Coming Next: The Greater Recession
The suspension of federal benefits would create damage almost as terrifying as the economic effects of the coronavirus.
By Paul Krugman
One pretty good forecasting rule for the coronavirus era has been to take whatever Trump administration officials are saying and assume that the opposite will happen. When President Trump declared in February that the number of cases would soon go close to zero, you knew that a huge pandemic was coming. When Vice President Mike Pence insisted in mid-June that “there isn’t a coronavirus ‘second wave,’” a giant surge in new cases and deaths was clearly imminent.
And when Larry Kudlow, the administration’s chief economist, declared just last week that a “V-shaped recovery” was still on track, it was predictable that the economy would stall.
On Friday, we’ll get an official employment report for July. But a variety of private indicators, like the monthly report from the data-processing firm ADP, already suggest that the rapid employment gains of May and June were a dead-cat bounce and that job growth has at best slowed to a crawl.
ADP’s number was at least positive — some other indicators suggest that employment is actually falling. But even if the small reported job gains were right, at this rate we won’t be back to precoronavirus employment until … 2027.
Also, both ADP and the forthcoming official report will be old news — basically snapshots of the economy in the second week of July. Since then much of the country has either paused or reversed economic reopening, and there are indications that many workers rehired during the abortive recovery of May and June have been laid off again.
But things could get much worse. In fact, they probably will get much worse unless Republicans get serious about another economic relief package, and do it very soon.
I’m not sure how many people realize just how much deeper the coronavirus recession of 2020 could have been. Obviously it was terrible: Employment plunged, and real G.D.P. fell by around 10 percent. Almost all of that, however, reflected the direct effects of the pandemic, which forced much of the economy into lockdown.
What didn’t happen was a major second round of job losses driven by plunging consumer demand. Millions of workers lost their regular incomes; without federal aid, they would have been forced to slash spending, causing millions more to lose their jobs. Luckily Congress stepped up to the plate with special aid to the unemployed, which sustained consumer spending and kept the nonquarantined parts of the economy afloat.
Now that aid has expired. Democrats offered a plan months ago to maintain benefits, but Republicans can’t even agree among themselves on a counteroffer. Even if an agreement is hammered out — and there’s no sign that this is imminent — it will be weeks before the money is flowing again.
The suffering among cut-off families will be immense, but there will also be broad damage to the economy as a whole. How big will this damage be? I’ve been doing the math, and it’s terrifying.
Unlike affluent Americans, the mostly low-wage workers whose benefits have just been terminated can’t blunt the impact by drawing on savings or borrowing against assets. So their spending will fall by a lot. Evidence on the initial effects of emergency aid suggests that the end of benefits will push overall consumer spending — the main driver of the economy — down by more than 4 percent.
Furthermore, evidence from austerity policies a decade ago suggests a substantial “multiplier” effect, as spending cuts lead to falling incomes, leading to further spending cuts.
Put it all together and the expiration of emergency aid could produce a 4 percent to 5 percent fall in G.D.P. But wait, there’s more. States and cities are in dire straits and are already planning harsh spending cuts; but Republicans refuse to provide aid, with Trump insisting, falsely, that local fiscal crises have nothing to do with Covid-19.
Bear in mind that the coronavirus itself — a shock that came out of the blue, though the United States mishandled it terribly — reduced G.D.P. by “only” around 10 percent. What we’re looking at now may be another shock, a sort of economic second wave, almost as severe in monetary terms as the first. And unlike the pandemic, this shock will be entirely self-generated, brought on by the fecklessness of President Trump and — let’s give credit where it’s due — Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader.
The question is, how can this be happening? The 2008 financial crisis and the sluggish recovery that followed weren’t that long ago, and they taught us valuable lessons directly relevant to our current plight. Above all, experience in that slump demonstrated both that economic depressions are no time to obsess over debt and that slashing spending in the face of mass unemployment is a terrible mistake.
But nobody in the White House or on the G.O.P. side of Capitol Hill seems to have learned anything from that experience. In fact, not having learned anything from the last crisis almost seems to be a requirement for Republican economic advisers.
So at the moment we seem to be headed for a Greater Recession — a worse slump than 2007-2009, overlaid on the coronavirus slump. MAGA!
Economy Creates 1.8 Million Jobs in July, Production Workers’ Wages Fall
By DEAN BAKER
There is no evidence that generous unemployment benefits are making it difficult to find workers.
The July employment report showed the economy adding another 1,761,000 jobs in July. This follows gains of 2,725,000 in May, and 4,791,000 in June, leaving the economy down 12,881,000 jobs from its February level.
The unemployment rate fell from 11.1 percent to 10.2 percent, while the employment to population ratio (EPOP) rose from 54.6 percent to 55.1 percent. These gains likely overstate the true improvement from June, since the Bureau of Labor Statistics has largely fixed a misclassification problem that had caused unemployed workers to be counted as employed. The EPOP is still down by 6.0 percentage points from February, which translates into 15.6 million fewer people being employed.
While most sectors added jobs, the leisure and hospitality sector accounted for a hugely disproportionate share of the gains. The 592,000 new jobs in the sector were 41.6 percent of the private sector job growth in the month. This corresponds to hotels and restaurants reopening as state and local governments rolled back restrictions. (It is important to remember that the pay period including July 12th is the reference point for this report, so it would not pick up the effect of new restrictions imposed in the last three weeks.) Even with this job gain, employment in the sector is still down by 4,340,000, or 25.7 percent, from the February level.
It is worth noting that the loss of jobs in this low-paying sector does not appear to be due to being discouraged from working by generous unemployment benefits. The average hourly wage for production workers in the sector fell by 0.2 percent in July. It fell by 3.4 percent for production workers in retail, and 0.4 percent for production workers overall.
Other sectors with large gains include retail (258,300), health care (191,400), and temporary employment (143,700). The government sector added 301,000 jobs with 215,100 of these being in local education. This is primarily a seasonal adjustment issue, as teachers normally are laid off in July, but this year they were laid off with the shutdowns in March and April. State and local employment is still down 1,170,000 from its February level. Manufacturing added 26,000 jobs, and construction added 20,000. Employment in both sectors is now 5.8 percent below the February level.
Several sectors continue to lose jobs. The publishing industry lost another 6,900 jobs, leaving employment 4.2 percent below year-ago levels. The motion picture industry lost 4,200 jobs. Employment is now 52.4 percent below year-ago levels. Mining lost 7,000 jobs, and employment in the sector is now at its lowest level since August of 2005.
One item worth noting is that the job losses in this downturn have been disproportionately among production and nonsupervisory workers. While 11.4 percent of production jobs have been lost since February, just 3.6 percent of supervisory positions have disappeared.
[Graph]
The picture on the household side is consistent with those in the lowest paying jobs being hit hardest. The EPOP for those without a high school degree is down 7.1 percentage points since February, while the employment rate for those with just a high school is down 6.8 percentage points. By contrast, the EPOP for people with college degrees is down by 4.4 percentage points.
The EPOP for Black people is down 7.9 percentage points since February, compared to 5.6 percentage points for white people. It’s down 8.8 percentage points for Hispanic people.
One encouraging item in the household survey is that most of the unemployed still expect to get their jobs back. Of those counted as unemployed, 56.4 percent report that they are on temporary layoff. That is down only slightly from 59.5 percent in June. Many of these layoffs will not prove temporary, but there is more hope for those classified this way than for those who have simply lost their jobs.
On the whole, this is a very mixed report. The economy was adding jobs in July, but this is not the sharp rebound we were seeing in June. It would take us more than seven months at this pace of job growth to get back to the number of jobs we had in February, and it is almost certain that we will not be seeing comparable growth in the near future as the pandemic has forced rollbacks in openings.
It is also striking how the job loss is concentrated in the lowest paying sectors. Another figure showing this concentration is that of the 15,227,000 drop in employment since February, 4,383,000 of these were people who had been working part-time voluntarily.
It seems as though the Republican response to running the economy over the fiscal cliff is a haphazard ill-will of not wanting to fund the mostly Democrat held states. This is true, but there is also much more at play. Here are a few highlights:
1) Sending checks to non-constituents. Lets face it, most people receiving any kind of government benefit are usually not Republican voters.
2) Benefits to states such as New York and California. This back and forth is basically just kicking sand at the sworn enemy D states
3) Justifying to the deficit hawks/tea party. These guys are always rattling on about nonsense and they vote, so satisfying them is a political parlay that they have to include
But most importantly….TAXES. It always comes down to the MONEY.
In order to balance the budget to pay for said stimulus, as per the last bailout under Bush, Obama et al had to raise taxes to pay for it. Yes they also raised to cover the ACA, but far more it was about raising taxes to pay for the 2007/08 stim. This is not lost on the R camp as they know if a D congress has a foot hold they are looking at 4 years of Trump beating them in the public square, or worse, D in congress and White House…taxes are sure to increase, e.g. Biden.
So with that being said, why are the Rs willing to play this political game of chicken? Don’t they know that if the economy does in fact finish going over the falls that there will be a landslide in the opposite direction? Do they want that in order to purge the Trump?
Makes me wonder what the end goal is here, and I know it can’t be that complicated; 4D chess this is not.
Glamor tech stocks are all down, presumably from
profit-taking. They have been rising steadily
for the past week, probably due in part to
the announced Apple 4-for-one split set
to occur in another week or so.
(Institutions have been loading up, speculating
that AAPL will only go up even more after the
split, and they don’t care what it costs now.)
Anyway, some profits are being taking now.
Except for FaceBook, which has been
something of a laggard lately.
Apple could break the $2T market
cap barrier soon.
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned Russia’s foreign minister against Moscow paying bounties to Taliban-linked militants and other Afghan fighters for killing American service members, U.S. officials said.
Mr. Pompeo’s warning is the first known rebuke from a senior American official to Russia over the bounties program, and it runs counter to President Trump’s insistence that the intelligence from U.S. government agencies over the matter is a “hoax.” The action indicates that Mr. Pompeo, who previously served as Mr. Trump’s C.I.A. director, believes the intelligence warranted a stern message.
Mr. Pompeo delivered the warning in a call on July 13 with the minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, choosing to do so during a conversation that, officially, was about an unrelated topic — the possibility of a meeting of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the U.S. officials said in the past week.
The secretary of state did not explicitly point to the covert bounties scheme organized by a Russian military intelligence unit that was first reported in late June by The New York Times, most likely because the details of what American intelligence has learned and how it gathered the information remain classified, one of the officials said. In public, Mr. Pompeo has carefully avoided answering direct questions about American intelligence on the Russian bounties. But late last month in congressional testimony, he said broadly that he had raised with Mr. Lavrov “all of the issues” that put American interests at risk. …
Mr. Pompeo’s private move is the latest example of a common occurrence in the administration: American officials quietly carrying out actions that are at odds with Mr. Trump’s statements and his stance on important issues.
The Times reported that senior American officials, including some on the White House National Security Council, had debated for months over what to do about the Russian effort. Russian officials have denounced the reports on the bounties as lies.
Mr. Trump said last week that he did not mention American intelligence assessments of the bounties program when he spoke this month with Mr. Putin. “That was a phone call to discuss other things, and, frankly, that’s an issue that many people said was fake news,” he said in an interview with “Axios on HBO,” even though the C.I.A. has placed medium confidence in the assessment. …
Boston Globe – Jerome Friedman and Sheldon Glashow – August 7
Nobel Prize recipients call on US officials to reorient US federal spending priorities to address America’s true national health and welfare needs.
… The Cold War is long over, yet the United States, together with the eight other nuclear armed nations, still maintains thousands of nuclear weapons, many hundreds on hair-trigger alert, capable of being launched by heads of state with little, if any, consultative process.
Since entering office, President Trump has withdrawn from the nuclear arms agreement with Iran and abrogated both the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Open Skies Agreement with Russia. Recently his administration raised the specter of resuming nuclear weapons testing.
The nations of the world must get together and eliminate the threat of nuclear war. The Trump administration’s proposal to resume nuclear weapons testing weakens the existing Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a key instrument for controlling the spread and further development of nuclear weapons. It could ignite a new nuclear arms race with Russia or China, and it opens the door for other nations, such as India, Pakistan, and North Korea to enhance their own nuclear capabilities.
Despite the enormous overkill capacity of current arsenals, the US government is proposing to spend nearly $2 trillion over the next 30 years to upgrade these lethal weapons systems. This provocative program will make the world less safe and more susceptible to an accidental or inadvertent nuclear weapons launch.
The enormous costs of upgrading our nuclear weapons and their delivery systems drain the nation’s fiscal resources, and pose a threat to global security. Rather, we need to mobilize our scientific resources toward biomedical research to deal with present and future global health threats, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, preventing Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disease afflicting millions, and sharply increasing investment in solar, wind, geothermal, and other forms of sustainable energy to slow climate change.
The most robust effort in Congress to limit these nuclear weapon expenditures was led by Senator Ed Markey’s Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures Act, which would have immediately cut $75 billion from the most dangerous nuclear weapons development — but it did not make it into the most recent National Defense Authorization Act, which allocated $740 billion to the Pentagon. Redirecting those savings toward public health programs and programs such as education, housing, and improved infrastructure could have provided far more national security than upgraded nuclear weapons.
We call upon our elected representatives to reorient our federal spending priorities to address our true national health and welfare needs. We need the security of successfully addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, not the insecurity of starting a new nuclear arms race.
(Jerome Friedman is the Institute Professor and professor of physics, emeritus, at MIT and was awarded the 1990 Nobel Prize in physics. Sheldon Glashow is the Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University and was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics.)
Lost Summer: How Schools Missed a Chance to Fix Remote Learning
Education leaders spent months preparing to reopen classrooms. But with online learning set to continue for millions of students this fall, schools must catch up with reality.
By Dana Goldstein
Nuke the nuclear weapons budget
Nobel Prize recipients call on US officials to reorient US federal spending priorities to address America’s true national health and welfare needs.
By Jerome Friedman and Sheldon Glashow – Boston Globe
Through this century, each president has increased emphasis on nuclear weapons while Bush and Trump cancelled several treaties designed to lessen nuclear weapons emphasis and development. Obama chose “not” to limit nuclear weapons use by the US to defense.
As for the nuclear budget, that comes through the Energy Department and the last figures we have show the cost running at about $40 billion a year:
The New York Times has a strange looking article titled:
“‘I Was a Little Scared’: Inside America’s Reopening Schools
In their first week back, students have faced altered classrooms and emergency quarantines. Here’s what they say school is like in the age of Covid-19.”
I decided not to read the article when I noticed that the lead photograph was of a high school student “before” she tested positive for the coronavirus.
WASHINGTON — Talks on a coronavirus relief package collapsed on Capitol Hill on Friday, and White House officials said they will recommend that President Trump move ahead without Congress to try to address unemployment benefits, eviction rules, and student loan relief.
“The president would like us to make a deal, but unfortunately we did not make any progress today,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said after he and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
“At this point we are going to recommend to the president that over the weekend we move forward with some executive actions,” Mnuchin said.
Democrats said they had offered to reduce the price tag of their $3.4 trillion bill by $1 trillion, but that administration officials rejected the offer.
They kept the door open to further negotiations, but after days of fruitless talks, chances for a deal were evaporating. Mnuchin said no further meetings were scheduled.
Democrats say they cannot accept a bill that provides less than $2 trillion in new spending, while Senate Republicans believe no bill that large can pass their chamber. That left no clear legislative path forward, even as some 30 million jobless Americans have gone two weeks without emergency federal unemployment benefits that expired.
“They said they couldn’t go much above their existing $1 trillion. And that was disappointing,” Schumer said.
“We’re hopeful that they will think about it and come back and tell us they’re willing to meet us halfway,” he said.
But instead of additional negotiations the White House appears prepared to begin rolling out executive actions in coming days.
There are at least four executive issues that White House officials have said they’d like to target through executive orders, though the legal standing for such a move without Congress is unclear.
One target is to attempt to provide some relief to jobless Americans whose enhanced unemployment aid expired at the end of last month. White House officials have looked at potentially redirecting money from other programs toward unemployment benefits. Another target is to provide eviction relief for Americans who had been protected by a congressionally authorized eviction moratorium, but it expired last month as well.
The moratorium covered renters who live in homes with federally backed mortgages, which the Urban Institute estimates to be 12.3 million households.
White House officials are also looking to extend student loan flexibility to certain Americans, cognizant that a congressionally approved program for those borrowers expires next month.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow also said that Trump is poised to sign executive orders deferring payroll taxes, but the logistics of that is also unclear. It could not be immediately learned, for example, if Americans would ultimately have to repay any deferred tax cut.
A positive jobs report Friday morning appeared to harden the administration’s posture, with Kudlow pointing to the 1.8 million jobs added in July as evidence of a “self-sustaining recovery.”
Trump and White House officials have been eyeing the possibility of unilateral action all week, and Kudlow confirmed Friday that they were looking at “repurposing” hundreds of billions of dollars that have not yet been spent from earlier coronavirus relief legislation passed this spring.
The legality of such a moves is questionable, with Democrats insisting the White House can’t spend money without approval from Congress. But Trump has pushed the boundaries of executive authority in the past, including his move to declare a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border so he could raid Pentagon funds to build his wall.
Kudlow said the executive actions under consideration include moves to “reform unemployment” by providing a benefit for re-employment and a retention tax credit for employers.
Cutting the 7.65 percent payroll tax, which comes out of workers’ salaries and goes to fund Medicare and Social Security, has been a long-standing goal for Trump. Lawmakers in both parties question the value of such a move, partly because it would do little to help workers who are not actually employed. In recent days, White House officials have not been clear as to whether Trump believes he has the power to unilaterally defer the tax or actually cut it.
Before the meeting even started, Schumer and Pelosi heaped insults on Republicans in general and Meadows in particular, in comments that did not seem designed to engender fruitful negotiations.
“Basically, what’s happening is Mr. Meadows is from the Tea Party … and they don’t want to spend the necessary money,” Schumer said of the former North Carolina congressman, who was a leader of a faction of anti-spending rabble-rousers when he served in the House.
Pelosi said for the second day in a row that Republicans don’t give “a damn” about people in need.
For their part, Republicans accused Democrats of trying to get a political outcome instead of a deal, with the election approaching. …
i’ll add a huge clarification to Dean Baker’s employment situation report Anne posted above (same as i added to NDD’s post here at Angry Bear)
local school districts actually employed 928,300 less in July than in June and state colleges and universities employed 31,900 less, so the 215,700 and 29,800 job gains reported in July were a statistical aberration, caused by a ‘normal’ seasonal adjustment…most of the large seasonal job cutback usually associated with the end of the school year actually occurred in April this year, and this month’s seasonal adjustments gave those normal school year job losses back in July; the unadjusted data shows that there were actually only 591,000 more payroll jobs extant in July than in June..
Crisis negotiations between the White House and top Democrats teetered on the brink of collapse on Friday, as both sides said they remained deeply divided on an economic recovery package and President Trump’s advisers said they would recommend that he bypass Congress and act on his own to provide relief.
It was not clear what power Mr. Trump might have to move unilaterally to extend jobless aid or otherwise redirect federal relief money as he sees fit, since Congress controls spending. But the announcement by Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, that they were counseling him to do so reflected the failure of 10 days of marathon talks to reach a bipartisan compromise to pump more aid into the slowing economic recovery.
It came after another unproductive meeting between the administration officials and Democratic leaders, which ended with no agreement and no additional talks scheduled.
Democrats, who had earlier said they would be willing to lower their spending demands to $2 trillion from $3.4 trillion, said the White House, needed to return with a higher overall price tag, after Mr. Trump’s negotiators declined to accept that offer. Republicans have proposed a $1 trillion plan. …
… In a tweet, President Trump indicated he was ready to move on from the talks. “Pelosi and Schumer only interested in Bailout Money for poorly run Democrat cities and states. Nothing to do with China Virus! Want one trillion dollars. No interest. We are going a different way!” he wrote.
Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Meadows demanded that Democrats agree to lower the amount of aid for state and local governments, and provide more specifics about how they were proposing to revive lapsed unemployment benefits.
“There’s both a top-line issue but also policy issues,” Mr. Mnuchin said after the meeting, which lasted more than an hour in Ms. Pelosi’s office. “I don’t want to speculate as to whether there is an agreement or not. We will continue to try to get an agreement that’s in the best interest of the people, and that’s why we’re here.”
While the executive orders have not yet been finalized, Mr. Meadows said it was likely that action would come over the weekend.
“This is not a perfect answer — we’ll be the first ones to say that,” he said. “But it is all that we can do and all the president can do within the confines of his executive power, and we’re going to encourage him to do it.”
America’s Unholy Crusade Against China
Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered an anti-China speech that was extremist, simplistic, and dangerous. If biblical literalists like Pompeo remain in power past November, they could well bring the world to the brink of a war that they expect and perhaps even seek.
By JEFFREY D. SACHS
Trump Targets WeChat and TikTok, in Sharp Escalation With China
The government cited national security concerns in announcing sweeping restrictions on two popular Chinese social media networks, a move that is likely to be met with retaliation.
By Ana Swanson, Mike Isaac and Paul Mozur
He has a strategy. “The strategy would follow what we know works: a national mandate on mask wearing, closing all the hot spots for a period of time including bars and churches, drastically reducing travel, and shutting down what we had previously considered essential services but exposed too many to needless risk.” This might be a good strategy, but hard not to see that it is not a list of policies that would fall under the authority of the President, with the possible exception of travel restrictions, which are not detailed by Slavitt. The strategy does not mention areas that clearly are under Presidential authority such as directed production of ventilators, federal participation and support of vaccine development, federal support for development of COVID treatments, federal emergency medical support via field hospitals and hospital ships.
If you go by Slavitt’s coronavirus strategy, then elections of governors. county executives, mayors, city councils and such are more important than choosing between Trump and Biden.
U.S. reports show racial disparities in kids with COVID-19
Racial disparities in the U.S. coronavirus epidemic extend to children, according to two sobering government reports released Friday.
One of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports looked at children with COVID-19 who needed hospitalization. Hispanic children were hospitalized at a rate eight times higher than white kids, and Black children were hospitalized at a rate five times higher, it found.
The second report examined cases of a rare virus-associated syndrome in kids. It found that nearly three-quarters of the children with the syndrome were either Hispanic or Black, well above their representation in the general population.
The coronavirus has exposed racial fractures in the U.S. healthcare system, as Black, Hispanic and Native Americans have been hospitalized and killed by COVID-19 at far higher rates than other groups.
Meanwhile, the impact of the virus on children has become a political issue. President Donald Trump and some other administration officials have been pushing schools to reopen, a step that would allow more parents to return to work and the economy to pick up.
On Wednesday, Facebook deleted a post by Trump for violating its policy against spreading misinformation about the coronavirus. The post featured a link to a Fox News video in which Trump says children are “virtually immune” to the virus.
The vast majority of coronavirus cases and deaths have been in adults, and kids are considered less likely to have serious symptoms when they’re infected. Of the nearly five million cases reported in the U.S. as of Wednesday, about 265,000 were in children 17 and under – about five percent. Of the more than 156,000 deaths reported at that time, 77 were children – about 0.05 percent.
But Friday’s CDC reports are a “gut punch” reminder that some children are getting seriously ill and dying, said Carrie Henning-Smith, a University of Minnesota researcher who focuses on health disparities.
“It’s clear from these studies, and from other emerging research, that kids are not immune,” she said. “Kids can pass along COVID, and they can also suffer the effects of it.”
She said studies should give community leaders pause about opening schools. “We need to be really, really careful. We are potentially talking about putting children in unsafe situations,” Henning-Smith said.
The first CDC report released Friday was based on cases from 14 states. The researchers counted 576 hospitalizations of kids from March 1 through July 25. At least 12 were sick enough to need a machine to help them breathe. One died.
The hospitalization rate for Hispanic children was about 16.4 per 100,000. The rate for Black children was 10.5 per 100,000, and for white kids it was 2.1 per 100,000.
As with adults, many of the hospitalized children had existing health problems, including obesity, chronic lung conditions and – in the case of infants – preterm birth.
A number of possible factors could explain the disparities, said Dr. Cyrus Shahpar, who oversees epidemic prevention efforts for a not-for-profit data and advocacy organization called Vital Strategies.
Larger percentages of Hispanic and Black kids may go to hospital emergency rooms when they’re sick, which could be driven by difficulty getting into – or paying for – doctor’s office visits. That lack of access to regular health-care could lead to more severe illness, he suggested.
The second CDC report focused on 570 kids diagnosed with a rare condition, which CDC calls multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C. Ten of them died.
Some children with the syndrome have symptoms resembling Kawasaki disease, another rare childhood condition that can cause swelling and heart problems. Other symptoms include fever, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, neck pain, rash, bloodshot eyes or feeling extra tired.
“The underlying problem that results in MIS-C seems to be a dysfunction of the immune system,” said Dr. Ermias Belay, who is leading the CDC team looking into MIS-C cases.
The immune system kicks into overdrive when it sees the virus, releasing chemicals that can damage different organs, he added.
In the study, many of the patients with the condition had severe complications, including inflammation of the heart, shock, and kidney damage. Nearly two-thirds of the cases overall were admitted to intensive care units, and the average ICU stay was five days.
The CDC report covered illnesses that began from mid-February to mid-July. Forty states reported cases.
The report found that 13 percent of kids with the condition were white, while more than 40 percent were Hispanic and 33 percent were Black. Overall, about half of U.S. children are white, around 25 percent Hispanic and about 14 percent are Black, according to population estimates.
Scientists are still learning about the condition. Experts say genetics has nothing to do with why some racial and ethnic groups are more likely to be infected by the virus, get seriously sick from it or die from it. But it’s not yet clear if genetics play a role in the childhood inflammation condition, Shahpar and Belay said.
Chinese mainland reports 31 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
The Chinese mainland registered 31 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Friday, with 6 cases from overseas and 25 domestically transmitted, Chinese health authority said Saturday.
All of the 25 domestically-transmitted cases are in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
No deaths related to the disease were reported Thursday, while 35 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals.
An estimated 27% of adults in the U.S. missed their rent or mortgage payment for July. That’s probably going to be worse in August. https://t.co/zKmwvdvbo6
One-Third of American Renters Expected to Miss Their August Payment
An expansive census survey reveals a nation stretched to the brink by the financial toll of pandemic.
It’s outrageous that the @UN_HRC would offer a seat to Cuba, a brutal dictatorship that traffics its own doctors under the guise of humanitarian missions. Any country that values human rights should refrain from voting Cuba onto the Council. pic.twitter.com/SOebuzm0Rs
It’s outrageous that the @UN_HRC would offer a seat to Cuba, a brutal dictatorship that traffics its own doctors under the guise of humanitarian missions. Any country that values human rights should refrain from voting Cuba onto the Council.
The Dominican Republic has been the fastest growing country in per capita GDP in the western hemisphere since 1971. Nonetheless, Cuba has had markedly better healthcare outcomes even though Cuba has been continually under United States sanctions. The coronavirus experience reflects a profound difference in healthcare systems, a difference reflected in other basic health characteristics of the countries.
Totally not racist to imply anything with a Chinese origin is “dirty.”
Secretary Pompeo @SecPompeo
US government account
The U.S. expands the Clean Network by launching 5 new Clean initiatives–Clean Carrier, Clean Store, Clean Apps, Clean Cloud & Clean Cable–to secure Americans’ most sensitive information from the CCP’s surveillance state. We call on freedom-loving nations and companies to join us.
As Charlie Brown would say if he were an economics wonk, "Aaauuuuggghhh!" No, gold prices aren't rising because investors expect inflation. They don't. Gold is high because bond yields are so low 1/https://t.co/xK2W3VKYZr
As Charlie Brown would say if he were an economics wonk, “Aaauuuuggghhh!” No, gold prices aren’t rising because investors expect inflation. They don’t. Gold is high because bond yields are so low 1/
Why Is Everyone Buying Gold?
It’s one of the best performing assets in the world this year. That’s not a great sign.
12:05 PM · Aug 8, 2020
Here’s the 10-year breakeven inflation rate — the rate that would equalize yields on inflation-protected and ordinary bonds — plus the yield on those inflation-protected bonds 2/
The implied inflation forecast is actually lower than it was last year; what’s happened is a plunge in yields, reflecting economic pessimism. Some weirdness in March, which I’ll explain next 3/
So, in March there was a near-collapse of financial markets, which drove down the price of anything not totally liquid, including inflation-protected bonds. Hence a brief yield spike and fall in apparent inflation expectations. But it was just a blip 4/
The thing is, we went through exactly this story in 2008-9: rising gold prices without rising inflation expectations bc of falling yields, and even a blip in TIPs prices during the post-Lehman financial disruption. No excuse for being confused now [end wonkish rant]/
The data for a country with so expensive a healthcare system, represent a pervasive institutional problem. Anne Case and Angus Deaton have sought to tell us this for several years but received little attention in the telling.
America Can Afford a World-Class Health System. Why Don’t We Have One?
Our system takes from the poor and working class to generate wealth for the already wealthy.
By Anne Case and Angus Deaton
Anne Case and Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel laureate in economics, are professors at Princeton and the University of Southern California.
I don't know if anyone else has said this, but payroll tax cuts are the hydroxychloroquine of economic policy. They won't do anything to solve the employment crisis, but will have dangerous side effects. Yet Trump remains obsessed with them as a cure 1/
I don’t know if anyone else has said this, but payroll tax cuts are the hydroxychloroquine of economic policy. They won’t do anything to solve the employment crisis, but will have dangerous side effects. Yet Trump remains obsessed with them as a cure 1/
7:11 AM · Aug 9, 2020
We’ve lost millions of jobs, not because employers lack incentives to hire, but because many activities, like bars, indoor dining, inessential travel, elective medical care have been put on hold because of the risk of contagion 2/
Letting employers keep money they were supposed to be paying into Social Security and Medicare — no good reason to believe they’ll pass the savings on to workers — does nothing to remedy this problem 3/
It will, however, undermine the finances of programs that are absolutely crucial to the lives of older Americans. If you measure the quality of policy ideas on a scale of 1 to 10, this is a minus 5 or worse 4/
Even Senate Rs consider this a terrible idea. So where’s Trump getting it from? The immediate answer seems to be Stephen Moore, whose previous greatest hits include predicting that tax cuts would create a Kansas economic miracle 5/
Just a word about the other Trump “policy”, on unemployment benefits. He is NOT proposing to extend supplemental benefits. He’s calling for a new program, without Congressional authorization, that states are supposed to set up and provide with matching funds 6/
Two realities here: 1. The administrative capacity of state unemployment offices is stretched to the limit — it took months to provide expanded benefits, and some people never got them. They’re in no position to add a new program 7/
States are also broke because of coronavirus revenue losses and expenses. Even if they could reprogram their COBOL-driven computers fast enough, they wouldn’t have the money 8/
So this is policy by reality TV: an attempt to pretend that Trump is doing something, while providing no real relief for months at best. The fact is that Trump and those around him don’t know how to do policy 9/
Chinese mainland reports 23 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
The Chinese mainland registered 23 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Saturday, with 8 cases from overseas and 15 domestically transmitted, Chinese health authority said Sunday.
All of the 15 domestically-transmitted cases are in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
No deaths related to the disease were reported Saturday, while 45 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals.
"TikTok is not just China’s revenge for the century of humiliation between the Opium Wars and Mao’s revolution. It is the opium — a digital fentanyl, to get our kids stoked for the coming Chinese imperium."
“TikTok is not just China’s revenge for the century of humiliation between the Opium Wars and Mao’s revolution. It is the opium — a digital fentanyl, to get our kids stoked for the coming Chinese imperium.”
Wheresoever the Roman conquers, he inhabits. — Seneca
Let me come clean. I am a fully paid-up member of the neoimperialist gang. Two years ago — when it was not at all fashionable to say so — I was already arguing that it would be ”desirable for the United States to depose” tyrants like Saddam Hussein. ”Capitalism and democracy,” I wrote, ”are not naturally occurring, but require strong institutional foundations of law and order. The proper role of an imperial America is to establish these institutions where they are lacking, if necessary . . . by military force.”
Should there be any confusion about what Niall Ferguson is about, this is an historian who made sure to ridicule * the work done by the New York Times on Black history in Americas. **
This Contact Tracer Is Fighting Two Contagions: The Virus and Fear
Convincing infected people to open up means helping them confront deeply held concerns about deportation or job loss.
By Jo Becker
Chinese mainland reports 49 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
The Chinese mainland registered 49 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Sunday, with 35 cases from overseas and 14 domestically transmitted, Chinese health authority said Monday.
All of the 14 domestically transmitted cases are in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. And among the cases from overseas, 18 are in Shanghai.
Shanghai’s civil aviation department will strengthen the control measures for international flights and certain airlines will be halted as imported COVID-19 cases have been continuously reported on some inbound flights in Shanghai, according to local authorities on Monday.
No deaths related to the disease were reported on Sunday, while 64 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals.
New Zealand has gone 100 days without recording a locally transmitted Covid-19 case, a milestone that has both been welcomed and brought warnings against complacency.
The last case of community transmission was detected on 1 May, days after the country started easing its lockdown.
Sunday was the fourth day in a row that no new cases of Covid-19 were reported.
The total number of active cases in the country remained at 23, all in managed isolation.
Praised internationally for its handling of the pandemic, the country’s government has lifted almost all of its lockdown restrictions, first imposed in March.
An early lockdown, tough border restrictions, effective health messaging and an aggressive test-and-trace programme have all been credited with virtually eliminating the virus in the country.
Coronavirus: New Zealand marks 100 days without community spread – BBC News
[ Very important, possibly especially so, since close-by Australia is now experiencing a community spread of infections. This is winter in the southern hemisphere and looking to countries below the Equator we find a serious spread of infections in countries from Indonesia to South Africa to Chile… ]
U.S. reported over 97,000 child COVID-19 cases in last two weeks of July
The U.S. reported more than 97,000 child COVID-19 cases from July 16 to July 30, a 40-percent increase, according to a new report, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, based on publicly reported data from 49 states by the end of July.
The age range for children varied by state, with most states defining children as those up to age of 19 and one state – Alabama – pushing the limit to 24.
Cumulatively, 338,982 U.S. children tested positive for the coronavirus, accounting for 8.8 percent of the total confirmed cases in the country. That means 447 per 100,000 children were infected by the virus, the report showed.
At least 86 children have died since May. Last week, a 7-year-old boy with no pre-existing conditions became the youngest coronavirus victim in Georgia.
The report comes during back-to-school season, as health officials are trying to figure out how the virus affects children and how it’s spread among young people. Some schools have begun welcoming crowds back to class and others have had to readjust their reopening plan.
Some U.S. leaders – including President Donald Trump – have said the virus doesn’t pose a large risk to children. In July, Trump has urged schools to reopen even as coronavirus cases spiked.
But one recent study suggests teenagers can transmit the virus just as much as adults. Another study said children younger than five carry a higher viral load than adults, raising even more questions about their role in transmission.
Israel appeared to have contained the spread of coronavirus infections, but under political pressure the government incautiously opened schools and businesses and the spread has been fierce and persistent since then.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/opinion/coronavirus-us-recession.html
August 6, 2020
Coming Next: The Greater Recession
The suspension of federal benefits would create damage almost as terrifying as the economic effects of the coronavirus.
By Paul Krugman
One pretty good forecasting rule for the coronavirus era has been to take whatever Trump administration officials are saying and assume that the opposite will happen. When President Trump declared in February that the number of cases would soon go close to zero, you knew that a huge pandemic was coming. When Vice President Mike Pence insisted in mid-June that “there isn’t a coronavirus ‘second wave,’” a giant surge in new cases and deaths was clearly imminent.
And when Larry Kudlow, the administration’s chief economist, declared just last week that a “V-shaped recovery” was still on track, it was predictable that the economy would stall.
On Friday, we’ll get an official employment report for July. But a variety of private indicators, like the monthly report from the data-processing firm ADP, already suggest that the rapid employment gains of May and June were a dead-cat bounce and that job growth has at best slowed to a crawl.
ADP’s number was at least positive — some other indicators suggest that employment is actually falling. But even if the small reported job gains were right, at this rate we won’t be back to precoronavirus employment until … 2027.
Also, both ADP and the forthcoming official report will be old news — basically snapshots of the economy in the second week of July. Since then much of the country has either paused or reversed economic reopening, and there are indications that many workers rehired during the abortive recovery of May and June have been laid off again.
But things could get much worse. In fact, they probably will get much worse unless Republicans get serious about another economic relief package, and do it very soon.
I’m not sure how many people realize just how much deeper the coronavirus recession of 2020 could have been. Obviously it was terrible: Employment plunged, and real G.D.P. fell by around 10 percent. Almost all of that, however, reflected the direct effects of the pandemic, which forced much of the economy into lockdown.
What didn’t happen was a major second round of job losses driven by plunging consumer demand. Millions of workers lost their regular incomes; without federal aid, they would have been forced to slash spending, causing millions more to lose their jobs. Luckily Congress stepped up to the plate with special aid to the unemployed, which sustained consumer spending and kept the nonquarantined parts of the economy afloat.
Now that aid has expired. Democrats offered a plan months ago to maintain benefits, but Republicans can’t even agree among themselves on a counteroffer. Even if an agreement is hammered out — and there’s no sign that this is imminent — it will be weeks before the money is flowing again.
The suffering among cut-off families will be immense, but there will also be broad damage to the economy as a whole. How big will this damage be? I’ve been doing the math, and it’s terrifying.
Unlike affluent Americans, the mostly low-wage workers whose benefits have just been terminated can’t blunt the impact by drawing on savings or borrowing against assets. So their spending will fall by a lot. Evidence on the initial effects of emergency aid suggests that the end of benefits will push overall consumer spending — the main driver of the economy — down by more than 4 percent.
Furthermore, evidence from austerity policies a decade ago suggests a substantial “multiplier” effect, as spending cuts lead to falling incomes, leading to further spending cuts.
Put it all together and the expiration of emergency aid could produce a 4 percent to 5 percent fall in G.D.P. But wait, there’s more. States and cities are in dire straits and are already planning harsh spending cuts; but Republicans refuse to provide aid, with Trump insisting, falsely, that local fiscal crises have nothing to do with Covid-19.
Bear in mind that the coronavirus itself — a shock that came out of the blue, though the United States mishandled it terribly — reduced G.D.P. by “only” around 10 percent. What we’re looking at now may be another shock, a sort of economic second wave, almost as severe in monetary terms as the first. And unlike the pandemic, this shock will be entirely self-generated, brought on by the fecklessness of President Trump and — let’s give credit where it’s due — Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader.
The question is, how can this be happening? The 2008 financial crisis and the sluggish recovery that followed weren’t that long ago, and they taught us valuable lessons directly relevant to our current plight. Above all, experience in that slump demonstrated both that economic depressions are no time to obsess over debt and that slashing spending in the face of mass unemployment is a terrible mistake.
But nobody in the White House or on the G.O.P. side of Capitol Hill seems to have learned anything from that experience. In fact, not having learned anything from the last crisis almost seems to be a requirement for Republican economic advisers.
So at the moment we seem to be headed for a Greater Recession — a worse slump than 2007-2009, overlaid on the coronavirus slump. MAGA!
Anne:
At least I do not have to go searching for Krugman and Baker when you deliver both commentaries here on the open thread. Thanks!
https://cepr.net/jobs-2020-08/
August 7, 2020
Economy Creates 1.8 Million Jobs in July, Production Workers’ Wages Fall
By DEAN BAKER
There is no evidence that generous unemployment benefits are making it difficult to find workers.
The July employment report showed the economy adding another 1,761,000 jobs in July. This follows gains of 2,725,000 in May, and 4,791,000 in June, leaving the economy down 12,881,000 jobs from its February level.
The unemployment rate fell from 11.1 percent to 10.2 percent, while the employment to population ratio (EPOP) rose from 54.6 percent to 55.1 percent. These gains likely overstate the true improvement from June, since the Bureau of Labor Statistics has largely fixed a misclassification problem that had caused unemployed workers to be counted as employed. The EPOP is still down by 6.0 percentage points from February, which translates into 15.6 million fewer people being employed.
While most sectors added jobs, the leisure and hospitality sector accounted for a hugely disproportionate share of the gains. The 592,000 new jobs in the sector were 41.6 percent of the private sector job growth in the month. This corresponds to hotels and restaurants reopening as state and local governments rolled back restrictions. (It is important to remember that the pay period including July 12th is the reference point for this report, so it would not pick up the effect of new restrictions imposed in the last three weeks.) Even with this job gain, employment in the sector is still down by 4,340,000, or 25.7 percent, from the February level.
It is worth noting that the loss of jobs in this low-paying sector does not appear to be due to being discouraged from working by generous unemployment benefits. The average hourly wage for production workers in the sector fell by 0.2 percent in July. It fell by 3.4 percent for production workers in retail, and 0.4 percent for production workers overall.
Other sectors with large gains include retail (258,300), health care (191,400), and temporary employment (143,700). The government sector added 301,000 jobs with 215,100 of these being in local education. This is primarily a seasonal adjustment issue, as teachers normally are laid off in July, but this year they were laid off with the shutdowns in March and April. State and local employment is still down 1,170,000 from its February level. Manufacturing added 26,000 jobs, and construction added 20,000. Employment in both sectors is now 5.8 percent below the February level.
Several sectors continue to lose jobs. The publishing industry lost another 6,900 jobs, leaving employment 4.2 percent below year-ago levels. The motion picture industry lost 4,200 jobs. Employment is now 52.4 percent below year-ago levels. Mining lost 7,000 jobs, and employment in the sector is now at its lowest level since August of 2005.
One item worth noting is that the job losses in this downturn have been disproportionately among production and nonsupervisory workers. While 11.4 percent of production jobs have been lost since February, just 3.6 percent of supervisory positions have disappeared.
[Graph]
The picture on the household side is consistent with those in the lowest paying jobs being hit hardest. The EPOP for those without a high school degree is down 7.1 percentage points since February, while the employment rate for those with just a high school is down 6.8 percentage points. By contrast, the EPOP for people with college degrees is down by 4.4 percentage points.
The EPOP for Black people is down 7.9 percentage points since February, compared to 5.6 percentage points for white people. It’s down 8.8 percentage points for Hispanic people.
One encouraging item in the household survey is that most of the unemployed still expect to get their jobs back. Of those counted as unemployed, 56.4 percent report that they are on temporary layoff. That is down only slightly from 59.5 percent in June. Many of these layoffs will not prove temporary, but there is more hope for those classified this way than for those who have simply lost their jobs.
On the whole, this is a very mixed report. The economy was adding jobs in July, but this is not the sharp rebound we were seeing in June. It would take us more than seven months at this pace of job growth to get back to the number of jobs we had in February, and it is almost certain that we will not be seeing comparable growth in the near future as the pandemic has forced rollbacks in openings.
It is also striking how the job loss is concentrated in the lowest paying sectors. Another figure showing this concentration is that of the 15,227,000 drop in employment since February, 4,383,000 of these were people who had been working part-time voluntarily.
Political Calculus in a Game of Chicken
It seems as though the Republican response to running the economy over the fiscal cliff is a haphazard ill-will of not wanting to fund the mostly Democrat held states. This is true, but there is also much more at play. Here are a few highlights:
1) Sending checks to non-constituents. Lets face it, most people receiving any kind of government benefit are usually not Republican voters.
2) Benefits to states such as New York and California. This back and forth is basically just kicking sand at the sworn enemy D states
3) Justifying to the deficit hawks/tea party. These guys are always rattling on about nonsense and they vote, so satisfying them is a political parlay that they have to include
But most importantly….TAXES. It always comes down to the MONEY.
In order to balance the budget to pay for said stimulus, as per the last bailout under Bush, Obama et al had to raise taxes to pay for it. Yes they also raised to cover the ACA, but far more it was about raising taxes to pay for the 2007/08 stim. This is not lost on the R camp as they know if a D congress has a foot hold they are looking at 4 years of Trump beating them in the public square, or worse, D in congress and White House…taxes are sure to increase, e.g. Biden.
So with that being said, why are the Rs willing to play this political game of chicken? Don’t they know that if the economy does in fact finish going over the falls that there will be a landslide in the opposite direction? Do they want that in order to purge the Trump?
Makes me wonder what the end goal is here, and I know it can’t be that complicated; 4D chess this is not.
August 7, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,053,137)
Deaths ( 163,193)
India
Cases ( 2,086,506)
Deaths ( 42,564)
Mexico
Cases ( 462,690)
Deaths ( 50,517)
UK
Cases ( 309,005)
Deaths ( 46,511)
Germany
Cases ( 215,882)
Deaths ( 9,253)
France
Cases ( 197,921)
Deaths ( 30,324)
Canada
Cases ( 118,757)
Deaths ( 8,966)
China
Cases ( 84,565)
Deaths ( 4,634)
August 7, 2020
Coronavirus (Deaths per million)
UK ( 685)
US ( 493)
France ( 464)
Mexico ( 391)
Canada ( 237)
Germany ( 110)
India ( 31)
China ( 3)
Notice the ratios of deaths to coronavirus cases are 15.1%, 15.3% and 10.9% for the United Kingdom, France and Mexico respectively.
Buying opportunities (on Wall St) abound.
An interesting day on the street. Buy on the dip?
Glamor tech stocks are all down, presumably from
profit-taking. They have been rising steadily
for the past week, probably due in part to
the announced Apple 4-for-one split set
to occur in another week or so.
(Institutions have been loading up, speculating
that AAPL will only go up even more after the
split, and they don’t care what it costs now.)
Anyway, some profits are being taking now.
Except for FaceBook, which has been
something of a laggard lately.
Apple could break the $2T market
cap barrier soon.
Pompeo Warned Russia Against Bounties on US Troops in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has warned Russia’s foreign minister against Moscow paying bounties to Taliban-linked militants and other Afghan fighters for killing American service members, U.S. officials said.
Mr. Pompeo’s warning is the first known rebuke from a senior American official to Russia over the bounties program, and it runs counter to President Trump’s insistence that the intelligence from U.S. government agencies over the matter is a “hoax.” The action indicates that Mr. Pompeo, who previously served as Mr. Trump’s C.I.A. director, believes the intelligence warranted a stern message.
Mr. Pompeo delivered the warning in a call on July 13 with the minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, choosing to do so during a conversation that, officially, was about an unrelated topic — the possibility of a meeting of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the U.S. officials said in the past week.
The secretary of state did not explicitly point to the covert bounties scheme organized by a Russian military intelligence unit that was first reported in late June by The New York Times, most likely because the details of what American intelligence has learned and how it gathered the information remain classified, one of the officials said. In public, Mr. Pompeo has carefully avoided answering direct questions about American intelligence on the Russian bounties. But late last month in congressional testimony, he said broadly that he had raised with Mr. Lavrov “all of the issues” that put American interests at risk. …
Mr. Pompeo’s private move is the latest example of a common occurrence in the administration: American officials quietly carrying out actions that are at odds with Mr. Trump’s statements and his stance on important issues.
The Times reported that senior American officials, including some on the White House National Security Council, had debated for months over what to do about the Russian effort. Russian officials have denounced the reports on the bounties as lies.
Mr. Trump said last week that he did not mention American intelligence assessments of the bounties program when he spoke this month with Mr. Putin. “That was a phone call to discuss other things, and, frankly, that’s an issue that many people said was fake news,” he said in an interview with “Axios on HBO,” even though the C.I.A. has placed medium confidence in the assessment. …
August 7, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,058,862)
Deaths ( 163,313)
Nuke the nuclear weapons budget
Boston Globe – Jerome Friedman and Sheldon Glashow – August 7
Nobel Prize recipients call on US officials to reorient US federal spending priorities to address America’s true national health and welfare needs.
… The Cold War is long over, yet the United States, together with the eight other nuclear armed nations, still maintains thousands of nuclear weapons, many hundreds on hair-trigger alert, capable of being launched by heads of state with little, if any, consultative process.
Since entering office, President Trump has withdrawn from the nuclear arms agreement with Iran and abrogated both the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Open Skies Agreement with Russia. Recently his administration raised the specter of resuming nuclear weapons testing.
The nations of the world must get together and eliminate the threat of nuclear war. The Trump administration’s proposal to resume nuclear weapons testing weakens the existing Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a key instrument for controlling the spread and further development of nuclear weapons. It could ignite a new nuclear arms race with Russia or China, and it opens the door for other nations, such as India, Pakistan, and North Korea to enhance their own nuclear capabilities.
Despite the enormous overkill capacity of current arsenals, the US government is proposing to spend nearly $2 trillion over the next 30 years to upgrade these lethal weapons systems. This provocative program will make the world less safe and more susceptible to an accidental or inadvertent nuclear weapons launch.
The enormous costs of upgrading our nuclear weapons and their delivery systems drain the nation’s fiscal resources, and pose a threat to global security. Rather, we need to mobilize our scientific resources toward biomedical research to deal with present and future global health threats, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, preventing Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disease afflicting millions, and sharply increasing investment in solar, wind, geothermal, and other forms of sustainable energy to slow climate change.
The most robust effort in Congress to limit these nuclear weapon expenditures was led by Senator Ed Markey’s Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures Act, which would have immediately cut $75 billion from the most dangerous nuclear weapons development — but it did not make it into the most recent National Defense Authorization Act, which allocated $740 billion to the Pentagon. Redirecting those savings toward public health programs and programs such as education, housing, and improved infrastructure could have provided far more national security than upgraded nuclear weapons.
We call upon our elected representatives to reorient our federal spending priorities to address our true national health and welfare needs. We need the security of successfully addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, not the insecurity of starting a new nuclear arms race.
(Jerome Friedman is the Institute Professor and professor of physics, emeritus, at MIT and was awarded the 1990 Nobel Prize in physics. Sheldon Glashow is the Metcalf Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University and was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/us/remote-learning-fall-2020.html
August 7, 2020
Lost Summer: How Schools Missed a Chance to Fix Remote Learning
Education leaders spent months preparing to reopen classrooms. But with online learning set to continue for millions of students this fall, schools must catch up with reality.
By Dana Goldstein
Blue highlighting covers this entire article, above. * I would guess a linking code was left unclosed.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/08/06/opinion/nuke-nuclear-weapons-budget/
August 6, 2020
Nuke the nuclear weapons budget
Nobel Prize recipients call on US officials to reorient US federal spending priorities to address America’s true national health and welfare needs.
By Jerome Friedman and Sheldon Glashow – Boston Globe
Through this century, each president has increased emphasis on nuclear weapons while Bush and Trump cancelled several treaties designed to lessen nuclear weapons emphasis and development. Obama chose “not” to limit nuclear weapons use by the US to defense.
As for the nuclear budget, that comes through the Energy Department and the last figures we have show the cost running at about $40 billion a year:
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/reports/52401-nuclearcosts.pdf
The New York Times has a strange looking article titled:
“‘I Was a Little Scared’: Inside America’s Reopening Schools
In their first week back, students have faced altered classrooms and emergency quarantines. Here’s what they say school is like in the age of Covid-19.”
I decided not to read the article when I noticed that the lead photograph was of a high school student “before” she tested positive for the coronavirus.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/us/coronavirus-students.html
August 7, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,073,625)
Deaths ( 163,563)
our June trade deficit fell $4.1 billion, or 7.5%, on a $5.9 billion decrease in our imports of nonmonetary gold; does anyone know what that’s about?
“Nuke the nuclear weapons budget>/a>”
Well, “>/a>” should have been ““.
Obviously.
Grrr. The “>” should have been pointing the other way.
Coronavirus relief talks collapse on Capitol Hill
Washington Post via @BostonGlobe – August 7
as President Trump readies executive actions
WASHINGTON — Talks on a coronavirus relief package collapsed on Capitol Hill on Friday, and White House officials said they will recommend that President Trump move ahead without Congress to try to address unemployment benefits, eviction rules, and student loan relief.
“The president would like us to make a deal, but unfortunately we did not make any progress today,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said after he and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
“At this point we are going to recommend to the president that over the weekend we move forward with some executive actions,” Mnuchin said.
Democrats said they had offered to reduce the price tag of their $3.4 trillion bill by $1 trillion, but that administration officials rejected the offer.
They kept the door open to further negotiations, but after days of fruitless talks, chances for a deal were evaporating. Mnuchin said no further meetings were scheduled.
Democrats say they cannot accept a bill that provides less than $2 trillion in new spending, while Senate Republicans believe no bill that large can pass their chamber. That left no clear legislative path forward, even as some 30 million jobless Americans have gone two weeks without emergency federal unemployment benefits that expired.
“They said they couldn’t go much above their existing $1 trillion. And that was disappointing,” Schumer said.
“We’re hopeful that they will think about it and come back and tell us they’re willing to meet us halfway,” he said.
But instead of additional negotiations the White House appears prepared to begin rolling out executive actions in coming days.
There are at least four executive issues that White House officials have said they’d like to target through executive orders, though the legal standing for such a move without Congress is unclear.
One target is to attempt to provide some relief to jobless Americans whose enhanced unemployment aid expired at the end of last month. White House officials have looked at potentially redirecting money from other programs toward unemployment benefits. Another target is to provide eviction relief for Americans who had been protected by a congressionally authorized eviction moratorium, but it expired last month as well.
The moratorium covered renters who live in homes with federally backed mortgages, which the Urban Institute estimates to be 12.3 million households.
White House officials are also looking to extend student loan flexibility to certain Americans, cognizant that a congressionally approved program for those borrowers expires next month.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow also said that Trump is poised to sign executive orders deferring payroll taxes, but the logistics of that is also unclear. It could not be immediately learned, for example, if Americans would ultimately have to repay any deferred tax cut.
A positive jobs report Friday morning appeared to harden the administration’s posture, with Kudlow pointing to the 1.8 million jobs added in July as evidence of a “self-sustaining recovery.”
Trump and White House officials have been eyeing the possibility of unilateral action all week, and Kudlow confirmed Friday that they were looking at “repurposing” hundreds of billions of dollars that have not yet been spent from earlier coronavirus relief legislation passed this spring.
The legality of such a moves is questionable, with Democrats insisting the White House can’t spend money without approval from Congress. But Trump has pushed the boundaries of executive authority in the past, including his move to declare a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border so he could raid Pentagon funds to build his wall.
Kudlow said the executive actions under consideration include moves to “reform unemployment” by providing a benefit for re-employment and a retention tax credit for employers.
Cutting the 7.65 percent payroll tax, which comes out of workers’ salaries and goes to fund Medicare and Social Security, has been a long-standing goal for Trump. Lawmakers in both parties question the value of such a move, partly because it would do little to help workers who are not actually employed. In recent days, White House officials have not been clear as to whether Trump believes he has the power to unilaterally defer the tax or actually cut it.
Before the meeting even started, Schumer and Pelosi heaped insults on Republicans in general and Meadows in particular, in comments that did not seem designed to engender fruitful negotiations.
“Basically, what’s happening is Mr. Meadows is from the Tea Party … and they don’t want to spend the necessary money,” Schumer said of the former North Carolina congressman, who was a leader of a faction of anti-spending rabble-rousers when he served in the House.
Pelosi said for the second day in a row that Republicans don’t give “a damn” about people in need.
For their part, Republicans accused Democrats of trying to get a political outcome instead of a deal, with the election approaching. …
August 7, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,084,440)
Deaths ( 163,800)
i’ll add a huge clarification to Dean Baker’s employment situation report Anne posted above (same as i added to NDD’s post here at Angry Bear)
local school districts actually employed 928,300 less in July than in June and state colleges and universities employed 31,900 less, so the 215,700 and 29,800 job gains reported in July were a statistical aberration, caused by a ‘normal’ seasonal adjustment…most of the large seasonal job cutback usually associated with the end of the school year actually occurred in April this year, and this month’s seasonal adjustments gave those normal school year job losses back in July; the unadjusted data shows that there were actually only 591,000 more payroll jobs extant in July than in June..
As US Stimulus Talks Near Collapse, Trump Eyes Executive Orders
The White House and top Democrats remain divided on a recovery
package and President Trump’s advisers said they would recommend he act on his own.
It was not clear what power Mr. Trump might have to extend jobless aid amid the pandemic, since Congress controls spending.
As the US stimulus talks falter again, Trump’s advisers say they would tell him to act on his own.
NY Times – August 7
Crisis negotiations between the White House and top Democrats teetered on the brink of collapse on Friday, as both sides said they remained deeply divided on an economic recovery package and President Trump’s advisers said they would recommend that he bypass Congress and act on his own to provide relief.
It was not clear what power Mr. Trump might have to move unilaterally to extend jobless aid or otherwise redirect federal relief money as he sees fit, since Congress controls spending. But the announcement by Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, that they were counseling him to do so reflected the failure of 10 days of marathon talks to reach a bipartisan compromise to pump more aid into the slowing economic recovery.
It came after another unproductive meeting between the administration officials and Democratic leaders, which ended with no agreement and no additional talks scheduled.
Democrats, who had earlier said they would be willing to lower their spending demands to $2 trillion from $3.4 trillion, said the White House, needed to return with a higher overall price tag, after Mr. Trump’s negotiators declined to accept that offer. Republicans have proposed a $1 trillion plan. …
… In a tweet, President Trump indicated he was ready to move on from the talks. “Pelosi and Schumer only interested in Bailout Money for poorly run Democrat cities and states. Nothing to do with China Virus! Want one trillion dollars. No interest. We are going a different way!” he wrote.
Mr. Mnuchin and Mr. Meadows demanded that Democrats agree to lower the amount of aid for state and local governments, and provide more specifics about how they were proposing to revive lapsed unemployment benefits.
“There’s both a top-line issue but also policy issues,” Mr. Mnuchin said after the meeting, which lasted more than an hour in Ms. Pelosi’s office. “I don’t want to speculate as to whether there is an agreement or not. We will continue to try to get an agreement that’s in the best interest of the people, and that’s why we’re here.”
While the executive orders have not yet been finalized, Mr. Meadows said it was likely that action would come over the weekend.
“This is not a perfect answer — we’ll be the first ones to say that,” he said. “But it is all that we can do and all the president can do within the confines of his executive power, and we’re going to encourage him to do it.”
Rjs:
I’ll add a huge clarification to Dean Baker’s employment situation report…
[ This looks to be so; nicely done. ]
Especially important:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-06/America-s-unholy-crusade-against-China-SJi2Xp4Wv6/index.html
August 5, 2020
America’s Unholy Crusade Against China
Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered an anti-China speech that was extremist, simplistic, and dangerous. If biblical literalists like Pompeo remain in power past November, they could well bring the world to the brink of a war that they expect and perhaps even seek.
By JEFFREY D. SACHS
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/technology/trump-wechat-tiktok-china.html
August 6, 2020
Trump Targets WeChat and TikTok, in Sharp Escalation With China
The government cited national security concerns in announcing sweeping restrictions on two popular Chinese social media networks, a move that is likely to be met with retaliation.
By Ana Swanson, Mike Isaac and Paul Mozur
A man named Andy Slavitt wrote an article for USA Today concerning the need to elect Biden to reset US coronavirus policy.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/08/04/trump-ignores-covid-deaths-need-for-national-strategy-column/5574327002/
He has a strategy. “The strategy would follow what we know works: a national mandate on mask wearing, closing all the hot spots for a period of time including bars and churches, drastically reducing travel, and shutting down what we had previously considered essential services but exposed too many to needless risk.” This might be a good strategy, but hard not to see that it is not a list of policies that would fall under the authority of the President, with the possible exception of travel restrictions, which are not detailed by Slavitt. The strategy does not mention areas that clearly are under Presidential authority such as directed production of ventilators, federal participation and support of vaccine development, federal support for development of COVID treatments, federal emergency medical support via field hospitals and hospital ships.
If you go by Slavitt’s coronavirus strategy, then elections of governors. county executives, mayors, city councils and such are more important than choosing between Trump and Biden.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-08/U-S-reports-show-racial-disparities-in-kids-with-COVID-19-SN19om12IU/index.html
August 8, 2020
U.S. reports show racial disparities in kids with COVID-19
Racial disparities in the U.S. coronavirus epidemic extend to children, according to two sobering government reports released Friday.
One of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports looked at children with COVID-19 who needed hospitalization. Hispanic children were hospitalized at a rate eight times higher than white kids, and Black children were hospitalized at a rate five times higher, it found.
The second report examined cases of a rare virus-associated syndrome in kids. It found that nearly three-quarters of the children with the syndrome were either Hispanic or Black, well above their representation in the general population.
The coronavirus has exposed racial fractures in the U.S. healthcare system, as Black, Hispanic and Native Americans have been hospitalized and killed by COVID-19 at far higher rates than other groups.
Meanwhile, the impact of the virus on children has become a political issue. President Donald Trump and some other administration officials have been pushing schools to reopen, a step that would allow more parents to return to work and the economy to pick up.
On Wednesday, Facebook deleted a post by Trump for violating its policy against spreading misinformation about the coronavirus. The post featured a link to a Fox News video in which Trump says children are “virtually immune” to the virus.
The vast majority of coronavirus cases and deaths have been in adults, and kids are considered less likely to have serious symptoms when they’re infected. Of the nearly five million cases reported in the U.S. as of Wednesday, about 265,000 were in children 17 and under – about five percent. Of the more than 156,000 deaths reported at that time, 77 were children – about 0.05 percent.
But Friday’s CDC reports are a “gut punch” reminder that some children are getting seriously ill and dying, said Carrie Henning-Smith, a University of Minnesota researcher who focuses on health disparities.
“It’s clear from these studies, and from other emerging research, that kids are not immune,” she said. “Kids can pass along COVID, and they can also suffer the effects of it.”
She said studies should give community leaders pause about opening schools. “We need to be really, really careful. We are potentially talking about putting children in unsafe situations,” Henning-Smith said.
The first CDC report released Friday was based on cases from 14 states. The researchers counted 576 hospitalizations of kids from March 1 through July 25. At least 12 were sick enough to need a machine to help them breathe. One died.
The hospitalization rate for Hispanic children was about 16.4 per 100,000. The rate for Black children was 10.5 per 100,000, and for white kids it was 2.1 per 100,000.
As with adults, many of the hospitalized children had existing health problems, including obesity, chronic lung conditions and – in the case of infants – preterm birth.
A number of possible factors could explain the disparities, said Dr. Cyrus Shahpar, who oversees epidemic prevention efforts for a not-for-profit data and advocacy organization called Vital Strategies.
Larger percentages of Hispanic and Black kids may go to hospital emergency rooms when they’re sick, which could be driven by difficulty getting into – or paying for – doctor’s office visits. That lack of access to regular health-care could lead to more severe illness, he suggested.
The second CDC report focused on 570 kids diagnosed with a rare condition, which CDC calls multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C. Ten of them died.
Some children with the syndrome have symptoms resembling Kawasaki disease, another rare childhood condition that can cause swelling and heart problems. Other symptoms include fever, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, neck pain, rash, bloodshot eyes or feeling extra tired.
“The underlying problem that results in MIS-C seems to be a dysfunction of the immune system,” said Dr. Ermias Belay, who is leading the CDC team looking into MIS-C cases.
The immune system kicks into overdrive when it sees the virus, releasing chemicals that can damage different organs, he added.
In the study, many of the patients with the condition had severe complications, including inflammation of the heart, shock, and kidney damage. Nearly two-thirds of the cases overall were admitted to intensive care units, and the average ICU stay was five days.
The CDC report covered illnesses that began from mid-February to mid-July. Forty states reported cases.
The report found that 13 percent of kids with the condition were white, while more than 40 percent were Hispanic and 33 percent were Black. Overall, about half of U.S. children are white, around 25 percent Hispanic and about 14 percent are Black, according to population estimates.
Scientists are still learning about the condition. Experts say genetics has nothing to do with why some racial and ethnic groups are more likely to be infected by the virus, get seriously sick from it or die from it. But it’s not yet clear if genetics play a role in the childhood inflammation condition, Shahpar and Belay said.
August 7, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,095,524)
Deaths ( 164,094)
India
Cases ( 2,086,864)
Deaths ( 42,578)
Mexico
Cases ( 462,690)
Deaths ( 50,517)
UK
Cases ( 309,005)
Deaths ( 46,511)
Germany
Cases ( 216,315)
Deaths ( 9,254)
France
Cases ( 197,921)
Deaths ( 30,324)
Canada
Cases ( 118,985)
Deaths ( 8,970)
China
Cases ( 84,565)
Deaths ( 4,634)
August 7, 2020
Coronavirus (Deaths per million)
UK ( 685)
US ( 495)
France ( 464)
Mexico ( 391)
Canada ( 237)
Germany ( 110)
India ( 31)
China ( 3)
Notice the ratios of deaths to coronavirus cases are 15.1%, 15.3% and 10.9% for the United Kingdom, France and Mexico respectively.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-08/Chinese-mainland-reports-31-new-COVID-19-cases-25-in-Xinjiang–SMtazzmMi4/index.html
August 8, 2020
Chinese mainland reports 31 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
The Chinese mainland registered 31 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Friday, with 6 cases from overseas and 25 domestically transmitted, Chinese health authority said Saturday.
All of the 25 domestically-transmitted cases are in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
No deaths related to the disease were reported Thursday, while 35 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals.
Chinese mainland new locally transmitted cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-08/Chinese-mainland-reports-31-new-COVID-19-cases-25-in-Xinjiang–SMtazzmMi4/img/71048da971ef427392616a7002bdf7e4/71048da971ef427392616a7002bdf7e4.jpeg
Chinese mainland new imported cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-08/Chinese-mainland-reports-31-new-COVID-19-cases-25-in-Xinjiang–SMtazzmMi4/img/d399405a337543b3a86b5c3fa38c3912/d399405a337543b3a86b5c3fa38c3912.jpeg
Chinese mainland new asymptomatic cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-08/Chinese-mainland-reports-31-new-COVID-19-cases-25-in-Xinjiang–SMtazzmMi4/img/66a58919eeef41c19d7b407da4ac9080/66a58919eeef41c19d7b407da4ac9080.jpeg
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/08/world/europe/coronavirus-nursing-homes-elderly.html
August 8, 2020
When Covid-19 Hit, Many Elderly Were Left to Die
By Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Matt Apuzzo and Monika Pronczuk
Photographs by Mauricio Lima
August 8, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,100,004)
Deaths ( 164,180)
Bloomberg CityLab @CityLab
An estimated 27% of adults in the U.S. missed their rent or mortgage payment for July. That’s probably going to be worse in August.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-07/survey-exposes-america-s-looming-rent-crisis
One-Third of American Renters Expected to Miss Their August Payment
An expansive census survey reveals a nation stretched to the brink by the financial toll of pandemic.
3:12 PM · Aug 7, 2020
Secretary Pompeo @SecPompeo
US government account
It’s outrageous that the @UN_HRC would offer a seat to Cuba, a brutal dictatorship that traffics its own doctors under the guise of humanitarian missions. Any country that values human rights should refrain from voting Cuba onto the Council.
8:51 AM · Aug 8, 2020
Interestingly, Cuba has a longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality rate than the United States:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=td5X
January 15, 2018
Life Expectancy at Birth for United States and Cuba, 1980-2018
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=qHGN
January 30, 2018
Infant Mortality Rate for United States and Cuba, 1980-2018
August 7, 2020
Coronavirus
Dominican Republic
Cases ( 77,709)
Deaths ( 1,259)
Deaths per million ( 116)
Cuba
Cases ( 2,829)
Deaths ( 88)
Deaths per million ( 8)
The Dominican Republic has been the fastest growing country in per capita GDP in the western hemisphere since 1971. Nonetheless, Cuba has had markedly better healthcare outcomes even though Cuba has been continually under United States sanctions. The coronavirus experience reflects a profound difference in healthcare systems, a difference reflected in other basic health characteristics of the countries.
August 8, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,110,557)
Deaths ( 164,453)
Ian Goodrum @isgoodrum
Totally not racist to imply anything with a Chinese origin is “dirty.”
Secretary Pompeo @SecPompeo
US government account
The U.S. expands the Clean Network by launching 5 new Clean initiatives–Clean Carrier, Clean Store, Clean Apps, Clean Cloud & Clean Cable–to secure Americans’ most sensitive information from the CCP’s surveillance state. We call on freedom-loving nations and companies to join us.
3:22 PM · Aug 7, 2020
Paul Krugman @paulkrugman
As Charlie Brown would say if he were an economics wonk, “Aaauuuuggghhh!” No, gold prices aren’t rising because investors expect inflation. They don’t. Gold is high because bond yields are so low 1/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/08/opinion/gold-investment-coronavirus.html
Why Is Everyone Buying Gold?
It’s one of the best performing assets in the world this year. That’s not a great sign.
12:05 PM · Aug 8, 2020
Here’s the 10-year breakeven inflation rate — the rate that would equalize yields on inflation-protected and ordinary bonds — plus the yield on those inflation-protected bonds 2/
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ee6RklsXoAUxea4?format=png&name=small
The implied inflation forecast is actually lower than it was last year; what’s happened is a plunge in yields, reflecting economic pessimism. Some weirdness in March, which I’ll explain next 3/
So, in March there was a near-collapse of financial markets, which drove down the price of anything not totally liquid, including inflation-protected bonds. Hence a brief yield spike and fall in apparent inflation expectations. But it was just a blip 4/
The thing is, we went through exactly this story in 2008-9: rising gold prices without rising inflation expectations bc of falling yields, and even a blip in TIPs prices during the post-Lehman financial disruption. No excuse for being confused now [end wonkish rant]/
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ee6Tc_wXYAMvw1r?format=png&name=small
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=tTyc
January 15, 2018
Interest Rate on 10-Year Treasury Inflation-Indexed Bonds and 10-Year Breakeven Inflation Rate, 2017-2018
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=tTyD
January 15, 2018
Interest Rate on 10-Year Treasury Inflation-Indexed Bonds and 10-Year Breakeven Inflation Rate, 2020
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=tTB2
January 15, 2018
Price of Gold and 10-Year Breakeven Inflation Rate, 2007-2018
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=tTAA
January 15, 2018
Price of Gold and 10-Year Breakeven Inflation Rate, 2017-2018
August 8, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 82,279)
Deaths ( 592)
Deaths per million ( 64)
———————————–
July 4, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 29,170)
Deaths ( 330)
Deaths per million ( 36)
When schools are opened incautiously.
August 8, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,120,955)
Deaths ( 164,577)
The data for a country with so expensive a healthcare system, represent a pervasive institutional problem. Anne Case and Angus Deaton have sought to tell us this for several years but received little attention in the telling.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/opinion/covid-inequality-health-care.html
April 14, 2020
America Can Afford a World-Class Health System. Why Don’t We Have One?
Our system takes from the poor and working class to generate wealth for the already wealthy.
By Anne Case and Angus Deaton
Anne Case and Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel laureate in economics, are professors at Princeton and the University of Southern California.
August 8, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,134,430)
Deaths ( 164,769)
Paul Krugman @paulkrugman
I don’t know if anyone else has said this, but payroll tax cuts are the hydroxychloroquine of economic policy. They won’t do anything to solve the employment crisis, but will have dangerous side effects. Yet Trump remains obsessed with them as a cure 1/
7:11 AM · Aug 9, 2020
We’ve lost millions of jobs, not because employers lack incentives to hire, but because many activities, like bars, indoor dining, inessential travel, elective medical care have been put on hold because of the risk of contagion 2/
Letting employers keep money they were supposed to be paying into Social Security and Medicare — no good reason to believe they’ll pass the savings on to workers — does nothing to remedy this problem 3/
It will, however, undermine the finances of programs that are absolutely crucial to the lives of older Americans. If you measure the quality of policy ideas on a scale of 1 to 10, this is a minus 5 or worse 4/
Even Senate Rs consider this a terrible idea. So where’s Trump getting it from? The immediate answer seems to be Stephen Moore, whose previous greatest hits include predicting that tax cuts would create a Kansas economic miracle 5/
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ee-bW8GWoAMt9sQ?format=png&name=small
Just a word about the other Trump “policy”, on unemployment benefits. He is NOT proposing to extend supplemental benefits. He’s calling for a new program, without Congressional authorization, that states are supposed to set up and provide with matching funds 6/
Two realities here: 1. The administrative capacity of state unemployment offices is stretched to the limit — it took months to provide expanded benefits, and some people never got them. They’re in no position to add a new program 7/
States are also broke because of coronavirus revenue losses and expenses. Even if they could reprogram their COBOL-driven computers fast enough, they wouldn’t have the money 8/
So this is policy by reality TV: an attempt to pretend that Trump is doing something, while providing no real relief for months at best. The fact is that Trump and those around him don’t know how to do policy 9/
August 8, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,149,723)
Deaths ( 165,070)
India
Cases ( 2,152,020)
Deaths ( 43,453)
Mexico
Cases ( 469,407)
Deaths ( 51,311)
UK
Cases ( 309,763)
Deaths ( 46,566)
Germany
Cases ( 216,896)
Deaths ( 9,261)
Canada
Cases ( 119,221)
Deaths ( 8,976)
China
Cases ( 84,596)
Deaths ( 4,634)
August 8, 2020
Coronavirus (Deaths per million)
UK ( 686)
US ( 498)
Mexico ( 398)
Canada ( 238)
Germany ( 110)
India ( 31)
China ( 3)
Notice the ratios of deaths to coronavirus cases are 15.1% and 10.9% for the United Kingdom and Mexico respectively.
August 9, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,159,283)
Deaths ( 165,186)
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-09/Chinese-mainland-reports-23-new-COVID-19-cases-15-in-Xinjiang-SO262GIj0Q/index.html
August 9, 2020
Chinese mainland reports 23 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
The Chinese mainland registered 23 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Saturday, with 8 cases from overseas and 15 domestically transmitted, Chinese health authority said Sunday.
All of the 15 domestically-transmitted cases are in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
No deaths related to the disease were reported Saturday, while 45 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals.
Chinese mainland new locally transmitted cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-09/Chinese-mainland-reports-23-new-COVID-19-cases-15-in-Xinjiang-SO262GIj0Q/img/9ae72f3afa6f4dbcb6523bc30476f1a2/9ae72f3afa6f4dbcb6523bc30476f1a2.jpeg
Chinese mainland new imported cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-09/Chinese-mainland-reports-23-new-COVID-19-cases-15-in-Xinjiang-SO262GIj0Q/img/a347c6bd77994d94bda2503760fe2f8f/a347c6bd77994d94bda2503760fe2f8f.jpeg
Chinese mainland new asymptomatic cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-09/Chinese-mainland-reports-23-new-COVID-19-cases-15-in-Xinjiang-SO262GIj0Q/img/732aadd612054269a8b1dd4ad2c2a67b/732aadd612054269a8b1dd4ad2c2a67b.jpeg
Niall Ferguson @nfergus
“TikTok is not just China’s revenge for the century of humiliation between the Opium Wars and Mao’s revolution. It is the opium — a digital fentanyl, to get our kids stoked for the coming Chinese imperium.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-09/tiktok-is-the-superweapon-in-china-s-cultural-warfare
TikTok Is Inane. China’s Imperial Ambition Is Not.
The U.S. won the Cold War by exporting its values, and China has a similar plan for Cold War II.
1:01 PM · Aug 9, 2020
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/27/magazine/the-empire-slinks-back.html
April 27, 2003
The Empire Slinks Back
By NIALL FERGUSON
Wheresoever the Roman conquers, he inhabits. — Seneca
Let me come clean. I am a fully paid-up member of the neoimperialist gang. Two years ago — when it was not at all fashionable to say so — I was already arguing that it would be ”desirable for the United States to depose” tyrants like Saddam Hussein. ”Capitalism and democracy,” I wrote, ”are not naturally occurring, but require strong institutional foundations of law and order. The proper role of an imperial America is to establish these institutions where they are lacking, if necessary . . . by military force.”
Should there be any confusion about what Niall Ferguson is about, this is an historian who made sure to ridicule * the work done by the New York Times on Black history in Americas. **
* https://twitter.com/nfergus/status/1292510652355891200
** https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html
August 9, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,173,857)
Deaths ( 165,297)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/09/us/california-contact-tracing.html
August 9, 2020
This Contact Tracer Is Fighting Two Contagions: The Virus and Fear
Convincing infected people to open up means helping them confront deeply held concerns about deportation or job loss.
By Jo Becker
August 9, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,194,872)
Deaths ( 165,557)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/09/world/coronavirus-covid-19.html
August 9, 2020
At least 97,000 children in the U.S. tested positive for the coronavirus in the last two weeks of July.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/09/world/coronavirus-covid-19.html
August 9, 2020
The Georgia high school whose crowded hallways flooded social media has nine new coronavirus cases.
August 9, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,199,444)
Deaths ( 165,617)
India
Cases ( 2,214,137)
Deaths ( 44,466)
Mexico
Cases ( 475,902)
Deaths ( 52,006)
UK
Cases ( 310,825)
Deaths ( 46,574)
Germany
Cases ( 217,281)
Deaths ( 9,261)
Canada
Cases ( 119,451)
Deaths ( 8,981)
China
Cases ( 84,619)
Deaths ( 4,634)
August 9, 2020
Coronavirus (Deaths per million)
UK ( 686)
US ( 500)
Mexico ( 403)
Canada ( 238)
Germany ( 110)
India ( 32)
China ( 3)
Notice the ratios of deaths to coronavirus cases are 15.0% and 10.9% for the United Kingdom and Mexico respectively.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-10/Chinese-mainland-reports-49-new-COVID-19-cases-SPJgxC6wwM/index.html
August 10, 2020
Chinese mainland reports 49 new COVID-19 cases, no new deaths
The Chinese mainland registered 49 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Sunday, with 35 cases from overseas and 14 domestically transmitted, Chinese health authority said Monday.
All of the 14 domestically transmitted cases are in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. And among the cases from overseas, 18 are in Shanghai.
Shanghai’s civil aviation department will strengthen the control measures for international flights and certain airlines will be halted as imported COVID-19 cases have been continuously reported on some inbound flights in Shanghai, according to local authorities on Monday.
No deaths related to the disease were reported on Sunday, while 64 COVID-19 patients were discharged from hospitals.
Chinese mainland new locally transmitted cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-10/Chinese-mainland-reports-49-new-COVID-19-cases-SPJgxC6wwM/img/2fd7686721c644b2be5737308cdc4d53/2fd7686721c644b2be5737308cdc4d53.jpeg
Chinese mainland new imported cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-10/Chinese-mainland-reports-49-new-COVID-19-cases-SPJgxC6wwM/img/a0a65a6299f549a784ee1604cdc17b50/a0a65a6299f549a784ee1604cdc17b50.jpeg
Chinese mainland new asymptomatic cases
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-10/Chinese-mainland-reports-49-new-COVID-19-cases-SPJgxC6wwM/img/639b17419789400d9c6b80c55eb8af4f/639b17419789400d9c6b80c55eb8af4f.jpeg
in keeping with the thread than Anne has going here…
Coronavirus: New Zealand marks 100 days without community spread – BBC News
New Zealand has gone 100 days without recording a locally transmitted Covid-19 case, a milestone that has both been welcomed and brought warnings against complacency.
The last case of community transmission was detected on 1 May, days after the country started easing its lockdown.
Sunday was the fourth day in a row that no new cases of Covid-19 were reported.
The total number of active cases in the country remained at 23, all in managed isolation.
Praised internationally for its handling of the pandemic, the country’s government has lifted almost all of its lockdown restrictions, first imposed in March.
An early lockdown, tough border restrictions, effective health messaging and an aggressive test-and-trace programme have all been credited with virtually eliminating the virus in the country.
August 10, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,210,423)
Deaths ( 165,756)
Rjs:
August 10, 2020
Coronavirus: New Zealand marks 100 days without community spread – BBC News
[ Very important, possibly especially so, since close-by Australia is now experiencing a community spread of infections. This is winter in the southern hemisphere and looking to countries below the Equator we find a serious spread of infections in countries from Indonesia to South Africa to Chile… ]
August 10, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,219,339)
Deaths ( 165,849)
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-10/Report-U-S-child-COVID-19-cases-surged-40-in-last-two-weeks-of-July-SQBK4uyjPa/index.html
August 10, 2020
U.S. reported over 97,000 child COVID-19 cases in last two weeks of July
The U.S. reported more than 97,000 child COVID-19 cases from July 16 to July 30, a 40-percent increase, according to a new report, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, based on publicly reported data from 49 states by the end of July.
The age range for children varied by state, with most states defining children as those up to age of 19 and one state – Alabama – pushing the limit to 24.
Cumulatively, 338,982 U.S. children tested positive for the coronavirus, accounting for 8.8 percent of the total confirmed cases in the country. That means 447 per 100,000 children were infected by the virus, the report showed.
At least 86 children have died since May. Last week, a 7-year-old boy with no pre-existing conditions became the youngest coronavirus victim in Georgia.
The report comes during back-to-school season, as health officials are trying to figure out how the virus affects children and how it’s spread among young people. Some schools have begun welcoming crowds back to class and others have had to readjust their reopening plan.
Some U.S. leaders – including President Donald Trump – have said the virus doesn’t pose a large risk to children. In July, Trump has urged schools to reopen even as coronavirus cases spiked.
But one recent study suggests teenagers can transmit the virus just as much as adults. Another study said children younger than five carry a higher viral load than adults, raising even more questions about their role in transmission.
August 10, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 5,230,157)
Deaths ( 165,935)
August 10, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 84,722)
Deaths ( 613)
Deaths per million ( 67)
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July 4, 2020
Coronavirus
Israel
Cases ( 29,170)
Deaths ( 330)
Deaths per million ( 36)
Israel appeared to have contained the spread of coronavirus infections, but under political pressure the government incautiously opened schools and businesses and the spread has been fierce and persistent since then.
August 10, 2020
Coronavirus
Dominican Republic
Cases ( 80,499)
Deaths ( 1,328)
Deaths per million ( 122)
Cuba
Cases ( 3,046)
Deaths ( 88)
Deaths per million ( 8)