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Former Health and Social Services Officer Dr. Mario Ramirez told CNBC that he was “concerned” about equitable access to Covid-19 resources around the world and criticized the Trump administration for not participating in the multilateral COVAX facility.

“One of the things that was regrettable about the Trump administration’s approach to the pandemic was that they chose not to attend the COVAX facility,” said Ramirez, a former coordinator for the HHS Pandemic and Emerging Threats Office of Global Affairs. “The COVAX facility was an opportunity for emerging economies to jointly invest in vaccines and gain access to all of these resources.”

According to a report by NBC News, poorer countries around the world may have to wait years to get vaccines while vaccines are currently being rolled out in rich countries like the US and the UK.

In a comprehensive interview on Wednesday evening during The News with Shepard Smith, Ramirez also discussed his experience with Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. One of tens of thousands of Americans who have now received it, he said he felt “great” after having “a little pain in his arm”.

All 50 states have now started giving Pfizer’s vaccinations. An FDA advisory committee will meet Thursday to discuss whether or not to give Moderna’s vaccine the go-ahead just two days after announcing the shot is highly potent. If the panel approves the Moderna vaccine, nearly 6 million doses will be deployed across the country next week. The federal government has already signed deals with Pfizer and Moderna to deliver a total of 200 million vaccine doses by the first quarter of the new year.

Ramirez told Shepard Smith that there are several systems in place to ensure people get their critical second dose of the Covid vaccine. He was given a physical paper dosage card and said it was part of the process to remind people to get their second dose. The ambulance added that he also receives regular feedback from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through his V-Safe app. Ramirez said another critical aspect of helping people remember they received the second dose was to sign up for the first dose.

“For example, we know from previous studies with the HPV vaccine that complying with this second visit is a big contributor to compliance,” Ramirez said.

A man without a mask walks through a crowd in New York City on December 13, 2020.

Alexi Rosenfeld | Getty Images

A Trump official for the Department of Health and Human Services this summer repeatedly urged the adoption of a Covid-19 strategy in the US that keeps businesses open while exposing “infants, children, adolescents” and others to the coronavirus to do so – referred to as herd immunity according to emails from the House legislature.

Rep. James Clyburn, DS.C., chair of the select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis who received the emails, said Wednesday the documents showed “a harmful pattern of political interference by administrative officials”.

The emails surfaced as part of an investigation by the House’s coronavirus subcommittee into suspected political interference by the Trump administration. The investigation came after former HHS Scientific Advisor Paul Alexander and Trump’s longtime ally Michael Caputo were accused this summer of being involved in the work of professional scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Dr. Interfering with Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease specialist.

Alexander was ousted when Caputo, assistant secretary for public affairs, left HHS on vacation in September.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar has denied allegations of political interference in his department in Congress.

Alexander wrote in a July 4 email to Caputo and six other HHS communications officials that the US must establish herd immunity by “allowing non-high-risk groups to expose themselves to the virus.”

“Infants, children, adolescents, young people, young adults, middle-aged people without conditions, etc. have little to no risk … so we use them to build a herd … we want them to get infected. … and recover … with antibodies, “he wrote.

Alexander later brought the proposed strategy to the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn, as another email shows.

“It may be best that we open up and flood the zone and let the children and young people infect while we acutely imprison the elderly and at risk” in order to achieve “natural immunity … natural exposure” he wrote to Hahn, Caputo, and other HHS officials on July 24. Caputo asked Alexander to dig deeper into the idea, as further emails show.

Caputo, who was recruiting Alexander, left HHS for a 60-day medical vacation in September after saying in a video posted on his personal Facebook page that CDC scientists were involved in “riot” against Trump. Alexander’s departure was announced in the announcement of Caputo’s medical leave.

“His emails have absolutely nothing to influence the department strategy,” said an HHS spokesman on Wednesday. “Dr. Paul Alexander previously served as temporary senior policy advisor to the assistant secretary for public affairs and is no longer with the department.”

The new emails provide a powerful glimpse into Caputo and Alexander’s attempts to downplay the pandemic as the coronavirus quickly spread across the country, particularly in the sun belt, and the death toll rose.

“As the virus spread across the country, these officials ruthlessly wrote, ‘Who cares? “And,” We want them to get infected, “Clyburn said in a statement.” They privately admitted that they “always knew” that the president’s policies would in certain cases lead to an “increase,” and they did planned to blame professional scientists for spreading the virus. ”

On June 24, Alexander wrote to Caputo and two other HHS officials, “We always knew when you relax and open up that cases are going to arise.” Then he asked, “But are the new cases problematic?”

“We also need to promote the good stories we know of elderly people with serious conditions, who get them and survive … that is the key to telling,” he added.

In the emails, Alexander criticized fierce scientific advisers to the government, including Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases. In an email to Caputo and other HHS communications officials on July 3, when US cases were close to 2.8 million, Alexander complained that Fauci had warned the public to “expect a dramatic increase in the spread”.

“He just won’t stop !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He can’t keep silent … and he’s not on the same side of the government … does he think he’s the president? ?? “” Alexander added.

In the United States, more than 16.7 million people have been diagnosed with Covid-19 to date, and more than 306,000 people have died in less than a year, according to Johns Hopkins University.

In the Dutch city of Venray, Didi Taihuttu decided to play his first major bitcoin gambling game. In early 2017, the father of three searched every corner of his five-bedroom home and gathered the family’s supplies of gold jewelry and trinkets. Taihuttu sensed that it was time to swap her gold supply for Bitcoin.

Three years later, that bet has paid off for Taihuttu. Bitcoin broke above $ 20,000 for the first time on Wednesday. His investment today is almost three times what it is today if he had kept his gold nest egg.

“Central banks and governments are now slowly beginning to understand that Bitcoin is the gold of the 21st century,” said Taihuttu.

In the midst of the economic and geopolitical turmoil, more and more investors are looking for Bitcoin as a safe haven game.

“In the last few weeks in particular, it has been clear that Bitcoin stole the thunder of gold,” said Mati Greenspan, portfolio manager and founder of Quantum Economics.

JP Morgan strategists say the price of gold will suffer if institutional investors keep buying bitcoin.

While cryptocurrency has indeed matured into an integral part of the financial industry, some Wall Street investors warn that volatile cryptocurrency will never replace gold as a store of value as it has no value to store.

Is Bitcoin Safer Than Gold?

When the coronavirus pandemic stalled economies around the world, investors did what they usually did under economic uncertainty: fled to safe investments. Just this year gold and cash weren’t the only safe haven games.

Bitcoin is up around 190% since the start of the year, outperforming a mix of major assets, including gold. And unlike its rally in 2017, analysts don’t think we’re headed for a bursting price bubble anytime soon.

Mike Novogratz, CEO of investment firm Galaxy Digital, believes this comeback rally is just beginning. He sees Bitcoin rising to $ 60,000 by next year.

Tom Fitzpatrick, global head of CitiFXTechnicals, said the charts signaled that Bitcoin could hit $ 318,000 by December 2021, in a report destined for Citibank institutional clients and received by CNBC.

Meanwhile, the price of gold has declined from its all-time high in August 2020, not least due to optimism about progress on the Covid vaccine front.

“Let’s face it, who needs a safe haven when the pandemic is over?” Scott Nations of Nations Indexes said in an interview with CNBC’s “Fast Money Halftime Report”. “And if you still want a safe haven, don’t look to gold. You look to bitcoin.”

Part of the difference in the 2020 Bitcoin rally from 2017 is that institutional investors are introducing Bitcoin, giving it a newfound legitimacy, and helping to eliminate the reputational risk of investing in the cryptocurrency.

Old-school billionaire hedge fund managers Stanley Druckermiller and Paul Tudor Jones now own Bitcoin, and big fintech players like Square and PayPal are also adding crypto products.

“Bitcoin is now a regulated financial asset that does not correlate with a risk-adjusted rate of return. As a result, a record percentage of institutional flow is achieved through our brokerage and exchange platforms,” ​​said Dave Chapman, Executive Director, BC Group.

“For all of these and other reasons, Bitcoin is seen as a true safe haven; as digital gold,” Chapman continued in an interview with CNBC’s Capital Connection.

But remember, Bitcoin has a long history of wild volatility. In the end, while price movements in 2020 appear to be more stable than in previous rallies, we just have to wait and see how Bitcoin performs over time.

“It would be difficult to label an emerging asset like Bitcoin as a safe haven because it has not yet stood the test of time,” Greenspan said. “It could be more accurate to say that it eats at his [gold’s] Market share as a hedge against inflation. “

Bitcoin supply bottleneck

After making the leap from gold to bitcoin, Taihuttu decided to get involved with the cryptocurrency. The Dutch family of five liquidated their fortunes, from their retirement accounts and cars to their clothes and toys. They are betting everything on the volatile cryptocurrency when it was $ 900 per coin in 2017. Bitcoin has increased more than 2,200% since then.

Analysts say this year’s rally in bitcoin has a lot to do with the limited supply of bitcoin worldwide. Only 21 million bitcoins are ever produced.

While we are unlikely to run out of gold anytime soon, the total number of bitcoin mined is around 18.5 billion, which is close to the maximum threshold.

The surge in interest from established financial players has not only reformed the image of Bitcoin, but has also created a supply shortage.

Bitcoin is now seen as a true safe haven. a digital gold.

Dave Chapman

BC Group Managing Director

“The main reason for the 2017 and 2020 rallies is the same,” Greenspan said. “It’s a question of digital scarcity. There is a strictly limited supply of Bitcoin on the market. So if everyone buys and no one sells, it can put huge upward pressure on the price. What is different this time around is the players involved.” “

The 2017 rally was fueled by speculation in retail, and in 2020, billionaires and corporations are buying bitcoin en masse.

“When PayPal starts selling bitcoin to its 350 million users, they’ll have to buy the bitcoin somewhere,” said Taihuttu. “There will be a major supply crisis because not enough new bitcoins are being mined every day to meet the needs of large companies.”

The limits of gold

Bitcoin behaves very much like gold. Its value is very volatile, there is a market in which it is bought and sold and, similar to other commodities, you can speculate on the future price of Bitcoin through the derivatives market.

Mainstream adoption has been hugely important to Bitcoin as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are neither asset backed nor have the full trust and support of the government. They are valuable because people believe they are valuable. So there is a long way to go when bitcoin is bought by some of the biggest names on Wall Street.

Bitcoin’s digital infrastructure also offers certain advantages to gold.

“Physical gold requires storage, is not easy to move across borders, has paper equivalents on exchanges that may or may not fully reflect actual gold movement, and could potentially be described as ‘yesterday’s news’ for financial security,” explained Fitzpatrick.

“Bitcoin is the new gold,” continued Fitzpatrick. “It moves easily across borders and property is opaque.”

Taihuttu agrees. “We have a limited supply of Bitcoin and the demand is growing enormously. More and more people are realizing that Bitcoin is the perfect gold of the 21st century.”

On a Skype call with Taihuttu, I noticed that he was wearing a gold watch on the same arm that had the Bitcoin logo tattooed on it. When I asked if he had seconds because of gold, he said, “The only gold I wear now is fake.”

Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine is pictured at Rady Children’s Hospital before being returned to the refrigerator on December 15, 2020 in San Diego, California.

Adriana Drehsler | AFP | Getty Images

US officials said Wednesday they quarantined several thousand doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine in California and Alabama this week after an “anomaly” in the transportation process caused the storage temperature to become too cold.

The Pfizer vaccine, which was developed with the German drug manufacturer BioNTech, requires a storage temperature of around minus 70 degrees Celsius. Vials of the vaccine are kept in bowls, each containing at least 975 doses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Army General Gustave Perna, who oversees the logistics for President Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed ​​vaccination program, told reporters that two trays of the vaccine that arrived at two different locations in California had to be returned to Pfizer after the temperature somehow rose Celsius had fallen minus 92 degrees.

The vaccine “never left the truck,” he said during a press conference on Wednesday. “We immediately returned and mailed them to Pfizer to replace these two trays. We are now working with the FDA, CDC, FDA and Pfizer to determine whether or not this anomaly is safe, but we are not taking any chances one and we can see that. “

He said the “anomaly” had recurred in Alabama.

“Across the country in Alabama, two trays came in at one location. The same anomaly was minus 92. We were able to stop and quarantine the vaccine, pause and get a replacement shipment to Alabama.” he said.

It is unclear why the storage temperature dropped. Pfizer did not immediately return a request for comment.

Americans received some of the first shots of Pfizer’s vaccine on Monday after the Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccine on Friday. Officials and medical experts had already acknowledged that Pfizer’s vaccine would present a new logistical challenge as it would have to be stored in ultra-cold temperatures.

“We’re talking super cold. It’s completely unprecedented,” Soumi Saha, pharmacist and vice president of advocacy at Premier, a consulting firm that works with thousands of hospitals and nursing homes, told CNBC in an interview last month.

She said it was “completely new territory” for health systems. “And so this is a brand new logistical challenge to distribute this vaccine and get it to the right place and do it while maintaining the integrity of the product,” she said.

During the briefing, Perna said that vaccine shipments in the US are still on track. Another 886 deliveries are expected across the nation on Thursday. The federal government released 2.9 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine this week. Next week, the government plans to ship an additional 2 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine, as well as 5.9 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine, if approved by the FDA, Perna said.

The FDA’s Advisory Panel on Vaccines and Related Biological Products, an external group of medical experts advising the agency, is voting Thursday on whether to recommend Moderna’s emergency vaccine. A positive vote from the committee will likely pave the way for Moderna’s vaccine to become the second approved for use in the US after Pfizer. FDA approval could take place on Friday.

“It’s about a steady cadence of supplies to the American people,” said Perna.

For the world’s largest cinema chain, bankruptcy could be the best option to survive the coronavirus pandemic.

The coronavirus pandemic has hit cinemas since March, cracking their bottom line, but no one has been hit harder than AMC. The cinema chain got caught up in the pandemic with nearly $ 5 billion in debt, which it amassed to add luxury seating to its theaters and buy in rivals such as Carmike and Odeon.

Since January, the company’s shares have fallen more than 60%, and in the past five days the stock has fallen around 30%.

Last Friday, AMC said Mudrick Capital Management had agreed to invest $ 100 million to help the financially ailing cinema chain survive the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. However, the movie theater chain will still need at least $ 750 million in additional liquidity to fund its cash needs through 2021.

“In all honesty, I believe Chapter 11 is really the only way AMC can survive,” said Doug Stone, president of Box Office Analyst. “I don’t see any appetite out there for more $ 750 million in stock sales and any debt they take on will be astronomical.”

AMC has focused on fundraising for months. The cinema chain has already renegotiated its debt to improve its balance sheet this year and is exploring various ways to raise additional sources of liquidity. It is also trying to find ways to increase the number of visitors.

“The simple answer is, if you file for bankruptcy, it is more likely a reorganization than a liquidation,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush. “In bankruptcy, they can wipe out their lease obligations and extend the leases that make sense, potentially reducing their total cost of ownership.”

As coronavirus cases continued to rise in the fall and winter months, studios have postponed major blockbusters until mid-2021, and some have chosen to simultaneously release major films in theaters and on streaming platforms in order to limit potential ticket sales .

The hope is that with a vaccine, Covid-19 cases will drop significantly and audiences will be more willing to return to theaters. This in turn gives the studios the confidence to keep important film titles on the calendar. Without fresh content, moviegoers will not return in sufficient numbers to give cinemas any real financial boost.

Still, a vaccine may not be generally available to the public until mid-2021. While the news is promising, it does not address the short-term problems cinemas face.

“I think that now that vaccines are introduced, creditors and landlords will be ready to work with them,” Pachter said. “It has been difficult to give them more credit when there was no ‘light’ at the end of the tunnel, but it is likely that we will get back to something that is nearing normal by the middle of the year, so restructuring makes a lot of sense . “

AMC did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. The company reiterated on SEC filings that bankruptcy is an option for the company if it is unable to raise additional funds.

In times without a pandemic, the theater industry is profitable. In 2019, the domestic box office had its second-best year ever at $ 11.4 billion, just below the record of $ 11.9 billion in 2018. Before the global outbreak, 2020 was facing a similar level.

Now movie chains are desperately renegotiating with lenders and landlords, trying to find creative ways to generate revenue. Most major movie theaters are now offering cheaper private theater rentals to attract reluctant moviegoers. Others have turned parking lots into concert halls, launched quiz nights, and even negotiated contracts with local colleges to rent out the space for personal learning.

Cinema chains are facing tough headwinds in the first part of 2021 as there are limited new films and cases are expected to remain high.

“January is turning out to be a very challenging month with little product impact,” said Stone. “The introduction of vaccines is unlikely to have a big impact until late in the second quarter, in my opinion. I don’t think AMC can do without restructuring until then.”

But there is hope for AMC and other domestic cinema chains, said Eric Wold, senior analyst at B. Riley Securities.

“We have already seen a very strong response to films in countries that opened earlier than the US, especially China, which we believe provides a strong early glimpse of what to expect here in the US . ” Said Wold.

“And given what AMC and many other exhibitors learned during the pandemic about more efficient operations and the flexibility of the company’s rental partners, we could actually see AMC operationally emerge in a stronger position than before the pandemic that would have a way to go offer renewed deleveraging, “he said.