Endemic does not spell R-E-L-I-E-F

This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, an entrail reading of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. Sign up here.Today’s Agenda Just because there’s an “en [Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, an entrail reading of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - Just because there’s an “end” in “endemic” [doesn’t mean you should stop worrying](. - Rates and stocks [don’t always move in opposite directions](. - Dictators like to dictate [their own version of history](. - Investors picked the [wrong week to stop sniffing glue](. How to Be in an Endemic “You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on,” says the nameless, immobile protagonist at the end of Samuel Beckett’s [“The Unnamable.”]( Two years into Covid-19 and its implacable march through the Greek alphabet, many of us can relate. Heck, if Beckett were still alive, the pandemic might have foddered another obscurantist novel or play. So it’s understandable that we seek relief in the idea of the pandemic becoming an “endemic.” Not so fast, says Faye Flam. We all “want a word to describe[the better future we envision](.” But “endemic” may not be the one, “since even the experts disagree about what it means.” As Flam points out, endemic diseases can be deadly and disruptive, like malaria. And even if the total number of infections attains stability — one definition of endemic — that doesn’t mean a new strain can’t kindle a new pandemic. What’s needed now, Faye argues, is for public health authorities to draw on two years of learning and “impose interventions that are humane, sustainable, life-saving and protective against new variants.” Key to that would be an adequate supply of effective Covid-19 treatments. Inexplicably, we’re still a long way from those. Lisa Jarvis inspects the nation’s medical supply cabinets and finds effective treatments such as sotrovimab and paxlovid[ mostly missing]( or out of reach for many patients. “Doctors and hospitals will need to be better supplied for any next variant that comes along,” she writes. Congress could help by providing funding to ensure hospitals load up on the most effective treatments. What Goes Up … WTF? In the old days, the ancients had a variety of ways to foretell the future: aeromancy (atmospheric phenomena), cartomancy (cards), cleromancy (dice or lots), pyromancy (fire and smoke), scapulimancy (the shoulder blades of animals), haruspicy (the entrails of sacrificed animals) or hepatoscopy (animal livers). (Nerd alert: Cicero provides a nice survey in [De Divinatione](.) Here at Bloomberg, we don’t need bird guts, because we have data. And for those who think higher interest rates mean bad news for stocks, Nir Kaissar has a data corrective: “The longer history of interest rates and stock valuations [doesn’t show any reliably inverse relationship](.” In fact, if anything, the opposite tends to be true: On the other hand, Chris Bryant comes up with good evidence that a deflating stock market and higher interest rates will [put an end to the mad cash dash]( by overvalued tech companies: U.S. equity issuance so far in January is a fraction of last year’s torrid pace. How the Fed will respond if its inflation medicine doesn’t take is an open question. In that regard, here’s what former Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota wants to know: Will President Joe Biden’s nominees for empty Fed seats be willing to raise interest rates sharply to curb inflation even if doing so [was a brutal job killer](? Past data suggest bringing down inflation by just a half percentage point might entail a five-percentage-point increase in overall unemployment, with even worse consequences for minority workers. That’s a bitter economic and political pill for any president to swallow. The World According to Vladimir In a time of geopolitical flux, it shouldn’t be surprising history is also up for grabs. As Hal Brands observes, “Leaders who want a new global equilibrium are seeking authority and legitimacy from their own [preferred versions of history](.” Leading the revisionist pack is Vladimir Putin, who has not only argued at downright academic length that Ukraine has been inseparable from Russia, but has also sought to rewrite the history of World War II in a way that absolves the USSR of partnering with Adolf Hitler to carve up Europe. Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan have also proved to be dab hands with an airbrush. But China’s Xi Jinping deserves special mention here. During the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, both horrific episodes of famine and repression, China suffered the grievous consequences of efforts to erase history and substitute slogans for science and objective truth. Yet now with the ascendance of [“Xi Jinping Thought](,” the country is on the verge of falling into the same ahistorical abyss. Even Deng Xiaoping knew better. In 1979, coming out of the miasma of the Cultural Revolution, he blessed a joint venture with Encylopaedia Britannica to create an objective reference work for Chinese starved for knowledge of the outside world. Sadly, nothing of that sort seems possible in Xi’s China. Telltale Charts On yesterday’s helter-skelter stock trading, Lloyd Bridges, who played the hapless air traffic controller Steve McCroskey in “Airplane,” perhaps put it best: “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.” John Authers charted the[remarkable whiplash](, which over the course of the day traced a reversal not only of fortunes but of strategy, as investors flip-flopped between volatile growth stocks and those with payouts and dividends. Here’s how we started: And here’s how we ended up when markets closed: “There is no way to explain what happened in terms of any fundamentals or news,” John writes. But the historical record of previous instances like this offers little hope of comfort ahead. Meep, meep! Further Reading [Abandoning nuclear power will be a mistake]( for Germany.— Javier Blas, Liam Denning, Jonathan Ford, Andreas Kluth FTC Chair Lina Khan has a [secret weapon]( in her ambitious fight against Big Tech.— Parmy Olson [Congress already legislated against affirmative action]( in college admissions when it passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. — Ramesh Ponnuru Meme investors are learning the hard way that [the house always wins](.— Mark Gongloff Ouch! SoftBank will miss the [big cash prize it expected]( from the sale of chip maker Arm to Nvidia.— Tim Culpan Credit Suisse’s no good, very bad year just [keeps getting worse](. — Paul Davies The “simpler” version of GE still requires [a manual and a compass on earnings day](.— Brooke Sutherland ICYMI The Navy’s $13 billion aircraft carrier likely [can’t defend itself](. Chinese audiences get [a weird version of “Fight Club](.” Turns out those gnomes of Zurich do [know how to have a good time]( — on their clients’ dime. Kickers Things to do during Covid (cont.): Play your trumpet into a[bowl of jello](; or turn your coffee table into a [1980s pinball machine](.  (h/t [The Hustle]() Pro tip: [Don’t play chess]( with Harvard mathematician Michael Simkin, who just solved a 150-year-old chess puzzle. (h/t [Scott Kominers]() At last, someone finds a real use for kombucha: [water filters](. Mind the gap: there are about 40 billion billion (that’s “quintillion” to number geeks) [black holes]( in the universe. Hmmm, lease a robot for $8 an hour or pay a human $15 an hour? Small businesses [have new choices](. (h/t [Robert Burgess]() Batman called: [He wants his eyeliner back](. (h/t [Jessica Karl]() Notes: Please send coffee table pinball machines, robot workers and complaints to James Gibney at jgibney5@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. Like Bloomberg Opinion Today? [Subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more](. 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