Month: December 2020

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Business

‘I Am So Misplaced’: Black Owners Wrestle to Get Insurers to Pay Claims

‘I Am So Lost’: Black Homeowners Struggle to Get Insurers to Pay Claims

When a pipe burst and their house flooded in 2018, Deonne Burgess knew the cleanup was going to be chaotic. What she wasn’t expecting was a review by State Farm, her home insurer.

A State Farm claims adjuster tried to remove as many items as possible from a repair list of her home in Inglewood, a mostly black neighborhood in Los Angeles, Ms. Burgess said. The adjuster argued that State Farm didn’t have to pay to replace a door that was so damaged by the flood that it was no longer closed.

Ms. Burgess, the global payroll director for Wonderful Company, which makes packaged foods like pomegranate juice and pistachios, began to believe that she was treated with particular suspicion for being black. She told State Farm it was unlikely that policyholders would receive the same treatment in a white neighborhood.

“It was right after the Malibu fires and I said, ‘Nobody in Malibu would have to justify things like that,'” she said.

Ms. Burgess’ claims “are unfounded,” said Roszell Gadson, a state farm spokesman. “State Farm is committed to a diverse and inclusive environment in which all customers are treated with fairness, respect and dignity.”

Ms. Burgess could not prove that her experience with the state farm adjuster was racism. After all, the same insurer paid out a car insurance claim for their BMW 5 Series sedan, which was also destroyed by the flood; Another group of people took care of it and there wasn’t much to argue about. But Mark Young, the State Farm hired salesman who arranged for her walls and floors to be repaired, and Leonard Redway, the plumber Mrs. Burgess hired to fix a broken pipe, said Mrs. Burgess was treated worse than her white customers. Both are black too.

Redway said applicants in predominantly white, affluent neighborhoods would generally have a much easier time getting insurers to cover repair costs. “If I were in the year 90210, it would be almost like an open check,” he said, referring to the affluent Beverly Hills zip code. “Sometimes the adjusters don’t even come out to see it.”

Accusations of racism are often difficult to prove, but especially in homeowner insurance where insurers have a lot of discretion and don’t always provide detailed explanations as to why claims are denied. Because company representatives often review claims and assess an applicant’s credibility through home visits, face-to-face interactions, and other measures, biases can arise.

While claims disputes are hardly uncommon in the industry, many black customers say they feel they are being treated unfairly because of their race – something Jeff Major, a Manhattan-based public expert who haggles claims with insurance companies on behalf of policyholders, has testified to his work.

“You can actually tell a difference between a Caucasian family and an African-American, Hispanic, or Asian family,” Major said. “It’s kind of known. It is not talked about. It’s a culture. “

The insurers keep their policy sales and claims data firmly under control. They have long argued that the size and timing of disbursements, as well as the neighborhoods in which claims are registered and addressed, are proprietary information and disclosure of this data would affect their competitiveness. They guard it so eagerly that even most regulators do not have detailed information on how insurers evaluate individual claims.

Michael Barry, a spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group, said claims data is private because payouts are viewed as “losses” and disclosing them would “put insurers at a competitive disadvantage”.

Where data is publicly available, such as auto insurance, researchers have found that policies discriminate against black drivers by charging them higher premiums. But homeowner insurance was opaque.

Economy & Economy

Updated

Dec. Dec. 23, 2020 at 8:59 p.m. ET

Forcing insurers to segregate data can be difficult, in part because it is regulated by states, not the federal government. For example, federal laws that banned redlining for banks after the civil rights movement don’t apply equally to insurers. And by 2014, 17 states had no bans on racial discrimination by insurers, according to a group of university researchers.

In late September, the Federal Insurance Advisory Board, which includes top executives from the country’s largest insurers, voted against a proposal to investigate racist bias in the industry, fearing that the study would tarnish the distinction between the legitimate discretionary insurers’ claims Claimant and unfair bias.

To assess the veracity of their clients’ claims, insurers send adjusters to meet with claimants in person. This gives companies a wide range of discretion in determining the extent of the damage and what information should be classified as potentially fraudulent.

“Whenever there is a lot of discretion, that discretion can be influenced by implicit or explicit bias,” said Tom Baker, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who studied insurance payouts to victims of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Latino applicants have had significantly longer delays in receiving funds from insurers than white applicants.

Lisa Thompson, a black homeowner in Toledo, Ohio, had been living with her daughter while the roof of her home was being repaired when thieves broke into that home, stripped it and tore down her water heater, appliances, and part of her roof. Ms. Thompson filed a lawsuit with her insurer, Allstate.

A adjuster posted by the company accused them of orchestrating the theft, Ms. Thompson said. In order to pursue their claim, Allstate representatives would have to come to the offices of a law firm hired by the company to make a deposit. On December 9, 2019, Ms. Thompson spent nearly four hours answering questions about her employment history, family, and time at the home.

Allstate sent her a letter on June 8, saying that her claim is still being investigated and asked for an additional 180 days to complete the process. Shortly thereafter, she canceled her policy, saying her investigator found that Ms. Thompson did not qualify as a “resident” of her home because she lived with her daughter. But Ms. Thompson didn’t find out her claim had been denied when the New York Times contacted Allstate in November to inquire about her case. The insurer had sent the letter informing her of the denied claim to the address where Mrs. Thompson had not lived.

“We apologize for the failure of your client to receive this correspondence,” an Allstate representative later wrote to an attorney assisting Ms. Thompson with her claim. Your house will remain uninhabitable. She files a discrimination lawsuit against Allstate with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission.

Nicholas Nottoli, an Allstate spokesman, said the claim was denied “on the basis of facts after thorough investigation”. He added that the company had no record of its appraisal accusing Ms. Thompson of helping the thieves and that “race is not a factor in pricing, underwriting or claims settlement”.

Mr. Young, the salesman hired by State Farm to arrange repairs to Ms. Burgess’ house, saw insurers knock down other black customers and lobby on their behalf – even though his Los Angeles company, Valley Green, which specializes in the repair of damaged houses, depends on insurers for companies.

He fought on behalf of Langston Phillips, who nearly lost his house during a fight with his insurer Pacific Specialty. Three years ago, Mr. Phillips’s kitchen had been flooded in a burst pipe and ruined parts of his three-bedroom house in Inglewood. A Pacific Specialty appraiser found that the company owed Mr. Phillips to repair costs of just over $ 11,000. Mr. Phillips’ contractor said his house needs far more extensive repairs.

Pacific Specialty asked Mr. Young to take a look. Mr. Young decided the repairs would cost more than $ 33,000. A battle ensued in which Mr. Young sided with Mr. Phillips despite being hired by Pacific Specialty.

Because of the dispute, the amount Pacific Specialty was willing to pay to pay Mr. Phillips even reached him, forcing him to move into a single hotel room with his two children while he waited for his kitchen to be rebuilt. On a particularly bad day, he emailed a Pacific Specialty representative asking for clarification on when some of that money would arrive. “I’m so lost,” he wrote.

“We strive to pay claims as quickly and fairly as possible in order to bring the insured back to their pre-loss standard of living,” said Kara Holzwarth, Pacific Specialty General Counsel. “We find that water leakage can be fraught with disagreement.” She said Pacific Specialty’s treatment of Mr. Phillips had nothing to do with his race.

After two years of fighting, Mr. Phillips gave up. Concerned about the loss of the house, he moved back in and started working on weekends to pay for the repairs – replacing the cabinets, floors, and plumbing – that he was doing himself. “I’m bone tired,” he said.

Mr. Young has since realized that most insurers are unwilling to work with him. He is currently suing 17 insurance companies in succession for discrimination after the companies refused to include him on their supplier lists. He has reached a confidential settlement in his lawsuit against travelers and has pending complaints against others.

“I’m the only one who rattles the cages,” he said, “and says why don’t you give minority sellers work?”

Niraj Chokshi contributed to the coverage.

Categories
Entertainment

Jazz Onscreen, Depicted by Black Filmmakers at Final

Jazz Onscreen, Depicted by Black Filmmakers at Last

In the middle of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the new Netflix drama based on August Wilson’s acclaimed play, the title character drifts into a monologue. “White people don’t understand the blues,” muses Rainey (Viola Davis), an innovator at the intersection of blues and jazz with an indomitable trust in her own expressive machine.

“They hear it coming out, but they don’t know how it got there,” she says as she prepares to record in a 1927 Chicago studio. “They don’t understand that’s the way of life to talk.” You don’t sing to feel better, you sing because that is your way of understanding life. “

Time seems to stand still when Rainey speaks. The gap between their words and what white society is ready to hear shows well before us. They realize that this is the fertile space in which their music exists – an ungoverned area too full of spirit, expression and abstention for politics and law to interfere.

But maybe this scene is only so amazing because it was so rare in all of film history. With a few exceptions, the films have hardly ever told the story of jazz through the lens of black life.

Now, inexcusably late, that is beginning to change.

Piloted by veteran theater director George C. Wolfe, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” is one of three feature films released this holiday season that focus on jazz and blues. All of them were made by black directors or co-directors. The other two are New York stories: “Sylvie’s Love” by Eugene Ashe, a mid-century romance between a young jazz saxophonist and an aspiring TV producer, and “Soul”, a Pixar feature film by Pete Docter and Co – Director: Kemp Powers, who uses a pianist’s near-death experience to raise open questions about inspiration, compassion and how we all manage life’s endless counterpoint between frustration and resilience.

The films present black protagonists in full bloom – musically, visually, thematically – and give these characters a dimensionality and depth that the music itself reflects. It is reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s explanation of why she wrote Jazz, her novel in 1992: she wanted to examine the changes in African American life brought about by the great migration – changes she later wrote “were abundantly evident in music. ”

The new films surpass many, if not all, of the problems of past jazz films, which in the past have delineated the boundaries of the white gaze better than showing where the music came from or how it can transcend. White listening and patronage don’t really enter the narratives of these new films as anything other than distraction or necessary inconvenience.

Earlier this year, critic Kevin Whitehead released “Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories in Film,” an overview of jazz’s long history on screen. As he notes, jazz and cinema grew up together in the interwar period. But in those years and far beyond, writes Whitehead, the films repeatedly whitewashed jazz history: “In film for film, African-Americans who invented music are marginalized when white characters don’t push them completely off the screen . ”

It applied to “New Orleans,” a 1947 film starring Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday that was originally intended to be about Armstrong’s rise but was rewritten at the behest of its producers to focus on a story of white romance. It applied to “Paris Blues”, a 1961 vehicle for Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier, based on a novel about the interracial love affairs of two jazz musicians. However, this key element has been more or less deleted from the script. Ultimately, the film is about Newman’s trombonist Ram’s struggle to convince himself and others that jazz is worthy of his obsession. He insists that a career as an improvising musician requires such a unique dedication that he cannot sustain a relationship.

In the last few years, jazz has emerged most prominently on screen in the work of Damien Chazelle. His “Whiplash” (2014) and “La La Land” (2016) tell the stories of young white men who, like Ram, have painfully dedicated themselves to jazz and the associated feeling of excellence. In these films, jazz is a challenge and an albatross. But in “Sylvies Liebe”, “Ma Raineys Black Bottom” and “Soul” the music is more of an ointment: a river of possibility flowing through a hostile country and – as Rainey says in Wilson’s script – simply the language of life .

“Whiplash” focuses on the relationship between a demonic music teacher (played by JK Simmons in an Oscar-winning performance) and his most dedicated young student, Andrew (Miles Teller), who is driven by a desire to become a drum master. The film offers an insight into the current life after jazz in conservatories, in which the students learn their language using diagrams and theoretical frameworks. However, most teachers pay little attention to the spiritual or social properties of music. Again, we run into the slightly misogynistic – and deeply depressing – idea that devotion to music cannot coexist with romantic love and caring: Andrew’s dating behavior is disastrous, and he proudly declares that it’s music.

“La La Land” follows a pianist, Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), who left music school for a few years. At first he saw him dyspeptically hit the tape deck in his convertible and tried to memorize the notes on a recording of Thelonious Monk as if they were timetables. He sees himself as the guardian of the past successes of jazz and is committed to the opening of a club that preserves what is often referred to as “pure” jazz. It’s a cultural legacy that, as a fellow musician played by John Legend gently reminds him, hasn’t exactly asked for his help – though that doesn’t put him off.

There is a big difference between these characters’ relationships with jazz and those of, for example, Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha), the saxophonist in “Sylvie’s Love”, or Joe, the pianist in “Soul”. While Sylvie Robert watches while playing, she sees him settle deep inside himself. There is no gap between what he is on and off the stage other than that he could be freer up there. Performing doesn’t become an unhealthy obsession; So life is.

While “Sylvie’s Love” depends on a “Paris Blues” -like tension between art and romance, the two can ultimately coexist. Spike Lee’s “Mo ‘Better Blues” (1990) and “Crooklyn” (1994) were halfway there and showed what it looks like for jazz musicians to have loving marriages. (Lee, whose father is a jazz musician, doesn’t make it seem easy. But possible? Yes.) “Sylvie’s Love” takes this conflict and melts it away like great film romance can.

On many levels, “Soul” is the most expansive and impressive of the new jazz films. Joe, a middle school pianist and band teacher, is about to die when his mind creeps into the Great Before, where uninitiated souls prepare to invade bodies at birth. There he meets 22, an unruly soul who has failed to persuade a human body.

In his classroom, Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx) preaches the glory of jazz improvisation, drawing on a true story that haunted the famous pianist Jon Batiste, who made the music Joe plays, the film’s director, Docter, and the co-director had told Powers. “This is the moment I fell in love with jazz,” Joe recalls the first time he walked into a jazz club as a kid. He caresses the piano keys as he speaks. “Hear this!” he says. “See, the tune is just an excuse to get you out.”

After an accident lands Joe in intensive care and his soul drifts out of his body, he and 22 come up with a plan to bring him back to life. He finds out that all souls need a “spark” to touch their passion and guide them through life. He knows immediately that he plays the piano. That is his purpose in life. But one of the spiritual guides and counselors who populate the Great Before (all called Jerry) quickly makes it clear. “We don’t assign purposes,” said Jerry. “Where did you get this idea from? A spark is not a soul’s purpose. Oh, you mentors and your passions – your “intentions”, your meanings of life! So basic. “

Your conversation remains wonderfully open. But the point becomes clear, subtle as it is: Above meaning, above purpose, above any means to an end, there is only life. That is, music.

Categories
Health

Is Dairy Farming Merciless to Cows?

Is Dairy Farming Cruel to Cows?

Stephen Larson, attorney for Dick Van Dam Dairy, described the images as staged or taken out of context. Earlier this month, a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by another animal rights organization against the farm. “The allegation that they mistreated their cows is something that affects the Van Dam family very deeply because the truth is that they have looked after all of their cows for generations,” said Larson.

Dairy industry experts and farmers who watched the footage expressed their dislike, saying the abuses depicted were not the norm. “These videos make every dairy farmer and veterinarian sick because we know the vast majority of farmers would never do such things to their cows,” said Dr. Carie Telgen, president of the American Association of Bovine Practitioners.

Efforts to turn Americans against dairy products are gaining momentum at a time when many of the country’s farms are struggling to make a profit. Milk consumption has fallen 40 percent since 1975, a trend that is accelerating as more people consume oat and almond milk. In the last ten years, 20,000 dairy farms have ceased operations, which, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, corresponds to a decrease of 30 percent. And the coronavirus pandemic has forced some producers to dump unsold milk down the drain as demand for school lunch programs and restaurants have dried up.

During his Academy Awards for Best Actor last February, Joaquin Phoenix received rousing applause when he urged viewers to turn down dairy products.

“We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow, and when she is born we steal her baby, although her screams of fear are unmistakable,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion. “And then we take their milk, which is intended for the calf, and put it in our coffee and cereal.”

The National Milk Producers Federation, which represents most of the country’s 35,000 dairy farmers, has tried to combat the bad mood in the public by promoting better animal welfare among its members. This means encouraging more frequent vet visits, low-wage workers receiving regular training in handling humane cows, and phasing out tail docking – the once ubiquitous practice of removing a cow’s tail.

“I don’t think there are farmers out there who are not doing their best to improve the care and welfare of their animals,” said Emily Yeiser Stepp, who leads the association’s 12-year animal care initiative. “Even so, we cannot be deaf to consumer values. We have to do better and give them a reason to stay in the duct. “

Categories
Business

How Joe Biden can speed up the transition to scrub vitality

How Joe Biden can accelerate the transition to clean energy

US President-elect Joe Biden speaks about the latest massive cyber attack against the US and other targets of the Biden administration in Wilmington, Delaware, December 22, 2020.

Leah Millis | Reuters

As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, we are facing a green industrial revolution. Now is the time for President-elect Joe Biden and his brilliant team of scientific, economic and national security experts to work with the private sector to accelerate this historic transition to a low-carbon world.

With an ambitious $ 2 trillion plan to address the climate change threat more broadly than any other government, the Biden presidency could mark a turning point in federal government policy and usher in a new era for clean energy.

And the newly announced Biden environmental team will find a receptive business community to work with. In recent years, efforts to combat climate change in the United States have not been led by the federal government and federal politics – although many states and cities have continued to act independently – but by corporations and financial markets.

The private sector has increasingly focused on sustainability and climate risks, not only due to heightened climate change awareness and accountability to stakeholders, but also due to dramatic innovations that have significantly lowered the price of clean energy and catalyzed a shift in creating markets, Create financial incentives and motivate companies and institutional investors to benefit from these trends.

In fact, renewable energy is cheaper than traditional electricity generation for more than two thirds of the world. It was only last year that electricity generation from renewable sources surpassed coal in the US for the first time in modern times.

It was also a turning point for corporate climate announcements as more companies set goals for zero net emissions with clear timelines and actions.

Meanwhile, more and more investors are refusing to invest in conventional energy sources as economics become less attractive and they focus instead on clean technologies. The value of private equity investments in renewable energy projects has doubled in the past year, and in the past year and a half, venture finance for climate tech companies has increased from $ 418 million in 2013 to $ 16.1 billion -Dollar.

It was also a turning point for corporate climate announcements as more companies set goals for zero net emissions with clear timelines and actions. A number of tech companies announced significant decarbonization goals, including Google, which is committed to offsetting all the carbon it has ever emitted and being 100% renewable by 2030.

In the transportation sector, JetBlue was the first US airline to achieve CO2 neutrality for all domestic flights. In the telecommunications sector, AT&T has pledged net carbon neutrality by 2035 and introduced a new climate change analysis tool to quantify climate risks across the network. In particular, several major oil and gas companies have pledged to decarbonize their businesses significantly this year, including BP, Shell and, just last month, Equinor.

According to a recent report that analyzes progress under the Paris Agreement and finds significant private sector momentum, over 1,500 companies, with combined sales of $ 12.5 trillion, have now set net zero emissions targets.

Throughout modern history, there have been a number of turning points in the energy sector that have brought about transformative change: the industrial revolution in the 1750s and 1760s, which ushered in the rise of coal power and the use of steam; the invention of the first widespread light bulb in the 1870s, which extended the working day and improved the quality of life; and the rise of oil, which in 1964 overtook coal as the main global energy source and ushered in a new era of mass production and global transportation.

Today we are at a different turning point as we continue on the path towards a clean world. But we have to accelerate the pace and act faster and more comprehensively in order to counter the existential risks and costs of climate change.

In 2020 the private sector led the way, but the federal government still has an opportunity to get involved again. The future Biden administration should set up a Sustainable Recovery Task Force composed of business and labor leaders who can offer climate and economic policy a private sector perspective, and call a summit on better reconstruction within the first 100 days. Participate in the private sector representative. Advance a detailed climate agenda.

We believe this moment represents a historic opportunity for our new national leadership to join forces with corporations and institutional investors to take bold climate action to accelerate the global transition to a low-carbon economy.

Laura Tyson, a former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration, is a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley and a member of the Board of Advisors for Angeleno Group, LLC, an energy and climate solutions investment firm . Daniel Weiss is co-founder and managing partner of the Angeleno Group.

Categories
Politics

Reduction Package deal Grows as Marketing campaign Situation in Georgia Senate Races

Relief Package Grows as Campaign Issue in Georgia Senate Races

The $ 900 billion pandemic relief package that President Trump was late in signing Sunday night gained momentum as an issue in the Georgia Senate runoff election on Monday.

“Aid is on the way,” tweeted Senator Kelly Loeffler Monday morning, welcoming the stimulus package with its billions of dollars in the distribution of vaccines, schools and other beneficiaries and a payment of $ 600 to millions of Americans. She and her incumbent, David Perdue, released a statement on Sunday evening thanking the president for the final approval of the stimulus funds to avoid Mr Trump upset the fate of the bill last week by calling it “disgrace” demanding that direct payments be increased to $ 2,000.

At the same time, the two Democratic candidates – Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock – on Monday criticized the Republican-led Senate for months of keeping its feet on the bill. They called the $ 600 payments too small and took up the president’s request for larger payments to strengthen their position.

“David Perdue doesn’t care about us, and $ 600 is a joke,” Mr. Ossoff told hundreds of people at an outdoor rally with Mr. Warnock in DeKalb County, one of the suburbs of Atlanta, has become increasingly diverse over the past decade.

“You are sending me and Reverend Warnock to the Senate and we will put money in your pocket,” said Mr. Ossoff. He faces Mr Perdue in the runoff election while Mr Warnock challenges Ms. Loeffler.

Mr Perdue has run ads attacking Mr Ossoff for calling the $ 600 relief checks a “joke” when the President also called them far too small. Mr Ossoff wrote on Twitter that Mr Perdue did not even endorse a first round of direct payments last spring.

With election day in Georgia a little over a week away, Mr. Trump’s initial refusal to sign the stimulus package had put Ms. Loeffler and Mr. Perdue in a delicate position. Both had supported the measure, which was passed with a direct payment of $ 600, but both are strong supporters of Mr. Trump and risked angering him if they publicly broke with him about the need to sign the bill.

“The president continues to put both incumbent Republican senators in difficult places during a highly competitive Senate runoff,” said Bill Crane, a longtime Georgia political agent and analyst who worked for candidates in both parties.

Despite the confusion, the president tweeted Sunday that he would make a final campaign appearance on behalf of the two senators in Dalton, Georgia, a carpet-making center in the north. The two races have attracted national attention and a record inflow of money because of their potentially crucial role in determining the balance of power in the Senate.

If both Mr Ossoff and Mr Warnock win, there will be a 50-50 split, with control of the chamber shifting to the Democrats as Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris is able to break ties.

The fate of the two Senators in the unusual double runoff election could be attributed to turnout in Dalton and the rest of northwest Georgia, a conservative area where Mr Trump received 70 percent or more of the vote in most counties. His decision to visit the region where he remains popular appeared to be aimed at last-minute motivation among Republican voters.

The election appeared to be aimed at a record turnout in a runoff election. 2.1 million Georgians had already cast ballots either in places with early voting or by postal vote. The largest voter turnout so far has been in the democratic areas around Atlanta.

Mr Crane said he saw benefits for the Democrats in the early voting, electoral enthusiasm and money. “Democrats kill postal votes,” said Crane, finding, according to an analysis of the Atlanta Journal’s constitution, that 76,000 new voters had registered since the November election.

“That speaks again for enthusiasm and would play for the democratic side,” he said.

Republicans have raised concerns that Mr. Trump’s repeated complaints about “rigged elections” – a false claim he made to explain his loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr. – will deter voters in their party from voting to decide for the runoff election in the Senate. Mr Crane said the message from far-right commentators on electoral fraud had lasted in the state and some Georgians were confused about whether their votes would count. “Georgia is still at odds over whether we should vote at all,” he said.

With the early polls going through December, Mr Warnock and Mr Ossoff’s campaigns on Monday focused on encouraging voters to vote. Several rappers performed at their drive-in event in the parking lot of a Baptist church, including Shelley FKA DRAM, JID, Tokyo Jetz and BRS Kash.

Mr. Ossoff, who runs a documentary production company, and Mr. Warnock, the pastor of a historic church in Atlanta, encouraged their supporters to go to early voting venues or drop their ballots in. “The whole country is watching voters in Georgia to see what we will do at this historic moment,” Ossoff said.

Both Mr Ossoff and Mr Warnock – as well as Democrats on Capitol Hill – viewed the economic reviews as a profitable problem and had used both the lower payments and the president’s opposition to the stimulus package to increase their chances in Georgia. On Monday, hours before the House of Representatives decided to move ahead with the $ 2,000 stimulus checks requested by Mr. Trump, Ossoff tweeted, “@Perduesenate, when are you going to sign $ 2,000 aid checks for Georgians?”

Categories
Business

‘You’re on Mute’ and ‘Unprecedented’: The Phrases of the 12 months

‘You’re on Mute’ and ‘Unprecedented’: The Words of the Year

“You’re dumb” was said in 1,000 percent more calls between executives and investors in 2020 compared to 2019.

December 29, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic released a new dictionary in 2020, and it appears that the American company started speaking a new language overnight. In conversations between executives and investors, there were a number of words and phrases used to describe the … unprecedented moment we were all in. These are some of the terms that have skyrocketed in use this year based on more than 20,000 corporate presentations we analyzed with Sentieo, a research company. (Surprisingly, executives swore as much as they did last year.)

+ 70,830%

“These are unprecedented times. Much of our reopening is not just our decision. We are not in full control. ” Christine McCarthy, CFO of the Walt Disney Company September 9th

“We have never been in a challenging environment.” Larry Culp Jr., CEO of General Electric 28th of October

“So expanding the shelter on site – or frankly I would call it the forcible detention of people in their homes against all of their constitutional rights – but that’s my opinion – and breaking people’s freedoms in terrible and wrong ways not why people came to America or built this country. What the (expletive). Excuse me. It’s outrage. It’s an outrage. ” Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla April 29

Source: Sentieo • Figures come from transcripts of investor calls for all companies listed on the US stock exchange. Prevalence is measured by the number of transcripts that contain a phrase, not all of the individual mentions. Data as of December 28th. • Illustration from the New York Times

Categories
Health

You’re Contaminated With the Coronavirus. However How Contaminated?

You’re Infected With the Coronavirus. But How Infected?

With Covid-19 patients flocking to hospitals across the country, doctors face an impossible question. Which patients in the emergency room are more likely to get worse quickly and which are most likely to fight the virus and recover?

As it turns out, there may be a way to differentiate these two groups, although it’s not yet widely used. Dozens of research published in the past few months found that people with bodies full of coronaviruses were more likely to get seriously ill and die more often, compared to people who carried much fewer viruses and were more likely to be relatively unharmed.

The results suggest that knowing what is known as viral load – the amount of virus in the body – could help doctors predict a patient’s course and more accurately distinguish those who may only need an oxygen check once a day from those who need it monitored, said Dr. Daniel Griffin, an infectious disease doctor at Columbia University in New York.

Tracking viral load “can actually help us stratify risk,” said Dr. Griffin. The idea is not new: viral load management has long been the foundation of caring for people living with HIV and stopping the transmission of this virus.

Little effort has been made to track viral loads in Covid-19 patients. However, earlier this month the Food and Drug Administration announced that clinical laboratories may report not only whether a person was infected with the coronavirus, but also how much virus was transmitted in their body.

This is not a change in policy – laboratories could have reported this information all along, according to two senior FDA officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity for not having the authority to speak publicly on the matter.

Still, the news came as a welcome surprise to some of the experts who have spent months pushing laboratories to record this information.

“This is a very important step by the FDA,” said Dr. Michael Mina, epidemiologist at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. “I think it’s a step in the right direction to make the most of one of the little pieces of data we have for a lot of positive people.”

The FDA change followed a similar move by the Florida Department of Health to require all laboratories to report this information.

Omitting viral load from test results was a missed opportunity not only to optimize strained clinical resources but also to better understand Covid-19, experts say. For example, an analysis of viral load shortly after exposure could reveal whether people who die of Covid-19 are more likely to have high viral loads at the onset of their illness.

And a study published in June showed that the viral load decreased as the immune response increased, “just as you would expect from an old virus,” said Dr. Alexander Greninger, a virologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. who directed the study.

An increase in the average viral load across communities could indicate an increasing epidemic. “We can get an idea of ​​whether the epidemic is growing or decreasing without relying on the number of cases,” said James Hay, postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Mina’s laboratory.

Fortunately, viral load data – or at least a rough approximation of it – is readily available to feed into the results of the PCR tests that most laboratories use to diagnose coronavirus infection.

A PCR test is performed in “cycles”, doubling the amount of viral genetic material originally taken from the patient sample. The higher the initial viral load, the fewer cycles the test takes to find genetic material and generate a signal.

A positive result at a low cycle threshold or Ct implies a high viral load on the patient. If the test is positive after completing many cycles, the patient is likely to have a lower viral load.

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York recorded the viral load of more than 3,000 hospitalized Covid-19 patients on the day they were admitted. They found that 40 percent of patients with high viral loads – whose tests were positive at a Ct of 25 or less – died in the hospital, compared with 15 percent of those who tested positive at higher Ct and presumably lower viral loads.

In another study, the Nevada Department of Health found an average Ct of 23.4 in people who died from Covid-19 compared to 27.5 in people who survived their diseases. People who were asymptomatic had a mean of 29.6, suggesting they carried much fewer viruses than the other two groups.

These numbers seem to vary very little, but they represent millions of virus particles. “These are not subtle differences,” said Dr. Greninger. A study from his lab showed that patients with a Ct less than 22 were more than four times as likely to die within 30 days as compared to those with a lower viral load.

However, using Ct values ​​to estimate viral load is a difficult practice. Viral load measurements for HIV are highly accurate because they are based on blood samples. Tests for the coronavirus rely on wiping your nose or throat – a process that is subject to user error and the results of which are less consistent.

The amount of coronavirus in the body changes drastically as the infection progresses. The levels go from undetectable to positive test results in just a few hours, and the viral load continues to rise until the immune response sets in.

Then the viral load decreases rapidly. However, viral fragments can remain in the body and produce positive test results long after the patient is no longer infectious and the disease has resolved.

Given this variability, capturing viral load at a given point in time may not make sense if there is no more information about the progression of the disease, said Dr. Celine Gounder, Infectious Disease Specialist at Bellevue Hospital Center and a member of the Coronavirus Inbound Management Advisory Group.

“When do you measure the viral load on this curve?” Asked Dr. Gounder.

The exact relationship between a Ct value and the corresponding viral load can vary between tests. Instead of validating this quantitative relationship for each machine, the FDA authorized the tests to provide diagnoses based on a limit value for the cycle threshold.

Most manufacturers conservatively set the thresholds for diagnosing their machine between 35 and 40. These values ​​generally correspond to an extremely low viral load. However, the exact threshold for a positive result or for a certain Ct as an indication of infectivity depends on the instrument used.

“So I’m very concerned about many of these Ct-based ratings,” said Susan Butler-Wu, director of clinical microbiology at the University of Southern California.

“Of course it is a value that can be useful in certain clinical circumstances,” said Dr. Butler-Wu, “but the idea that you can have a unicorn Ct that correlates perfectly with an infectious or non-infectious condition makes me very nervous.”

Other experts recognized these limitations, but said that the benefits of collecting Ct values ​​outweighed the concerns.

“All of these are valid points when looking at the test results of an individual patient, but they don’t change the fact that, on average, looking at the results of the admission tests of these Ct values, actually identifies patients at high risk of decompensation will and die, “said Dr. Michael Satlin, an infectious disease physician and lead researcher on the Weill Cornell Study.

Dr. Satlin said adjusting his team’s results for duration of symptoms and various other variables did not change the high risk of death in high viral load patients. “Regardless of how you try to statistically adjust, that association is extremely strong and won’t go away,” he said.

At the population level, too, Ct values ​​can be valuable during a pandemic, said Dr. Hay. High viral loads in a large group of patients may indicate recent exposure to the virus, suggesting an incipient increase in community transmission.

“This could be a great monitoring tool for less well-equipped facilities that need to understand the course of the epidemic but are unable to conduct regular, random tests,” said Dr. Hay.

Overall, information on the viral load is too valuable to be ignored or discarded without analysis.

“One of the things that has been difficult with this pandemic is that everyone wants to do evidence-based medicine and do it at the right pace,” said Dr. Greninger. “But we should also expect certain things to be true, like that more viruses are usually not good.”

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World News

Croatia Hit by Sturdy Earthquake

Croatia Hit by Strong Earthquake

At least one person was killed and a city in central Croatia was left in ruins after a strong 6.4 magnitude earthquake Tuesday, according to the US Geological Survey and local officials.

The full extent of the victims was not known. There were reports that the quake, which occurred just after noon local time, about 30 miles from the capital, Zagreb, could be felt in the Balkans and as far as Hungary.

The epicenter of the quake was near the town of Petrinja, and the mayor Darinko Dumbovic told Croatian state television that at least one person, a 12-year-old girl, had been killed. He said he passed her body on the street.

“This is a disaster,” he said. “My city is completely destroyed.”

“We need firefighters, we do not know what is under the surface, a roof has fallen on a car, we need help,” he said in an emotional telephone interview from the scene that was broadcast on Croatian state television.

“Mothers cry for their children,” he said.

Images from the city on social media and local TV showed streets littered with rubble, buildings with collapsed roofs, and rescue workers looking for people who might be trapped.

In the moments after the earth stopped shaking, orange dust filled the air as car alarms went off, church bells rang, and calls for survivors rang through the streets.

In a dramatic rescue, a man and a child were pulled from a car buried under rubble. The mayor told local reporters that he did not know the condition of the two people, but that they appeared to be alive.

“I also heard the kindergarten collapsed,” he said, adding, “Fortunately, there were no children in the building at the time.”

The Red Cross in Croatia said it was a “very serious” situation.

The earthquake was the second to hit the area in two days after a 5.2 magnitude tremor on Monday morning damaged buildings and fueled fears in a region with a history of seismic activity.

It took only a few hours for Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and President Zoran Milanovic to tour the center of Petrinja to investigate the damage caused by the first quake.

While that first tremor caused no injuries, Mr Dumbovic said many buildings had been damaged, which left them in a precarious state when the second quake erupted.

He said there had been several small earthquakes in the past few days and that many residents were afraid to spend the night in their homes.

In Zagreb, where people took to the streets during the quake, many decided to ignore the current travel ban in order to limit the spread of the coronavirus and leave the city.

In neighboring Slovenia, the state news agency announced that the country’s only nuclear power plant, located about 100 km from the epicenter, has been shut down as a precaution.

The Hungarian Paks nuclear power plant said in a statement that it had not stopped production even though the earthquake was felt there.

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, said she had asked Janez Lenarcic, the European Commissioner for Crisis Management, to be ready to travel to Croatia to provide assistance.

The region is prone to earthquakes and experts have warned that the Balkans in south-eastern Europe have not addressed the risks of aging buildings.

While many towns and villages trace their roots back hundreds of years, a building boom that happened in the 1990s during the transition from communism to capitalism often meant that structures were built without regard to safety standards.

The result is that millions of people are living in buildings that are unlikely to survive a major earthquake, experts say.

In Croatia, the scars of past quakes are still visible in places like Dubrovnik, where a quake in 1667 destroyed almost a third of the city and killed more than 5,000 people.

Alisa Dogramadzieva and Joe Orovic contributed to the coverage.

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Business

Pierre Cardin, ground-breaking designer, dies

Pierre Cardin, ground-breaking fashion designer, dies

Designer Pierre Cardin poses during the launch of the new Haute Couture collection by Pierre Cardin Paris at Maxim on November 26, 2013 in Paris.

Richard Bord | Getty Images

Pierre Cardin, who in his more than seven decades in fashion brought geometric shapes to haute couture and named everything from clothing to furniture and perfume to pens, died Tuesday. He was 98 years old.

“It is with great sadness that the members of the Academy of Fine Arts announce the death of their colleague Pierre Cardin,” tweeted the French Academy of Fine Arts.

Cardin died in a hospital in Neuilly, west of Paris, his family told Agence France-Presse.

Cardin switched from the world of bespoke high fashion for private customers to ready-to-wear designs for the masses.

“You said Pret-a-Porter would kill your name and it saved me,” Cardin once said.

Cardin was born on July 2, 1922, the son of a wealthy wine merchant near Venice. When he was two years old, he and his family moved from fascist Italy to France.

Cardin was only 14 years old when he started as an apprentice tailor. At the age of 23 he moved to Paris, studied architecture and worked at the Paquin fashion house and later at Elsa Schiaparelli. In the French capital he met the film director Jean Cocteau and helped design masks and costumes for the 1946 film “La Belle et La Bete”.

He switched to Christian Dior in 1946 and worked as a pattern tailor on the female “New Look” fashion of the post-war period. Four years later he opened his own fashion house and designed costumes for the theater.

In 1953 he presented his first women’s collection and the following year he opened his first women’s boutique, Eve, and unveiled the Bubble dress. The garment, a loose fitting dress that gathers at the waist and hem and balloons on the thighs, has been recognized internationally. Soon his fashion was worn by such bold names as Eva Peron, Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, Mia Farrow and Jacqueline Kennedy.

Pierre Cardin at the opening of the Musee Pierre Cardin on November 13, 2014 in Paris.

Pascal Le Segretain | Getty Images

In 1957 he traveled to Japan and was one of the first European designers to explore Asian influences. He later pioneered China to break out of its drab, militaristic Mao Zedong look.

Also in 1957, he opened another Parisian boutique, this time for men by the name of Adam, with colorful ties and printed shirts. He later made the iconic collarless suits for the Beatles and helped attract clients like Gregory Peck. Rex Harrison and Mick Jagger.

“Before me, no designer made clothes for men, only tailors,” Cardin said in an interview with Agence France-Presse in 2009. “Today, the image of designers is more focused on men than women, right or wrong. So I was right 40 or 50 years ago. “

In 1959, he shocked the fashion world by presenting a ready-to-wear show at a department store, Printemps in Paris. After the show, he was expelled from the Elite Chambre Syndicale, the French association of haute couture designers. (He was later reinstated.)

The French fashion designer Pierre Cardin opened his own fashion house in 1950.

Reg Lancaster | Getty Images

Over-the-top fashion from out of this world

With the advent of the US-Russia space race in the late 1950s and 1960s, he launched the “Cosmocorps” collection – exaggerated unisex fashions from around the world. His space age look included helmets, google, tunics and over-the-knee boots.

“My favorite piece of clothing is what I invent for a life that doesn’t yet exist, the world of tomorrow,” he said.

Or as he put it in an interview with AFP 2009: “Fashion and design are not the same. Fashion can be worn. Design can be uncomfortable and unpopular, but it’s creative. So design is the real value.”

He pioneered branding in the 1970s, giving his name to virtually everything, including automobiles – Cardin AMX Javelin from American Motors Corp. from 1971 – perfume, pens, cigarettes and even sardines. He has been called a “Branding Visionary” by the New York Times. A 2002 article found that around 800 products bearing his name were sold in more than 140 countries for $ 1 billion in annual sales.

In 1981, he bought one of Paris’ most iconic names, Maxim’s Restaurant, for more than $ 20 million.

“I’ve done everything! I even have my own water! I make perfumes, sardines. Why not? During the war, I would have rather smelled the scent of sardines than perfume. If someone had asked me to make toilet paper, I would do it. Why not? ”he said in a 2002 interview with The Times.

He loved using geometric and strange designs. He developed a fabric, cardine, to emboss abstract shapes on garments. One of his residences was the Palais Bulles (Bubble Palace), a bizarre collection of circular structures – a la “The Flintstones” meets “The Jetsons” – overlooking the Mediterranean Sea near Cannes.

In May 2003, Pierre Cardin celebrated his 80th birthday and 50 years of fashion design in his Palais Bulles.

Alain Benainous | Getty Images

He also owned and restored the castle of the Marquis de Sade in Provence, where he held concerts and opera performances. “Cardin has a perfect angle,” said Architectural Digest in a 2007 story of the restoration of the castle, which was originally built in the 15th century.

Although Cardin was gay, he had a five-year affair with Moreau, “the queen of French new wave cinema”. During the affair, according to The Hollywood Reporter, he had a relationship with longtime artistic director and life partner Andre Oliver. Oliver died in 1993.

Cardin’s fascination with space led him to NASA, where he tried on an Apollo 11 spacesuit in 1971, two years after the first moon landing. In 2019, 50 years after the first moon landing, the Brooklyn Museum hosted a Cardin retrospective. In the catalog he was asked about his vision of fashion half a century in the future:

“In 2069 we will all be walking on the moon or Mars with my ‘Cosmocorps’ ensembles. Women will wear plexiglass bell hats and tube clothing. Men will wear elliptical pants and kinetic tunics.”

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Categories
Health

Runners’ Submit-Pandemic Desires – The New York Occasions

Runners’ Post-Pandemic Dreams - The New York Times

This was a different and difficult year for running. The Olympic Games have been postponed, major marathons and races canceled and even group runs largely off the table. We asked readers what they dream of once it is safe to meet again. Here’s what some of our ongoing readers had to say. (The answers have been edited and compressed.)

If you have any future running dreams you’d like to tell us about, please add them in the comments.

Looking forward to the day when I can train for my first marathon, five minutes before the start of the race, I’m nervous and wondering if I should really wait in line for that toilet or if I have it in me to get it Carrying On X Miles I sprinted through the finish line despite feeling like I was only two miles back and lived for that warm shower right after feeling all of my chafing patches of skin that was sure to have over 1,000 calories in fuel from a laden burger paired with sweet potato fries at the local pub who then went home and immediately fell asleep dreaming that I could do it all over again next time. – Holly Tran, Connecticut

I want to be able to race again and take part in triathlons in every state in the United States. As much as I’ve gotten into the virtual run, I want to feel the exhilaration of standing in line with hundreds or even thousands of people and sharing that moment as we cross the starting line. I want to smile at the people next to me as if to say it was worth the wait to wear a mask and stay safe. – Dan Frank, Southborough, Mass.

Recognition…Angela Johnson

I am a front line worker. I never lost any income or routine. I saw people socialized at work and had new people every day to speak to in the hospital. The only thing I lost from a truly personal, selfish aspect was the chance to run the Boston Marathon, which required three years of training, qualification, and planning. So – if and when the pandemic ends – I’ll be making this pilgrimage from Michigan to Hopkinton to walk the 42 km when it is safe for the rest of my family to be there to partake of the experience. I bought the party jacket from the Boston Athletic Association, but I refuse to wear it until I physically complete this course. – Joshua Johnson, Grand Rapids, Mich.

By the time I run my next marathon, I’ll be entering a new age group and should really qualify for Boston. Unless they shorten qualifying times. Once again. – Deborah Freedberg, Portland, Ore.

Recognition…JoAnn Wanamaker

In the fall of 2019, I started running Back on My Feet, which combats homelessness through running and community support. We met at 5:45 a.m. three days a week to run or take a walk. This all came to a standstill at Covid, and while there have been some soft reboots, it’s not back to normal with the positive energies of hugs and high fives or seeing smiling faces. I look forward to getting back to the morning circle ups and sunrise walks. – Andrew Udis, New York, NY

Recognition…Kate McGuinness

I look forward to something as simple as meeting up with my usual group of running friends on St. Stephens Day (Boxing Day) to run our usual 5-mile trail at our local Ardgillan Park. This annual tradition has been unbroken for over 40 years and welcomes all ages as well as hikers and babies in strollers. After our run and a shower, we gather at the rugby club for a few pints of Guinness. The usual suspects appear and we tell stories of absent friends. Bliss. – Shay McGuinness, Skerries, County Dublin, Ireland

I want to run with my running club again. I miss her a lot. I want to see my family in Boston – we haven’t seen each other in person since the High Holidays (September) 2019. Above all, I want to travel around the world with my husband again. – Virginia Flores, Boca Raton, Fla.

Join a running group and train as a group for races. I moved to Denver to be with new twin grandchildren – just like everyone is locked, including running groups. I always seem to make friends in these groups and enjoy the camaraderie. Miss it very much. – Dianne Wright, Lakewood, Colo.

First I want to fly to Israel and hug my four grandchildren who live in Jerusalem. I want to have calzone at our favorite Italian restaurant and then go across the street to see a movie. Not asking for much! Third, I want to do a personal 5K race and get a medal for first place in the over 75 category. – Gail Arnoff, Shaker Heights, Ohio

I am a runner, a yoga teacher and five years sober! My girlfriend is starting Recovery Run Adventures, so I will join her and other runners in recovery to run and have adventures around the world. It gives us something to stay motivated in our training and sobriety right now! – Susanne Navas, Great Falls, Va.