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5 issues to know earlier than the inventory market opens Friday, Aug 13

5 things to know before the stock market opens Friday, Aug 13

Here are the top news, trends, and analysis investors need to start their trading day:

1. S&P 500 stock futures slightly higher, Dow closes on records

Matteo Colombo | DigitalVision | Getty Images

Stock futures were slightly higher on Friday, the day after the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 closed again at all-time highs. The 30-strong Dow rose 14.88 points on Thursday to end the trading day on a record 35,499.85. The broad S&P 500 gained 0.3% to close at a record high of 4,460.83. The indices enter the Friday session by 0.8% and 0.6% respectively for the week. The Nasdaq Composite was up 0.3% on Thursday, down 0.1% on the tech-heavy index this week. The benchmark 10-year government bond yield was slightly lower on Friday, falling 2 basis points to 1.344%.

2. Disney stocks rise after better than expected earnings

Visitors walk along Paradise Gardens Park during Touch of Disney at Disney California Adventure in Anaheim, California on Thursday, March 18, 2021.

MediaNews Group / Orange County Register via Getty Images | MediaNews Group | Getty Images

Shares in the Dow component Disney rose more than 5% in early trading on Friday as Wall Street cheered the media and entertainment giant’s third-quarter financial results. Disney’s quarterly revenue of $ 17.02 billion surpassed analyst expectations of $ 16.76 billion, while earnings per share of 80 cents exceeded forecasts of 55 cents, according to Refinitiv. The company’s flagship streaming service, Disney +, ended the quarter with 116 million subscribers, more than the 114.5 million analysts expected in a StreetAccount poll. Disney’s Parks, Experiences and Products division also posted a profit in the third quarter, the first since the coronavirus pandemic began early last year.

3. FDA approves booster vaccination against Covid for people with weakened immune systems

A nurse gives the Covid-19 vaccine at a baseball game on August 5, 2021 in Springfield, Missouri. According to the latest figures from the state health department, just over 4 in 10 Missourians have received the Covid-19 vaccine.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

The Food and Drug Administration approved booster coronavirus vaccines for people with compromised immune systems late Thursday. The final go-ahead for these third Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccinations would come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency’s vaccine advisory committee is due to meet on Friday and make a recommendation. Should this be approved by the CDC, booster vaccinations could be given immediately to immunocompromised people, providing those at risk with further protection from Covid. Cancer and HIV patients as well as organ transplant recipients are eligible.

While the FDA stressed that other fully vaccinated people are currently “adequately protected”, said Dr. White House chief medical officer Anthony Fauci said Thursday that it was “likely” that everyone will need a booster shot on the street.

4. Airbnb shares fall after warning of delta ramifications

John MacDoughall | AFP | Getty Images

Airbnb’s shares fell more than 3% in the premarket on Friday as investors digested the travel company’s second-quarter results and its warning of the potential impact of the Covid Delta variant. Revenue of $ 1.34 billion, according to Refinitiv, surpassed analyst projections of $ 1.26 billion, while the company lost 11 cents per share. Airbnb reported a 29% increase in nights and experiences booked compared to the previous quarter’s 83.1 million, while StreetAccount was forecasting 79.2 million. While Airbnb expects third-quarter revenue to be higher than ever, a letter to shareholders said concerns about the Delta option are likely to affect travel behavior.

5. USA sends 3,000 soldiers to evacuate embassy personnel in Afghanistan

Afghan security forces stand guard at a checkpoint in the Guzara district of Herat province, Afghanistan, July 9, 2021.

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The Pentagon will send 3,000 troops to Afghanistan to help evacuate US embassy personnel in the Afghan capital, Kabul, as the Taliban advance into the city. “This is a very closely focused mission to ensure the orderly reduction of civilian personnel from Afghanistan,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Thursday. The US still expects to fully withdraw all troops by August 31, Kirby said, as part of the process to end America’s longest war that began after the September 11, 2001 attacks. According to Reuters, the Taliban took control of the second and third largest cities in Afghanistan on Friday. As of August 6, the Taliban have taken control of 14 of the country’s 34 provincial capitals.

– Reuters contributed to this report. Follow the whole market like a pro on CNBC Pro. Get the latest on the pandemic with coronavirus coverage from CNBC.

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How the Delta Variant Is Affecting Wedding ceremony Season

How the Delta Variant Is Affecting Wedding Season

Despite the furious variation that led to the CDC’s recent recommendation that all Americans, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks indoors in most parts of the country, some still feel uncomfortable with the demand for evidence. Brides like Mariah Hughes of Bangor, Maine, would rather use the honor system.

“I think I can make an educated guess if my family and friends are vaccinated,” she said. Ms. Hughes and her fiancé Stephen Cormier had planned to get married in September but postponed their date until next June as the photographer they wanted to work with was firmly booked. You are less frustrated than relieved. “With the Delta variant that is so widespread, we feel we have made the right decision,” she said.

Not that she or anyone can rely on Covid to be history next year. In Denver, Brittney Griffin, the event manager at the Blanc wedding venue, is ready to pull masks out again, despite the high vaccination rates in Colorado. “We haven’t had to do that yet,” but she said new mandates could come. “Unfortunately we’ve been through this before, so if it becomes necessary again we’ll at least be prepared.”

Niche players like McKenzi Taylor, the founder of Cactus Collective Weddings in Las Vegas, could be one of the few whose businesses got back on their feet thanks to Delta. Ms. Taylor plans small weddings in remote, outdoor settings.

“We’re usually people’s second choice,” she said, which means that most of the couples they contact do so because Covid has spoiled their original plans. With the virus outbreak in 2020, it saw bookings surge by 30 percent. Now business is booming again. “Unfortunately we are in a completely new cycle with Delta. I get a lot of calls asking ‘How soon can we get married?’ “

However, timing cannot be everything. “In four years we will still have breakthrough infections,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, Infectious Disease Specialist and Senior Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. “It will still be a problem.”

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Abbott deploys 2,500 out-of-state medical staff as youthful sufferers crowd hospitals

Abbott deploys 2,500 out-of-state medical workers as younger patients crowd hospitals

Dr. Joseph Varon (right) and Jeffrey Ndove (left) perform a hypothermia treatment procedure on a patient in the COVID-19 intensive care unit on Christmas Eve at United Memorial Medical Center December 24, 2020 in Houston, Texas.

Nakamura go | Getty Images

DALLAS – Texas hospitals are suspending voting and reaching out to 2,500 health workers from other states to tackle a surge in Covid cases as younger and healthier patients who haven’t been vaccinated against the days of treatment of the virus crowd.

The state is preparing for its most aggressive fight to date against the coronavirus as the Delta variant spreads across the country, hitting states with low vaccination rates and relaxed public health measures, particularly in the south and the Midwest.

Covid cases in the Lone Star State have exploded in the past few weeks. Texas averaged about 15,419 new cases per day on Wednesday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, up 34% from a week ago and more than double the seven-day average of 6,762 two weeks ago.

“What is worrying about the development is that the number of cases is growing much faster,” said Dr. Trish Perl, director of the infectious diseases division at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

“We are seeing unvaccinated people who are younger than they were earlier in the pandemic, when we saw many hospitalizations over 65,” said Perl. “Now 18- to 49-year-olds are the biggest and highest gains, and many of these people have no underlying medical conditions.”

The spike in cases comes as Republican Governor Greg Abbott wages war on local school and government officials who reintroduced masked mandates, threatening $ 1,000 fines for communities and officials who oppose him. He initially banned local mask mandates in an implementing ordinance of 18

The second order also prohibited all public and private entities, government agencies, from requiring individuals to be vaccinated or to provide evidence of vaccination.

Local officials across Texas are defying state leaders and turning to the courts to challenge Abbott.

A person will receive the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine at the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi, Texas, USA on Thursday, February 11, 2021.

Nakumura go | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A district judge in Bexar County, home of San Antonio, on Tuesday issued an injunction against Abbott’s mask ban, which allowed local officials to restore mandates and other emergency orders to combat the Delta variant.

About 300 miles north, the Dallas Independent School District issued a temporary mask requirement for all counties on Monday.

Clay Jenkins, a Dallas County Democrat, followed suit with a new mask mandate for schools, businesses and county buildings Wednesday after a local judge issued an injunction preventing Abbott from enforcing his ban.

Abbott has vowed to fight the restraining orders. In a joint press release with Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, the two said they are relying on personal responsibility to protect “the rights and freedoms of all Texans.”

“Attention-grabbing judges and mayors opposed orders from the very beginning of the pandemic, and the courts ruled on our side – the law,” Paxton said in the statement. “I am confident that the outcome of all lawsuits will come with freedom and individual choice, not mandates and government abuse.”

Austin Mayor Steve Adler, a Democrat, said he was weighing a citywide mask mandate when “the science, the data, and the doctors tell us this has to be something to keep the community safe”.

“Local school districts should be able to make this decision themselves in order to offer their children the best possible protection,” Adler said in an interview with CNBC on July 28th.

“I haven’t heard any scientific or data-driven rationale for policies that do not allow the enforcement of masking to protect public health,” Adler said, adding that he “strongly recommends that all children in schools wear” masks, and that teachers and guests at school do the same. “

Meanwhile, hospital stays continue to rise. Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital in Houston and St. Luke’s Hospital in nearby Woodlands have set up overflow tents outside to cope with the influx of patients, most of whom local officials say are unvaccinated. Texas lags behind the US in vaccinations, with 53.6% of the total population receiving at least one vaccination, compared with 58.9% nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A construction team is working to pitch tents hospital officials plan to pitch with an overflow of COVID-19 patients outside Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital in Houston on Monday, August 9, 2021.

Godofredo A. Vásquez | Houston Chronicle via AP

Abbott asked the Texas Hospital Association earlier this week to postpone voluntary medical procedures to free up beds in the intensive care unit, and said the state is hiring 2,500 medical staff outside of the state to relieve exhausted doctors and nurses.

“This help couldn’t come quickly enough. Many hospitals have already shut down non-essential services and are rerouting patients to add staff, ”Ted Shaw, president of the Texas Hospital Association, said in a statement Tuesday. “The hospital industry is losing frontline staff, especially nurses, to burnout and illness; many left the profession due to the extreme nature of the work during a relentless pandemic.”

More than 90% of all intensive care beds in Texas were occupied on Wednesday, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, with around 40% dedicated to Covid patients as of Wednesday.

While cases and deaths across the country have receded from their record highs in January, they’re on the rise again – but much faster in Texas. The state’s death toll is also rising, with a seven-day average of 57 daily Covid deaths on Monday, 36% more than last week, but below the record average of more than 341 deaths per day in late January 2021 data, according to Hopkins.

“It’s honestly heartbreaking. There is this feeling that they are invincible, but that’s not true, we are seeing seriously ill people,” said Perl of UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. She said vaccinations are “the absolute best defense”.

Editor’s note: Nate Ratner and Robert Towey reported from New York and New Jersey, respectively.

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F.D.A. Approves Xywav, a GHB drug, for Uncommon Sleeping Dysfunction

F.D.A. Approves Xywav, a GHB drug, for Rare Sleeping Disorder

On the black market, homemade GHB — also known as liquid ecstasy, goop and G — can be bought by the capful for $5 to $25. But nightly treatments of Xyrem and Xywav cost roughly $100,000 a year. The new approval will make it much easier for hypersomnia patients to get insurance coverage for Xywav.

Many doctors and patients have never heard of idiopathic hypersomnia, Mr. Cozadd said, but Jazz will aim to change that. “There’s an educational effort that we’ll be part of,” he said, “which is really making sure there’s a better understanding among treaters and among patients of the condition and its treatment.”

The F.D.A. said its decision was significant because it is the first drug approved to treat the disorder.

“Idiopathic hypersomnia is a lifelong condition, and the approval of Xywav will be instrumental in providing treatment for symptoms such as excessive sleepiness and difficulty waking, and in effectively managing this debilitating disorder,” said Dr. Eric Bastings, deputy director of the agency’s Office of Neuroscience, in a statement.

In March, Jazz and the Hypersomnia Foundation, a patient advocacy group, began an awareness campaign — “I have IH” — which included an online survey of health care providers’ knowledge of the condition (it was low), and advertisements in Times Square.

“I never thought I’d live to see that day — it was very emotional,” said Betsy Ashcraft, the treasurer of the foundation’s board of directors, whose adult son has idiopathic hypersomnia. (Jazz paid the foundation for board members’ time consulting on the campaign, she said.)

GHB is an old drug, first synthesized by a Russian chemist in 1874. A century later, it was sold as a dietary supplement in the United States, and academic researchers began reporting that it greatly improved the nighttime sleep of people with narcolepsy and curbed their daytime attacks of paralysis, called cataplexy.

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Dr. Scott Gottlieb expects Covid to be ‘endemic’ in U.S. after delta surge

Dr. Scott Gottlieb expects Covid to be 'endemic' in U.S. after delta surge

Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Friday that he expected the coronavirus to become an endemic virus in the US and other western countries after the recent surge in Delta variant infections settled.

“We are going from a pandemic to a more endemic virus, at least here in the United States and probably in other western markets,” said Gottlieb on “Squawk Box”. An endemic virus is one that remains relatively infrequent in the American population, such as seasonal flu.

Gottlieb – Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration from 2017 to 2019 during the Trump administration and now a board member at several companies, including vaccine maker Pfizer – has previously said that “true herd immunity” for Covid in new infections may indeed be impossible for years to come .

“It’s not a binary point in time, but I think after we get through this delta wave this becomes more of an endemic disease where you see some kind of persistent infection through winter … but not at the level” we certainly do experience right now, and it doesn’t necessarily depend on the booster shots, “added Gottlieb on Friday.

Gottlieb said he anticipates the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant will remain remarkable in the coming weeks.

“You will probably see the course of the delta wave between the end of September and October,” said Gottlieb. “Hopefully we’ll be on the other side, or come the other side, sometime in November, and we won’t see a big bout of infection on the other side of this delta wave after that.”

The tri-state region of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut will see a spike in delta cases as rates slow in the south, Gottlieb said.

“This is a big country and the delta wave will be regionalized to sweep across the whole country,” he said. “Hopefully by September you will see the other side of that curve very clearly in the south, but falls will increase in the northeast, in the Great Lakes region, maybe in the Pacific Northwest. … It will likely coincide with a restart at school, some companies are coming back if you look at last summer too. “

Gottlieb’s comments on Friday morning came before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave final approval to begin distributing Covid vaccine booster vaccines to recipients of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines who have weakened immune systems. The CDC’s approval followed a unanimous vote on Friday to recommend booster vaccinations for its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. It now enables the shots to reach vulnerable people such as organ transplant recipients, cancer and HIV patients.

The day before, the FDA approved booster injections for people with compromised immune systems. They make up about 2.7% of the US adult population, but account for about 44% of hospitalized breakthrough Covid cases among fully vaccinated people, according to recent data from the CDC.

Gottlieb said the ability to give these Americans booster vaccinations, which help strengthen their immunity levels, will push the US further into the “endemic phase”.

“I think this is both a political call and a public health call for US officials to continue trying to promote initial vaccinations before they move on to booster vaccinations,” Gottlieb said of the FDA’s announcement on Thursday.

Some of the people Gottlieb believes should get Covid booster vaccinations soon include nursing home residents, who tend to be older and have underlying medical conditions that make them more prone to Covid. That’s especially worrying as the Delta variant invades the northern states and continues to postpone its first round of vaccination in the rearview mirror, he said.

“I would be concerned about nursing homes entering these environments now, given that there is a patient population that is likely to have declining immunity and is more vulnerable than it was five months ago.”

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC employee and a member of the board of directors of Pfizer, genetic testing startup Tempus, health technology company Aetion, and biotechnology company Illumina. He is also co-chair of the Healthy Sail Panel of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and Royal Caribbean.

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How Fermented Meals Could Alter Your Microbiome and Enhance Your Well being

How Fermented Foods May Alter Your Microbiome and Improve Your Health

Greater diversity in the gut microbiome is generally considered a good thing. Studies have linked it to lower rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, metabolic disorders, and other diseases. People who live in developed nations tend to have less microbial diversity in their stomachs than people who live in more traditional, non-industrialized societies. Some scientists speculate that modern lifestyle factors like Diets high in processed foods, chronic stress, and physical inactivity can suppress the growth of potentially beneficial gut microbes. Others argue that the correlation between diverse microbiomes and good health is exaggerated and that the low level of microbiome diversity typically seen in people in developed countries might be appropriately adapted to a modern world.

One topic that there is little disagreement about among nutritionists is the benefits of a high-fiber diet. In large studies, people who consume more fruits, vegetables, nuts, and other high-fiber foods tend to have lower death rates and fewer chronic illnesses. Fiber is considered good for gut health: microbes in the gut feed on fiber and use it to produce useful by-products like short chain fatty acids that can reduce inflammation. Some studies also suggest that consuming lots of fiber promotes a diverse microbiome.

The Stanford researchers expected that a high-fiber diet would have a huge impact on the composition of the microbiome. Instead, the high-fiber group tended to show few changes in their microbial diversity. But when the scientists took a closer look, they discovered something conspicuous. People who started with higher microbial diversity showed a decrease in inflammation on the high-fiber diet, while those with the lowest microbial diversity had a slight increase in inflammation when they consumed more fiber.

The researchers said they suspect that people with low microbiome diversity may lack the right microbes to digest all of the fiber they consume. One finding that supports this: The high-fiber group had unexpectedly large amounts of carbohydrates in their stool that were not broken down by their gut microbes. One possibility is that her bowels took more time to adjust to the high-fiber diet. But ultimately, this finding could explain why some people experience gas and other uncomfortable gastrointestinal problems when they eat a lot of fiber, said Christopher Gardner, another author on the study.

“Perhaps the challenge some people have with fiber is that their microbiome isn’t prepared for it,” said Dr. Gardner, the director of nutritional studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center.

One question the researchers want to answer in the future is what would happen if people consumed more fermented foods and more fiber at the same time. Would that increase the variety of microbes in your gut and improve your ability to digest more fiber? Would the two have a synergistic effect on inflammation?

Suzanne Devkota, director of microbiome research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, who wasn’t involved in the new study, said fermented foods had long been believed to have health benefits, but the new research was some of the first provides “hard evidence” that it can affect the gut and inflammation. “We have always been a little reluctant to comment on whether fermented foods are beneficial, especially from an inflammatory point of view, because there really was no data behind it,” she said.

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All people will sometime ‘seemingly’ want a booster shot of the Covid vaccines, epidemiologist says

Everybody will someday 'likely' need a booster shot of the Covid vaccines, epidemiologist says

The epidemiologist Dr. Anne Rimoin told CNBC that she and Dr. Anthony Fauci, Senior Medical Advisor to the White House, agreed when he said that one day everyone will “likely” need a booster dose of Covid-19 vaccines.

“Well, I think Dr. Fauci is right,” said Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology at the UCLA School of Public Health.

“What will warrant a booster is when we see real, diminishing effectiveness of this vaccine in saving people from serious illness, hospitalization, or death. We’re not there yet, but if we are, then we go” a booster need.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday gave final approval to give Covid-19 booster vaccinations to recipients of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, hours after a key panel unanimously voted to allow third doses for immunocompromised Americans advocate. The CDC’s decision followed the approval of the booster vaccination for immunocompromised patients by the Food and Drug Administration late Thursday.

Rimoin told CNBC The News with Shepard Smith that both agencies have made a “really important” decision when it comes to the immunocompromised population.

“When they got the vaccine, they didn’t really develop an immune response enough to protect themselves against this virus,” said Rimoin. “Therefore, both the FDA and CDC are currently recommending an additional dose for these people, which studies have shown to improve the immune response in about 1/3 to 1/2 of the population.”

Immunocompromised patients make up approximately 2.7% of the US adult population and 44% of breakthrough hospital-treated infections that make someone infected even after being fully vaccinated.

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Schooling Secretary criticizes Republican governors over ban on masks in faculties.

Education Secretary criticizes Republican governors over ban on masks in schools.

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration admonished the Republican governors of Texas and Florida on Friday for blocking local school districts from requiring masks or taking other measures to protect students from the coronavirus in the coming school year.

The secretary of education, Miguel Cardona, sent a pair of letters to the governors and their education commissioners, writing that he was concerned about recent executive actions taken by both governors.

Those orders, he wrote, prohibited districts from “voluntarily adopting science-based strategies for preventing the spread of Covid-19 that are aligned with the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” like universal masking. The letters were made public late Friday.

The debate over whether local school districts should be able to require masks has become highly partisan. Republicans have cast mask rules as an infringement on parental rights, while Democrats have said they are a matter of public health.

Last week President Biden also sharply criticized Republican governors like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas who had banned mask mandates, saying they “are passing laws and signing orders that forbid people from doing the right thing.”

“If you aren’t going to help, at least get out of the way,” Mr. Biden said.

In one letter released Friday, Dr. Cardona criticized Governor DeSantis for threatening this week to withhold the salaries of district superintendents or school board members who defied his order.

The education secretary noted that the American Rescue Plan Act passed by Congress allocated more than $7 billion to the state for safety measures. None of the money has been made available to local districts, Dr. Cardona wrote, and it could be used to pay the salaries of school officials.

“In fact, it appears that Florida has prioritized threatening to withhold state funds from school districts that are working to reopen schools safely rather than protecting students and educators and getting school districts the federal pandemic recovery funds to which they are entitled,” Dr. Cardona wrote.

In his letter to Texas officials, Dr. Cardona criticized Governor Abbott’s executive order blocking mask rules in schools as well as other state guidance that makes contract-tracing optional.

Dr. Cardona said Governor Abbott’s order “may infringe upon a school district’s authority to adopt policies to protect students and educators as they develop their safe return to in-person instruction plans required by federal law.”

The offices of Governor DeSantis and Governor Abbott did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

He suggested that the state’s actions might imperil its federal relief funding. The policies, he wrote, appeared to “restrict the development of local health and safety policies and are at odds with the school district planning process,” which are required under the Education Department’s rules for receiving the relief funding.

Dr. Cardona said his department’s rules emphasize that districts have discretion over how to use their funding, and that contact tracing, indoor masking policies, and other C.D.C recommendations are permitted and encouraged.

Dr. Cardona added that the Biden administration would “continue to closely review and monitor” whether both states were meeting requirements under federal funding laws.

Dr. Cardona also expressed support for districts in both states that have defied the governors’ orders.

“The Department stands with these dedicated educators who are working to safely reopen schools and maintain safe in-person instruction,” he wrote.

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Mississippi seeks docs, nurses, ventilators as Covid sufferers pack ICU beds

Mississippi seeks doctors, nurses, ventilators as Covid patients pack ICU beds

A prisoner at the Bolivar County Correctional Facility receives a Covid-19 vaccination administered by medical workers with Delta Health Center on April 28, 2021 in Cleveland, Mississippi.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves pleaded Friday with residents to get vaccinated as the state scrambles to hire hundreds of temporary doctors, nurses and EMTs.

He’s also requested ventilators from the Strategic National Stockpile as the spread of the delta variant fills hospitals in the state with mostly unvaccinated patients. The state even asked federal officials to send a medical U.S. Navy ship but was turned down, he said.

“When you look across the country, to a certain extent, this current wave is the pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Reeves said at a press conference, adding that the state was headed toward a new peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. “We continue to see more and more data, and the data is becoming more and more clear. Those who received the vaccine are significantly less likely to contract the virus.”

For the few breakthrough cases in fully vaccinated people the state has seen so far, “they’re much less likely to spread the virus and it is highly unlikely that if you have the vaccine that you end up in the hospital or that you end up in an ICU bed,” he said.

Mississippi extended a state-of-emergency order on Thursday that was set to expire this week after the state hit a record of more than 5,000 new Covid cases in one day, said Reeves, a Republican. The spike in cases will likely be followed by an increase in hospitalizations and deaths.

The state requested 65 physicians, 920 nurses, 41 nursing aides, 59 advanced practice nurses, 34 physician assistants, 239 respiratory technicians and 20 EMTs, according to Reeves. The extra help would open up 771 medical surgery beds and 235 ICU beds, he said.

About 97% of people currently hospitalized for Covid in the state are unvaccinated, a trend seen throughout the country. This week, Mississippi’s daily hospitalization rate reached numbers higher than any the state has seen throughout the pandemic.

In the last four days, “we’ve lost four healthy people in their 20s, two of whom were pregnant, zero vaccinated,” Mississippi state health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said during the briefing. “In the past four days, we’ve lost 10 people in their 30s, and these aren’t people who are chronically ill cancer patients.” None in their 30s who died were vaccinated.

In other age groups, the number of deaths in unvaccinated people continued to overwhelmingly eclipse the number of deaths in vaccinated people.

“I mean, there’s a pattern here … by and large the vaccines have been incredibly protective and helpful and especially for people who are under 50,” Dobbs said.

The state has one of the lowest vaccination rates per capita in the United States, but daily vaccination rates have tripled over the past month amid the spread of the dominant delta variant, according to state health officials.

The governor said he has no intention of mandating masks or vaccines for state employees “or for anyone else” and emphasized that he believes those things are personal choices.

“I have no intention based upon the data that I have seen of issuing a statewide mask mandate,” Reeves said in a press briefing on Friday.

Reeves said he does not plan to impose mask mandates on schools either, saying that school districts “have every right” to encourage mask use if they deem it necessary.

More than 5,000 children are currently quarantining after positive cases were detected in just the first couple of weeks of schools reopening, some without mask mandates.

In total, Mississippi has recorded 381,147 Covid cases and 7,761 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Mississippi State Department of Health.

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What We Suppose We Know About Metabolism Might Be Unsuitable

What We Think We Know About Metabolism May Be Wrong

Everyone knows the conventional wisdom about metabolism: people gain weight year after year from the age of 20 because their metabolism slows down, especially in middle age. Women have a slower metabolism than men. This makes it harder for them to control their weight. Menopause only makes things worse and slows women’s metabolism even more.

All wrong, according to a paper published in Science on Thursday. Using data from nearly 6,500 people aged 8 days to 95 years, the researchers discovered that there are four different stages of life when it comes to metabolism. They also found that there were no real differences between men’s and women’s metabolic rates after other factors were controlled.

The results of the research are likely to change the science of human physiology and could also have implications for some medical practices, such as determining appropriate drug doses for children and the elderly.

“It will be in textbooks,” predicted Leanne Redman, an energy balance physiologist at Pennington Biomedical Research Institute in Baton Rouge, La., Who also called it “a critical paper.”

Rozalyn Anderson, a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies aging, wrote a perspective that accompanies the article. In an interview, she said she was “overwhelmed” with the results. “We’re going to have to revise some of our ideas,” she added.

However, the effects of the results on public health, nutrition and nutrition are currently limited as the study offers “a 30,000 foot view of energy metabolism,” said Dr. Samuel Klein, who was not involved in the study and is the director of the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He added, “I don’t think you can make new clinical statements” for a person. When it comes to weight gain, the topic is the same as always: people eat more calories than they burn.

Metabolic research is expensive, and so most published studies had very few participants. But the new study’s lead researcher, Herman Pontzer, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University, said the project’s participating researchers agreed to share their data. There are more than 80 co-authors on the study. By pooling the efforts of half a dozen laboratories collected over 40 years, they had sufficient information to ask general questions about changes in metabolism throughout life.

All of the research centers involved in the project studied metabolic rates using a method that is considered the gold standard – double-labeled water. It measures calorie consumption by measuring the amount of carbon dioxide a person exhales during daily activities.

Investigators also had the participants’ height and weight, as well as body fat percentage, which enabled them to study basic metabolic rates. Of course, a shorter person burns fewer calories than a taller person, but to correct size and fat percentage, the group asked: Was their metabolism different?

“It was really clear that we didn’t have a good overview of how height affects metabolism or how aging affects metabolism,” said Dr. Pontzer. “These are basic fundamentals that you would think would have been answered 100 years ago.”

Central to their results was that the metabolism is different in all people in four different phases of life.

  • There are infants, up to the age of 1, when calorie burning peaks and accelerates until it is 50 percent above the adult rate.

  • Then, from the first to the 20th year of life, the metabolism gradually slows down by about 3 percent per year.

  • It remains stable between the ages of 20 and 60.

  • And from the age of 60, it drops by around 0.7 percent per year.

After checking people’s height and muscle mass, the researchers found no differences between men and women either.

As would be expected, metabolic rate patterns vary for the population, but individuals do vary. Some have a metabolic rate 25 percent below their average age and others have a metabolic rate 25 percent higher than expected. However, these outliers do not change the general pattern that is reflected in graphs that show the course of metabolic rates over the years.

The four stages of metabolic life outlined in the new paper show that “there is no constant energy expenditure per pound,” noted Dr. Redman. The price is age-dependent. This contradicts the longstanding assumptions that she and others have held in nutritional science.

The pathways of metabolism throughout life and the individuals who are outliers will raise a number of research questions. For example, what are the characteristics of people whose metabolism is higher or lower than expected and is it related to obesity?

One of the findings that Dr. Most surprising to Pontzer was the metabolism of infants. For example, he expected a newborn to have sky-high metabolism. After all, the general rule in biology is that smaller animals burn calories faster than larger ones.

Instead, says Dr. Pontzer, babies have the same metabolic rate as their mothers in the first month of life. But shortly after the baby was born, he said, “Something happens and your metabolism picks up.”

The group also expected metabolism to slow down in adults over the age of 40 or in women with the onset of menopause.

But, said Dr. Pontzer, “we just didn’t see that.”

The slowdown in metabolism that begins around the age of 60 leads to a 20 percent drop in metabolic rate by the age of 95.

Dr. Klein said that although people gained more than a pound and a half on average in adulthood, they can no longer attribute it to a slowed metabolism.

The energy needs of the heart, liver, kidneys, and brain make up 65 percent of resting metabolic rate, even though they make up only 5 percent of body weight, said Dr. Small. A slower metabolism after age 60 could mean that important organs function less well as you get older. This could be one reason why chronic diseases are most common in the elderly.

Even college students could see the effects of the metabolic shift around the age of 20, said Dr. Small. “When you finish college, you burn fewer calories than you did when you started.”

And by the age of around 60, young people, no matter what they look like, change fundamentally.

“There is a myth about keeping youth,” said Dr. Anderson. “Biology doesn’t say that. At the age of 60 things start to change. “

“There comes a time when things are no longer the way they used to be.”