by Calculated Risk on 1/11/2022 07:11:00 PM

Wednesday:
• At 7:00 AM ET, The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications index.

• At 8:30 AM, The Consumer Price Index for December from the BLS. The consensus is for 0.5% increase in CPI, and a 0.5% increase in core CPI.

On COVID (focus on hospitalizations and deaths):

COVID Metrics
	Now	Week Ago	Goal
Percent fully Vaccinated	62.6%	---	≥70.0%1
Fully Vaccinated (millions)	207.8	---	≥2321
New Cases per Day3🚩	750,996	509,446	≤5,0002
Hospitalized3🚩	119,115	86,401	≤3,0002
Deaths per Day3🚩	1,633	1,163	≤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 (1.4 million today!).  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.