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southeastasianists · 4 years ago

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According to the World Health Organisation, the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the Philippines on 20 January 2020. More than a year after, there are now more than 600,000 confirmed cases, nearly 13,000 deaths and a surge of 5000 new cases in one day. Approximately 41 percent of the total number of confirmed cases are from the National Capital Region (NCR), where Manila is located. The death toll from Duterte’s Drug War since July 2016 ranges from a conservative estimate of 8,663 people according to the UN Human Rights Council, to possibly thrice as high based on statements from the Philippine Commission on Human Rights. The official record from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), the agency implementing Duterte’s Drug War, is at 6,011 deaths from July 2016 to December 2020.

Alarmingly, the national pandemic response is even being harnessed in the service of the Drug War with extrajudicial killings registering a 50 percent increase between April and July 2020. Both COVID-19 related deaths and extrajudicial killings linked with the War on Drugs have been popularly represented by the Duterte government as disconnected from, or outside of, all the range and repertoires of repression at the state’s disposal.

Yet prior to the pandemic, Filipinos were already primed for and inoculated to mass loss of life and human rights violations, precisely because of the militarism that has been the logic of security under Duterte’s rule. We can understand everyday life in the Philippines as part of an ongoing continuum of violence, from the first day that Duterte launched his war on drugs, to the present militarised response to the health crisis. The Philippines was already suffering a ‘murderous plague’ which made death paradoxically both an abstract and visceral reality for many Filipinos, even before the disease outbreak.

It matters, therefore, that we constantly articulate how tragedy and mass loss of life are routine and logical outcomes under Duterte and why this government must be made accountable for the murderous plague it has authored. Filipinos must maintain their demands for better leadership, crisis response and management despite the persistent gaslighting by the President, his spokespersons, and enabling members of his regime. The forthcoming May 2022 national elections have prompted discussions on the importance of leadership among specific sectors mobilised by the question, ‘pangulo’ or ‘pang-gulo’ (‘president’ or ‘nuisance’)? At the highest level of power, does the Philippines have someone who leads, or someone who self-servingly obstructs recovery and fuels division?

Drug war and the limits of militarised security

Duterte’s default approach has been to wield the military and police at every crisis. However, this approach generates its own crises because the truncated lens of militarism comes up inadequate in addressing the multidimensional root causes and consequences to much of the global security challenges we are facing today. Based on the best available science, and what COVID-19 is demonstrating globally, state leaders must be able to address a drastically changed security landscape where the heightened intensity and frequency of extreme events will threaten all areas of human life and ecosystems. What has been undeniable is that leaders disastrously fall short of managing crises—whether in the context of armed conflicts, disasters and climate change, or health pandemics—when they do not incorporate a range of perspectives and expertise.

Duterte’s military and police-driven approach to every national decision-making process is exclusionary. He has sought to frame Filipinos, especially frontline health workers who express their discontent, as ‘enemies’ who do nothing but complain. Because he reproduces and invests in militarising crises, he cannot but interpret differing views as an existential threat to his power. The Philippines therefore has a leader that forecloses spaces for civic deliberation and participation at a time when these are most needed.

The drug war has gradually created the institutional and rhetorical foundations that enable other forms of violence: the use of Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 and ‘red-tagging’ to silence opposition; the compounded suffering of internally displaced communities as resources are diverted away from the forgotten crises in Marawi and Tacloban; and ongoing violence and development aggression against Indigenous peoples and environmental activists. Duterte’s war on drugs has been argued to satisfice the stages of genocide.

Death and disinformation due to ‘infodemic’

The pandemic is also mediated by a pervasive climate of disinformation in the Philippines. The deadly combination of militarism and disinformation has been effective in fragmenting and eliminating political opposition, and in state repression more generally. Over the past years, Philippine democracy has been constantly threatened and undermined by the rapid and increased production and dissemination of misinformation and disinformation. A study has shown how insidious, partisan and curated content is produced and circulated by “architects of networked disinformation”, including influencers, online celebrities, politicians in-house team’s, and marketing companies. These players have weaponized the internet to support and bolster the operations of Duterte’s administration in designing and implementing a political and militarist agenda.

An evident outcome of weaponizing social media platforms is the silencing of dissent. Paid trolls, bot armies and a range of fake news websites run by supporters of Duterte have targeted and harassed individuals and institutions. For instance, in 2018, Maria Ressa, the chief executive of Rappler, was the target of state-sponsored “patriotic trolling”, misogynistic comments and hate speech. Meanwhile, the Philippine government attempted to revoke Rappler’s license in 2018. Notably in 2020, Philippine lawmakers rejected the franchise renewal for ABS-CBN, a Philippine’s broadcasting company also critical of Duterte’s governance.

Misinformation and disinformation also impact the lives of ordinary Filipinos in national and transnational contexts. A report shows that Filipinos spend an average of 4 hours and 15 minutes each day on different social media channels. These online platforms have also been used to sustain ties among overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and their families. For the ten million Filipinos spread across the world, social media and mobile applications have become valuable tools to remain connected to home. However, these channels serve as key sites for producing and disseminating fake information. For example, a study on the 2019 Philippine election shows how OFWs are targeted by online communities that disseminate falsehoods and manipulative content.

More recently, an ‘infodemic’ has emerged in tandem with the COVID-19 pandemic. The spread of hoaxes and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and attacks on the credibility of the World Health Organization (WHO) re-victimises all those who have died in the pandemic and the families they have left behind. In a digital environment muddled by falsehoods and inaccuracies, people are afforded narratives that only validate their own pre-existing beliefs and affirm experiences that reflect their immediate or narrow environment. This makes it all the more possible for those in positions of power and privilege to detach (and stay out of touch) from the harsh realities millions of Filipinos are facing.

The use of digital technologies at a time of crisis can stir heightened ambivalence among Filipinos. On the one hand, greater online connectivity affords the maintenance of intimate ties transnationally. However, it is the same connectivity that can potentially be used to distort understanding of social welfare, human rights, and personal and familial futures through the lens of fear. Akin to the pandemic, widespread disinformation is slowly but effectively killing mutual trust and civic participation in Philippine society. It does this by eroding Filipinos’ access to reliable information and their right to thrive in democratic spaces. Crucially, disinformation hinders Filipinos from seeing the structural inequalities, marginalisation and exploitation that implicates us all. There is neither one person nor a “silver bullet” that can magically vanquish—in six months—what has been built over decades by political and economic systems in the Philippines. It will take care, collective action and mutual responsibility.

Stop the killings; stop the strongman

Crises can provide windows of opportunity to overhaul ossified harms done by this government, and repair what good is left. Deaths and killings may be mundane now but they do not have to be acceptable: not now and not in the future. There is a need to develop antidotes that can reclaim, secure and protect democracy. As the COVID-19 pandemic intersects with Duterte’s murderous plague, Filipinos are faced with clear lessons that can be brought to bear in the next election.

First, there is no path to “rapid” recovery and it takes inclusive governance and leadership to realise long-lasting and “crisis-proof” reconstruction. Moving forward, Filipinos might be more sceptical and suspicious of leaders promising to do everything without demanding shared responsibilities and recognising diverse expertise from the Filipino public. Globally, we are also seeing youth-led protests both from afar such as in the US, and closer in neighbouring Thailand and Myanmar, against police and military violence as well as outdated styles and systems of militarised authority. While their rule may seem inescapable at present, young people are taking the lead in sending a clear message: the myth of the ‘strongman’ is no more.

Second, the killings were indirectly enabled by the political fragmentation and societal division accelerated by digital technologies. What proved most effective in stifling collective action was the framing of political engagements in terms of “camp” politics and loyalties—us versus them / DDS versus Dilawan—instead of under a unifying identity of “the Filipino people.” Duterte’s success in fulfilling an initial populist desire for a ‘strongman leader’ is an outcome of previous failures in crisis response under the Aquino government. Rather than see Duterte and Aquino as oppositional, we need to see the violent continuity between the two different models of leadership.

Third, the rise and resilience of Duterte’s strongman rule is connected with his leveraging of underlying sexism, misogyny, class and regional prejudices in Philippine society. Clearly, Duterte’s misogyny is no laughing matter. Rape jokes are neither humorous nor harmless. His speeches form part of, and feed, societal violence. Finally, the path to stopping the killings will be long and difficult, but necessary. The governance challenges ahead will be more complex and difficult. An indispensable step in this direction is recognising and healing from collective grief on a transnational scale. Then the task of refocusing energies toward building new leaders and political agendas can begin.

#Southeast Asia #Philippines #Covid-19 #Politics #Rodrigo Duterte

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lokiondisneyplus · 4 years ago

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Prior to the pandemic, Frank Patterson would spend most days at the sprawling production facility, formerly known as Pinewood Atlanta Studios, that he runs outside of Atlanta. Then COVID-19 hit, and not even he was able to make his health and safety team's cut of essential on-site personnel.

"They were like, 'Frank, why are you here? You're setting a bad example,' " says the president and CEO of what is now Trilith Studios, the in-demand filming location known for hosting a suite of Marvel projects, including WandaVision and Avengers: Endgame.

Since Patterson took the reins in 2016, he's transformed the place from a set of soundstages to a full-fledged film community. After divesting from the Pinewood Group, Patterson led investments in new technologies and content companies, as well as expanded Trilith's footprint. The result is a 935-acre master development that includes the studio as well as a European-inspired town including homes, restaurants and schools that serve as a live-work community for the many creatives on the lot.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Patterson, 59, opened up about the most challenging aspect of COVID-era production, the studio's biggest concerns and whether he'll mandate vaccines.

You've had multiple projects in production during COVID-19. How has it been going?

We've been very fortunate. We had the first studio feature in the industry back to work in June. I can't say what it is, but they'll be finished soon. It was an intense amount of research and work to put together protocols, recognizing that the disaster version looks like an outbreak. None of that's happened. We've had enormously low numbers of positive tests. And we have a full lot: 3,200 people drove on today.

How much more expensive is it to make a film or show right now?

It's costing about 20 percent more money and 20 percent more time. Things are slower and clunkier and it's taking more space. But the good news is cast and crew are taking safety very seriously. I'm sure you heard the story of Tom Cruise getting upset at the crew for not following protocols [on Mission: Impossible 7]. I don't think that's common. What we have found is with the exception of the day player — they tend to test positive more than the average crewmember — people are taking care of themselves.

A year in, how do you feel you did with the COVID-19 protocols?

They're pretty routine now. We're not just making stuff up like we were in the very beginning.

Which of those do you expect to remain post-pandemic?

The washing hands and standing apart, that's how we keep from spreading these diseases and how we need to work. There's a heightened awareness for cleanliness. People used to drag themselves to work miserably sick because if you missed work, you were letting your team down. Well, that's changed. If you show up and you're sick, they're like, "Get out of here." That'll go forward.

Fellow Georgian Tyler Perry said when he was shooting his shows last summer, there was an elderly actress who didn’t feel comfortable coming on set given the risk, so they had to write her out of the scripts. Have you heard of anything like that happening on any of your productions?

Not leaving a show, but changing of schedules to accommodate people's tolerance for coming back to work. There's an, "OK, let's not shoot this right now because this actor is not quite ready to come back to work." They're pivoting and shooting other stuff first and coming back. That's happening across all the productions.

What are the biggest concerns that you hear from the studios now?

Everyone's overwhelmed with the need to get stuff made, but we aren't returning to the speed that we had and we're spending more dollars per frame captured in just the pure production. And it's not like people don't care because you always care when you're spending more money than you planned, but it’s a way a distant second to: Are we getting this stuff shot?

Are all the studios behind?

Nobody is meeting their goals. Just look at the Disney+ line-up, all the stuff that they want to put in place. Look at what Paramount is doing now with Paramount Plus. If you just look at these pipelines, this is the anxiety that everyone feels right now. And then, by the way, WandaVision's a hit, so you got to feed that beast, right? That’s the tension that you feel every day.

How much of that is not having enough physical space to film? Several production facilities, including yours, are fully booked.

It's not just about space. Yes, of course, we could use some more facilities, and we're putting in five more stages that will be ready by June. But that's only one small part. Even before COVID hit, there weren't enough people — I'm talking about crew, not to mention the storytellers — to meet the demand that Wall Street was pouring into the pipeline. There's a talent drain. With COVID, it's [only gotten worse].

Georgia opened sooner than other states. Did you field a lot of calls?

It was overwhelming. Guys were like, "Hey, we heard you guys figured it out." First of all, we didn't figure it out. We have a version and it's working. But there was a lot of attention on us. And we had the good fortune of not having to worry about what role our government leaders would play because they basically said, "We're going to let the industry figure it out." That's the good news. The bad news: It was on us to figure it out and take responsibility.

Are you getting involved in the vaccine rollout as you did testing?

No, we decided we would just keep our focus on the testing protocols. We have to make certain that we just take it all the way to the end — and we'll let [union, guild and association] leadership decide when that is and when those protocols can change. And then again, as an industry, we're going to have to decide what we want to carry forward and what we don't. That's the next phase, and the rate at which we're vaccinating may advance those conversations faster than I thought. I used to think [the protocols] were going to go into 2022. I don't know if that's the case anymore.

Have you had conversations about mandating the vaccine on sets?

We haven't. We know that when it comes to mandatory protocols, we'll have to work in collaboration with industry leadership. No one goes on our lot without a mask, for example. And that was a political thing. Fortunately, Governor Kemp said, "How can I help?" And we were like, "What would be helpful is if you wear a mask in public," and he said, "OK." So when a crewmember said, "It's my right [not to wear one]" or whatever, of course we can say, "This is private property, sorry," but what our security team said instead was, "Hey, listen, the governor's wearing a mask, and you should wear a mask to protect our industry." It was us taking a stand, but the stand was really only taken because the unions and guilds and associations agreed. We'll have to do the same thing with the vaccination.

You're building out a neighboring town for people to live. Is this the future of production facilities?

I don't think so. In some ways, what we're doing is what Mr. Disney did. The mill town is not a new concept. But if we didn't have a state with a reputation for being so business friendly, for having the tax incentives, for having the most traveled airport in the world, if those things didn't exist right there, believe me, we couldn't do this. I grew up in Hill Country outside of San Antonio, Texas. You cannot do this in San Antonio, Texas.

How many people are buying houses and apartments on the Trilith property?

We have 400 of the apartments built, 260 of them occupied. We’re at almost 300 homes now sold and 500 people in the town. We're working on our next set of 150 homes right now and starting our third micro village. The second micro village filled up like that (snaps fingers). We have 36 people on the waiting list. What’s happening — and this is a global trend — is that COVID has heightened our awareness of the benefits of this approach to working. The distributed workforce and the way for us to collaborate with these electronic tools is causing a lot of people to realize that they don't have to live in the town they thought they have to live in. So I think people thought it was going to be more like a second home, but they're actually staying here.

Every few years it seems there’s some controversial legislation in Georgia that pops up and Hollywood threatens a boycott, whether it’s an anti-LGBT or anti-abortion bill. Do you just assume it's going to pass?

These kinds of ebbs and flows of social discourse and its impact on the industry will never go away. Georgia is not immune to it. The film industry has been this wonderful beacon of possibility, and I do worry, given what's going on in our culture right now, that we as an industry could get caught sideways in this in some way that really dampens our ability to continue to have diverse views on the world.

Georgia's film incentives program has been criticized by some as an irresponsible use of taxpayer money. Do you see it being phased out or pared in the future?

This state is very proud of the fact that seven years in a row now it’s the number one state in the United States to do business. They saw the film industry as a way to really diversify its economy, to bring the creative class into the state. So they wrote this policy that was supported left and right, and that still is the case. I'm not a politician, but I'm on all of these committees, and what I noticed is they were so careful and specific about making it make business sense. It would be very difficult for anyone to turn it around now because it's just good, smart money — and you have both Democrats and Republicans looking at it. But in every session in every state always in the U.S., you will have people come up and write up some kind of legislation, "Let's get rid of tax incentives." It's just not going to happen. I would be really surprised.

But there were some changes to it recently, yes?

There were parts that we needed to improve on around auditing and how we manage the information and our relationship with all the productions. We needed to clean up some of the back of house stuff, so Representative Matt Dollar passed some amendments last session that are now going into effect that really helped clean up the whole process.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

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trylonandperisphere · 5 years ago

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OPINION

YOUNG AND UNAFRAID OF THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC? GOOD FOR YOU. NOW STOP KILLING PEOPLE

A DOCTOR IN WESTERN EUROPE

ON 3/11/20 AT 2:29 PM EDT

The World Health Organization Declares The New Coronavirus Outbreak A Pandemic

I'm a doctor in a major hospital in Western Europe. Watching you Americans (and you, Brits) in these still-early days of the coronavirus pandemic is like watching a familiar horror movie, where the protagonists, yet again, split into pairs or decide to take a tour of a dark basement.

The real-life versions of this behavior are pretending this is just a flu; keeping schools open; following through with your holiday travel plans, and going into the office daily. This is what we did in Italy. We were so complacent that even when people with coronavirus symptoms started turning up, we wrote each off as a nasty case of the flu. We kept the economy going, pointed fingers at China and urged tourists to keep traveling. And the majority of us told ourselves and each other: this isn't so bad. We're young, we're fit, we'll be fine even if we catch it.

Fast-forward two months, and we are drowning. Statistically speaking—judging by the curve in China—we are not even at the peak yet, but our fatality rate is at over 6 percent, double the known global average.

Put aside statistics. Here is how it looks in practice. Most of my childhood friends are now doctors working in north Italy. In Milan, in Bergamo, in Padua, they are having to choose between intubating a 40-year-old with two kids, a 40-year old who is fit and healthy with no co-morbidities, and a 60-year-old with high blood pressure, because they don't have enough beds. In the hallway, meanwhile, there are another 15 people waiting who are already hardly breathing and need oxygen.

The army is trying to bring some of them to other regions with helicopters but it's not enough: the flow is just too much, too many people are getting sick at the same time.

We are still awaiting the peak of the epidemic in Europe: probably early April for Italy, mid-April for Germany and Switzerland, somewhere around that time for the UK. In the U.S., the infection has only just begun.

But until we're past the peak, the only solution is to impose social restrictions.

And if your government is hesitating, these restrictions are up to you. Stay put. Do not travel. Cancel that family reunion, the promotion party and the big night out. This really sucks, but these are special times. Don't take risks. Do not go to places where you are more than 20 people in the same room. It's not safe and it's not worth it.

But why the urgency, if most people survive?

Here's why: Fatality is the wrong yardstick. Catching the virus can mess up your life in many, many more ways than just straight-up killing you. "We are all young"—okay. "Even if we get the bug, we will survive"—fantastic. How about needing four months of physical therapy before you even feel human again. Or getting scar tissue in your lungs and having your activity level restricted for the rest of your life. Not to mention having every chance of catching another bug in hospital, while you're being treated or waiting to get checked with an immune system distracted even by the false alarm of an ordinary flu. No travel for leisure or business is worth this risk.

Now, odds are, you might catch coronavirus and might not even get symptoms. Great. Good for you. Very bad for everyone else, from your own grandparents to the random older person who got on the subway train a stop or two after you got off. You're fine, you're barely even sneezing or coughing, but you're walking around and you kill a couple of old ladies without even knowing it. Is that fair? You tell me.

My personal as well as professional view: we all have a duty to stay put, except for very special reasons, like, you go to work because you work in healthcare, or you have to save a life and bring someone to hospital, or go out to shop for food so you can survive. But when we get to this stage of a pandemic, it's really important not to spread the bug. The only thing that helps is social restriction. Ideally, the government should issue that instruction and provide a financial fallback—compensate business owners, ease the financial load on everyone as much as possible and reduce the incentive of risking your life or the lives of others just to make ends meet. But if your government or company is slow on the uptake, don't be that person. Take responsibility. For all but essential movement, restrict yourself.

This is epidemiology 101. It really sucks. It is extreme—but luckily, we don't have pandemics of this violence every year. So sit it out. Stay put. Don't travel. It is absolutely not worth it.

It's the civic and moral duty of every person, everywhere, to take part in the global effort to reduce this threat to humanity. To postpone any movement or travel that are not vitally essential, and to spread the disease as little as possible. Have your fun in June, July and August when this—hopefully—is over. Stay safe. Good luck.

The author is a senior doctor in a major European hospital. She asked to remain anonymous because she has not been authorized to speak to the press.

As told to Dimi Reider.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own.

World Health Organization advice for avoiding spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19)

Hygiene advice

Clean hands frequently with soap and water, or alcohol-based hand rub.

Wash hands after coughing or sneezing; when caring for the sick; before; during and after food preparation; before eating; after using the toilet; when hands are visibly dirty; and after handling animals or waste.

Maintain at least 1 meter (3 feet) distance from anyone who is coughing or sneezing.

Avoid touching your hands, nose and mouth. Do not spit in public.

Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue or bent elbow when coughing or sneezing. Discard the tissue immediately and clean your hands.

Medical advice

If you feel unwell (fever, cough, difficulty breathing) seek medical care early and call local health authorities in advance.

Stay up to date on COVID-19 developments issued by health authorities and follow their guidance.

Mask usage

Healthy individuals only need to wear a mask if taking care of a sick person.

Wear a mask if you are coughing or sneezing.

Masks are effective when used in combination with frequent hand cleaning.

Do not touch the mask while wearing it. Clean hands if you touch the mask.

Learn how to properly put on, remove and dispose of masks. Clean hands after disposing of mask.

Do not reuse single-use masks.

#covid-19 #corona virus #coronavirus #health #u.s. healthcare #medicine #safety #newsweek

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Graphics by Yutong Yuan

All across the country, the gears of the economy are grinding slowly and creakily into motion. Retail stores are newly open for in-person shopping in California. It’s possible to get a much-needed haircut in Alabama. And in Alaska, bartenders are even slinging drinks again — albeit with strict capacity and spacing limits.

The reopening of the economy might seem like a promising sign. After all, as shuttered stores and restaurants reopen, workers can return to their jobs or look for new positions, and industries that have seen slowdowns can resume operations. Some politicians — including President Trump — have promised a fast recovery.

But how quickly will the economy really be able to bounce back? How long will we be stuck with a double-digit unemployment rate and a host of other historically bad economic indicators?

We wanted to get a sense of what the experts were thinking. So we partnered with the Initiative on Global Markets, a research center at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, to survey a group of quantitative macroeconomic researchers who work in academic settings about the trajectory of the economic crisis. In consultation with Jonathan Wright of Johns Hopkins University and Allan Timmermann of the University of California, San Diego, two experts on macroeconomic forecasting, we asked the panel questions like what the shape of the recovery will resemble, when gross domestic product will return to its pre-crisis levels, and what the unemployment rate will be at the end of the year. The survey was conducted May 22 to 25.

Overall, the researchers predicted that although the economy will probably start to improve in the second half of this year, there won’t be a quick rally from this recession. “The panelists believe, on the whole, that the recovery from this crisis is going to be a very, very lengthy process,” Timmermann said. “We’re going to be seeing serious effects for years and years.”

Our sample of economists thought it was more likely than not — with an average probability of 54 percent — that the next quarter to see positive real GDP growth in the U.S. (relative to the previous quarter) would be the third quarter of 2020. But that’s probably a low bar to clear; the economy shrunk by 4.8 percent in the first quarter and is likely to contract even more in the second quarter. And there’s a significant chance that the contractions could continue further into the future: The forecasters we polled thought there was a 23 percent chance that the economy would not grow again until the fourth quarter of 2020 and a 22 percent chance that it wouldn’t grow until the first quarter of 2021 or later.

“The economy almost has to grow [in the third quarter] because we’ll be starting from such a low base,” Wright said. “Unless, of course, things seem to be looking good right now and then in July or August there’s another wave and we go straight back to lockdown. Then you could have another negative quarter.”

Another way to think about the recovery process is by considering the shape of the recession. We presented the economists with four specific options of how the trajectory of GDP might look as charted over 2020 and beyond: V-shaped, with a sharp fall and a sharp rebound; U-shaped, with a long period between the beginning of the recession and the recovery; W-shaped, with a sharp recovery followed by another sharp fall and recovery; or “Swoosh”-shaped, with a sharp decline followed by a very slow recovery (picture the Nike logo). More than half of respondents — 58 percent — thought the long, slow recovery of a “Swoosh” shape was most likely, with 19 percent predicting a U-shape and 13 percent calling for a W-shape with multiple declines and recoveries. Tellingly, only 1 out of 31 economists forecasted a V-shape, which would see a quick recovery after the sharp decline of the past few months.1

That pessimistic outlook also came through in our panel’s predictions for when the economy might return to the way it was before the pandemic. The researchers predicted, on average, only an 11 percent chance that real GDP will have caught up to its pre-crisis (fourth quarter of 2019) level by the first half of 2021 and only a 17 percent chance that it will have caught up to its pre-crisis level by the end of 2021. On average, they thought there was roughly a 40 percent probability that GDP would return to its pre-crisis levels sometime in 2022. But they assigned a 32 percent chance to the possibility that GDP wouldn’t return to its pre-crisis level until 2023 or later. Wright pointed out, too, that matching the pre-crisis GDP still isn’t a full recovery, since the economy would have continued to grow if the recession hadn’t happened.

There was a similarly bleak prediction for the unemployment rate. The forecasters’ median estimate for the unemployment rate in May’s jobs report, which will come out on June 5, was 20 percent. By the end of the year, they think the unemployment rate will still be very high by historical standards — the median estimate for the unemployment rate in the December jobs report, which will come out in January 2021, was 12 percent.

In general, the consensus of the forecasters was that there is only an 18 percent chance that the unemployment rate will fall below 10 percent this year, and a 36 percent chance that it won’t fall below 10 percent until after the second quarter of 2021 — over a year from now.

To give you an idea of how terrible a double-digit unemployment rate potentially sustained over 21 months would be, the unemployment rate had been at or above 10 percent for only 11 months total from 1948 through 2019.

But forecasting our economic future is a challenging business even when we’re not in the middle of a global pandemic. And as our respondents filled out their questionnaires, they were weighing a lot of unknowns and making their own assumptions about the trajectory of the virus and the economic crisis — including when a vaccine will be developed, how quickly businesses can get up and running, and even whether there will be a second wave of COVID-19 outbreaks in the summer or fall. Our economic indicators aren’t really designed to capture such a quickly unfolding crisis, which makes it even more difficult to predict what they’ll be saying a month or a year from now. “I assumed a base scenario where there’s a slow lifting of lockdown orders and no reversal,” Wright said. He also assumed there would be continued support from the Federal Reserve and Congress. “But what if there’s a big standoff in Congress and unemployment benefits don’t get extended? What if there’s a second wave of the virus?”

As such, many of the experts predicted a wide range of possible outcomes, particularly on questions that required them to project more than a few months into the future. For example, the economists’ median prediction for what the unemployment rate would be in the December 2020 jobs report — 12 percent — was just a little lower than the unemployment rate in the April jobs report (14.7 percent). But the experts’ confidence in their responses varied a lot — with upper-bound estimates ranging from 10 to 30 percent and lower-bound estimates ranging from 6 to 15 percent.

You can also see this uncertainty in our earlier question about when GDP will finally recover. The economists agreed that it was unlikely for real GDP to return to where it was before the COVID-19 pandemic anytime soon. But beyond that, they weren’t particularly sure when a recovery might happen.

None of these projections are especially encouraging — remember, the unemployment rate was only 3.5 percent back in February, and the peak during the Great Recession was 10 percent. But they’re also an important reminder of just how much is up in the air right now, as we scramble to simultaneously contain the virus and rev up the economy.

We’ll be checking in with the panel of economists periodically as the pandemic and economic crisis continue to unfold. Their predictions will likely shift as the economy reopens and the long-term public health response becomes clearer. But right now, even the experts don’t seem to be expecting a rapid rebound from this recession — in fact, the economic pain of the COVID-19 crisis could be with us for years.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Neil Paine

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Headlines

State police returning to Portland following deadly shooting (AP) Oregon State Police will return to Portland to help local authorities after the fatal shooting of a man following clashes between President Donald Trump supporters and counter-protesters that led to an argument between the president and the city’s mayor over who was to blame for the violence. Trump and other speakers at last week’s Republican National Convention evoked a violent, dystopian future if Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden wins in November and pointed to Portland as a cautionary tale for what would be in store for Americans.

Snapped Poles, Shredded Roofs: A Long Road to Recovery After Laura (NYT) Hurricane Laura ravaged southwestern Louisiana, leaving weary residents to assess the toll and map a way forward. The damage the storm inflicted was so severe that it will be an immense undertaking just to clear debris. But beyond the physical labor, residents were also stepping into the thicket of bureaucracy that follows a hurricane, with insurance claims and applications for government aid. Officials said that roughly 368,000 customers in the state remained without electricity. Some 17,000 linemen were at work on repairs, but they had a lot to tackle: some 500 transmission towers were destroyed or damaged. In some places, utility companies said, it could be at least four weeks before electricity is restored. CoreLogic, an analytics firm in Irvine, Calif., estimated that the hurricane had caused insured losses of $8 billion to $12 billion. “The story here is going to be the wind damage,” said Curtis McDonald, a meteorologist with the firm.

Burning (NYT) According to researchers, somewhere between 4.4 million and 11.8 million acres in modern-day California burned every year in the earlier times. When people started moving there, and building there, and understandably preferring that their homes not burn, those natural fires were stopped. From 1982 to 1998, land managers in California burned on average 30,000 acres per year, which dropped to 13,000 acres from 1999 to 2017. The backlog is deadly, and one reason the state has become a powder-keg. A February 2020 study published in Nature Sustainability found California would need to burn 20 million acres to become stable.

A Zoom Thanksgiving? (AP) As the Summer of COVID draws to a close, many experts fear an even bleaker fall and suggest that American families should start planning for Thanksgiving by Zoom. Because of the many uncertainties, public health scientists say it’s easier to forecast the weather on Thanksgiving Day than to predict how the U.S. coronavirus crisis will play out this autumn. But school reopenings, holiday travel and more indoor activity because of colder weather could all separately increase transmission of the virus and combine in ways that could multiply the threat, they say. Here’s one way it could go: As more schools open for in-person instruction and more college students return to campuses, small clusters of cases could widen into outbreaks in late September. Public fatigue over mask rules and other restrictions could stymie efforts to slow these infections. A few weeks later, widening outbreaks could start to strain hospitals. If a bad flu season peaks in October, as happened in 2009, the pressure on the health care system could result in higher daily death tolls from the coronavirus.

Rethinking their slogan (Foreign Policy) The latest casualty of the coronavirus pandemic is the long-time slogan of popular U.S. fast food company Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). The slogan, “it’s finger lickin’ good,” has been used by the company on-and-off for 64 years, but KFC announced last week that it is suspending the slogan because it is no longer appropriate in the current health-conscious environment. Health experts discourage people from touching their faces in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and users on social media criticized KFC for implicitly promoting unhealthy habits in its marketing campaigns. The company rolled out an advertisement in the United Kingdom and Ireland that ended with the tagline: “That thing we always say? Ignore it. For now.”

India’s economy contracts by nearly 24 percent amid pandemic (Washington Post) India’s economic output shrank by nearly 24 percent in the most recent quarter, the worst contraction since records began and the largest such drop of any major economy during the coronavirus pandemic. The stunning decline reflects the economic toll of India’s nationwide lockdown and illustrates the depth of the challenge now facing Indian policymakers as they grapple both with a hobbled economy and a raging pandemic. India is currently adding the largest number of new coronavirus cases per day of any country in the world. The Indian economy has not contracted for two consecutive quarters—the definition of a recession—in 40 years. Now the country appears certain to experience a recession and possibly one of unprecedented severity. That kind of economic slump would be devastating in a country like India, where 9 out of 10 workers have no job protections or unemployment insurance, leaving them with almost no safety net.

Indian army says foils Chinese attempt to encroach over disputed border (Reuters) Indian troops foiled an attempt by Chinese troops to encroach over the disputed and ill-defined border in the western Himalayas, the Indian army said on Monday, in a fresh flare-up between the two nuclear-armed countries. Pre-emptive action by the Indian troops was enough to deter the Chinese troops, and the confrontation did not escalate into a clash between the two sides, an Indian military official, who requested anonymity, told Reuters. China rejected any breach of the border by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops, but tensions between the two armies in the freezing snow deserts of the Ladakh region have been running high for several months.

Backing the monarchy in Thailand (Foreign Policy) Protesters gathered in a stadium in the Thai capital of Bangkok on Sunday to rally in support of the monarchy following massive student-led anti-government demonstrations in recent weeks. The event, which attracted around 1,200 people, was organized by the newly-formed pro-monarchy group Loyal Thai. “We insist that the country’s conflicts stem from politicians,” said Warong Dechgitvigrom, a prominent right-wing politician who founded the group. “The monarchy institution has no part in governing the country. The institution is the morale support that connects the people together.” Anti-government protesters have defied draconian laws against criticizing the monarchy in recent weeks to take to the streets to demand the ouster of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, fresh elections, and a new constitution that would limit the powers of the monarchy.

Facial recognition and bathtime bookings: How China’s universities are reopening (Reuters) As COVID-19 cases in China sink to new lows, the world’s largest population of university students is heading back to campus in a migration defined by lockdowns, patriotic education and cutting-edge surveillance equipment. The highly choreographed return comes as Chinese universities revert to in-person instruction for the fall semester after months of pandemic controls. Some universities have strict rules governing how students eat, bathe and travel. Students in Beijing, Nanjing and Shanghai told Reuters that they must submit detailed movement reports and stay on campus. At the same time, government procurement documents show dozens of universities have purchased “epidemic control” surveillance systems based on facial recognition, contact tracing and temperature checks. There are more than 20 million university students in China, and most live on campus in shared dorm rooms, presenting a challenge for health authorities. On Chinese social media, students have chafed at the controls, which mirror restrictions on the wider population during the height of the outbreak in March.

With a Wary Eye on China, Taiwan Moves to Revamp Its Military (NYT) China’s growing aggression across Asia in recent months has created fears that it may make brash moves in Taiwan, the South China Sea or elsewhere. The ruling Communist Party’s recent crackdown on dissent and activism in Hong Kong, a former British colony that has long been a bastion of democratic values, has added to those concerns. Beijing’s posturing has forced Taiwan, an island of 24 million, to re-examine with new urgency whether it is prepared for a confrontation, the possibility of which now seems less remote. But there are questions about its readiness to defend its people—with or without the help of the United States. “I have to be honest: Taiwan’s military needs to improve a lot,” Wang Ting-yu, a member of Parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee, said in a telephone interview. Taiwan’s leaders have been moving to shake up the military and increase spending. Military tensions across the Taiwan Strait have surged in recent months as Taiwan has increasingly become a focal point in the confrontation between China and the United States.

New prime minister in Lebanon (Foreign Policy) Mustapha Adib, Lebanon’s current ambassador to Germany, is set to become the country’s next prime minister as it continues to grapple with one of its worst crises since the end of the civil war in 1990. Adib won support from all of the major parties on Sunday, as well as from former prime ministers including Saad al-Hariri. He will be designated prime minister today just before a crucial visit from French President Emmanuel Macron.

Israeli, U.S. officials on historic flight to UAE to formalize normalization deal (Reuters) Top aides to U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a historic first flight from Tel Aviv to the United Arab Emirates on Monday to finalize a pact marking open relations between the Gulf power and Israel. Even before discussions start in Abu Dhabi, the delegates made aviation history when the Israeli commercial airliner flew over Saudi territory on the direct flight from Tel Aviv to the UAE capital. Announced on Aug. 13, the normalization deal is the first such accommodation between an Arab country and Israel in more than 20 years and was catalyzed largely by shared fears of Iran.

#headlines #news

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onlinemarketinghelp · 5 years ago

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Finding Recession-Resistant Investments In The Face Of The Coronavirus https://ift.tt/2w14Ney

The coronavirus has presented investors with unprecedented uncertainty.

The global financial markets are still reeling from what WHO has called a pandemic, and the White House has declared a national emergency. Last month, the Dow Jones dropped 10 percent in one day, its largest one-day fall since 1987. The Federal Reserve Bank has even stepped in, injecting $1.5 trillion into the economy. In one month alone, the stock market lost well over 20%.

In light of these events, we thought it was interesting to see impact of the coronavirus on the fine wine market with a great deep-dive with our partners Vinovest. With more people looking for alternative investments, especially recession-resistant investments, let's look into this relatively unknown asset.

If you want to skip the details and learn more, check out Vinovest and see how you can invest in fine wine >>

Quick Navigation

How Does The Coronavirus Affect Fine Wine?

What Makes Fine Wine A Recession-Resistant Investment?

The Economics Of Fine Wine

Fine Wine vs. Gold In Recessions

Long-Term Appreciation In The Face Of Panic

Historical Performance Of Fine Wine

What To Expect From Here

How Does The Coronavirus Affect Fine Wine?

It is natural to wonder how the coronavirus will affect the value of fine wine. After all, equities are cratering under recent financial pressure. With that in mind, it's important to know that fine wine has almost no correlation with the stock market. Even in the most turbulent economic periods, fine wine manages to march on unscathed. Take the Great Recession in 2008. Stock prices plummeted 52 percent as people created a run on the money market funds. The price of fine wine, though? It had a single digit dip of nine percent.

What Makes Fine Wine A Recession-Resistant Investment?

Fine wine is not susceptible to the same market forces as traditional investments, like stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. While supply and demand impact both assets, the similarities disappear quickly after that. The separate sphere of influence is the key to the recession-resistance.

Factors That Influence The Price Of Wine:

Annual Harvest Yield

Consumer Tastes

Reputation

Tariffs

Vintage

Weather

Factors That Influence The Price Of Equities:

Company Earnings

Corporate Management

Dividends

Interest Rates

Political Climate

Barring a cataclysmic natural disaster or shift in consumer tastes, fine wine will remain a reliable investment. Outside factors, like the coronavirus or stock prices, are highly unlikely to influence whether or not someone wants to buy and consume wine. In an interview with Forbes, Silicon Valley Bank Wine Division founder Rob McMillian articulated the sentiment best, saying:

“We have to start the conversation by recognizing that people enjoy wine in good times and stressful times. Wine is not recession-proof, but it is recession-resistant. In the same way, it might not be virus-proof, but it will prove virus-resistant from an economic perspective. There is no chance we will see sweeping abstinence as a consequence of the virus.

Since the Great Recession, there have been several corrections in the stock market, the most recent being the coronavirus. While stock prices fluctuate during these times, the fine wine market tends to stay the same. Fine wine may experience a small decline. That said, there are precedents for price increases. We understand the coronavirus is creating a lot of concern. The cause for concern shouldn’t extend into investment-grade wine, though. It’s why fine wine is one of the few recession-resistant assets that can safeguard investors from the economic storm.

The Economics Of Fine Wine

Again, fine wine does not play by the same rules as traditional equities. For starters, wine has a fixed supply. Once the harvest is over, that is it. A winery cannot produce more wine for that vintage, even if it's a smashing success.

That supply will only decrease with time because investors will drink the wine. Even if the demand remains constant, the scarcity will drive up the price, barring a significant change in one of the factors mentioned above. The growth is buoyed by increasing interest in fine wine consumption from emerging markets, like India and China.

As Rob McMillian suggested, the coronavirus will not diminish people’s interest in wine. While the outbreak is far from ideal, people should not expect to see a meaningful change in consumption habits. The same cannot be said of the stock market.

The coronavirus has created a domino effect through fear, panic, and uncertainty, all things that investors want to avoid. As a result, many people are selling their stocks to minimize their losses or get their money into "safer" investments. As a result, American investors have lost roughly $3 trillion in wealth.

Fine Wine vs. Gold In Recessions

It's worth taking a moment to talk about gold. The odds are that when investors think of "safer" physical assets, they think of gold. That inclination is not without merit. Gold handily outperformed the S&P 500 from December 2007 to June 2009.

Historically, gold has had an inverse relation with the equity market during times of crisis. That correlation, though, is not stagnant. Gold’s recent performance suggests a positive correlation with the stocks, thus weakening its reputation as a risk-hedging investment.

The coronavirus-induced recession is a perfect example. The United States saw the first COVID-19 death on February 29. In the following days, Florida and California declared states of emergency, public and privates closed, and major corporations-imposed travel restrictions on employees. Gold, which had traded at $1,697 per ounce on March 2, fell 11 percent in a week.

There are other examples of gold’s increasing correlation with the stock market. During the 2018 US-China trade war, gold showed a 0.69 correlation, which means almost 50 percent of the variance between two is correlated. Mathematicians would call this value statistically significant. Fine wine, however, had a negative correlation, coming in at -0.55.

Gold is losing its luster as a portfolio diversifier. Its increasing correlation with the equity market fails to protect investors, despite its “safe haven” reputation. Additionally, the price of gold has more than quadrupled since 2000, far outpacing the reasonable demand for the physical product.

Long-Term Appreciation In The Face Of Panic

It is unclear how long the coronavirus will last. China is returning to its new normal after roughly 50 days. All countries, though, are not as well-equipped or proactive when it comes to treating COVID-19.

While the immediate financial world is in upheaval, fine wine is a long-term investment. It is not something people day trade, like stocks, to make marginal capital gains. Investors do not have the pressure of time when selling wine.

That is, in part, because wine gets better with age. All grapes have a compound called tannins. The organic substance is in the seeds, skin, roots, and leaves of the grape. While the quantity of tannins varies based on the grape varietal, they are present in every wine, to some extent.

Tannins have a bitter and astringent taste. Over time, though, they break down, which makes a wine smoother and more balanced. It is one of the reasons why wine producers put so much emphasis on proper and extended aging. To reap the benefits of aging, investors will likely need enough patience to outlast the 2020 flu season.

Historical Performance Of Fine Wine

Predictions are challenging, and the coronavirus only adds more uncertainty to the equation. The best way to understand what the future holds is to look at the past. From 2008 to 2010, in the throes of the global recession, the Liv-ex 1000, which tracks 1,000 wines from across the world, returned a little less than zero.

The same recession-resistant applied abroad. The March Gestion Vini Catana fund, which started in December 2009, invests in wine production and vineyards. Within a year after opening, it was up nine percent compared to a 3.7 percent decline for the FTSE 100. Meanwhile, the average hedge fund at this time was down 0.2 percent.

The question here is, why? During economic struggles, investor’s preferences do not change in a meaningful way when it comes to fine wine. It is one of the reasons why annual wine consumption has grown for the past 20 years. By the same token, people who purchase investment-grade wine can often afford to hold on to their collections during recessions, mitigating the risk of fire sales.

Wine Business Monthly published a study about which wineries performed the best during the recession in 2008. One of its conclusions was that large wineries had the resources to deal with the downturn. They have well-established consumer bases and can leverage economies of scale.

The second conclusion was that wineries that owned the means of production thrived. Translation: wineries like Château Lafite Rothschild, Screaming Eagle, and many more are in good shape. These estates control their land, grapes, and production, all the way through to distribution. Therefore, they do not have the same concerns as boutique producers that rely on purchasing grapes.

Unsurprisingly, sub-indices, like the Bordeaux 500 and Burgundy 150, performed well during the Great Recession. The former saw a 50 percent increase in value from 2009 to 2011. As for the Burgundy 150, its growth was closer to 60 percent.

The best case for fine wine’s recession-resistant is its history. While it is not impervious, it has stood up against the Great Depression, Dot Com bubble, and more. Researchers found the long-term investment performance of young-maturing wines from high-quality vintages provided the strongest financial return. Not only did it demonstrate remarkable recession-resistance, but it has also outpaced competitors, like fine stamps, arts, and bills, during the same time.

What To Expect From Here

As Managing Director of Cult Wines Ltd. Tom Gearing put it, “fine wine can act as a defensive asset class in times of economic crisis but also benefit from periods of economic growth.” It is why many people use fine wine as a way to round out their long-term investment strategy. The investment reduces overall risk while adding diversification and stability.

While clouds are darkening over Wall St, fine wine is a silver lining. The short-term volatility resistant and long-term appreciation will counteract the chaotic snapshot of the world today.

If you have any additional questions about wine investment, check out Vinovest today.

The post Finding Recession-Resistant Investments In The Face Of The Coronavirus appeared first on The College Investor.

from The College Investor

The coronavirus has presented investors with unprecedented uncertainty.

If you want to skip the details and learn more, check out Vinovest and see how you can invest in fine wine >>

Quick Navigation

How Does The Coronavirus Affect Fine Wine?

What Makes Fine Wine A Recession-Resistant Investment?

The Economics Of Fine Wine

Fine Wine vs. Gold In Recessions

Long-Term Appreciation In The Face Of Panic

Historical Performance Of Fine Wine

What To Expect From Here

How Does The Coronavirus Affect Fine Wine?

What Makes Fine Wine A Recession-Resistant Investment?

Factors That Influence The Price Of Wine:

Annual Harvest Yield

Consumer Tastes

Reputation

Tariffs

Vintage

Weather

Factors That Influence The Price Of Equities:

Company Earnings

Corporate Management

Dividends

Interest Rates

Political Climate

The Economics Of Fine Wine

Fine Wine vs. Gold In Recessions

Long-Term Appreciation In The Face Of Panic

Historical Performance Of Fine Wine

What To Expect From Here

While clouds are darkening over Wall St, fine wine is a silver lining. The short-term volatility resistant and long-term appreciation will counteract the chaotic snapshot of the world today.

If you have any additional questions about wine investment, check out Vinovest today.

The post Finding Recession-Resistant Investments In The Face Of The Coronavirus appeared first on The College Investor.

https://ift.tt/39s5Ku4 April 01, 2020 at 10:15AM https://ift.tt/39uZORf

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go-redgirl · 5 years ago

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Bradley Blakeman

Stop Blaming Trump for Coronavirus - Now

Mar 26, 2020

The president has done a great job based on the hand he's been dealt. Enough of the blame. Enough of taking advantage of crisis for political gain. Now is the time for all good men and women of good will to come to our nation's aid.

While Democrats in Congress today, many of whom were in leadership positions during the Obama sdministration, are now quick to blame our president for the "lack of pandemic preparedness," they cannot rewrite history.

Long before Donald J. Trump became the nation's 45th U.S. president, the Obama administration failed to properly prepare and properly deal with the Ebola outbreak — in 2014.

We were blessed as a nation that it was not as severe as it was.

This because we were simply not prepared.

In 2014, I authored a Newsmax opinion piece, "America Isn’t Prepared for a Pandemic."

At the time, I sounded the alarm and detailed Obama administration failures to properly and adequately pick up where the Bush administration left off in preparing the nation for a pandemic.

In 2014 I wrote:

"President Obama has a long history of blaming Bush for all that ails us but, with regard to national preparedness for pandemics, the Bush administration was way ahead of where the CDC and HHS finds us today as we struggle to deal with just a few domestic cases of the highly infectious Ebola virus.

"Flashback to 2008 — the Center for Disease Control awarded $24 million for pandemic influenza preparedness projects.

"According to the CDC, this was the plan:

"The CDC would spend $24 million to fund 55 projects in 29 state and local public health departments that could serve as innovative approaches for influenza pandemic preparedness.

"This is what Dr. Richard Besser, the Director of CDC’s Coordinating Office of Terrorism and Preparedness and Emergency Response, said about the program: 'What is learned from these projects can benefit everyone because it could improve national, regional, and local public health detection and response to a pandemic involving influenza.'

"'CDC intends for the recipients to implement promising practices or to develop effective approaches and models that can be replicated nationally,'" Dr. Besser said.

"State and local health departments in a competitive application process submitted a total of 184 funding applications. Eligible applicants for the awards were limited to the 62 state, local, and territorial public health departments that currently receive federal funding through CDC agreement.

"The 29 award recipients had one year to complete the projects, which began on September 30, 2008. The projects focus on seven key areas and include:

"1. Use of public engagement as part of the public health decision-making process

"2. Electronic laboratory data exchange to support influenza pandemic monitoring

"3. Integration of state-based immunization information systems to track distribution of influenza pandemic countermeasures

"4. Development of statewide electronic death reporting systems compliant with Public Health Information Network (PHIN) requirements

"5. Collaborative planning among healthcare providers to ensure the delivery of essential services during an influenza pandemic

"6. Development of interventions that promote preparedness for pandemic disease among identified vulnerable populations

"7. Distribution and dispensing of antiviral drugs to self-isolated or self-quarantined persons in an influenza pandemic event

"The $24 million for the new projects were part of $600 million in CDC’s Public Health Emergency Preparedness supplemental funding appropriated by Congress to accelerate state and local influenza pandemic planning efforts. The focus of the funding, which was distributed in three phases beginning in 2006, was on practical, community-based procedures that could prevent or delay the spread of influenza pandemic.

"Complimenting what CDC was doing, Bush’s Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Levitt made the preparation for a pandemic a national priority and embarked on a national tour of states to raise awareness and set forth protocols for federal, state and local officials.

"As part of President Bush’s plan to mobilize the nation to prepare for an influenza pandemic, Secretary Leavitt in 2005 announced $100 million in funding for state and local preparedness. In December of 2005, the secretary hosted a national summit on pandemic in Washington, D.C., and thereafter took his pandemic planning summits to all 50 states.

"This is what Secretary Levitt said at the time:

"'A pandemic is a global disease outbreak. Influenza pandemic occurs when a new flu virus emerges for which people have little or no immunity. The disease spreads easily from person to person, causes serious illness, and can sweep across the country and around the world in a very short time.

"'Currently, much attention is focused on avian, or 'bird flu,' as the possible cause of a pandemic. However, it is important to note that avian flu is not easily transmitted from human to human, and no human cases have been reported in the United States.'"

"Ebola is a virus and so is influenza. This is how the CDC defines influenza:

"'Seasonal influenza, commonly called 'the flu,' is caused by influenza viruses, which infect the respiratory tract, i.e., the nose, throat, lungs. Unlike many other viral respiratory infections, such as the common cold, the flu can cause severe illness and life-threatening complications in many people. It is estimated that in the United States, each year on average 5 percent to 20 percent of the population gets the flu and more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from seasonal flu-related complications. Flu seasons are unpredictable and can be severe. Over a period of 30 years, between 1976 and 2006, estimates of flu-associated deaths in the United States range from a low of about 3,000 to a high of about 49,000 people.'"

"HHS at the time said this about pandemic influenza:

"I attended many of Secretary Levitt’s Pandemic Summits and they were effective in preparing federal, state, and local health, community, and first responder leadership in ways to address how hospitals, schools, businesses, public agencies, faith-based organizations, and others participate in pandemic preparedness. With these meetings, officials were able to identify needs specific to the communities they serve and begin crucial coordination to assure readiness if a pandemic outbreak strikes.

"The Bush administration was on the forefront of national infectious disease preparedness in 2005-2008.

"The Obama administration has been caught flatfooted in 2014.

"What happened in the last 6 years? Why has the Obama administration dropped the ball in pandemic preparedness?

"Leaders are supposed to prevent bad things from happening and not merely respond to it when it does.

"The incompetent national response to Ebola today shows that our nation has lost its edge in preparedness and proves that we are vulnerable to a massive and deadly infectious disease outbreak in the U.S."

Democrats are good at passing the buck, but the buck stopped with them when they were in control and were forewarned. They are the ones who dropped the ball. When Democrats now scream at Trump for respirators, masks, gowns and other materials we have to ask —why didn’t the Obama administration and Congress order them under their watch?

The president has done a great job based on the hand he's been dealt.

Enough of the blame. Enough of taking advantage of crisis for political gain.

Now is the time for all good men and women of good will to come to the aid of our country.

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christelpipkin8-blog · 5 years ago

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Foreign Exchange Outbreak Solutions - Foreign Exchange Early Morning Trade Testimonial

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mariacallous · 2 years ago

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Foreign Policy Morning Brief: China’s endless zero-COVID nightmare

By Christina Lu

Welcome to today’s Morning Brief, where we’re looking at anguish over China’s zero-COVID policy, Russia’s escalating attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, and Ethiopia’s peace talks.

China Vows To Stick To Zero-COVID

Any hopes that China would adopt a new pandemic strategy were crushed on Saturday when officials vowed to stick to a zero-COVID policy, even as the harsh approach fuels outrage and discontent among the public.

Beijing’s adherence to zero-COVID spells continued anguish for Chinese citizens, who have grown increasingly frustrated under nearly three years of forced lockdowns, mass testing, and travel restrictions that have completely upended public life.

Since the pandemic first began, authorities have enforced zero-COVID with an inflexible, one-size-fits-all approach—with devastating results. Last week, lockdown restrictions in Lanzhou prevented a father from securing medical assistance for his sick 3-year-old son for almost two hours. When his son eventually reached the nearby hospital, he died of carbon monoxide poisoning; the hospital was only a 10-minute car ride away.

It’s one of many cases that illustrate the incalculable human costs of Beijing’s rigid policy. A 55-year-old woman reportedly committed suicide after being locked down last week, while 27 people being sent to mandatory quarantine were killed in a bus crash in September. In the city of Chengdu, workers forced locked-down residents to stay indoors even as an earthquake struck.

Just last week, authorities also trapped as many as 200,000 workers employed in China’s ‘iPhone City’ to quash a COVID outbreak, reflecting the extreme lengths authorities are willing to go to in order to stamp out the virus.

As Beijing sticks to its aggressive approach, China’s youth are confronting extreme uncertainty and despair. “For a generation of young Chinese whose lives have been reshaped by the zero-COVID policy, the disease often seems less of a threat than the government,” Tracy Wen Liu argued in Foreign Policy.

“It’s almost impossible for most ordinary people to live even an average life under all the strict rules and regulations,” Xu, a Chinese woman in her 20s, told her. “It takes extraordinary amounts of effort to be ordinary.”

What We’re Following Today

Russia targets Ukrainian infrastructure. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Russia is set to ramp up its attacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure as millions of people face power blackouts. Moscow’s assault has already devastated 40 percent of the country’s electrical grid.

“We also understand that the terrorist state is concentrating forces and means for a possible repetition of mass attacks on our infrastructure. First of all, energy,” Zelensky said.

Egyptian activist’s hunger strike. Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a detained British-Egyptian pro-democracy activist has gone on hunger strike, sparking a diplomatic crisis between Britain and Egypt. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak met Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi yesterday and raised the activist’s case, but there has reportedly been no progress toward securing his release. Abd el-Fattah, who was a key player in the Arab spring, is now refusing water. According to John Casson, a former U.K. ambassador to Egypt, “the next 24 to 48 hours are crucial.”

Ethiopia’s peace talks. Delegates representing the Ethiopian government and Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) began negotiations on Monday to determine the terms of a truce that was signed last week, including the matters of disarmament, humanitarian assistance, and monitoring processes. They also set up a hotline to help improve communication over preserving the cease-fire.

Keep an Eye On

Rare dissent in Russia. Heavy military losses in eastern Ukraine have sparked a backlash against military commanders and elicited a rare official response from the defense ministry. Survivors and the families of those killed have complained publicly that troops from Russia’s far east were used as cannon fodder in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

Pro-Kremlin military bloggers recently published a letter from soldiers in the 155th Brigade decrying “an incomprehensible offensive” near the village of Pavlivka. “As a result of the ‘carefully’ planned offensive by the ‘great generals,’ we lost about 300 people killed, wounded and missing as well as half the equipment in four days,” the surviving soldiers wrote. According to the Washington Post, “It was the first time since the start of Russia’s invasion that the ministry has officially responded to reports of mass casualties and criticism of commanders on Telegram.”

Latin American leaders meet. The leaders of Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru will meet in Mexico City later this month, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced on Monday. It is unclear whether Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will join.

Tanzania’s plane crash. Nineteen people were killed after a passenger plane crashed into Lake Victoria on Sunday. The plane had 43 people on board. Tanzanian authorities are conducting a rescue operation and investigation into what happened.

Monday’s Most Read

• The Cult of Modi by Ramachandra Guha

• The Obvious Climate Strategy Nobody Will Talk About by Ted Nordhaus, Vijaya Ramachandran, and Patrick Brown

• The U.N. (as We Know It) Won’t Survive Russia’s War in Ukraine by James Traub

Odds and Ends

Feeling anxious or stressed? Some people are finding solace by digging holes, the Wall Street Journal reported. Scientists, inventors, and artists have long used the activity to help clear their heads and troubleshoot difficult problems.

For others, digging up sand can simply be a good way to unwind. Charlie Mone, a student and avid hole-digger, told the Wall Street Journal that the activity is “just relaxing” for him and his friends. “We were there on the beach and we thought, ‘Well, what else are you going to do?’ ” he said. “So we started to dig.”

That’s it for today.

For more from FP, visit foreignpolicy.com, subscribe here, or sign up for our other newsletters.

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xtruss · 3 years ago

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Four Facts About Soaring Consumer Food Prices

— Blogs.IMF.Org | June 24, 2021

— By Christian Bogmans, Andrea Pescatori, and Ervin Prifti

Rising world food prices for producers are making headlines and causing concerns among the public. The most recent data show a moderation in consumer food price inflation globally, but as we explain below, that could change in the coming months. This would only add to the high prices that consumers in many countries already lived through last year.

If prices eventually rise again, there will likely be sizeable differences between countries. Due to various factors, it is probable that the effect would be felt most by consumers in emerging markets and developing economies still wrestling with the effects of the pandemic.

“Emerging Markets and Low-income Countries are More Vulnerable to Food Pprice Shocks.”

Fact #1: Food price inflation started increasing before the pandemic.

The increase in consumer food price inflation predates the pandemic. In the summer of 2018, China was hit by an outbreak of African swine fever, wiping out much of China’s hog herd, which represents more than 50 percent of the world’s hogs. This sent pork prices in China to an all-time high by mid-2019 creating a ripple effect on the prices of pork and other animal proteins in many regions around the world. This was compounded by the introduction of Chinese import tariffs on US pork and soybeans during the US-China trade dispute.

Fact #2: Early lockdown measures and supply chain disruptions induced a spike in consumer food prices.

At the start of the pandemic, food supply chain disruptions, a shift from food services (such as dining out) towards retail grocery, and consumer stockpiling (coupled with a sharp appreciation of the US dollar) pushed up consumer food price indices in many countries—with consumer food inflation peaking in April 2020—even though producer prices of primary commodities, including food and energy, were declining sharply as demand for primary food commodities was disrupted. By early summer 2020, however, various consumer food prices had moderated, pushing down consumer food inflation in many countries.

So while food prices at your grocery store (i.e., consumer food prices) may have increased, it is an exaggeration to say that they are currently rising at their fastest pace in years. They are also not currently contributing to headline inflation, though they may do so later this year and in 2022 (see the outlook below). Producer prices, on the other hand, have recently soared (see fact #4). But it takes at least 6-12 months before consumer prices reflect changes in producer prices. Also, on average, the pass-through from producer to consumer prices is only about 20 percent. This is because consumer food prices include the shipping costs of primary food commodities, the processing, marketing and packaging of food, and final distribution costs such as transport costs.

The last two facts will help us understand what to expect for consumer food prices.

Fact #3: Soaring shipping and transport costs.

Ocean freight rates as measured by the Baltic Dry Index (a measure of shipping costs) have increased around 2-3 times in the last 12 months while higher gasoline prices and truck driver shortages in some regions are pushing up the cost of road transport services. Higher transport costs will eventually increase consumer food inflation.

Fact #4: Global food producer prices have rallied reaching multi-year highs.

From their trough in April 2020, international food (producer) prices have increased by 47.2 percent attaining their highest (real) levels on May 2021 since 2014 (highest level ever in current dollar terms). Between May 2020 and May 2021, soybean and corn prices increased by more than 86 and 111 percent, respectively.

There are three main factors behind the recent rally in producer prices: (1) Demand for staples for both human consumption and animal feed has remained high, especially from China, as countries have stockpiled food reserves due to pandemic-related worries about food security. (2) The recent 2020-2021 La Niña episode—a global weather event occurring every few years—has led to dry weather in key food exporting countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States. This has caused, in some cases, harvests and harvest outlooks to fall short of expectations. As demand has outpaced supply, US and world stocks-to-use ratios—a measure of market tightness—reached multi-year lows for some staples. (3) Strong demand for biofuels increased speculative demand by non-commercial traders, and export restrictions are additional factors supporting world producer prices.

Outlook

Based on the four facts presented, it is plausible that consumer food price inflation will pick up again in the remainder of 2021 and 2022. Indeed, the recent sharp increase in international food prices has already slowly started to feed into domestic consumer prices in some regions as retailers, unable to absorb the rising costs, are passing on the increases to consumers. More is likely to come, however, since international food prices are expected to increase by about 25 percent in 2021 from 2020, stabilizing in 2021. A pass-through of 20 percent (13 percent in the first year and 7 percent in the second) would, thus, imply an increase in consumer food price inflation of about 3.2 percentage points and 1.75 percentage points on average in 2021 and 2022, respectively. An additional 1 percentage point to the 2021 global consumer food inflation could be added by the higher freight rates.

The impact, however, will vary by country. Consumers in emerging markets could experience even higher increases due to the higher dependency on food imports (e.g. countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa). The pass-through from producer prices to consumer prices also tends to be larger for emerging markets. For low-income countries struggling from the pandemic, the effects of further food inflation could be dire and risk a backslide in efforts to eliminate hunger.

Emerging markets and low-income countries are also more vulnerable to food price shocks because consumers in these countries typically spend a relatively large proportion of their income on food. Finally, for emerging markets and developing economies an additional risk factor is the currency depreciation against the US dollar—possibly due to falling export and tourism revenues and net capital outflows. Since most food commodities are traded in US dollars, countries with weaker currencies have seen their food import bill increase.

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classyfoxdestiny · 3 years ago

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As Childhood Covid Cases Spike, School Vaccination Clinics Are Slow Going

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — There were no cheery signs urging “Get your Covid-19 vaccine!” at the back-to-school immunization clinic at Carey Junior High School last week. In the sun-drenched cafeteria, Valencia Bautista sat behind a folding table in a corner, delivering a decidedly soft sell.

Hundreds of 12- and 13-year-olds streamed through with their parents to pick up their fall schedules and iPads. Ms. Bautista, a county public health nurse, wore a T-shirt that said “Vaccinated. Thanks, Public Health” and offered vaccines against ailments like tetanus and meningitis, while broaching the subject of Covid shots gently — and last.

By day’s end, she had 11 takers. “If they’re a no, we won’t push it,” she said.

Vaccination rates among middle and high school students need to rise drastically if the United States is going to achieve what are arguably the two most important goals in addressing the pandemic in the country right now: curbing the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant and safely reopening schools. President Biden told school districts to hold vaccination clinics, but that is putting superintendents and principals — many of whom are already at the center of furious local battles over masking — in a delicate position.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is authorized for people 12 and older, but administering it to anyone younger than 18 usually requires parental consent, and getting shots into the arms of teenagers has proved harder than vaccinating adults. Only 33 percent of 12- to 15-year-olds and 43 percent of 16- and 17-year-olds are fully vaccinated, according to federal data, compared with 62 percent of adults. Yet some school districts offering the shots, along with pediatrics practices, appear to be making progress: Over the past month, the average daily number of 12- to 15-year-olds being vaccinated rose 75 percent, according to Biden administration officials.

As the school year begins, many superintendents do not know how many of their students are vaccinated against Covid-19; because it is not required, they do not ask.

It is no surprise that nurses like Ms. Bautista are circumspect in their approach. In Tennessee, the state’s top immunization leader, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, said she was fired last month after she distributed a memo that suggested some teenagers might be eligible for vaccinations without their parents’ consent.

In Detroit, where county health officials have been running school-based clinics all summer, nurses discovered “strong hesitancy” when they made more than 10,000 calls to parents of students 12 and older to ask whether their children would get the shots and answer questions about them, said the deputy superintendent, Alycia Meriweather. More than half said no.

In Georgia, Savannah-Chatham County Public Schools held their back-to-school clinic at the mall — a “neutral location,” said M. Ann Levett, the superintendent. She is also planning school-based clinics, she said, despite some political pushback and “Facebook chatter” accusing her of “pushing the vaccine on kids.”

Ms. Levett said she was deeply concerned about whether she would be able to keep schools open.

“This is only the second day of school, and already we have positive cases among children,” she said in a recent interview. Her district has a mask mandate, but with 37,000 students, “I just introduced 37,000 more opportunities for the numbers to rise.”

In Laramie County, the center of the Delta surge in Wyoming, the Health Department proposed back-to-school clinics to Janet Farmer, the head nurse in the larger of the county’s two school districts. Ms. Farmer knew she would have to tread carefully. The flier she drafted for parents of students at the county’s three middle schools made little mention of Covid-19.

“Vaccines — NOT Mandatory,” it declared.

Nationally, more children are hospitalized with Covid-19 — an average of 276 each day — than at any other point in the pandemic. In Laramie County, Dr. Andrew B. Rose, a pediatrician at the Cheyenne Children’s Clinic and the president of Wyoming’s chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said two newborns — one a few days old, the other younger than two weeks — were recently admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 symptoms after their parents tested positive.

Wyoming, a heavily Republican state where nearly 70 percent of voters cast their ballots for former President Donald J. Trump in 2020, has one of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates, with about a third of its population fully vaccinated. Laramie County has about 100,000 people and Cheyenne, the state capital, which bills itself as “home to all things Western” including “rodeos, ranches, gunslingers” and eight-foot-tall cowboy boots.

At Casey Junior High, few children or adults wore masks at the recent clinic, despite a sign on the door saying they were “strongly recommended.” Parents seemed to have visceral reactions; they were either enthusiastic about the Covid shot or adamantly against it. Those who were wavering were few and far between, and not easy to persuade.

A nurse in blue scrubs and her husband, a nuclear and missile operations officer at the nearby Air Force base, who declined to give their names, wandered past Ms. Bautista’s table with their 12-year-old son. Their daughter, 13, has cystic fibrosis and is vaccinated. But their son was reluctant. They chatted amiably with Ms. Bautista, but decided to wait.

Cheyenne Gower, 28, and her stepson Jaxson Fox, 12, both said they were leaning toward getting the shot after talking with their doctors. Ms. Gower, citing the Delta surge, said she would get vaccinated soon. Jaxson said he was “still thinking about it” after his pediatrician discussed the risk of heart inflammation, a very rare side effect seen in young boys ages 12 to 17.

Updated

Aug. 20, 2021, 7:34 a.m. ET

“Put down that I’m more on the getting it side,” he instructed, eyeing a reporter’s notebook.

Although the vaccines were tested on tens of thousands of people and have been administered to nearly 200 million in the United States alone, many parents cited a lack of research in refusing. Aubrea Valencia, 29, a hair stylist, listened carefully as Ms. Bautista explained the reasons for the human papilloma virus and meningitis vaccines. Ms. Valencia agreed that her daughter should take both.

But when it came to the coronavirus vaccine, she drew the line. “The other two have been around longer,” she said, adding that she might feel “different about it if we had known someone who died” from the coronavirus.

Every once in a while, the nurses encountered a surprise, as when Kristen Simmons, 43, a professional dog handler, marched up with her son, Trent.

“He turned 12 on Monday, and so we want to get his Covid vaccine,” she declared. Ms. Bautista and the other nurses looked stunned.

“We tend to be more liberal,” Ms. Simmons later said — a statement that would have sounded odd in explaining a medical decision before the pandemic.

In the spring, when vaccines were limited to older Americans who were clamoring for them, officials including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the top U.S. infectious diseases expert, envisioned fall 2021 as the last mile of a campaign that could produce “herd immunity” by year’s end. Vaccinating children was crucial to that plan.

Now it is clear that will not happen. Children ages 11 and under are not yet eligible, but if and when the vaccine is authorized for them, experts expect it could be harder to persuade their parents than those of older children. A recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that parents of younger children were “generally more likely to be hesitant to vaccinating,” said Liz Hamel, who directed the research.

Understand the State of Vaccine and Mask Mandates in the U.S.

Mask rules. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in July recommended that all Americans, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks in indoor public places within areas experiencing outbreaks, a reversal of the guidance it offered in May. See where the C.D.C. guidance would apply, and where states have instituted their own mask policies. The battle over masks has become contentious in some states, with some local leaders defying state bans.

Vaccine rules . . . and businesses. Private companies are increasingly mandating coronavirus vaccines for employees, with varying approaches. Such mandates are legally allowed and have been upheld in court challenges.

College and universities. More than 400 colleges and universities are requiring students to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Almost all are in states that voted for President Biden.

Schools. On Aug. 11, California announced that it would require teachers and staff of both public and private schools to be vaccinated or face regular testing, the first state in the nation to do so. A survey released in August found that many American parents of school-age children are opposed to mandated vaccines for students, but were more supportive of mask mandates for students, teachers and staff members who do not have their shots.

Hospitals and medical centers. Many hospitals and major health systems are requiring employees to get a Covid-19 vaccine, citing rising caseloads fueled by the Delta variant and stubbornly low vaccination rates in their communities, even within their work force.

New York. On Aug. 3, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York announced that proof of vaccination would be required of workers and customers for indoor dining, gyms, performances and other indoor situations, becoming the first U.S. city to require vaccines for a broad range of activities. City hospital workers must also get a vaccine or be subjected to weekly testing. Similar rules are in place for New York State employees.

At the federal level. The Pentagon announced that it would seek to make coronavirus vaccinations mandatory for the country’s 1.3 million active-duty troops “no later” than the middle of September. President Biden announced that all civilian federal employees would have to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or submit to regular testing, social distancing, mask requirements and restrictions on most travel.

For school superintendents and public health officials who are intent on bringing students back to the classroom — and keeping them there — the low vaccination rates, coupled with the Delta surge, are worrisome.

Wyoming won national praise for keeping schools open all last year. Gov. Mark Gordon, who contracted Covid-19 last year and has encouraged people to get vaccinated, imposed a statewide mask mandate in December that he kept in place for schools even after he lifted it in March, which helped limit the spread of disease in classrooms. Despite the Delta surge and a recommendation from the C.D.C. for universal masking in schools, Mr. Gordon, a Republican, said this month that he would not impose another mandate and that he would leave it to each district to decide.

In Laramie County School District 1, which has about 14,000 students, including about 840 at Carey Junior High, the school board recently cut short its public meeting about masking when a man began ranting about another hot-button issue: critical race theory.

“Fifty percent of the calls here have been, ‘Please mask our kids,’ and 50 percent of the calls have been, ‘We’re not wearing masks,’” said Margaret Crespo, who left Boulder, Colo., about six weeks ago to become the new District 1 superintendent. “There’s no gray area.”

Dr. Crespo plans to make an announcement on masking on Friday, just before the school year starts on Monday.

Fights over the masking issue are even more divisive than the vaccination campaign, “and that is playing out in front of our eyes,” said Ray Hart, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents the country’s largest urban school districts.

“Everywhere I go this summer, that’s part of the message: Let’s get vaccinated,” said Allen Pratt, the executive director of the National Rural Education Association. But “because it’s government, you’ve got a line in the sand where people don’t trust you, and you’ve got to be understanding.”

White House officials have also been encouraging pediatricians to incorporate coronavirus vaccination into back-to-school sports physicals. Many districts are offering the shots during sports practice, with a reminder to athletes that if they are vaccinated, they will not have to quarantine and miss games if they are exposed to the coronavirus.

Laramie County District 1 offered coronavirus vaccines at mandatory clinics to educate high school student athletes about concussions; 32 students accepted shots, said Ms. Farmer, the nurse. The numbers were better at the junior high clinics; over two days at three schools with a total of about 2,400 students, more than 100 took their shots.

Ms. Farmer was satisfied.

“If it’s 100 people,” she said, “that’s 100 that didn’t have it yesterday.”

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

After President Trump won the 2016 election, there was a big debate over the role “identity politics” played in his victory. Some scholars argued that many white voters without a college degree — a group that proved pivotal in that election — jumped from supporting then-President Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 largely because they liked Trump’s framing of identity issues, such as immigration, more than Hillary Clinton’s.1 After the election, some (usually white) liberal and Democratic-leaning voices said that Democrats needed to abandon “identity politics” or face more defeats like Clinton’s. Other liberal voices (often Black) said that Trump had successfully tapped into the racist views of many white Americans. Both of those perspectives implied that debating issues of identity and race was bad for Clinton and good for Trump, and in the future it would be good for the GOP and bad for Democrats.

Never mind all that, at least for now. America is talking about identity and race, and so are both presidential candidates. And all that racial talk seems to be helping Democrats, not Republicans. Joe Biden led Trump by about 6 percentage points in national polls on May 25, the day a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd. Biden leads Trump by an average of nearly 10 points now, after weeks of race and racism dominating the national discussion.

Obviously a lot of factors could explain Trump’s decline in the polls, most notably the coronavirus outbreak and the president’s failure to come up with any real plan to limit the virus’s spread.

But it’s worth exploring this question: Why aren’t identity politics backfiring on Biden and helping Trump? It’s hard to say for sure, but here are five theories, ordered roughly from strongest to weakest.

Trump is in the White House now

Some political science research suggests that public opinion on major issues tends to move against the sitting president. So if President John Doe says he hates Granny Smith apples, Americans will begin consuming them by the bushel. And that pattern has already played out with Trump, with Americans becoming more supportive of immigrants and Obamacare, likely in reaction to the president’s attempts to limit immigration and repeal the health care law.

Current polling — and even polls from earlier in the Trump presidency — has shown Americans expressing more liberal views on racial issues. Those numbers might suggest real change in racial attitudes among Americans. (More on that in a bit.)

But what looks right now like increasing racial liberalism may really just be anti-Trump sentiment. If Americans, particularly Democratic-leaning Americans, perceive that Trump is opposed to the Floyd protests and to racial justice causes more broadly, they might become more supportive of such causes, consciously or unconsciously, simply as a reaction to the president’s sentiments.

So in terms of identity politics and their role in presidential elections, it may have been that a racialized discourse was electorally bad for Democrats when their party controlled the White House, like in 2016. But this kind of discourse is fine and perhaps even electorally beneficial for Democrats with a Republican president in office.

Also, the story here could simply be that Trump is a flawed candidate who was going to struggle in 2020 no matter what issues were dominating the news at the time. After all, he was viewed unfavorably by 60 percent of voters on Election Day in 2016, according to exit polls, and he has remained fairly unpopular throughout his presidency. In 2019 and earlier this year, Democrats spent a lot of time debating which of their potential presidential candidates was most “electable.” But Biden’s almost-10-point lead suggests that basically any of the other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates would likely be leading Trump right now if he or she were the presumptive Democratic nominee.

2016 was a fluke and identity politics don’t always hurt Democrats

Part of the focus on identity issues as an electoral liability stems from the current makeup of swing states and the Electoral College. White voters without degrees have become increasingly Republican-leaning and represent a disproportionate share of the electorate in key swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin. So Democrats need to worry more about appealing to white voters without degrees to win an Electoral College majority than they would if presidential elections were decided by a simple national plurality vote. Thus, a lot of post-2016 coverage started from the assumption that Democrats have an identity and race problem because they must appeal to white voters without degrees and that voting bloc — at least based on the 2016 results — seemed to be put off by Democrats’ approach to identity issues.

But that framing might be wrong, or at least a bit overstated. Why? First, there’s an alternate reading of the 2016 results that suggests race wasn’t an unusually important factor in motivating the white voters who switched to Trump. Second, the overall racial dynamics of American politics are not that bad for Democrats and perhaps even favorable to them.

Zoom out beyond 2016 and take the long view: The last seven presidential elections have featured four Democratic victories in both the popular vote and the Electoral College (1992, 1996, 2008, 2012); one instance where the GOP won the popular vote and Electoral College (2004); and two kind of fluky GOP wins in which Republicans lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College (2000, 2016).

That long view doesn’t look great for Republicans, and identity and race help explain why. Democrats have been handily winning the vote among Asian, Black and Hispanic Americans, who combined are growing as a share of the electorate. (The share of nonwhite U.S. voters was about 26 percent in 2016, compared to about 13 percent in 1980.) Democrats’ status as the party of minorities helps them in some ways, requiring the GOP to consolidate an increasingly high percentage of the country’s white voters to win elections.

But it isn’t easy or necessarily guaranteed that the Republicans will overwhelmingly win the white vote overall or the white non-college vote specifically — even in an election that’s centered on race. The 2017-2018 period was full of racialized political debate, most notably on immigration policy, but the exit polls suggest Democrats lost white voters without a college degree by 24 percentage points in 2018, compared to 37 points in 2016. So far in 2020, polls show Biden losing white voters without a degree by a margin closer to 20 points.

Meanwhile, Biden might carry white voters with a college degree by a large margin, in part because those voters have been turned off by Trump’s approach to racial issues. Indeed, white voters with a college degree or postgraduate education have been trending Democratic for years, and the GOP approach to race and ethnicity is likely a factor.

In short, the evidence suggests that Trump’s approach on racial issues never really appealed to people of color in the first place and, outside of November 2016, it has also been really off-putting to white voters with degrees and not that appealing to white voters without degrees.

It’s harder to use Biden as a wedge

On policy issues, including those around identity and race, Biden’s positions are clearly to the left of the ones Obama ran on in 2008 and arguably to the left of Clinton’s in 2016. In explicitly promising to pick a woman as vice president and a Black woman as Supreme Court justice, Biden has gone beyond Clinton or Obama in terms of allocating very important government posts based on gender and race. And Biden’s rhetoric on racial issues is similar to Clinton’s in 2016. After Floyd’s death, while Trump largely dismissed the protests, Biden called for “an era of action to reverse systemic racism.”

But Biden is an older white man. So his identity likely makes it harder for Trump to run an identity-based campaign against Biden than against Clinton and, to some extent, incumbent president Obama. (The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer made this argument explicitly in a recent piece.) Biden does not visually symbolize a changing America the way President Obama did and the way a President Hillary Clinton would have.

Also, Biden has self-consciously positioned himself as a more moderate Democrat and has distanced himself from more liberal elements of the party, including the causes favored by more liberal Black Americans, like defunding the police.

The electorate has really shifted on racial issues

It’s possible that Trump’s identity politics are less effective in 2020 than they were in 2016 because the events of the last four years have resulted in a real leftward shift on racial issues among Americans. And that shift is fundamental and real, not just about partisanship or anti-Trump sentiment, as I suggested above. After all, in interviews with reporters, more liberal-leaning people and even some former Trump voters are suggesting that they understand racial inequality more deeply now than ever before.

Institutions are aligned with Biden on these issues

Major U.S. businesses, corporations and other elite institutions are typically wary of being perceived as partisan. But in the wake of Floyd’s death, corporate America seems to have decided, for whatever reason, that support for Black Lives Matter and comprehensive, aggressive efforts to reduce racial inequality are either not that partisan or that they’re stances worth taking even if they annoy some Republicans.

So at least right now, it’s not really Biden and Democrats versus Trump and Republicans on issues of identity and race in America; rather, it’s Biden, Democrats, Facebook, Merck, JPMorgan Chase, Netflix, Nike, Stanford and lots of other major institutions versus Trump and Republicans.

This dynamic is not totally unique to the spring and summer of 2020. Major companies in America are often aligned with liberal cultural values — for example, supporting gay marriage even before the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that invalidated any remaining bans on same-sex unions.

But even if corporate America’s recent posture on racial issues isn’t that surprising, it’s still important. With a lot of major institutions in America echoing his general message, it’s not surprising that Biden’s identity politics are resonating more than Trump’s.

I’m writing this article at a particular moment in time. Perhaps there will be a backlash to the Floyd protests and public opinion will shift. Maybe Trump will benefit from that. If Biden picks a female vice presidential nominee, particularly one who is also a person of color, perhaps Trump’s identity tactics will resonate more with voters because he’ll then have a foil who is more like Clinton and Obama. Alternatively, Trump could make up ground in the polls due to unrelated issues and factors.

And even if Biden wins, that won’t totally answer the question of whether identity politics is bad or good for Democrats. LIke I said, perhaps basically any Democratic candidate would beat Trump amid a viral outbreak the president mishandled.

All that said, it appears right now that the identity politics of 2020 are a net plus for Democrats — and perhaps they weren’t too big a problem for Democrats in the first place. It’s hard to prove any of this, but it’s an important discussion to have. In 2008, it seemed like Democrats won a presidential contest that was largely about race. But even though the presidential nominees were white in 2016 and 2020, those may have been more racialized campaigns. And if the current polls hold up, Democrats, after losing a very racialized campaign, may show that they can win one.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Perry Bacon Jr.

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newstfionline · 5 years ago

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Headlines

WHO Issues Warning As Daily Caseload Grows (Foreign Policy) As dense crowds of protesters gather around the world, and New Zealand announces a return to life as usual, it’s easy to forget that a pandemic is still raging. On Monday, the WHO recorded the largest daily increase in new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, 136,000 in total; 75 percent of new cases came from just ten countries, mostly in the Americas and South Asia.

Stress is skyrocketing among the middle-aged (Marketwatch) If you’re middle-aged and you’re thinking, “I don’t remember everyone being this angry and miserable 20 or 30 years ago,” you’re not wrong. A recent study confirms what many people in later middle age already feel: We really are much more stressed than middle-aged people were back in the 1990s. The good news? As we get older our levels of stress will go down again. We’ll be happier in retirement than we are in our 40s and 50s, even with health issues. Older people experience fewer stressors and are able to cope with them better, says David Almeida, a psychologist and professor of human development at Pennsylvania State University. Meanwhile, the simplest answer is to move more. “My advice to people is to move when you are exposed to stress,” he says. “Moving, physical activity, is probably the best stress reducer.”

After Protests, Politicians Reconsider Police Budgets and Discipline (NYT) In an abrupt change of course, the mayor of New York vowed to cut the budget of the nation’s largest police force. In Los Angeles, the mayor called for redirecting millions of dollars from policing after protesters gathered outside his home. And in Minneapolis, City Council members pledged to dismantle their police force and completely reinvent how public safety is handled. As tens of thousands of people have demonstrated against police violence over the past two weeks, calls have emerged in cities across the country for fundamental changes to American policing. The pleas for change have taken a variety of forms—including measures to restrict police use of military-style equipment and efforts to require officers to face strict discipline in cases of misconduct. Parks, universities and schools have distanced themselves from local police departments, severing contracts. In some places, the calls for change have gone still further, aiming to abolish police departments, shift police funds into social services or defund police departments partly or entirely.

U.N. General Assembly won’t meet in person for first time in 75-year history (Washington Post) For the first time in the United Nations’ 75-year history, world leaders won’t convene in New York for the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting this September. U.N. General Assembly President Tijjani Muhammad-Bande explained Monday that an in-person gathering during the coronavirus pandemic would be impossible because world leaders typically travel with large delegations of aides and security personnel, making it hard to keep the numbers of attendees at events low. “A president doesn’t travel alone, leaders don’t travel alone,” he said. The session will instead take place remotely, though U.N. officials have yet to say exactly what that might look like.

Mexico’s Leader Rejects Big Spending to Ease Virus’s Sting (NYT) Across the globe, governments have rushed to pump cash into flailing economies, hoping to stave off the pandemic’s worst financial fallout. They have mustered trillions of dollars for stimulus measures to keep companies afloat and employees on the payroll. The logic: When the pandemic finally passes, economies will not have to start from scratch to bounce back. In Mexico, no such rescue effort has come. The pandemic could lead to an economic reckoning worse than anything Mexico has seen in perhaps a century. More jobs were lost in April than were created in all of 2019. A recent report by a government agency said as many as 10 million people could fall into poverty this year. Yet most economists estimate that Mexico will increase spending only slightly. Hostile toward bailouts, loath to take on public debt and deeply mistrustful of most business leaders, Mexico’s president has opted largely to sit tight.

Cuba almost coronavirus free (Foreign Policy) Cuba—a country that prides itself on its health system—has almost vanquished its coronavirus epidemic, according to official data. It has recently averaged less than ten cases per day and on Monday went nine consecutive days without a reported death from COVID-19. “We could be shortly closing in on the tail end of the pandemic and entering the phase of recovery from COVID,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel said over the weekend.

Spain makes masks mandatory until coronavirus defeated (Reuters) Wearing masks in public will remain mandatory in Spain after the country’s state of emergency ends on June 21 until a cure or vaccine for the coronavirus is found, Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Tuesday.

This round’s on us, says Malta (Reuters) Residents of Malta will be given $112 vouchers by the government to spend in bars, hotels and restaurants in an effort to revitalize the tourist industry. Tourism accounts for a quarter of the Mediterranean island’s GDP but it has been at a standstill since mid-March when flights were stopped during the coronavirus emergency. Flights to a small number of countries will resume on July 1 but they exclude big tourism source markets Britain and Italy.

Russia rejects Iran embargo (Foreign Policy) Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has called for “universal condemnation” of the U.S. campaign to pass a permanent arms embargo on Iran through the United Nations Security Council. In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Lavrov called the U.S. attempt to hold Iran to the confines of the Iran deal while the United States had already broken the deal was “ridiculous and irresponsible.”

Moscow’s strict coronavirus lockdown turns lax overnight (Washington Post) In a sudden about-face from one of the world’s strictest coronavirus lockdowns, Moscow dramatically eased restrictions Tuesday, abolishing the city’s digital-pass system for travel and allowing salons and most other nonessential businesses to open. Schedules for when Muscovites were allowed outside based on their address have also been done away with after just one week. Restaurants and cafes will be allowed to serve people on verandas starting June 16 and nearly all restrictions will be lifted by June 23—the day before Russia’s rescheduled Victory Day parade on Moscow’s Red Square. The city’s walk schedules and requirements for wearing face masks outside have increasingly been ignored by residents, and Moscow authorities might have been feeling the pressure from small businesses that have been closed since late March with little government aid to sustain them.

Tracking the origin of the coronavirus outbreak (Daily Telegraph) Coronavirus may have broken out in the Chinese city of Wuhan much earlier than previously thought, according to a new US study looking at satellite imagery and internet searches. The Harvard Medical School research found that the number of cars parked at major Wuhan hospitals at points last autumn was much higher than the preceding year. It also found that searches from the Wuhan region for information on “cough” and “diarrhea”, known Covid-19 symptoms, on the Chinese search engine Baidu spiked around the same time. It has led researchers to suggest that the outbreak began much earlier than December 31, the date the Chinese government notified the World Health Organization of the outbreak.

North Korea cuts off all communication with South Korea (AP) North Korea said it was cutting off all communication channels with South Korea on Tuesday, a move experts say could signal Pyongyang has grown frustrated that Seoul has failed to revive lucrative inter-Korean economic projects and persuade the United States to ease sanctions. The North’s Korean Central News Agency said all cross-border communication lines would be cut off at noon in the “the first step of the determination to completely shut down all contact means with South Korea and get rid of unnecessary things.” North Korea has cut communications in the past—not replying to South Korean phone calls or faxes—and then restored those channels when tensions eased.

The Palestinian Plan to Stop Annexation: Remind Israel What Occupation Means (NYT) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is pressing for annexation in conjunction with the Trump administration’s peace plan, which at least ostensibly contemplates an autonomous Palestinian entity as part of what it calls a “realistic two-state solution.” Mr. Netanyahu has vowed to annex up to 30 percent of the West Bank, and could do so as early as next month. But to the Palestinians, annexation flouts the ban on unilateral land grabs agreed to in the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, and would steal much of the territory they have counted on for a state. For that reason, they say it would kill all hope of a two-state solution to the conflict. In response to the annexation plan, Mr. Abbas renounced the Palestinians’ commitments under the Oslo agreements last month, including on security cooperation with Israel. The strategy aims to remind the Israelis of the burdens they would assume if the Palestinian Authority disbanded, and to demonstrate that they are willing to let the authority collapse if annexation comes to pass. The Palestinian Authority says it will cut the salaries of tens of thousands of its own clerks and police officers. It will slash vital funding to the impoverished Gaza Strip. And it will try any Israeli citizens or Arab residents of Jerusalem arrested on the West Bank in Palestinian courts instead of handing them over to Israel.

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Covid-19 Live Updates: Latest News on Vaccines, Variants and Cases

Here’s what you need to know:

An emergency paramedic takes the temperature of Uwe Einecke, 59, before he is vaccinated in Rostock, Germany.Credit…Lena Mucha for The New York Times

ROSTOCK, Germany — It was barely noon, but Steffen Bockhahn’s phone had not stopped ringing with people wanting to know if they qualified for a vaccination, and if not now, when?

Days earlier Germany had changed its guidance on who qualified for vaccines, resulting in a seemingly endless stream of questions from worried local residents for Mr. Bockhahn, the health minister for this port city in Germany’s northeast.

“No, I’m sorry, but we are not allowed to vaccinate anyone in Category 2 yet, only those nurses or other care givers are who are in the first priority group,” he told a caller. “You have to wait.”

More than two months into the country’s second full lockdown, people across Germany are growing tired of waiting, whether for vaccines, getting their government compensation, or a return to normalcy. It’s a disheartening comedown.

At the start of the pandemic, Germany showed itself to be a global leader in dealing with a once-in-a-century public heath crisis. Chancellor Angela Merkel forged a consensus on a lockdown. Her government’s testing and tracing tools were the envy of European neighbors. The country’s death and infection rates were among the lowest in the European Union. And a generally trustful population abided by restrictions with relatively muted grumbling.

No more. In the virus’s second wave, Germany now finds itself swamped like everyone else. A host of tougher new restrictions has stretched on, amid loud complaints, and even occasional protests before everything was shut down again. Still, infection rates hover around 10,000 new cases per day.

And as fears grow over the new variants first identified in England and South Africa, Germany’s vaccination program, lashed to the fortunes of the European Union, has floundered. Only 3.5 percent of Germans have received their first shots, and just 2 percent, roughly, have been fully immunized.

A survey by the Pew Research Center shows that while more Germans feel confident in their country’s handling of the pandemic than Americans or Britons, their approval dropped 11 percentage points between June and December 2020.

The mood has only soured further as Germans watch other countries, especially Britain, step up their vaccination campaigns with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — developed with the help of German taxpayers — while they have been left waiting for doses to arrive.

Beyond that, mayors are warning of the death of inner cities if small stores are not allowed to reopen. Some states have reopened schools, while others remain shuttered. Doctors are warning of the lockdown’s lasting psychological damage to children.

Parents are frustrated with the lack of support for online learning. Germany’s stringent data protection laws prevent Germans from using U.S.-based digital learning platforms, but local solutions do not always function smoothly. In many public schools, education now consists of teachers sending lessons as email attachments for students to work through on their own.

Ms. Merkel has done her best to buck up a weary public. Over the past month, the normally reserved chancellor has chatted by video with overwhelmed families, appeared before the Berlin news corps and given two interviews on prime time television.

“I wish that I had something good to announce,” she said, addressing the nation.

United States › United StatesOn Feb. 19 14-day change New cases 78,018 –45% New deaths 2,626 –34%

World › WorldOn Feb. 19 14-day change New cases 408,714 –24% New deaths 11,009 –25%

U.S. vaccinations ›

A drive-through coronavirus testing site in Bozeman, Mont., in December.Credit…Janie Osborne for The New York Times

Not three months ago, the coronavirus had so ravaged South Dakota that its packed hospitals were flying patients to other states for treatment. An analysis of data collected by Johns Hopkins University had shown that the mortality rates from Covid-19 in North and South Dakota were the world’s highest. In one Montana county, the rate of hospitalization for the virus was 20 times the national average.

As in some earlier hot spots like Arizona and Florida, the surge mushroomed as most leaders and residents in these states resisted lockdowns and mask mandates for months. In South Dakota, no statewide mask mandate was ever issued.

The spike in these states was as brief as it was powerful. Today, their rates of new cases are back roughly to where they were last summer or early fall. In North Dakota, which mandated masks at the height of its surge in mid-November, the turnaround has been especially dramatic: the daily average deaths per person is now the country’s second lowest, according to a New York Times database.

By some measures, the three-state hot spot’s trajectory has mirrored the nation’s. After the daily U.S. average for new cases peaked on Jan. 9, it took 37 days — until last Monday — for the rate to drop by two-thirds. It took South Dakota and Montana 35 days to reach the same mark after cases peaked in those two states in November. (North Dakota did it in 24.)

Deaths remain high nationally, because it can take weeks for Covid-19 patients to die. The country continues to average more than 2,000 deaths each day and is on pace to reach 500,000 deaths in the next week.

Experts say the spikes in the Northern Great Plains ebbed largely for the same reason that the U.S. caseload has been falling: People finally took steps to save themselves in the face of an out-of-control deadly disease.

“As things get worse and friends and family members are in the hospital or dying, people start to adjust their behavior and cases go down,” said Meghan O’Connell, an epidemiologist in South Dakota and an adviser on health issues to the Great Plains Tribal Leaders Health Board, which represents Native American populations in the area. Native Americans, who represent about 5 percent to almost 10 percent of the population all three states, have been infected by the virus at far higher rates than the general population.

During the outbreak’s worst weeks, from early November to late December, mask use rose 10 to 20 percentage points in South Dakota and 20 to 30 percentage points in North Dakota, according to survey data from the University of Maryland.

Since then, the U.S. vaccination drive has been gathering speed. North Dakota ranks fifth among states for giving its residents at least one shot; South Dakota is seventh and Montana is 11th.

Some experts see the coronavirus’s race through these states as a rough test of the widely rejected idea that the pandemic should be allowed to run its course until the population gains herd immunity.

While the region did not reach herd immunity, it may have come closer than anywhere else in the United States.

The outbreak in November vaulted North and South Dakota to the top of the list in cumulative cases per person, where they remain, according to a New York Times database, with 13 and 12.5 percent of their residents known to have been infected. Montana, at about 9.2 percent, is close to the middle of the national pack.

Just over 8 percent of Americans — about 27.9 million — are known to have had the coronavirus, but for many reasons, including that asymptomatic infections can go undetected, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that the real rate is 4.6 times that.

By those measures, as least six in 10 Dakotans — and most likely more — could have gained some immunity to the virus by the end of 2020, according to Jeffrey Shaman, a Columbia University professor of environmental health sciences who is modeling the future spread of the virus. And in some places, he noted, the share could be even higher.

Motorists lined up for a Covid-19 shot at a mass vaccination site in Los Angeles this month.Credit…Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

With the vaccine rollout gaining steam and coronavirus cases declining after a dark winter surge, it may seem as though the end of the pandemic is in sight for the United States. In reality, how soon could we get there?

One answer lies in herd immunity, the point when enough people are immune to the virus that it can no longer spread through the population. Getting there, however, depends not just on how quickly we can vaccinate but on other factors, too, like how many people have already been infected and how easily the virus spreads.

The exact threshold for herd immunity for the coronavirus is unknown, but recent estimates range from 70 percent to 90 percent.

If the rate of vaccinations continues to grow, one model shows we could reach herd immunity as early as July. But a lot could happen between now and then. The speed and uptake of vaccination, and how long immunity lasts are big factors. The rise of new virus variants and how we respond to them will also affect the path to herd immunity.

In most scenarios, millions more people will become infected and tens or hundreds of thousands more will die before herd immunity is reached.

Ginés González García, Argentina’s health minister, on Wednesday. He was asked to resign amid a vaccine scandal.Credit…Matias Baglietto/Reuters

BUENOS AIRES — Argentina’s health minister, Ginés González García, resigned on Friday at the request of the president over revelations that people with close ties to the government were given early access to Covid-19 vaccines.

The resignation came just hours after a well-known journalist incited nationwide outrage by revealing that he had been vaccinated at the health ministry. The journalist, Horacio Verbitsky, who is seen as pro-government, said he had called Mr. Gónzalez García, an old friend, to find out where he could get vaccinated and was directed to the ministry’s headquarters.

Mr. González García presented his resignation on Friday. Carla Vizzotti, who as the No. 2 official at the health ministry has played a visible role during the pandemic, is expected to be sworn in as the new health minister on Saturday afternoon.

The scandal in Argentina comes amid a similar controversy in Peru, where several high ranking officials, including the foreign and health ministers, were forced to step down after it was revealed that around 500 officials jumped the line to receive the vaccines before health care workers.

Mr. Verbitsky’s revelation led to widespread outrage on social media, which for days had been rife with rumors that well-connected Argentines had been quietly getting vaccinated. Local news media outlets quickly followed up with reports that Mr. Verbitsky was one of several government allies, naming lawmakers and business leaders, who received a shot at the ministry.

In his resignation letter, Mr. González García blamed his private secretary for an “involuntary confusion” that led to people being vaccinated at the ministry and said he would take responsibility “for the mistake.”

A prosecutor has opened a preliminary investigation and leaders of the opposition have called for congressional hearings.

Argentina began its vaccination campaign in late December with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, and until recently, most doses had been reserved for health care personnel and certain government officials.

Older Argentines became eligible for the vaccine this past week, but appointments are scarce.

Argentina, a nation of about 45 million, has received some 1.2 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine, and earlier this week received a shipment of 580,000 doses of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine from India’s Serum Institute. The country has administered more than 445,000 first doses and more than 261,000 second doses, according to the country’s health ministry.

The coronavirus has sickened more than two million people in the country, and more than 50,000 have died.

Applications have soared at Cornell University, which dropped its requirement for standardized test scores during the pandemic.Credit…Christopher Gregory for The New York Times

Prestigious universities like Cornell never have a hard time attracting students. But this year, its admissions office is swimming in 17,000 more applications than it has ever received before, driven mostly by the school’s decision not to require standardized test scores during the pandemic.

“We saw people that thought ‘I would never get into Cornell’ thinking, ‘Oh, if they’re not looking at a test score, maybe I’ve actually got a chance,’” said Jonathan Burdick, Cornell’s vice provost for enrollment.

But while selective universities like Cornell and its fellow Ivy League schools have seen unprecedented interest after waiving the requirement for SAT or ACT test scores, smaller and less recognizable schools are dealing with the opposite issue: empty mailboxes.

A drop in applications does not always translate into lower enrollment. But at a time when many colleges and universities are being squeezed financially by the pandemic and a loss of public funding, the prospect of landing fewer students — and losing critical tuition dollars — is a dire one at schools that have already cut programs and laid off staff.

The California State system extended the application deadline for all of its schools by two weeks, and Cal Poly Pomona managed to close the gap. But its herculean effort, at a time when Ivy League schools had to add an extra week just to consider their influx of applicants, further underscored inequities in higher education that have been widened by the pandemic.

“It’s impacting both students from an equity perspective,” said Jenny Rickard, the chief executive of the Common Application, which is used by colleges across the country, “and then it’s also showing which colleges and universities are more privileged.”

Many institutions outside the top tier were struggling even before the pandemic, and a smaller freshman class could mean further distress.

“Covid didn’t create this challenge, but it certainly exposes and exacerbates the risk that institutions face financially,” said Susan Campbell Baldridge, a former provost of Middlebury College and an author of “The College Stress Test,” a book that examines the financial threats to some American colleges and universities.

And the experiment with ignoring test scores could extend beyond the coronavirus crisis, some admissions officers said.

“For us,” said Luoluo Hong, who oversees admissions at the Cal States, “what is ultimately going to matter is: You’re admitted to college. But do you go?”

Credit…Matt Chase

There are many ways to assess how the coronavirus has affected the U.S. economy. The pandemic has decimated the labor market, driving the unemployment rate to 6.3 percent in January, nearly twice what it was a year earlier. Restrictions on activities led Americans to spend less money, pushing the savings rate to extraordinary heights. As people have fled to places with more space and fewer people, home prices have surged.

Another way the pandemic has affected the economy is by making people bored.

By limiting social engagements, leisure activities and travel, the pandemic has forced many people to live a more muted life. The result is a collective sense of ennui — one that is shaping what we do and what we buy.

Boredom’s impact on the economy is under-researched, experts say, possibly because there has been no modern situation like this one, but many agree that it’s an important one. How people spend money is a reflection of their emotional state — the answer to “How are you?” in Amazon packages and Target receipts.

Among the most vivid examples of boredom’s economic influence occurred late last month when amateur traders piled into shares of GameStop, a down-for-the-count retailer for gamers. These investors pushed its stock to astronomical highs before it crashed back to earth.

“Im bored i have 8k in free money what can i invest in that will make at least a little profit,” a Reddit user who goes by biged42069 wrote on Wall Street Bets at the height of the stock market frenzy. The response was unanimous: GameStop.

Of course, millions of people have been busier than ever during the pandemic. Essential workers have hardly experienced lockdown tedium. Women who have left the work force to take care of children who cannot go to school are frequently overwhelmed, their days a stream of Zoom classes and dinners and bedtimes. Boredom, in some ways, is a luxury.

And some groups of people are more likely to experience boredom than others. People who live alone, for instance, are more likely to be bored, said Daniel Hamermesh, an economist at Barnard College who has studied loneliness during the pandemic lockdowns.

Early in the pandemic, bread-making fervor prompted stores across the country to sell out of yeast. Puzzle sales have skyrocketed. Gardening has taken off as a hobby.

Home improvement, too, has boomed. According to the NPD Group, 81 percent of consumers in the United States purchased home improvement products in the six months than ended in November. Sherwin-Williams said it had record sales in the fourth quarter and for the year, in part because of strong performances in its do-it-yourself and residential repaint businesses.

Pandemic boredom evidently has nothing on watching paint dry.

A Covid vaccination being administered in Fargo, N.D., in December.Credit…Tim Gruber for The New York Times

New studies show that people who have had Covid-19 should only get one shot of a vaccine, a dose that is enough to turbocharge their antibodies and destroy the coronavirus — and even some more infectious variants.

Some researchers are trying to persuade scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend only one dose for those who have recovered from Covid-19, a move that could free up millions of doses at a time when vaccines are in high demand.

At least 30 million people in the United States — and probably many others whose illnesses were never diagnosed — have been infected with the coronavirus so far.

The results of these new studies are consistent with the findings of two others published over the past few weeks. Taken together, the research suggests that people who have had Covid-19 should be immunized — but a single dose of the vaccine may be enough.

A person’s immune response to a natural infection is highly variable. Most people make copious amounts of antibodies that persist for many months. But some people who had mild symptoms or no symptoms of Covid-19 produce few antibodies, which quickly fall to undetectable levels.

The latest study, which has not yet been published in a scientific journal, analyzed blood samples from people who have had Covid-19. The findings suggested that their immune systems would have trouble fending off B.1.351, the coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa.

But one shot of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine significantly changed the picture: It amplified the amount of antibodies in their blood by a thousandfold.

In another new study, researchers at New York University found that a second dose of the vaccine did not add much benefit at all for people who have had Covid-19 — a phenomenon that has also been observed with vaccines for other viruses.

In that study, most people had been infected with the coronavirus eight or nine months earlier, but saw their antibodies increase by a hundredfold to a thousandfold when given the first dose of a vaccine. After the second dose, however, the antibody levels did not increase any further.

what we learned

President Joe Biden makes remarks after touring the Pfizer manufacturing site in Kalamazoo, Mich. on Friday.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

In his first trips as president, President Biden traveled to Wisconsin and Michigan to promote his vaccination rollout plan and the $1.9 trillion relief bill he hopes can restore the American economy.

After an optimistic vow on Tuesday that any American who wanted a vaccine “could have one by the end of July this year,” Mr. Biden was asking for patience on Friday, saying the United States could be“approaching normalcy” by the end of the year. The week ended as winter storms hitting much of the country delayed the delivery of six million vaccines.

Mr. Biden addressed the virtual G7 summit and said that his administration would make good on a U.S. promise to donate $4 billion to the global vaccination campaign over the next two years. Mr. Biden’s engagement in the global fight against the pandemic is in stark contrast to the approach of former President Donald J. Trump, who withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization.

In other news this week:

Israel has raced ahead with the fastest Covid vaccination campaign in the world, inoculating nearly half its population with at least one dose. Now, new government and business initiatives are moving in the direction of a two-tier system for the vaccinated and unvaccinated, raising legal, moral and ethical questions.

Cuba is getting closer to achieving the mass production of a coronavirus vaccine invented on the island. If the vaccine proves safe and effective, it would hand the Cuban government a significant political victory — and a shot at rescuing the nation from economic ruin.

Life expectancy in the United States fell by a full year, the federal government reported Tuesday. The report also showed a deepening of racial and ethnic disparities between Black and white Americans. Life expectancy of Black population declined by 2.7 years in the first half of 2020. Another study, released Tuesday, showed that Latino and Black residents of New York City have fallen behind in vaccination rates.

Two developments this week could potentially expand access to the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine: The vaccine works well after one dose, and doesn’t always need ultracold storage. A study in Israel showed that the vaccine is 85 percent effective 15 to 28 days after receiving the first dose, raising the possibility that regulators in some countries could authorize delaying a second dose instead of giving both on the strict schedule of three weeks apart. And Pfizer and BioNTech also announced on Friday that their vaccine can be stored at standard freezer temperatures for up to two weeks.

House Republican leaders have called Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue plan a “payoff to progressives.”Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

Republicans are struggling to persuade voters to oppose President Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic rescue plan, which enjoys strong, bipartisan support nationwide even as it is moving through Congress with just Democratic backing.

Democrats who control the House are preparing to approve the package by the end of next week, with the Senate aiming to soon follow with its own party-line vote before unemployment benefits are set to lapse in mid-March. On Friday, the House Budget Committee unveiled the nearly 600-page text for the proposal, which includes billions of dollars for unemployment benefits, small businesses and stimulus checks.

Republican leaders on Friday said the bill spends too much and includes a liberal wish list of programs like aid to state and local governments — which they call a “blue state bailout,” though many states facing shortfalls are controlled by Republicans — and increased benefits for the unemployed, which they argued would discourage people from looking for work.

The arguments have so far failed to connect, in part because many of its core provisions poll strongly — even with Republicans.

More than 7 in 10 Americans now back Mr. Biden’s aid package, according to new polling from the online research firm SurveyMonkey for The New York Times. That includes support from three-quarters of independent voters, 2 in 5 Republicans and nearly all Democrats.

In the poll, 4 in 5 respondents, including nearly 7 in 10 Republicans, said it was important for the relief bill to include $1,400 direct checks. A similarly large group of respondents said it was important to include aid to state and local governments and money for vaccine deployment.

On Friday, House Republican leaders urged their rank-and-file members to vote against the plan, billing it as Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California’s “Payoff to Progressives Act.” They detailed more than a dozen objections to the bill, including “a third round of stimulus checks costing more than $422 billion, which will include households that have experienced little or no financial loss during the pandemic.” Ms. Pelosi’s office issued its own rebuttal soon after, declaring, “Americans need help. House Republicans don’t care.”

Mr. Biden has said he will not wait for Republicans to join his effort, citing the urgency of the economy’s needs.

The Republican pushback is complicated by the pandemic’s ongoing economic pain, with millions of Americans still out of work and the recovery slowing. It is also hampered by the fact that many of the lawmakers objecting to Mr. Biden’s proposals supported similar provisions, including direct checks to individuals, when Mr. Trump was president.

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California Will Reserve Vaccine Doses for Teachers and School Staff

Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Friday that, starting on March 1, California will set aside 10 percent of the state’s first doses of Covid-19 vaccine for educators and school employees.

Thirty-five counties in the state of California currently are prioritizing vaccinations for teachers and educators. We want to operationalize that as the standard for all 58 counties in the state. So effective March 1, not only are we doing that through our third-party administrator, but we are also setting aside 10 percent of all first doses, beginning with a baseline of 75,000 doses every single week that will be made available and set aside for those educators and childcare workers that are supporting our efforts to get our kids back into in-person instruction. That’s effective March 1. And the reason we can do that more formally, even though we have allowed for it over the course of the last number of weeks, is the window of visibility into the future with more vaccinations that we know are now coming from the Biden administration.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Friday that, starting on March 1, California will set aside 10 percent of the state’s first doses of Covid-19 vaccine for educators and school employees.CreditCredit…Dean Musgrove/The Orange County Register, via Associated Press

Under pressure to reopen classrooms in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Friday that, starting March 1, the state will reserve 10 percent of its first doses of Covid-19 vaccines for teachers and school employees.

Noting that the federal government has been steadily increasing the state’s vaccine allotment, the governor said he would set aside 75,000 doses each week for teachers and staff planning to return to public school campuses in person. Although California prioritizes teachers for the vaccine, supply has been an issue. Only about three dozen of the state’s 58 counties have had enough doses on hand to immunize those who work at public schools.

Most of California’s large school districts — including those in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco — have been operating remotely for the majority of students for almost a year. Mr. Newsom said reopening schools would be particularly important for single parents whose children have been learning from home.

As big school districts up and down the West Coast have mostly kept their buildings closed, Boston, New York, Miami, Houston and Chicago have been resuming in-person instruction.

New guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that urge school districts to reopen have not changed the minds of powerful teachers’ unions opposed to returning students to classrooms without more stringent precautions.

In Oregon, the governor prioritized teachers and school staff members for vaccination — ahead of some older people, which went against C.D.C. guidelines.

Mr. Newsom’s announcement was aimed at appeasing California’s teachers’ unions, which have demanded vaccination as a condition of returning to what they regard as a potentially hazardous workplace. The California Teachers Association this week began airing statewide television ads noting that the coronavirus is still a threat and demanding that the state not reopen classrooms without putting safety first.

The governor, who faces a recall effort over the state’s lockdowns, was also responding to fellow Democrats who control the Legislature and who on Thursday introduced a fast-track bill to reopen schools by April 15, using prioritized vaccines for teachers and hefty financial incentives.

The legislative plan calls for spending $12.6 billion in state and federal funding to help districts cover reopening costs, summer school, extended days and other measures to address learning loss. It largely aligns with the priorities of the unions, and state lawmakers said they expect it to pass swiftly.

On Friday, Mr. Newsom said he was very pleased with the plan but felt it didn’t push districts to open fast enough, and threatened to veto the bill if it passes.

“April 15!” he exclaimed. “That’s almost the end of the school year.”

The governor also noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued new guidelines saying that teacher vaccination need not be a prerequisite to reopening schools, as long as other health measures were enforced.

In New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, issued an emergency order on Friday requiring schools to offer in-person instruction to all students starting March 8.

“The data and science is clear — kids can and should learn in-person, and it is safe to do so,” said Mr. Sununu in a statement. “I would like to thank all school districts, teachers and administrators who have been able to successfully navigate this path.”

Taylor Erexson greeted a student in Chicago this month. Many states have included teachers in the most highly prioritized category for vaccination, allowing them to receive shots immediately. Still, many have not.Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York Times

This week, with vaccine production continuing to ramp up, President Biden declared that vaccines would be available for 300 million Americans “by the end of July” — enough to reach a critical mass. And on Friday, as Mr. Biden was headed to Michigan to tour a Pfizer vaccine plant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report stating that the available vaccines were quite safe, with only minor side effects.

Mr. Biden had put coronavirus relief at the center of his campaign, and his promise of additional stimulus checks for Americans was seen as particularly crucial to the Democratic Senate candidates’ wins in Georgia last month.

The president is working to deliver on his promises before voters lose faith — and he’s also facing down a stark deadline: Some key provisions in the latest round of economic relief, passed just before he took office, will run out in less than a month.

House Democrats on Friday released a nearly 600-page proposal for the legislation, and the president virtually dared Republicans in Congress to oppose the bill. “Critics say that my plan is too big, that it costs $1.9 trillion,” Mr. Biden said. “Let me ask them: What would they have me cut? What would they have me leave out? Should we not invest $20 billion to vaccinate the nation? Should we not invest $290 million to extend unemployment insurance for the 11 million Americans who are unemployed, so they can get by?”

But there’s one big campaign promise that continues to be particularly thorny: the dilemma of how quickly to reopen schools. As he was careful to note on Friday, those decisions will ultimately be made at the state and local levels, but Mr. Biden has stood by a promise to safely reopen most schools nationwide within the first 100 days of his presidency — meaning by late April.

But some experts remain skeptical about the feasibility of classrooms fully reopening by April without more concerted federal action to bring vaccines into schools. Some states have included teachers in the most highly prioritized category for vaccination, allowing them to receive shots immediately. Still, many have not.

“I can’t set nationally who gets in line when, and first — that’s a decision the states make,” Mr. Biden said in response to a reporter’s question, adding, “I think it’s critically important to get our kids back to school.”

Dr. Janet Woodcock, the acting F.D.A. commissioner, is considered to be one of the front-runners for the permanent role.Credit…Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters

One month into his presidency, President Biden still has not named a candidate to head the Food and Drug Administration, a critical position at a time when new vaccines and coronavirus treatments are under the agency’s review.

The vacancy is glaring, given that the president has made selections for most other top government health posts, and the gap has spurred a public lobbying campaign by supporters of the two apparent front-runners, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a former high-ranking F.D.A. official and Dr. Janet Woodcock, the agency’s acting commissioner.

The absence of a nominee has also exposed rifts among congressional lawmakers and within public health and medical communities, as well as inside the health and drug industries that depend on the F.D.A. for approval of their products. In particular, some public health officials have used the open position to debate the leadership qualifications needed to restore the agency’s morale and credibility after a year fighting both a pandemic and a president who often belittled the F.D.A.’s process for approving treatments and vaccines.

“Every month is a crucial month in the pandemic,” said Scott Becker of the Association of Public Health Laboratories. “There is so much going on regarding the vaccine, and new drugs and diagnostics. The time to have permanent leadership is now.”

Administration officials attributed the delay to the overwhelming focus on solving Covid-19 vaccine shortages and distribution problems.

The F.D.A. plays a key role in the nation’s pandemic response: vetting vaccines that are in development and under review as well as treatments, protective gear and devices. The agency also monitors the safety of new vaccines and therapies as they are distributed and administered to the public.

Interviews with several officials and other people familiar with the leading candidates indicate that the primary disagreement centers on how each would manage the inherent tensions between the agency’s mission to get drugs onto the market quickly and ensuring they are safe and will work.

Dr. Woodcock commands deep support, especially within the vast network of cancer-related patient advocacy groups, researchers and the drug companies that help finance them. But her decades of service at the F.D.A. have made her more of a target for critics, and she has drawn particular fire over her time as chief of the agency’s drug division during the opioid crisis.

Dr. Sharfstein held the No. 2 slot at the F.D.A. for nearly two years in the Obama administration and has extensive public health interests. He now works at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he is vice dean for public health practice and community engagement. He often criticized the Trump administration’s pandemic response, and called for the F.D.A. to “stand up for itself and for science, not politics.”

The last time his name was seriously floated for the top post, back in 2008, Dr. Sharfstein drew opposition from the pharmaceutical industry, which protested his criticism of off-label drug marketing and gifts from pharmaceutical companies to physicians.

Neither Dr. Woodcock nor Dr. Sharfstein would comment publicly because the selection process was under way.

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