Omicron Will Stress Food Supply Chains, Stelco reports steel order cancellations...

[TOM4CWB]

Conagra CEO Says Omicron Will Stress Food Supply Chains
Food maker says more of its employees testing positive for Covid-19; quarterly profits fall as costs mount
Why Getting a Covid Test Two Years Into the Pandemic Is Still Difficult

By Jesse Newman
Jan. 6, 2022 2:10 pm ET
Conagra Brands Inc. expects Covid-19’s Omicron variant to stress food supply chains and stretch staffing at the maker of Birds Eye frozen vegetables and Slim Jim meat snacks.

The Chicago-based food manufacturer said more of its employees are testing positive for Covid at a time when heightened consumer demand is already outstripping the company’s available supplies.

Also
Stelco reported on Bloomberg today a major reduction in steel [Stelco profit reduction] shipments over the past month as auto manufacturers cancel orders because of supply chain and worker Pandemic related disruptions

[blackpowder]

Keeps getting better and better. Doesn't seem to affect the talking heads from perpetuating it though.

[bucket]

Yara CEO said there would be a food crisis due to high fertilizer prices reducing production. He sets the fertilizer prices.

[foragefarmer]

Keeps getting better and better. Doesn't seem to affect the talking heads from perpetuating it though.

Talking Heads "Once in a Lifetime"

[TOM4CWB]

25 New Deltcron variant reported in Greece:

A new Cross between Delta and Omicron variants, not certain as to the infection severity and transmission capabilities…

All new reported Deltacron cases are from hospitals in Greece… which is disturbing.

Omicron is infectious alongside influenza, last year few influenza infections, this year Omicron and Influenza together much more common.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/5-million-americans-estimated-sick-140100456.html

RFD TV Rural Health Matters 4pm Report

This very likely to affect commodity markets in near future … community infrastructure capacity is a serious concern…. US said don’t travel to Canada.

Cheers

[burnt]

No more unjabbed truck drivers crossing the border either way in a week or so, CTA says it will affect 10 -15% of drivers, taking them off the job.

Can't see any issues arising from that, right?

You think we have supply chain issues now?

And rising prices? What would people be willing to pay after they see that the necessities of life are scarce-to-near-impossible to buy?

What will they be willing to do if their family is hungry?

Neighbor said that there were no eggs on the cooler shelf in the biggest store in town on the weekend, confirming what our household shopper told me from her shopping trip earlier in the week.

Empty egg shelves in the middle of Ontario farming country, millions of laying hens just miles from that store.

Nothing to see here, move on folks.

[furrowtickler]

25 New Deltcron variant reported in Greece:

A new Cross between Delta and Omicron variants, not certain as to the infection severity and transmission capabilities…

All new reported Deltacron cases are from hospitals in Greece… which is disturbing.

Omicron is infectious alongside influenza, last year few influenza infections, this year Omicron and Influenza together much more common.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/5-million-americans-estimated-sick-140100456.html

RFD TV Rural Health Matters 4pm Report

This very likely to affect commodity markets in near future … community infrastructure capacity is a serious concern…. US said don’t travel to Canada.

Cheers

Hopefully this is the case and the fear mongering can slow down already

[AlbertaFarmer5]

I was speaking to someone who works outdoors, mostly alone, miles from one another. He has been very busy because so many of his fellow employees have been at home isolating with Covid. None actually sick though. I assume this is the case throughout the supply chains.

At some point these disruptions causes more deaths and harm to our healthcare system than the problem they are attemting to stop.

[sumdumguy]

Tey buying a case of Ichiban Soup at Superstore. The oatmeal shelf with just two bags left.

[blackpowder]

Dealer told me they're not getting anymore phos until they rig up their own trucks.

[Old Cowzilla]

Tey buying a case of Ichiban Soup at Superstore. The oatmeal shelf with just two bags left.

Lots of Ichiban at our CO-OP but I only bought 4 bags and lots of everything else. Notice even though spud crop was poor 2 years in a row there never was a shortage of chips even when everybody was in lockdown at home watching T.V. A year ago G.M. FORD. AND DODGE ordered extra steel just in case of shortages and I bet they are the ones cutting orders now because of over supply.

[TOM4CWB]

25 New Deltcron variant reported in Greece:

A new Cross between Delta and Omicron variants, not certain as to the infection severity and transmission capabilities…

All new reported Deltacron cases are from hospitals in Greece… which is disturbing.

Omicron is infectious alongside influenza, last year few influenza infections, this year Omicron and Influenza together much more common.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/5-million-americans-estimated-sick-140100456.html

RFD TV Rural Health Matters 4pm Report

This very likely to affect commodity markets in near future … community infrastructure capacity is a serious concern…. US said don’t travel to Canada.

Cheers

The Canadian Press
A look at the latest COVID-19 developments in Canada


Mon, January 10, 2022, 6:20 PM
A look at the latest COVID-19 news in Canada:

— Health experts and government critics are calling on the prime minister and premiers to fix cracks in Canada's health system and improve surge capacity as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Prime Minister Justin Trudeauspoke with provincial and territorial leaders Monday to discuss the mounting health crisis posed by the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Conservative ethics critic John Brassard said Canadians have been dealing with lockdowns and restrictions for two years while very little was done to address surge capacity in hospitals.

— The rampant spread of the Omicron variant has stoked alarm across the border, where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a fresh Level 4 "avoid travel" advisory for Canada on Monday, citing a “very high” level of COVID-19 in the country and urging anyone who must go to be fully vaccinated. That quickly prompted the State Department to revise its travel advisory, which had been at Level 3, "reconsider travel," to upgrade its own advice to Level 4: "Do not travel to Canada due to COVID-19."

— The House of Commons ethics committee is expected to hold an emergency meeting later this week to investigate the Public Health Agency's decision to collect data from millions of mobile phones to understand travel patterns during the COVID pandemic. The Commons is still on its holiday break, but Conservative and Bloc Québécois MPs asked for the committee to have an emergency meeting after it emerged the agency is seeking to extend the data collection practice more than another 12 months. The first contract to track the data expired in the fall. On Dec. 16, the Public Health Agency of Canada issued a new request for proposals to track nationwide cell tower-based location data between Jan. 1, 2019, and May 31, 2023.".... This goes on for pages...

https://ca.yahoo.com/news/look-latest-covid-19-developments-220948287.html

THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
U.S. COVID hospitalizations hit new record high, raising risks for patients

January 11, 20228:35 AM ET
WILL STONE
Carrie Feibel, photographed for NPR, 19 September 2019, in Washington DC.
CARRIE FEIBEL

The omicron-driven surge has sent COVID-19 hospitalizations skyrocketing across the U.S., reaching a new pandemic high this week with 145,982 patients hospitalized.

This exceeds the previous high recorded in January last year, according to data tracked by the Department of Health and Human Services, from more than 5,400 hospitals in the country.

Patients with COVID now fill about 30% of ICU beds in the nation and pediatric COVID hospitalizations are also at the highest rate of the pandemic.

The record-breaking numbers are a sign of just how quickly the omicron variant has swept across the country. Overall infections are also at record levels, with the U.S. averaging more than 700,000 new cases a day.

And researchers and health workers warn that the crowded conditions could be leading to a rise in avoidable deaths, as clinicians struggle to provide the level of care they would normally.

"Things are looking grim and substantially worse in many ways than even just a year ago," says Dr. Doug White, a critical care physician at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine."...

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/01/11/1071568846/u-s-covid-hospitalizations-hit-new-record-high-raising-risks-for-patients



Cheers

[TOM4CWB]

"Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab - but feared debate could hurt ‘international harmony’
Sarah Knapton
Tue, January 11, 2022, 2:14 PM

Emails show scientists seriously discussed the laboratory leak theory, but that they feared the debate could damage science in China -

Leading British and US scientists thought it was likely that Covid accidentally leaked from a laboratory but were concerned that further debate would harm science in China, emails show.

An email from Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, on February 2 2020 said that “a likely explanation” was that Covid had rapidly evolved from a Sars-like virus inside human tissue in a low-security lab.

The email, to Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Francis Collins of the US National Institutes of Health, went on to say that such evolution may have “accidentally created a virus primed for rapid transmission between humans”.

But a leading scientist told Sir Jeremy that “further debate would do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular”. Dr Collins, the former director of the US National Institutes of Health, warned it could damage “international harmony”.

Viscount Ridley, co-author of Viral: the search for the origin of Covid, said: “These emails show a lamentable lack of openness and transparency among Western scientists who appear to have been more interested in shutting down a hypothesis they thought was very plausible, for political reasons.”

In the emails, Sir Jeremy said that other scientists also believed the virus could not have evolved naturally. One such scientist was Professor Mike Farzan, of Scripps Research, the expert who discovered how the original Sars virus binds to human cells.

Scientists were particularly concerned by a part of Covid-19 called the furin cleavage site, a section of the spike protein which helps it enter cells and makes it so infectious to humans.

Summarising Professor Farzan’s concerns in an email, Sir Jeremy said: “He is bothered by the furin site and has a hard time (to) explain that as an event outside the lab, though there are possible ways in nature but highly unlikely.

“I think this becomes a question of how do you put all this together, whether you believe in this series of coincidences, what you know of the lab in Wuhan, how much could be in nature - accidental release or natural event? I am 70:30 or 60:40.”...

https://ca.yahoo.com/news/scientists-believed-covid-leaked-wuhan-211452135.html