriq, one of the electric vehicles that General Motors Co said on October 20, 2020, that its Spring Hill, Tennessee, factory will begin to produce.General Motors Co. | ReutersGM is expected to continue to build or convert plants to battery facilities in the U.S. as it moves to become an automaker that exclusively offers electric vehicles by 2035. That includes at least 30 new EVs by 2025 under a $27 billion investment plant in electric and autonomous vehicles during that time frame.Most batteries, like semiconductors, are manufactured in Asia and Europe. Tesla operates a massive battery and cell manufacturing facility with Panasonic in Nevada. Tesla also told investors in September that it started producing its own cells at a pilot plant in Fremont, California.GM and LG first announced the joint venture in December 2019. More

In this articleMRNAPFEJNJA person walks by a sign that reads, “the vaccine is our best shot against COVID-19” on the Upper West Side amid the coronavirus pandemic on March 30, 2021 in New York City.Noam Galai | Getty ImagesJohnson & Johnson privately asked Covid-19 vaccine rivals Pfizer and Moderna to join a study looking into the potential risk of blood clots but the companies declined, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.Executives at Pfizer and Moderna said their vaccines appeared safe and they didn’t see the need to duplicate the efforts of regulators and companies already looking into the rare blood-clot issue, according to the Journal report.Only AstraZeneca, whose vaccine has also raised concerns from regulators over blood clots, agreed to join the effort, the Journal said.CNBC has reached out to the four companies for comment.On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised states to temporarily pause the use of J&J’s vaccine “out of an abundance of caution” after six women developed a rare but potentially life-threatening blood-clotting disorder that left one dead and one in critical condition.The women developed the condition known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, or CVST, within about two weeks of receiving the shot, U.S. health officials told reporters. CVST is a rare form of a stroke that happens when a blood clot forms in the brain’s venous sinuses. It can eventually leak blood into the brain tissues and cause a hemorrhage.A CDC panel on Wednesday decided to postpone a decision on the use of J&J’s vaccine while officials investigate the cases.Read the full Wall Street Journal report here. More