by Calculated Risk on 1/05/2022 09:00:00 PM

Thursday:
• At 8:30 AM ET, The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released.  Initial claims were 198 thousand last week.

• At 8:30 AM, Trade Balance report for November from the Census Bureau. The consensus is the trade deficit to be $70.0 billion.  The U.S. trade deficit was at $67.1 billion in October.

• At 10:00 AM, the ISM Services Index for December.

And on COVID (focus on hospitalizations and deaths):

COVID Metrics
	Today	Week Ago	Goal
Percent fully Vaccinated	62.3%	---	≥70.0%1
Fully Vaccinated (millions)	206.8	---	≥2321
New Cases per Day3🚩	554,328	281,842	≤5,0002
Hospitalized3🚩	85,423	64,152	≤3,0002
Deaths per Day3🚩	1,238	1,072	≤502
1 Minimum to achieve "herd immunity" (estimated between 70% and 85%). 2my goals to stop daily posts, 37-day average for Cases, Currently Hospitalized, and Deaths 🚩 Increasing 7-day average week-over-week for Cases, Hospitalized, and Deaths ✅ Goal met.

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows the daily (columns) and 7-day average (line) of positive tests reported.

New cases are at record levels.  It appears likely hospitalizations will exceed the previous 7-day average record of 124,031 a year ago.

Fortunately, deaths are still well below the previous 7-day average record of 3,421 in January 2021.