Shares of GameStop Corp. shot higher again Tuesday, closing at its highest point since the end of January and pushing its market cap back above $17 billion.
After plunging about 90% from its highs of the meme-stock-buying frenzy in January, GameStop stock
GME,
+26.94%
has skyrocketed more than 108% in the past five trading sessions, including Tuesday’s 27% gain. Shares closed Tuesday’s regular session at $246.90, off from a record close of $347.51 on Jan. 27, and were up another 3% in after-hours trading.
GameStop shares are up more than 1,200% year to date, and more than 5,700% over the past 12 months.
Shares started spiking again Monday after GameStop announced a new strategy committee to identify ways to accelerate its transformation, which will be led by activist investor and Chewy Inc.
CHWY,
+5.37%
co-founder Ryan Cohen.
Late Tuesday, GameStop said it will report fourth-quarter and fiscal-year earnings after the market closes March 23.
Earlier in the day, the Senate Banking Committee started hearings into financial speculation and the easy-trading practices of Robinhood and other zero-commission firms that, combined with chatter from Reddit forums, helped fuel the historic buying of heavily shorted stocks — such as GameStop and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc.
AMC,
+13.02%
— earlier this year.
MacKenzie Scott, the philanthropist formerly married to
Jeff Bezos,
has married again following her 2019 divorce from the
Amazon.com Inc.
founder, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Ms. Scott, one of the world’s wealthiest women, has married Dan Jewett, a science teacher at a Seattle private school, according to the person.
Ms. Scott has devoted much of her time recently to philanthropic efforts benefiting women-led charities, food banks and Black colleges, among other institutions. Since her divorce, Ms. Scott has given away more than $4 billion of her fortune, according to a post she wrote on Medium in December.
In a post dated Saturday on Ms. Scott’s page on the Giving Pledge website, for billionaires who have promised to donate most of their fortune to philanthropic efforts, Mr. Jewett signed on to her commitment.
“It is strange to be writing a letter indicating I plan to give away the majority of my wealth during my lifetime, as I have never sought to gather the kind of wealth required to feel like saying such a thing would have particular meaning,” Mr. Jewett’s post says.
“Dan is such a great guy, and I am happy and excited for the both of them,” said Mr. Bezos in a statement provided by an Amazon spokesman.
Ms. Scott and Mr. Jewett couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on Sunday.
Ms. Scott and Mr. Bezos, both Princeton University graduates, met while working at a hedge fund in New York. She helped him start Amazon in 1994, and is the author of two novels. Her Amazon author page now says that she “lives in Seattle with her four children and her husband, Dan.”
At the time of their 2019 divorce, after 25 years of marriage, Mr. Bezos was the wealthiest person in the world, with his stake of more than 16% of Amazon. Ms. Scott received 4% of Amazon’s shares as part of their divorce settlement, though Mr. Bezos kept voting rights for those shares.
Ms. Scott joined the Giving Pledge in May 2019, shortly after terms of her divorce with Mr. Bezos were finalized. The pledge was started by Bill and
Melinda Gates
and
Warren Buffett
in 2010. Mr. Bezos hasn’t joined the pledge.
Amazon’s business has been a major beneficiary of the pandemic, driving up its stock price. Mr. Bezos, after jostling for a time with
Elon Musk
for the title, again ranks as the world’s richest person, with a net worth of around $177 billion, according to wealth rankings by Forbes and Bloomberg. Ms. Scott ranks the 22nd richest person, at around $53 billion.
Mr. Jewett is a teacher at Lakeside School, according to the school’s website.
“In a stroke of happy coincidence, I am married to one of the most generous and kind people I know—and joining her in a commitment to pass on an enormous financial wealth to serve others,” Mr. Jewett said in his Giving Pledge letter.
WASHINGTON—Russian intelligence agencies have mounted a campaign to undermine confidence in
Pfizer Inc.’s
and other Western vaccines, using online publications that in recent months have questioned the vaccines’ development and safety, U.S. officials said.
An official with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which monitors foreign disinformation efforts, identified four publications that he said have served as fronts for Russian intelligence.
The websites played up the vaccines’ risk of side effects, questioned their efficacy, and said the U.S. had rushed the Pfizer vaccine through the approval process, among other false or misleading claims.
Though the outlets’ readership is small, U.S. officials say they inject false narratives that can be amplified by other Russian and international media.
The Sputnik V vaccine being administered at a site in Saint Petersburg, Russia, last month.
Photo:
anton vaganov/Reuters
“We can say these outlets are directly linked to Russian intelligence services,” the Global Engagement Center official said of the sites behind the disinformation campaign. “They’re all foreign-owned, based outside of the United States. They vary a lot in their reach, their tone, their audience, but they’re all part of the Russian propaganda and disinformation ecosystem.”
In addition, Russian state media and Russian government
Twitter
accounts have made overt efforts to raise concerns about the cost and safety of the Pfizer vaccine in what experts outside the U.S. government say is an effort to promote the sale of Russia’s rival Sputnik V vaccine.
“The emphasis on denigrating Pfizer is likely due to its status as the first vaccine besides Sputnik V to see mass use, resulting in a greater potential threat to Sputnik’s market dominance,” says a forthcoming report by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a nongovernmental organization that focuses on the danger that authoritarian governments pose to democracies and that is part of the German Marshall Fund, a U.S. think tank.
The foreign efforts to sow doubts about the vaccine exploit deep-seated anxieties about the efficacy and side effects of vaccines that were already prevalent in some communities in the U.S. and internationally. Concern about side effects is a major reason for vaccine hesitancy, according to U.S. Census Bureau data made public last month.
Kremlin spokesman
Dmitry Peskov
denied that Russian intelligence agencies were orchestrating articles against Western vaccines and said U.S. officials were mischaracterizing the broad international debate over vaccines as a Russian plot.
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“It’s nonsense. Russian special services have nothing to do with any criticism against vaccines,” Mr. Peskov said in a telephone interview from Moscow. “If we treat every negative publication against the Sputnik V vaccine as a result of efforts by American special services, then we will go crazy because we see it every day, every hour and in every Anglo-Saxon media.”
The State Department GEC official said that four publications had direct links to Russian intelligence and were used by the Russian government to mislead international opinion on a range of issues.
New Eastern Outlook and Oriental Review, the official said, are directed and controlled by the SVR, or Russia’s foreign intelligence service. They present themselves as academic publications and are aimed at the Middle East, Asia and Africa, offering comment on the U.S.’s role in the world. The State Department said in an August report that New Eastern Outlook was linked to “state-funded institutions” in Russia.
Another publication, News Front, is guided by the FSB, a security service that succeeded the KGB, the official said. It is based in Crimea, produces information in 10 languages, and had nearly nine million page visits between February and April 2020, the official added. In August, the State Department was less explicit, saying that News Front reportedly had ties to Russia security services and Kremlin funding.
To counter skepticism over its Covid-19 vaccine, Russia has built a big public-relations effort at home and abroad. WSJ’s Georgi Kantchev explains why the success of Sputnik V is so important for the Kremlin. Photo: Juan Mabromata/AFP via Getty Images
Rebel Inside, the fourth publication, has been controlled by the GRU, which is an intelligence directorate of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff. It covered riots and protests and now appears dormant, the GEC official said.
The State Department had previously not gone so far as to say that these outlets were controlled or guided by Russian intelligence agencies—an assertion that generally relies on U.S. classified intelligence.
A State Department spokesman didn’t provide specific evidence linking the publications to Russian intelligence but said the assessment was “a result of a joint interagency conclusion.”
“Russian intelligence services bear direct responsibility for using these four platforms to spread propaganda and lies,” the spokesman said. “From the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, we have seen Russia’s disinformation ecosystem develop and spread false narratives around the crisis.”
News Front, New Eastern Outlook and Oriental Review didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Social-media accounts affiliated with the four websites have largely been removed from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and
Pinterest,
though some non-English-language accounts remained active earlier this year.
Highlighting reports in the international media, a January article in News Front played up the risk that a person who receives the Pfizer or
Moderna Inc.
vaccines could contract Bell’s palsy, in which facial muscles are paralyzed, while a February article focused on a man in California that it said tested positive for Covid-19 after receiving the Pfizer vaccination.
In each case, the Russian outlets were repeating actual news reports but overlooking contrary information about the general safety of the vaccine. Numerous studies and real-world data have shown the Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccines to be safe and effective, and hospitalizations and deaths have begun to plummet in places like Israel where shots have been widely administered, though a small number of side effects have been reported.
“To date, millions of people have been vaccinated with our vaccine following the endorsement of regulators in multiple countries,” said Pamela Eisele, a spokeswoman for Pfizer, who added that individuals who have questions should consult the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website or their healthcare provider.
A spokeswoman for Moderna didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
A November article in New Eastern Outlook said that the Pfizer vaccine’s use of mRNA gene editing was “radical experimental technology” that lacked “precision” and said it was rushed through the approval process with the help of billionaire philanthropist
Bill Gates
and Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for the Covid-19 pandemic, both of whom the article accused of “playing fast and loose with human lives in their rush to get these experimental vaccines into our bodies.”
Some New Eastern Outlook articles have been republished by blogs and purported international news sites. One article from January alleged that the U.S. has biological labs around the world that may lead to outbreaks of infectious disease. The article was republished in full or part by websites in Bangladesh, Italy, Spain, France, Iran, Cuba and Sweden, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The U.S. has long accused Moscow of carrying out disinformation on medical issues.
Judy Twigg,
a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who is an expert on global health issues, said that the Soviet KGB had accused the CIA of spreading dengue fever in Cuba and malaria in Pakistan.
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“A persistent KGB campaign claimed that the U.S. Army’s former biological weapons labs at Fort Detrick had unleashed the AIDS epidemic,” she said. Soviet officials denied responsibility for this disinformation.
Thomas Rid, an expert on Russian disinformation at Johns Hopkins University who reviewed the websites cited by the State Department, said the articles were generally in line with Russia’s “rich history” of using communications technology to deceive both international and domestic audiences. He urged the U.S. government to do more to publicly explain how it has concluded the websites are controlled by specific Russian intelligence agencies.
With Russia and China seeking to sell their vaccines abroad, overt efforts to denigrate Pfizer have been well documented. The forthcoming German Marshall Fund report, which was reviewed by the Journal and is to be issued Monday, analyzed more than 35,000 Russian, Chinese and Iranian government and state media tweets on vaccine themes from early November to early February. “Russia provided by far the most negative coverage of Western vaccines.” it states, “with a remarkable 86% of surveyed Russian tweets mentioning Pfizer and 76% mentioning Moderna coded as negative.”
—Ann Simmons contributed to this article.
Investigating the Origin of Covid-19
Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com and Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com
Car dealer Brad Sowers is spending money to prepare for the coming wave of new electric models from General Motors Co. He is installing charging stations, upgrading service bays and retraining staff at his St. Louis-area dealership to handle the technology-packed vehicles.
But when he considers how many plug-in Chevy Bolts he sold last year—nine, out of the nearly 4,000 Chevrolets sold at his Missouri dealerships—it gives him pause.
“The consumer in the middle of America just isn’t there yet,” when it comes to switching to electric vehicles, he said, citing the long distances many of his customers drive daily and a lack of charging infrastructure outside major cities.
As auto executives and investors buzz about the coming age of the electric car, many dealers say they are struggling to square that enthusiasm with the reality today on new-car sales lots, where last year battery-powered vehicles made up fewer than 2% of U.S. auto sales.
Most consumers who come to showrooms aren’t shopping for electric cars, and with gasoline prices relatively low, even hybrid models can be a tough sell, dealers and industry analysts say.
Auto makers are moving aggressively to expand their electric-vehicle offerings with dozens of new models set to arrive in coming years. Some like GM are setting firm targets for when they plan to phase out gas-powered cars entirely.
Sales consultant Robert Mason Jr., center, spoke with Paul Sweeney, left, and his son, Jeff, who were purchasing a Chevrolet Trail Boss at Jim Butler Chevrolet in Fenton, Mo., on Friday.
Many dealers say that puts them in a delicate spot: They are trying to adjust, but unsure whether and how fast customers will actually make the switch. About 180 GM dealers, or roughly 20%, have decided to give up their Cadillac franchises rather than invest in costly upgrades that GM has required to sell electric cars.
A GM spokesman said the company expected some Cadillac dealers to opt out and is pleased that the roughly 700 remaining share its all-electric goals.
Past attempts by car companies to expand electric-car sales have largely flopped, saddling retailers with unsold inventory. Even now, some dealers say they are reluctant to stock electric models en masse.
“The biggest challenge is that dealers have a bit of ‘boy who cried wolf’ syndrome,” said Massachusetts dealer Chris Lemley.
Car companies have promised for years to make electric cars mainstream, but produced only low-volume, niche models, he said. He recalls
Ford Motor Co.
rolling out an all-electric Focus that sold poorly and stacked up on his lot. It was discontinued in 2018.
“So when we are told, ‘This time, we really mean it,’ it’s easy to be skeptical,” Mr. Lemley added.
Some shoppers also are unsure. Joe Daniel, an energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said he was determined to buy an electric car, but eventually abandoned his effort after realizing there weren’t enough public charging stations near his apartment in Washington, D.C. Without a place to plug in, the purchase made little sense, he added.
“For EVs to take off, they need to be as convenient as gas-powered cars—that’s the whole point of this big purchase,” Mr. Daniel said.
Gone are the long waits at charging stations: Chinese electric-vehicle startup NIO is pioneering battery-swap systems, challenging Tesla and other rival car makers. Here’s how NIO and Tesla are racing for the world’s largest EV market in China. Photo illustration: Sharon Shi
To solve problems like this, President Biden has said he wants to spend billions of dollars to upgrade the country’s charging infrastructure as part of a push to incentivize battery-powered cars.
Ford, GM and other major car companies say they are confident in their new electric-vehicle offerings and are training dealers to sell and service them.
Still, some auto retailers say they worry about the long-term implications for their business.
Tesla Inc.’s
influence on the electric-car market has created a new standard for car shoppers, offering an online transaction and a simplified lineup with no price negotiation. Other electric-vehicle startups, like Rivian Automotive and Lucid Motors, say they’ll likewise sell directly to consumers and bypass traditional dealerships.
Some car companies are now following their lead, initially stocking dealership lots with few if any electric models and allowing customers to order more directly from the manufacturer.
Volvo Cars CEO
Håkan Samuelsson
recently said that all future battery-electric vehicles would be sold exclusively online and the price would be set centrally, eliminating the ability to haggle. Dealerships will help deliver vehicles to customers and perform other services, like maintenance, he said.
“The marketplace is moving from the physical dealership to online. That’s what will happen in the next 10 years,” Mr. Samuelsson said.
Howard Drake,
a GM dealer in Los Angeles, said he is considering converting two of his showrooms. Rather than separate models by brand, he is considering two stores—one for electrics, the other for gas-powered vehicles.
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“These are really different customers,” Mr. Drake said. “A Hummer EV buyer probably doesn’t want to be sitting next to some guy buying a gas-guzzling pickup truck.”
Mr. Sowers said he sees encouraging signs. GM recently dropped the sticker price of the all-electric Bolt and helped boost sales for the model in February. But he said his electric-vehicle inventory will remain light because he is uncertain about longer-term demand.
“It’s still very early days,” Mr. Sowers said.
As soon as dealers figure out how to sell EVs, another business problem awaits in the service bay.
Troy Carrico worked on a Chevrolet Corvette.
Electric vehicles typically have fewer mechanical parts and don’t require the same type of service that gas engine cars need, such as oil changes. That work right now is a big profit center for dealerships.
“There’s going to be an impact, but it might take three or four years to see the full effect,” Mr. Lemley said. “That’s really my biggest question mark heading into all of this.”
WASHINGTON—U.S. government scientists are pushing back against calls for one-dose regimens for two Covid-19 vaccines designed to be administered with two shots, saying there isn’t enough evidence that a single dose provides long-term protection.
“It is essential that these vaccines be used as authorized by FDA in order to prevent Covid-19 and related hospitalizations and death,” Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s center that oversees vaccines, told The Wall Street Journal.
The FDA late last year approved a two-dose regimen for vaccines from
Moderna Inc.
and from a partnership of
Pfizer Inc.
and
BioNTech
SE. More recently it approved use of a one-dose regimen for a vaccine from
Johnson & Johnson.
Some scientists and lawmakers have called for shifting to a one-dose regimen for all the vaccines, citing preliminary studies showing one shot can be effective. They contend shifting to one shot will allow the U.S. to accelerate the pace of vaccinations.
In a March 2 letter to acting Health and Human Services Secretary
Norris Cochran,
seven physician members of Congress urged the department “to consider issuing a revised emergency use authorization as soon as possible” that might lead to single-dose use of the
Pfizer
and Moderna vaccines.
“Last week, the U.S. passed a sobering milestone of over 500,000 deaths related to COVID-19,” said the letter, signed by lawmakers including
Rep. Andy Harris
(R, Md.) and
Rep. Gregory F. Murphy,
(R., N.C.). “These are staggering statistics, and anything we can do to help prevent further tragedy—to further protect the public health and safety of the American people—should be fully employed.”
In interviews, senior government scientists at the FDA and the National Institutes of Health said such a shift isn’t warranted, saying the evidence used to approve the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was based on two doses.
These scientists said one dose may offer short-term protection, but the longer-term protection is a question mark.
“You would be flying blind to just use one dose,” said one senior scientist and adviser to President
Biden.
“If you’re going to do something else other than follow the studies shown to the FDA, show me that this one-shot effect is durable.”
Another senior U.S. government doctor said the durability of the vaccination is especially important when more-resistant strains of Covid-19, including those from the U.K. and South Africa, are appearing in the U.S.
“We think it’s best to get people to as high a level of immunity as possible,” the doctor said.
The doctor added that the pace of vaccinations is accelerating with the recent decision by
Merck
& Co. to help produce the J&J vaccine.
“We’re going to have a good supply of vaccines very soon,” the doctor said.
Representatives of Pfizer and Moderna didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday. Pfizer has previously said it doesn’t have data regarding the single-dose approach, and Moderna has previously said it isn’t studying the issue.
Paul A. Offit
of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who served on the FDA advisory panel that recommended the use of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, said those clinical trials “found a level of neutralizing antibodies [with one dose] that was significantly less than what they got with two doses.”
The FDA advisory panel’s chairman,
Arnold Monto,
also said the two-shot regimen is best for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Dr. Monto, a public-health doctor at the University of Michigan, stressed the need for two doses to counter the Covid-19 variants.
“We’ve got information on a two-dose strategy,” said Dr. Monto. “We need high antibody levels from those doses to deal with the variants.”
Others holding fast with similar views in the U.S. government are prominent infectious-disease doctor
Anthony Fauci
and
Andy Slavitt,
a senior White House adviser for Covid-19 response. Mr. Slavitt said it would be a mistake for the U.S. government to be persuaded by just one study.
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University of Minnesota epidemiologist
Michael Osterholm
said in testimony Thursday before the Minnesota legislature that the U.S. should consider delaying second doses so more people can get first shots.
“We could get more of our over-65 group vaccinated,” he said. “I think the data will support that actually is a very effective way to go.”
Two weeks ago, researchers in Israel reported that one dose of the Pfizer vaccine was 85% effective in preventing symptomatic disease 15 to 28 days after inoculation.
In the U.K, the government has opted to stretch vaccine supplies by delaying a second dose by up to 12 weeks in a bid to reach more people.
British researchers released preliminary data in recent days saying that either of two vaccines—from Pfizer and from
AstraZeneca
PLC—reduced the risk of hospitalization among people older than 70 years old by 80%, compared with people of similar ages without vaccination.
AstraZeneca is still conducting a U.S. study of its vaccine, which hasn’t yet gained authorization from the FDA.
A worker carries a broom past closed stores at the Tanger Outlets center in Atlantic City, N.J. Shares of Tanger surged on Thursday.
Angus Mordant/Bloomberg
Tanger Factory Outlet Centers
took a wild ride on Thursday, the latest hot potato stock caught in a short squeeze.
The mall operator has a high amount of short interest, currently more than 33% of its shares, according to FactSet. That makes it among the most heavily shorted stocks along with
GameStop
(30.2%),
Rocket Cos.
(39.7%), and
GoodRx Holdings
(27.6%), according to MarketWatch data.
Shares of Tanger (ticker: SKT) jumped 22% Thursday morning to hit a 52-week high before settling down. By midafternoon, they had lost steam completely and were down 5.4%. The stock is up 38% over the last year, compared with a 20% one-year gain in the
S&P 500.
Malls have been among the most downtrodden stocks during the pandemic, forced to temporarily close locations and restrict the number of shoppers while also juggling budget-strapped tenants facing the same challenges.
Tanger has been a topic on a Reddit forum called WallStreetBets. One post from Wednesday said “SKT is about to reach its highest point since may 2019 and it’s the second most shorted stock after GME. You know what to do!”
“Lets make this explode,” the post says. “Help bring this stock to the spotlight and make it the new GME.”
A spokesman for Tanger wasn’t immediately available on Thursday.
WSB on Reddit is the forum where stock trading enthusiasts share ideas. It’s also a big focus of those investigating the run-up in
GameStop
(GME),
AMC Entertainment Holdings
(AMC), and other stocks a few weeks ago in a trading frenzy described as retail investors going after professional short sellers.
The average rating of the six analysts who publish research on Tanger is Underweight, the equivalent of a Sell. Full-year 2020 revenue fell 10%, to $370 million, according to FactSet.
LONDON—The U.K. has become a testing ground for how a more-contagious and possibly deadlier coronavirus variant spreads through communities, displacing its less-transmissible ancestors and complicating vaccine rollouts and the lifting of lockdowns.
The variant has now been identified in more than 70 countries and 40 U.S. states, and its advance in Britain could help scientists understand its likely trajectory in the U.S. These charts show the spread of the variant around the U.K. and what British scientists are learning about it—including its higher transmissibility and lethality.
“Increasingly, since this version of the virus was discovered we’ve really been running two separate pandemics,” said
Jason Leitch,
national clinical director for Scotland. “That is a warning to other countries.”
Seven–day rolling rate of new cases
Per 100,000 population
U.K. variant share of new cases in England
Source: Public Health England (map); Second Generation Surveillance System (chart)
British scientists detected the new variant in November, and in early December traced its first appearance in the U.K. to the southern English county of Kent, in September. The country was in lockdown in November to suppress a deadly wave of infection that had been building since the fall. British public health officials were mystified by the virus’s ongoing spread in southern England despite those restrictions.
When scientists examined the variant’s genome, they found an unusually large number of mutations, some of which pointed to the possibility the new variant could spread more rapidly than pre-existing versions. Further sequencing—and a testing quirk that served as a reliable proxy for the variant’s presence—revealed how quickly the variant rose to dominance.
Total number of
contacts that
became cases
Percentage of all contacts that became cases, by region
Total number of
contacts that
became cases
Percentage of all contacts that became cases, by region
Total number of
contacts that
became cases
Percentage of all contacts that became cases, by region
Percentage of all contacts that became
cases, by region
Total number of
contacts that
became cases
When lockdown lifted in early December, the new variant went national. The overall case rate per 100,000 people increased fivefold in London, and the new variant was soon detected in almost every corner of the U.K. Another, stricter nationwide lockdown was imposed Jan. 4 to arrest its spread. Caseloads have since fallen back and the government has published plans for a staged reopening in the coming months.
Public-health officials began probing the contact patterns of people known to be infected with the new variant, now widely known as B.1.1.7. They found evidence that people infected with the variant went on to infect more people than those infected with the previously dominant strain. That finding reinforced the genetic analysis pointing to a more transmissible version of the pathogen.
“We haven’t seen anything quite like the U.K. variant in terms of its growth rate, in terms of its transmissibility,” said
Nick Loman,
a professor of microbial genomics and bioinformatics at the University of Birmingham.
More worrying still, when public-health officials and teams at U.K. universities began examining clinical data on those known to have been infected with B.1.1.7, they detected signs the variant might be associated with a higher risk of death.
Findings from various studies about the increased or decreased likelihood of dying from Covid-19 if
infected with the U.K. variant vs. previous variant
Findings from various studies about the increased or decreased likelihood of dying from
Covid-19 if infected with the U.K. variant vs. previous variant
Findings from various studies about the increased or decreased likelihood of
dying from Covid-19 if infected with the U.K. variant vs. previous variant
Findings from various studies about the
increased or decreased likelihood of dying
from Covid-19 if infected with the U.K.
variant vs. previous variant
One preliminary analysis, from Scotland, suggested infection with the variant could be 65% more likely to result in hospitalization and 37% more likely to end in death than contracting the older version of the virus. Scientists say these findings aren’t definitive, and some studies suggested the link with higher mortality was weak or the variant may even be associated with a lower risk of dying.
Still, the evidence was sufficient for a panel of scientists advising the U.K. government to say this month that it is likely B.1.1.7 carries a greater risk both of hospitalization and death than established versions.
Surveys of patients conducted by the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics between November and January made another finding: Infection with the B.1.1.7 can result in slightly different symptoms, which may help doctors spot possible cases.
Percentage of Covid-19 patients in England reporting each symptom, based on which variant they are
infected with
Percentage of Covid-19 patients in England reporting each symptom, based on which
variant they are infected with
Percentage of Covid-19 patients in England reporting each symptom, based on
which variant they are infected with
Percentage of Covid-19 patients in England
reporting each symptom, based on which
variant they are infected with
The classic symptoms of Covid-19—fever, cough and shortness of breath—were slightly more common among those with the new variant than the old. Patients reporting a loss of taste or smell were less common. And gastrointestinal complaints were more frequent in the case of the new variant.
One cold comfort for the U.K., according to public-health officials, is that the new variant is now so dominant and so transmissible that other variants of concern to epidemiologists, such as those identified in South Africa and Brazil, haven’t gained much traction. Another reason for optimism is that lab tests and some clinical studies—as well as real-world vaccination in the U.K.—suggest the variant can be neutralized by the current range of vaccines.
As highly transmissible coronavirus variants sweep across the world, scientists are racing to understand why these new versions of the virus are spreading faster, and what this could mean for vaccine efforts. New research says the key may be the spike protein, which gives the coronavirus its unmistakable shape. Illustration: Nick Collingwood/WSJ
Dr.
Philip Dormitzer,
Pfizer Inc.’s
chief scientific officer of viral vaccines, told U.K. lawmakers on Wednesday that the company was seeing protection against the U.K. variant in real-world data from Israel and from the U.K. “equivalent to the protection we saw in controlled trials before that variant was circulating.”
Still, the variant’s rapid advance and unusual characteristics mean it remains a worry, say disease experts, especially if vaccine rollouts don’t keep pace.
Cumulative number of U.S. Covid-19 samples testing positive for the U.K. variant
Cumulative number of U.S. Covid-19 samples testing positive for the U.K. variant
Cumulative number of U.S. Covid-19 samples testing positive for the U.K. variant
Cumulative number of U.S. Covid-19 samples
testing positive for the U.K. variant
“It’s a new beast,” said
Eric Topol,
professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in California. He said he didn’t think it was widely appreciated that the new variant could create a new pandemic, one “driven by a tougher virus to combat.”
—Jason French, Andrew Levinson, Max Rust, Josh Ulick, Dov Friedman, and Randy Yeip contributed to this article.
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Write to Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com and Joanna Sugden at joanna.sugden@wsj.com
in late January that he took out a $20,000 personal loan and used it to purchase shares. Then the buzzy stock plunged nearly 80%.
GameStop’s volatile ride is hitting the portfolios of individual investors like Mr. Vergara who purchased the stock in a social-media-fueled frenzy. These casual traders say GameStop was their “YOLO,” or “you only live once,” trade. They bought around its late January peak, betting it would continue its astronomical climb. While some cashed out before it crashed, others who hung onto their shares are in the red.
‘I thought it could go up to $1,000. I really believed in that hype, which was an awful thing to do,’ Mr. Vergara says.
Photo:
Farrah Skeiky for the Wall Street Journal
Mr. Vergara, a 25-year-old security guard in Virginia, started investing four years ago after deciding he wanted to retire young. To save money, he drives a 1998 Honda Civic, eats a lot of rice and lives with his dad. He stashed his savings mostly in diversified index funds, which are now valued at about $50,000. Then Mr. Vergara, a longtime reader of the WallStreetBets page on Reddit, saw others posting about buying GameStop shares and the stock’s colossal rise.
He didn’t want to touch his index-fund investments, so instead he got a personal loan with an 11.19% interest rate from a credit union and used it to fund most of his GameStop purchase. He bought shares at $234 each.
Price return, year to date, 30-minute intervals
Source: FactSet
GameStop shares started the year around $19, zoomed to nearly $350 (and almost hit $500 in intraday trading) in late January, and then began to spiral back to earth. The shares closed Friday at $52.40, down 85% from the peak close.
“I thought it could go up to $1,000. I really believed in that hype, which was an awful thing to do,” Mr. Vergara said.
He plans to hold on to the shares because he believes in the company’s turnaround, he said, and use his paycheck to cover the monthly payments on the personal loan. Once the pandemic is over, he hopes to move back to his native Philippines, live off savings and start a charity. The GameStop loss set those plans back about six months, he said.
One of the artworks by Tony Moy, whose bet on GameStop stock has lost much of its value, is inspired by ‘diamond hands,’ a phrase used to describe hanging onto your position, no matter what.
Photo:
Matt Moy
Free trading and simple-to-use apps have made it much easier for regular investors to pour money into stocks like GameStop. In a world without international travel, live entertainment and other usual pastimes, brokerage apps such as Robinhood Markets Inc. are drawing hordes of new users looking for both a diversion and a jackpot.
Before the pandemic, Patrick Wesolowski checked his portfolio once a week. Then the clients of his Chicago-area dog-walking business stopped taking vacations and started working from home, crimping his income and leaving him with lots of free time.
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With business sluggish, the 31-year-old started spending more time researching stocks to include in his $15,000 portfolio. He “lurked” on WallStreetBets, reading about other investors’ wild bets but not posting much himself. “It’s like reading ‘Florida Man’ news headlines with a Wall Street twist,” he said.
In recent months, Mr. Wesolowski found himself picking up his smartphone to check his Fidelity Investments brokerage-account balance more often. He followed the frenzy around GameStop, and when shares were approaching $300 decided to put in $3,000. Afterward, he checked his portfolio on his phone every 10 minutes. At first, watching the stock drop made him feel queasy, but then he got used to it.
“If I lose it, I lose it. I’m OK. It’s like going to Vegas,” Mr. Wesolowski said. If he still had that money, he said, he might have put it toward a personal splurge like a vacation.
Patrick Wesolowski spent more time researching stocks after the pandemic hurt his dog-walking business and bought $3,000 of GameStop shares.
Photo:
Ola Wazny
For many, GameStop represented more than just an investment. When Tony Moy bought about $1,200 of the shares, two at $379 and two more a few days later at $228, “I knew it was, intrinsically, the wrong move,” he said.
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Mr. Moy wasn’t surprised when the stock quickly lost much of its value. A casual reader of WallStreetBets, he was mostly excited about the push to stick hedge funds with losses. Some hedge funds that shorted the stock—betting the price would fall—suffered big losses, though others managed to make money during the turmoil.
The trade was an outlet for Mr. Moy’s frustrations after an abysmal year, a “virtual protest” of sorts, he said. In 2020, after the pandemic shut down large gatherings, the Chicago-based artist lost most of his income from selling his work at comic conventions. He also came down with a bad case of Covid-19 that left him coughing for months. He said his more successful investing endeavors have helped him get by financially.
One of Mr. Moy’s most recent works of art is inspired by “diamond hands,” a phrase used on Reddit to describe hanging onto your position, no matter what. He is keeping his GameStop shares as a memento. “It’s going to be a little reminder to me,” he said, “of how 2020 was the year when hedge funds had a great year and everyone else was struggling.”
The recent run-up in GameStop and other stocks involved investors in opposing camps: traditional Wall Street firms and small investors bucking the system. WSJ asked the same questions to one of each about the role of WallStreetBets in the trading frenzy. Photo Illustration: Carlos Waters
Write to Rachel Louise Ensign at rachel.ensign@wsj.com
LONDON—A Covid-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and
AstraZeneca
PLC is effective against a variant of coronavirus that is spreading rapidly in the U.S. and around the world, according to a new study, a reassuring sign for governments banking on mass vaccination to bring the pandemic to an end.
The preliminary findings, published in a study online Friday that hasn’t yet been formally reviewed by other scientists, follow similarly positive results from other manufacturers.
Preliminary studies from
Pfizer Inc.
and
Moderna Inc.
found their Covid-19 shots continued to offer protection against new virus variants that have contributed to a fresh surge in cases in the U.K., Europe, South Africa and elsewhere.
Vaccine makers are nevertheless readying new shots that zero in on the new variants more precisely, underlining how mutations in the virus risk morphing the year-old pandemic into a long-running cat-and-mouse game between scientists and a shifting enemy. The virus behind Covid-19 has so far been linked to almost 2.3 million deaths worldwide and more than 100 million cases.
The study published Friday looked at the AstraZeneca vaccine’s effectiveness against a new variant of coronavirus first identified in the U.K. last year.
As new coronavirus variants sweep across the world, scientists are racing to understand how dangerous they could be. WSJ explains. Illustration: Alex Kuzoian/WSJ
The variant has now displaced older strains to become the dominant version of the coronavirus in Britain and is spreading in many other countries, including the U.S., where public-health officials have said it could become the dominant version of the virus.
Preliminary estimates suggest the variant from the U.K. is 50%–70% more transmissible than earlier versions of the virus. U.K. scientists said recently that early data suggested it could also be deadlier.
Researchers examined blood samples from around 256 participants in an ongoing clinical trial of the vaccine in the U.K. who tested positive for Covid-19.
Genetic sequencing allowed them to identify which participants were infected with the new variant and which had an older version. A little under a third had the new variant.
By testing antibody levels and other markers of immune system activity against the virus, the researchers found the vaccine triggered an effective immune response against the new variant in 75% of cases that showed symptoms of infection, and in around two-thirds of cases if those that didn’t show symptoms were also included.
The U.K. Coronavirus Variant
The small-scale study showed the vaccine works slightly better against older, more established versions of the virus. For those with the older strain, the vaccine was effective in 84% of symptomatic cases and 81% of all cases.
The researchers reported sharply differing antibody responses among the two groups, saying certain types of antibodies induced by the vaccine were up to nine times less effective at neutralizing the new variant than the old. Overall protection was similar, however, suggesting other parts of the immune system are playing a key role.
Andrew Pollard,
director of the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, said it isn’t entirely clear which biological mechanisms are most important. It might be infection-fighting T-cells or other types of antibodies, he said.
“We don’t know the answer,” he said.
Almost 120 million doses of vaccine have been administered worldwide, according to figures compiled by the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data project. Roll-outs have been patchy, with some countries such as Israel and the U.K. moving rapidly to inoculate their most at-risk citizens and others, including in Europe, lagging behind due to supply and other issues. The U.S. has so far given at least one dose of vaccine to 35 million people, around 10% of its population.
Vaccine makers say the technology behind Covid-19 vaccines should allow them to swiftly retool their production lines to produce shots targeted more precisely at new and emerging variants.
Some studies have suggested a variant first identified in South Africa might be less susceptible to existing vaccines than the U.K. variant. Companies including Moderna, Pfizer and its partner
BioNTech
SE,
Johnson & Johnson
and
Novavax Inc.
are designing new vaccines to specifically target the South African variant.
Babak Javid,
associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco, said small differences in how vaccines perform against new variants compared with established versions isn’t a major concern provided those vaccinated are protected against severe illness and hospitalization. That will be critical to determining when countries relax lockdowns and other public health restrictions, he said.
The author of the Cracked Market blog, Jani Ziedins, last week warned the traders piling into the videogames retailer GameStop not to get greedy — or more specifically, not to be a pig.
Well.
As the chart shows, that short squeeze worked until it didn’t. Momentum fizzled after Robinhood and other brokerages limited access to trading in GameStop
GME,
-42.11%
and other securities that were surging in popularity. As to why, there will be Congressional hearings to find out the culprit — hedge funds or good-old-fashioned margin requirements — but the end result is the same.
GameStop may still have its moments. “As for what comes next, GME will be insanely volatile for weeks and even months. That means 50% and 100% moves in both directions. But at this point, a 50% bounce only gets us back to $75. Maybe we get back to $100 or even $125, but waiting for anything higher is just wishful thinking,” Ziedins says.
Here’s Ziedins’ advice now. “For those that still have money left in the market, there is no reason to ride this all the way into the dirt. Cash in what you have left, learn from this lesson, and come back to the market better prepared next time,” says the Cracked Market blogger.
Cue, Frank Sinatra.
And those traders are inexperienced. Cardify, a consumer-data firm, did a survey of 1,600 self-directed investors in GameStop and cinema chain AMC Entertainment
AMC,
-20.96%
and found that most were inexperienced investors — 44% having less than 12 months of experience, and another quarter with one to two years’ experience. Nearly half made their biggest-ever do-it-yourself trading investment in the last four weeks, according to the survey that ended on Monday.
Why? Of these overwhelmingly young and male investors, 45% said for quick financial profits. Nearly 20% said it was part of a long-term investing strategy, and 16% said to spite big hedge funds and institutional investors, according to Cardify.
The buzz
The U.S. added 49,000 nonfarm payrolls jobs in January while the unemployment rate fell to 6.3%, according to the Labor Department.
The U.S. Senate in the early hours of the morning approved a budget resolution that will allow for a fast tracking of the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan proposed by the Biden administration to be approved without Republican support. Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tiebreaking vote. Johnson & Johnson
JNJ,
+0.93%
meanwhile submitted its coronavirus vaccine for Food and Drug Administration approval.
Pinterest
PINS,
+0.91%
shares jumped 11% in premarket trade, as the art-sharing social-media service reported forecast-beating earnings on a 76% jump in revenue during the fourth quarter. Another social-media service, Snap
SNAP,
-1.60%,
also beat expectations. Besides using social media, people stuck at home were playing videogames, as Activision Blizzard
ATVI,
-0.10%
gained 8% after it reported stronger earnings and bookings than expected, increased its dividend by 15%, and authorized a $4 billion share buyback plan.
Ford Motor Co.
F,
+1.52%
reported a surprise profit and topped expectations.
Exercise-bike maker Peloton Interactive
PTON,
+7.04%
slumped 7% as it did beat on earnings but flagged a rise in shipping and other costs. T-Mobile US
TMUS,
+0.95%,
the mobile service operator, also beat earnings expectations but guided to a softer 2021 than expected.
Luckin Coffee, the U.S.-listed Chinese coffee retailer, filed for bankruptcy protection, less than a year after an accounting scandal.
The market
After the S&P 500
SPX,
+1.09%
ended Thursday at a record for the sixth time in 2021, U.S. stock futures
ES00,
+0.37%
NQ00,
+0.20%
pointed to another day of gains.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury
TMUBMUSD10Y,
1.158%
moved up to 1.16%, after ending Thursday at its highest in 11 months.
The chart
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Today’s technology giants are following a similar trajectory to the radio makers of the 1920s, as well as the dot-com era around the turn of the century. “So the point is that you can be a firm believer in tech’s ability to transform our lives but still think valuations might be in a bubble,” said Jim Reid, strategist at Deutsche Bank.
Random reads
This local government meeting over Zoom
ZM,
+2.50%
turned into a chaotic, internet sensation.
Chocolate sales were 40% to 50% higher in areas with an increased number of COVID-19 cases, according to confectioner Hershey
HSY,
+0.44%.
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