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Business

Apple closes in on $3 trillion market value

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Dec 13 (Reuters) – Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) market value hovered just shy of the $3 trillion mark on Monday, following a stunning run over the past decade that has turned it into the world’s most valuable company.

The stock needs to gain 4% from its closing price of $175.74 a share on Monday to reach $182.86 and a record $3 trillion in market value after ending the day down slightly more than 2%. It rose about 11% last week, extending its more than 30% gain for the year as investors remain confident that flush consumers will continue to pay top dollar for iPhones, MacBooks and services such as Apple TV and Apple Music.

The iPhone maker’s march from $2 trillion to near $3 trillion in market value took just 16 months, as it led a group of megacap tech companies such as Google-parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) that benefited from people and businesses relying heavily on technology during the pandemic.

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In comparison, Apple’s move to $2 trillion from $1 trillion took two years, though its stock rise was more rapid over that period.

“It’s now one of the more richly valued companies in the market, which shows the dominance of U.S. technology in the world and how confident investors are that it will remain in Apple’s hands,” said Brian Frank, a portfolio manager at Frank Capital who sold his long-standing position in Apple in 2019 as the stock’s valuation rose. “It seems like the stock has priced in every possible good outcome.”

Among new revenue lines that investors expect are a possible Apple Car, alongside growth in service categories such as apps and TV that still remain well below the 65% of the company’s revenues generated by sales of iPhones, said Daniel Morgan, senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Company.

Eclipsing the $3 trillion milestone would add another feather in the cap for Chief Executive Tim Cook, who took over after Steve Jobs resigned in 2011, and oversaw the company’s expansion into new products and markets.

“Tim Cook has done an amazing job over the past decade, taking Apple’s share price up over 1,400%,” OANDA analyst Edward Moya said.

Apple shares have returned 22% per year since the 1990s, while the S&P 500 (.SPX) has returned less than 9% annually in the same period.

If Apple hits the $3 trillion milestone, Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) will be the only company in the $2 trillion club, while Alphabet (GOOGL.O), Amazon (AMZN.O) and Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) have crossed $1 trillion.

Microsoft, which has a market value of roughly $2.6 trillion, was the world’s most valuable company as recently as late October when Apple reported that supply chain constraints could weigh on its growth for the remainder of the year.

Large technology stocks have rallied this year with investors tapping increasing demand for cloud-based products as companies shifted to a hybrid work model and consumers upgraded their devices. The Nasdaq 100 (.NDX), which is top-weighted by large companies such as Apple, is up nearly 26% this year, while the broader S&P 500 index is up roughly 24%.

The emergence of technologies such as 5G, augmented reality/virtual reality, and artificial intelligence may also help Apple and other cash-rich large technology stocks remain in favor with investors as the global economy puts the coronavirus pandemic behind it and supply chain pressures ease.

“Fed tapering and eventually tightening, along with growth concerns toward the end of 2023 helped Apple resume its role as a favorite holding for most investors,” Moya said.

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Reporting by Nivedita Balu and Anisha Sircar in Bengaluru and David Randall in New York; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta, Nick Zieminski and Jonathan Oatis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Health

When will the COVID pandemic end? CDC Director Rochelle Walensky shares her prediction

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ATLANTA — When Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, takes stock of the coronavirus pandemic, she knows it’s far from over. But she also believes it won’t last forever.

For Walensky, one of the key signs the United States is exiting the pandemic will be when hospitals are no longer filled to the brim with COVID-19 patients. And when the number of daily deaths starts to plummet.

“We’ve gotten pretty cavalier about 1,100 deaths a day,” Walensky told ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton in a rare in-person interview from CDC headquarters in Atlanta.

“That’s an extraordinary amount of deaths in a single day from this disease,” Walensky said. “We can’t — I can’t — be in a position where that is OK.”

For the nation’s public health experts, deaths and hospitalizations have become a more reliable benchmark for progress than overall cases.

Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News’ chief medical correspondent, was given rare access inside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emergency Operations Center in Atlanta by CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky. (Matt Miller/ABC)

The more scientists have learned about the virus, the more they have moved away from concept of herd immunity — the idea that the virus will one day be stopped in its tracks when enough people are immune.

Instead, scientists agree that some mild breakthrough cases are still likely to happen, even among the vaccinated. In a world where almost everyone was vaccinated, COVID-19 cases would still happen.

The virus would still spread among us, akin to the seasonal flu. And like the flu, some people would still be hospitalized, and some would die — but dramatically fewer than 1,100 deaths per day.

MORE: Pfizer says booster dose of COVID vaccine offers protection against omicron variant

Right now, roughly 65% of eligible Americans are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. The more people who get vaccinated, the more deaths and hospitalizations are driven down.

The CDC’s real-world data is already demonstrating this to be true, with unvaccinated people 14 times more likely to die and 11 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19.

Despite the grim daily death count, Walensky said she believes that one day we’ll leave behind one of the key symbols of the pandemic: the face mask.

“Masks are for now, they’re not forever,” Walensky said. “We have to find a way to be done with them.”

And the best way to put the pandemic — and masks — in the rearview mirror is to “lean in” to the current strategies we know work, Walensky said.

And for now, Walensky is urging patience as public health guidance evolves to reflect new science.

“Science is hard in a two-minute soundbite,” she said. “Know that every single decision — as hard as they are — have been grounded in science.”

Copyright © 2021 ABC News Internet Ventures.



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Science

New study explores lunar pits and caves

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A pit in a fracture on the lunar surface. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

The moon may be a mostly uniform expanse of gray, but if you look closely, you can still find a few nooks and crannies in its surface, from deep trenches to pits and maybe even caves.

Now, researchers at CU Boulder have set out to explore what the environment might be like inside some of these shadowy features—many of which are too dark to see clearly from orbit.

The team’s preliminary results suggest that pits and caves on the moon showcase remarkably stable conditions. They don’t seem to experience the wild swings in temperature that are common at the moon’s surface, said Andrew Wilcoski, a graduate student in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at CU Boulder. He will present the group’s initial findings Friday at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting in New Orleans.

“If we’re hoping to send people into these caves in the decades ahead, we want to know what they should expect down there,” said Wilcoski, a co-author of the new research.

The take-home message: What is it like to go spelunking on the moon?

Future lunar explorers may want to pay attention. Pits and caves, Wilcoski explained, are potentially ideal places for the space colonies of the future. Their walls and crevices are naturally homey and might protect humans from the sun’s dangerous radiation. Some scientists have also wondered if lunar pits and caves could be rich in natural resources that astronauts covet. That includes ice, which explorers could mine to collect water for drinking, showers and even rocket fuel.

To find out for sure, Wilcoski and planetary scientist Paul Hayne drew on computer simulations to try to recreate the conditions below the moon’s surface.

Their initial findings present a mixed bag: The stable environments of lunar pits and caves could help astronauts weather some of the moon’s worst extremes. Those same conditions, however, may make them less-than-perfect spots to go looking for water.






“They’re attractive options for establishing a long-term human presence on the moon,” said Hayne, assistant professor in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at CU Boulder.

Pockmarked moon

Hayne added that no one knows how many pits and caves might be hiding on the moon. One scientific team that went searching for them in 2014 found more than 200. Many looked like round holes punched into the lunar surface, and they ranged from about a half a mile wide to the size of a London double-decker bus.

Scientists are excited about their potential in part because the moon itself is such an extreme environment.

“As you get close to the equator, temperatures can reach more than 100 degrees Celsius during the day on the surface, and it will get down to 170 degrees Celsius below zero at night,” Wilcoski said.

The researchers developed simulations to track the temperatures in hypothetical lunar pits and caves of various shapes and sizes as the sun rose and set over the moon. They found that how these formations are oriented matters. If a cave’s mouth points directly at the rising sun, for example, it will get a lot warmer than if it points away.

Just like caves on Earth, caves on the moon seemed to sustain relatively balmy environments. Most of the team’s simulated caves hosted temperatures of about minus 120 to minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 184 to minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit) throughout an entire lunar day.

Those aren’t great conditions for water frozen into ice, Wilcoski said. Previous research by Hayne and other scientists has shown that water ice may have accumulated over billions of years in certain sites on the moon that researchers call “cold traps.” But, based on results from the new simulations, many lunar pits and caves are probably too warm to harbor similar treasure troves. In other words, go somewhere else to fill up your Nalgene.

“One intriguing possibility would be to establish a protected base station inside a lunar pit or cave near one of the polar craters containing water ice,” Hayne said. “Astronauts could then venture out when conditions were right in order to collect ice-rich soil.”

Carbon dioxide cold traps on the moon are confirmed for the first time

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University of Colorado at Boulder

Citation:
Spelunking on the moon: New study explores lunar pits and caves (2021, December 13)
retrieved 14 December 2021
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Science

Footprints Show Some Two-Legged Dinosaurs Were Agile

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New research on dinosaur footprints unearthed in Spain adds to growing evidence that a dinosaur that was genetically similar to the Tyrannosaurus rex was extremely agile. The Tyrannosaurus rex was a very large meat-eating dinosaurs that was not agile.

The findings were published on December 9 in “Scientific Reports,” which covers natural sciences. The findings announced the existence of sets of fossilized dinosaur footprints that prove the dinosaur could move quickly.

These footprints join other sets found in Utah and Texas. One of the sets there shows dinosaurs running at speeds over 48 kph. The Spanish footprints showed speeds of nearly 45 kph.

To figure out the running speed, scientists measured the length of the footprints and then considered the height of the place where the dinosaur’s legs meet the body, or the hip. They also needed to consider the distance between one footprint and another on the same foot.

All the known sets of prints that show speed come from a family of dinosaurs called theropods. These carnivorous, or meat-eating, dinosaurs stood on two legs and could not fly. They are like the famed velociraptor, a dinosaur seen in many famous movies.

The researchers estimated that the animal that created the most recent set of footprints was probably 1.5 to 2 meters tall and 4 to 5 meters long from mouth to tail.

Scientists think there may be faster dinosaurs, but these footprints have been easier to find. The footprints are known as tracks when there are one or more long sets.

“Behavior is something very difficult to study in dinosaurs,” said lead writer Pablo Navarro-Lorbés of the University of La Rioja. “These kind of findings are very important, I think, for improving that kind of knowledge.”

Scientists usually predict dinosaur behavior through computer modeling of the animals’ movement. Physical examination of fossilized footprints confirmed the results.

These are “clearly active, agile animals,” said Smithsonian paleontologist Hans Sues, who was not part of the study.

I’m Gregory Stachel.

Emma H. Tobin reported this story for The Associated Press. Gregory Stachel adapted it for VOA Learning English. Susan Shand was the editor.

____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

dinosaur – n. one of many reptiles that lived on Earth millions of years ago

agile – adj. able to move quickly and easily

fossil – n. something (such as a leaf, skeleton, or footprint) that is from a plant or animal which lived in ancient times and that you can see in some rocks

tail – n. the part of an animal’s body that extends from the animal’s back end

paleontology – n. the science that deals with the fossils of animals and plants that lived very long ago especially in the time of dinosaurs

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Science

Team develops the world’s first optical oscilloscope

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UCF Physics Associate Professor Michael Chini worked on the world’s first optical oscilloscope. Credit: University of Central Florida

A team from UCF has developed the world’s first optical oscilloscope, an instrument that is able to measure the electric field of light. The device converts light oscillations into electrical signals, much like hospital monitors convert a patient’s heartbeat into electrical oscillation.

Until now, reading the electric field of light has been a challenge because of the high speeds at which light waves oscillates. The most advanced techniques, which power our phone and internet communications, can currently clock electric fields at up to gigahertz frequencies—covering the radio frequency and microwave regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Light waves oscillate at much higher rates, allowing a higher density of information to be transmitted. However, the current tools for measuring light fields could resolve only an average signal associated with a ‘pulse’ of light, and not the peaks and valleys within the pulse. Measuring those peaks and valleys within a single pulse is important because it is in that space that information can be packed and delivered.

“Fiber optic communications have taken advantage of light to make things faster, but we are still functionally limited by the speed of the oscilloscope,” says Physics Associate Professor Michael Chini, who worked on the research at UCF. “Our optical oscilloscope may be able to increase that speed by a factor of about 10,000.”

The team’s findings are published in this week’s Nature Photonics journal.

The team developed the device and demonstrated its capability for real-time measurement of the electric fields of individual laser pulses in Chini’s lab at UCF. The next step for the team is to see how far they can push the speed limits of the technique.

The lead author of the paper is UCF postdoctoral scholar Yangyang Liu. Other authors include physics alums Jonathan Nesper ’19 ’21MS, who earned his bachelor’s in math and master’s in physics; Shima Gholam-Mirzaei ’18MS ’20PhD; and John E. Beetar ’15 ’17MS ’20PhD.

Gholam-Mirzaei is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Joint Attosecond Science Laboratory at the National Research Council of Canada and University of Ottawa and Beetar is completing a postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley.

Chini had the idea for the single-shot waveform measurement scheme and oversaw the research team. Liu led the experimental effort and performed most of the measurements and simulations. Beetar assisted with the measurements of the carrier-envelope phase dependence. Nesper and Gholam-Mirzaei assisted with the construction of the experimental setup and with the data collection. All authors contributed to the data analysis and wrote the journal article.

Imaging light waveforms in air plasma

More information:
Yangyang Liu et al, Single-shot measurement of few-cycle optical waveforms on a chip, Nature Photonics (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41566-021-00924-6
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University of Central Florida

Citation:
Team develops the world’s first optical oscilloscope (2021, December 13)
retrieved 14 December 2021
from https://phys.org/news/2021-12-team-world-optical-oscilloscope.html

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World

CDC: Italy and 2 other nations now at ‘very high’ travel risk for Covid-19

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(CNN) — The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added three nations to its highest-risk category for travel on Monday, including tourist favorite Italy.

In its weekly update of Covid-19 travel advisories, the CDC also added giant, frigid Greenland and the tiny, tropical East African island nation of Mauritius to its “Level 4: Covid-19 Very High” category.

Typically, the CDC places a destination at Level 4 when more than 500 cases per 100,000 residents are registered in the past 28 days.

All three nations moved up from Level 3.

Last week, the CDC put Italy’s neighbor, France, at Level 4 — along with six other destinations. France remains at Level 4 this week.

European surge and Omicron

Italy’s move to Level 4 comes as Europe continue to grapple with another surge in Covid-19 cases.

The United Kingdom is facing a “tidal wave” of infections from the new Omicron coronavirus variant, ministers have warned, noting rapid transmission rates in London and across the country. Germany is also grappling with its fourth wave on the pandemic and a sharp rise in deaths. Both of those nations are also on the CDC’s Level 4 list.
Meanwhile, the entire world continues to monitor Omicron.

Other nations on Level 4

While Europe is being hard hit, it isn’t the only region with popular tourist destinations on Level 4. Among the other places also considered at “very high” risk for travel are:

• Barbados
• Belize
• Cayman Islands
• Jordan
• Seychelles Islands
• Turkey

In all, more than 80 countries were rated Level 4 as of December 13.

Happening on Level 3

Tourists wearing face masks view from an observation deck at the Kuala Lumpur Tower in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Vincent Thian/AP

The Level 3 category — which applies to destinations that have had between 100 and 500 cases per 100,000 residents in the past 28 days — just saw one new addition on Monday.

For Malaysia, the move to Level 3 was good news as it had been residing at Level 4 since June 2021.

Quite a few Caribbean nations popular with Americans seeking warmer climes are currently on Level 3. They include, among others:

• Aruba
• Dominican Republic
• Granada
• Saint Kitts and Nevis

“This is a very dynamic situation, and travelers should consider how important the trip is to them and have a plan B and a plan C,” said Wen, an emergency physician and professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health.

“They should think through all the scenarios for what could happen. Let’s say that they end up in a country that is now going to implement a mandatory quarantine on arrival. How will they cope with that? Is it worth going?”

US embassies provide country-specific information for American citizens, including whether tests in a particular destination are reliably available within the one-day period required for their return.

Level 2, Level 1 and unknowns

Jamaica, homes to colorful corals reefs, has been moved to Level 2 by the CDC.

Shutterstock

Destinations carrying the “Level 2: Covid-19 Moderate” designation have seen 50 to 99 Covid-19 cases per 100,000 residents in the past 28 days. Three nations moved there Monday. They are:

• Jamaica
• Philippines
• Republic of Congo

This was an improvement for all three nations, which had previously been at Level 3.

In the category of “Level 1: Covid-19 Low” destinations, fewer than 50 new cases per 100,000 residents have been logged over the past 28 days. Only one new nation joined this level on Monday, that of the small African nation of Equatorial Guinea. It previously had been on Level 2.

Finally, there are destinations for which the CDC has an “unknown” risk because of a lack of information. As of December 13, some of those places included:

• Cambodia
• Canary Islands
• Gibraltar
• Nicaragua
• Tanzania

The CDC cautions even fully vaccinated travelers about venturing to destinations with no reliable statistics about the current Covid-19 situation.

In its broader travel guidance, the CDC has recommended avoiding all international travel until you are fully vaccinated.

“Fully vaccinated travelers are less likely to get and spread Covid-19. However, international travel poses additional risks, and even fully vaccinated travelers might be at increased risk for getting and possibly spreading some Covid-19 variants,” the agency said.

Top image: Christmas trees are seen in Trieste, Italy, on December 12. (Photo by Manuel Romano/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

CNN’s Marnie Hunter and Rob Picheta contributed to this report.

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Business

Elon Musk named Time’s 2021 ‘Person of the Year’

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Dec 13 (Reuters) – Tesla (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for 2021, a year that saw his electric car company become the most valuable carmaker in the world and his rocket company soar to the edge of space with an all-civilian crew.

Musk is also the founder and CEO of SpaceX, and leads brain-chip startup Neuralink and infrastructure firm The Boring Company. Tesla’s market value soared to more than $1 trillion this year, making it more valuable than Ford Motor (F.N) and General Motors (GM.N) combined.

Tesla produces hundreds of thousand of cars every year and has managed to avert supply chain issues better than many of its rivals, while pushing many young consumers to switch to electric cars and legacy automakers to shift focus to EV vehicles.

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“For creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, for driving society’s most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is TIME’s 2021 Person of the Year,” the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Edward Felsenthal, said.

“Even Elon Musk’s spacefaring adventures are a direct line from the very first Person of the Year, Charles Lindbergh, whom the editors selected in 1927 to commemorate his historic first solo transatlantic airplane flight over the Atlantic.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk gestures as he visits the construction site of Tesla’s Gigafactory in Gruenheide near Berlin, Germany, August 13, 2021. Patrick Pleul/Pool via Reuters

From hosting Saturday Night Live to dropping tweets on cryptocurrencies and meme stocks that have triggered massive movements in their value, Musk has dominated the headlines and amassed over 66 million followers on Twitter.

Some of his tweets have also attracted regulatory scrutiny in the past.

According to the magazine, “The Person of the Year” signifies somebody “who affected the news or our lives the most, for better, or worse.”

Time magazine named the teenage pop singer Olivia Rodrigo as its “Entertainer of the Year”, American gymnast Simone Biles “Athlete of the Year” and vaccine scientists were named “Heroes of the Year”.

Last year, U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were jointly given the “Person of the Year” title. Time began this tradition in 1927. Facebook (FB.O)CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon (AMZN.O)founder Jeff Bezos have also received the title in the past.

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Reporting by Nivedita Balu and Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Entertainment

Stevie J Claims Race Played Factor in Getting Kicked Off Delta Flight

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TMZ.com

Stevie J says the incident that ended with his son and him getting booted from a Delta flight is rooted in race — and he believes a white traveler would’ve gotten a pass.

We got the music producer Monday outside 3SIXTY9 in Los Angeles and asked what went down last week during his trip from L.A. to Atlanta.

Stevie says the gate agents told him and his son, Stevie II, to toss their alcoholic beverages before boarding … but there was no way they were going to waste their booze.



12/10/21

TMZ.com

He says they threw back the drinks and scanned their boarding passes and were walking down the jet bridge when all of a sudden dozens of police swarmed and escorted them off for a chat.

Stevie says it’s a case of power-hungry cops mixed with racism — claiming police took things too far, and would never treat white passengers the same way.

Waiting for your permission to load the Instagram Media.

As we first told you … Stevie is threatening legal action, and now he says he doesn’t want beef with Delta but hopes they come to the table to hash things out.

Stevie says he’s a good guy who was making people laugh in line to board the plane, and he’s surprised this happened on Delta — he proudly told us about his elite status with the airline.

BTW, we also asked what they were sipping on that was so precious, and let’s just say … Stevie should be blaming George Clooney for all this trouble!

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Technology

Get Apple’s M1 MacBook Air for the best price today only

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This story is part of a group of stories called

Only the best deals on Verge-approved gadgets get the Verge Deals stamp of approval, so if you’re looking for a deal on your next gadget or gift from major retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and more, this is the place to be.

The MacBook Air with M1 processor, our top pick for the best laptop of 2021, is currently $200 off at Best Buy. This brings the popular laptop from Apple down to its historical low price of $799.99. We have often seen this MacBook Air discounted by $50, $100, and even occasionally $150, but this level of sale is much less frequent, and as good as it gets. Best Buy’s deal on the MacBook Air is only running for today — scheduled to expire when it strikes midnight on December 14th — or while supplies last.

The configuration of MacBook Air on offer today is the late 2020 model with the Apple-made M1 CPU, outfitted with the base-level 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. You have your choice of colors from its three options of space gray, gold, and silver.

There are few other laptops as capable in this price range as the MacBook Air, whether you’re dabbling in productivity and work, everyday home and on-the-go computer use, or even light content creation. Its battery life is also exceptional. The biggest knock against this laptop — dongle life aside — is the awful webcam quality. Though there are worse problems to have, especially if you put some of that money saved toward a webcam that is much better than the cameras built into any laptop. Read our review.

MacBook Air with M1 (late 2020)

The MacBook Air is Apple’s entry-level laptop, which comes outfitted with the company’s new M1 chip and in one of three different colors (silver, space gray, and gold).

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Sports

Bulls COVID outbreak: NBA postpones Chicago’s next two games with 10 players in health and safety protocols

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Amid a COVID-19 outbreak that has hit the Chicago Bulls especially hard, the NBA has opted to postpone the team’s next two games as it has 10 players in the league’s health and safety protocols. Alize Johnson became the 10th player to enter protocols Monday morning, leaving the Bulls with just nine active players, one more than the required eight players needed to play in a game.

Per the league’s statement:

The Chicago Bulls’ next two games – Tuesday, Dec. 14 against the Detroit Pistons and Thursday, Dec. 16 at Toronto – have been postponed. Ten Bulls players, along with additional staff members, are currently in the NBA’s Health and Safety Protocols.

Chicago was scheduled to play the Detroit Pistons Tuesday, followed by a road trip to take on the Toronto Raptors Thursday, but the league decided to postpone those two games to give the Bulls a chance to get some players back healthy. 

Below is a list of Chicago’s players currently in protocols: 

Zach LaVine and Troy Brown Jr. entered league protocols Sunday. LaVine is expected to be sidelined for a minimum of 10 days, but could be back sooner if he records two negative tests in a 24-hour period. Even the team’s broadcasters — Stacey King and Bill Wennington — have entered protocols.

Bulls center Nikola Vucevic recently returned to game action after his own bout with COVID-19 in November. The Bulls have been testing players and coaches multiple times per day amid the team-wide outbreak. The good news is that Bulls players are vaccinated, so they’re not dealing with too many severe symptoms. 

“Maybe some of it’s because of the vaccination, we’ve got a lot of guys sitting at home with no symptoms right now,” Bulls coach Donovan said of the situation Saturday, via ESPN. “That’s obviously a good thing, too, because I think when guys have gone through a real difficulty of getting really, really sick, it’s really made it a lot harder for them coming back. … We do have some guys that have felt under the weather, we have guys that have very, very mild symptoms, and some guys that just don’t have any.”

All of the absences are unfortunate for a Bulls team that has been very good when healthy. Chicago currently sits third in the Eastern Conference standings with a 17-10 record. Though not ideal, the Bulls have done their best to persevere. 

“It is a scary time,” Donovan added. “Our guys have really done a good job of just trying to put their best foot forward to try to really stay locked in on, ‘This is what I have to do,’ or, ‘This is what I can control,’ and try to move forward with it.”

The other positive is that White and Green could soon return to action this week after being the first two players to enter COVID-19 protocols over a week ago. DeRozan’s return could follow shortly behind that after being sidelined just hours before Chicago’s Dec. 6 win against the Denver Nuggets when he tested positive for the virus. 

One team they just faced Saturday, the Miami Heat, is already dealing with the possible exposure as forward Caleb Martin and broadcaster Jason Jackson both entered protocols. Postponing the next two games will help ensure that this outbreak doesn’t spread any further than it already has within the Bulls’ organization, in addition to potentially spreading to any other opposing teams Chicago faces.

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