Month: April 2021

Categories
World News

U.S. working with IMF to supply $650 billion in forex help to nations hit by pandemic

U.S. working with IMF to provide $650 billion in currency aid to countries hit by pandemic

The U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, DC on Friday, March 19, 2021.

Samuel Corum | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The Treasury Department is working with the International Monetary Fund to provide monetary aid of up to $ 650 billion to countries hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic.

An announcement by the Treasury Department on Friday showed it was helping the IMF allocate $ 650 billion in Special Drawing Rights, which “would help build reserve buffers, smooth adjustments and mitigate the risks of economic stagnation in global growth.” “.

SDRs are currency reserves that countries can use to supplement their foreign exchange assets such as gold and US dollars.

The Treasury Department’s announcement indicated that the allocation of SDRs is within the level the department is allowed to allocate without the approval of Congress. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Senator John Kennedy, R-La., Had a heated discussion on the SDR issue during a public hearing recently.

In essence, the deal would allow countries to exchange their SDRs for US dollars. Global demand for American currency has been a recurring problem throughout the pandemic and has resulted in the Federal Reserve running a robust dollar swap program around the world as well.

The Treasury Department would exchange SDRs for dollars it holds in the Exchange Stabilization Fund. This, in turn, would require the government to borrow more money and create some coastline, namely the difference between the interest on the SDR and the interest on government bonds.

“These potential implied costs are much less than the benefits of a strong global recovery,” the department said in the press release.

“Addressing long-term global reserves would help support the global recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. A strong global recovery would also increase demand for US exports of goods and services – creating US jobs and US -Companies support “statement added.

Categories
Business

Jobless Claims Tick Up, Exhibiting a Lengthy Highway to Restoration: Stay Updates

The Forecast Salon in Birmingham, Ala. A pickup in business activity nationwide has fed hopes that workers’ prospects are improving. 

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Wes Frazer for The New York Times

A year after they first rocketed upward, jobless claims may finally be returning to earth.

More than 714,000 people filed for state unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday. That was up slightly from the week before, but still among the lowest weekly totals since the pandemic began.

In addition, 237,000 people filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program that covers people who don’t qualify for state benefits programs. That number, too, has been falling.

Jobless claims remain high by historical standards, and are far above the norm before the pandemic, when around 200,000 people a week were filing for benefits. Applications have improved only gradually — even after the recent declines, the weekly figure is modestly below where it was last fall.

But economists are optimistic that further improvement is ahead as the vaccine rollout accelerates and more states lift restrictions on business activity. Fewer companies are laying off workers, and hiring has picked up, meaning that people who lose their jobs are more likely to find new ones quickly.

“We could actually finally see the jobless claims numbers come down because there’s enough job creation to offset the layoffs,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at the job site ZipRecruiter.

But Ms. Pollak cautioned that benefits applications would not return to normal overnight. Even as many companies resume normal operations, others are discovering that the pandemic has permanently disrupted their business model.

“There are still a lot of business closures and a lot of layoffs that have yet to happen,” she said. “The repercussions of this pandemic are still rippling through this economy.”

Shoppers in Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. Germany and other countries have cut their value-added taxes to encourage consumer spending.Credit…Lena Mucha for The New York Times

The European Central Bank’s chief economist argued on Thursday that fears of a big rise in inflation are overblown, a sign that the people who control interest rates in the eurozone are likely to keep them very low for some time to come.

The comments — by Philip Lane, an influential member of the central bank’s Governing Council whose job includes briefing other members on the economic outlook — are an attempt to calm bond investors who are nervous that the end of the pandemic will lead to high inflation.

Fueling their fears, inflation in the eurozone rose to an annual rate of 1.3 percent in March from 0.9 percent in February, according to official data released on Wednesday, the fastest increase in prices in more than a year.

Market-based interest rates have been rising because investors worry that President Biden’s $2 trillion stimulus program will provoke a broad increase in prices for years to come. The interest rates that prevail on bond markets ripple through the financial system and can make mortgages and other types of borrowing more expensive, creating a drag on economic growth.

Despite big monthly swings in inflation during the last year, the average had been remarkably stable at an annual rate of about 1 percent, Mr. Lane wrote in a blog post on the central bank’s website on Thursday. That is well below the European Central Bank’s target of 2 percent.

“The volatility in inflation over 2020 and 2021 can be attributed to a host of temporary factors that should not affect medium-term inflation dynamics,” Mr. Lane wrote.

That is another way of saying that the European Central Bank is not going to panic about short-lived fluctuations in inflation and put the brakes on the eurozone economy anytime soon.

On the contrary, Mr. Lane’s analysis suggests that the European Central Bank will continue trying to push inflation toward the 2 percent target. In March, the central bank said it would increase its purchases of government and corporate bonds to try to keep a lid on market-based interest rates.

Mr. Lane said it was no surprise to see “considerable volatility in inflation during the pandemic period.” He attributed the ups and downs to quirky factors that are not likely to recur.

Germany and some other countries cut their value-added taxes to encourage consumer spending, then raised them again later. The price of fuel fluctuated wildly. People spent almost nothing on travel, but increased spending on home exercise equipment or products that they needed to work from home. That affected the way inflation is calculated and made the annual rate look higher, Mr. Lane said.

“The medium-term outlook for inflation remains subdued,” he wrote, “and closing the gap to our inflation aim will set the agenda for the Governing Council in the coming years.”

Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi oil minister, has argued that increasing oil output too fast would be risky.Credit…via Reuters

OPEC and its allies, including Russia, are meeting by videoconference Thursday to discuss whether to ease production curbs on oil as countries around the world try to expand from pandemic lockdowns.

Analysts say recent events will support the views of Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi oil minister, who has argued for caution in increasing supply, noting the risks of swamping the market. But other outcomes are possible at the meeting of the group known as OPEC Plus, including modest increases and even cuts in oil production,

France’s reimposition of a national lockdown, announced Wednesday, underlines persistent doubts about the pace of recovery from the pandemic, as have rising case numbers in the United States.

After modest increases when the Suez Canal was recently blocked by a cargo ship, oil prices were rising again on Thursday, with Brent crude, the global benchmark, more than 1 percent higher, to more than $63 a barrel.

“All signs seemingly point to the group maintaining current production levels,” Helima Croft, head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, an investment bank, wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday.

Yet pressure may also come to increase supply. Members of the OPEC Plus group are withholding an estimated eight million barrels of a day, or about 9 percent of current global consumption. As the global economy recovers, it will become increasingly difficult for the Saudis to persuade others to restrain supplies.

By: Ella Koeze·Data delayed at least 15 minutes·Source: FactSet

Wall Street’s rally continued on Thursday as tech shares extended their gains. Shares in Europe and Asia were also higher, as traders focused on optimism about the economic recovery.

The S&P 500 rose 0.8 percent in early trading, on track for a record close, while the Nasdaq composite gained 1.8 percent.

Bond yields pulled further back from their recent 14-month high. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell to 1.69 percent.

Adding to the optimism about the economy, a measure of manufacturing activity rose to its highest since 1983, the Institute for Supply Management said.

New data released on Thursday showed a slight rise in claims for unemployment benefits, though the data from the week before showed claims at the lowest since the start of the pandemic. On Friday, the Labor Department will publish its monthly jobs report for March.

  • On Wednesday, President Biden laid out a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which included money for a range of activities, including repairing roads and bridges, building affordable housing and caregiving facilities, and expanding access to broadband. It would be paid for by an increase in corporate taxes, undoing some of the cut by his predecessor, President Donald J. Trump.

  • The infrastructure plan also includes spending about $50 billion on the semiconductor industry, where a global shortage in chips has disrupted car manufacturing. Shares in Micron Technology, an Idaho-based chip maker, rose nearly 5 percent in premarket trading.

  • The plan includes $174 billion to encourage the manufacture and purchase of electric vehicles. Tesla shares rose 2.4 percent in early trading and ChargePoint Holdings, which has a large network of electric-vehicle charing stations, rose as much as 14 percent, adding to a 19 percent increase on Wednesday.

  • Most European stock indexes were higher even as more lockdowns were announced in the region. In France, restrictions have been expanded to more regions and schools will close for several weeks. In Italy, business closures will extend until the end of April. But a series of reports published on Thursday showed manufacturing activity picking up in Europe.

  • Oil prices rose ahead of a meeting between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, at which they are set to decide production quotas for May. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, climbed 2.7 percent to just above $60 a barrel.

  • QuantumScape, a California-based start-up working on a technology that could make batteries cheaper, said it had reached a technical requirement that would clear the way for a $100 million investment by Volkswagen. QuantumScape’s shares jumped 16 percent in early trading.

  • On Friday, markets will be closed in the United States, Europe and some other countries for Good Friday.

The occupancy rate in nursing homes in the fourth quarter of 2020 was down 11 percentage points from the first quarter, but there are hurdles to staying out of facilities.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

The pandemic has intensified a spotlight on long-running questions about how communities can do a better job supporting seniors who need care but want to live outside a nursing home.

The coronavirus had taken the lives of 181,000 people in U.S. nursing homes, assisted living and other long-term care facilities through last weekend, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation — 33 percent of the national toll.

The occupancy rate in nursing homes in the fourth quarter of 2020 was 75 percent, down 11 percentage points from the first quarter, according to the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, a research group. The shift may not be permanent, but this much is clear: As the aging of the nation accelerates, most communities need to do much more to become age-friendly, said Jennifer Molinsky, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard.

“It’s about all the services that people can access, whether that’s the accessibility and affordability of housing, or transportation and supports that can be delivered in the home,” she said.

But there are hurdles for those who wish to stay out of a facility, Mark Miller reports for The New York Times:

  • A major shortage of age-friendly housing in the United States will present problems for seniors who wish to stay in their homes. By 2034, 34 percent of households will be headed by someone over 65, according to the Harvard center. Yet in 2011, just 3.5 percent of homes had single-floor living, no-step entry and extra-wide halls and doors for wheelchair access, according to Harvard’s latest estimates.

  • Medicare does not pay for most long-term care services, regardless of where they happen; reimbursement is limited to a person’s first 100 days in a skilled nursing facility. Medicaid, which covers only people with very low incomes, has long been the nation’s largest funder of long-term care. From its inception, the program was required to cover care in nursing facilities but not at home or in a community setting. “There’s a bias toward institutions,” said Judith Solomon, a senior fellow specializing in health at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Adam Bouhmad, second from right, has helped low-income families in Baltimore get affordable internet service through his Waves project.Credit…Jared Soares for The New York Times

A year after the pandemic turned the nation’s digital divide into an education emergency, President Biden is making affordable broadband a top priority, comparing it to the effort to spread electricity across the country. His $2 trillion infrastructure plan, announced on Wednesday, includes $100 billion to extend fast internet access to every home.

The money is meant to improve the economy by enabling all Americans to work, get medical care and take classes from wherever they live. Although the government has spent billions on the digital divide in the past, the efforts have failed to close it partly because people in different areas have different problems. Affordability is the main culprit in urban and suburban areas. In many rural areas, internet service isn’t available at all because of the high costs of installation.

“We’ll make sure every single American has access to high-quality, affordable, high speed internet,” Mr. Biden said in a speech on Wednesday. “And when I say affordable, I mean it. Americans pay too much for internet. We will drive down the price for families who have service now.”

Longtime advocates of universal broadband say the plan, which requires congressional approval, may finally come close to fixing the digital divide, a stubborn problem first identified and named by regulators during the Clinton administration. The plight of unconnected students during the pandemic added urgency.

“This is a vision document that says every American needs access and should have access to affordable broadband,” said Blair Levin, who directed the 2010 National Broadband Plan at the Federal Communications Commission. “And I haven’t heard that before from a White House to date.”

Some advocates for expanded broadband access cautioned that Mr. Biden’s plan might not entirely solve the divide between the digital haves and have-nots.

The plan promises to give priority to municipal and nonprofit broadband providers but would still rely on private companies to install cables and erect cell towers to far reaches of the country. One concern is that the companies won’t consider the effort worth their time, even with all the money earmarked for those projects. During the electrification boom of the 1920s, private providers were reluctant to install poles and string lines hundreds of miles into sparsely populated areas.

Taxpayers who received unemployment benefits last year — but who filed their federal tax returns before a new tax break became available — could receive an automatic refund as early as May, the Internal Revenue Service said on Wednesday.

The latest pandemic relief legislation — signed into law on March 11, in the thick of tax season — made the first $10,200 of unemployment benefits tax-free in 2020 for people with modified adjusted incomes of less than $150,000. (Married taxpayers filing jointly can exclude up to $20,400.)

But some Americans had already filed their tax returns by March and have been waiting for official agency guidance. Millions of U.S. workers filed for unemployment last year, but the I.R.S. said it was still determining how many workers affected by the tax change had already filed their tax returns.

On Wednesday, the I.R.S. confirmed that it would automatically recalculate the correct amount of benefits subject to taxation — and any overpayment will be refunded or applied to any other outstanding taxes owed. The first refunds are expected to be issued in May and will continue into the summer.

The I.R.S. said it would begin processing the simpler returns first, or those eligible for up to $10,200 in excluded benefits, and then would turn to returns for joint filers and others with more complex returns.

There is no need for those affected to file an amended return unless the calculations make the taxpayer newly eligible for additional federal credits and deductions not already included on the original tax return, the agency said. Those taxpayers may want to review their state tax returns as well, the I.R.S. said.

People who still haven’t filed and expect to do so electronically can simply answer the questions asked by their online tax preparer, which will factor in the new tax break when they file. The agency provided an updated worksheet and additional guidance in March for taxpayers that prefer paper.

Microsoft’s HoloLens headsets, demonstrated above in 2017, will equip soldiers with night vision, thermal vision and audio communication.Credit…Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

Microsoft said Wednesday that it would begin producing more than 120,000 augmented reality headsets for Army soldiers under a contract that could be worth up to $21.9 billion.

The HoloLens headsets use a technology called the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, which will equip soldiers wearing them with night vision, thermal vision and audio communication. The devices also have sensors that help soldiers target opponents in battle.

The deal is likely to create waves inside Microsoft, where some employees have objected to working with the Pentagon. Employees at other big tech companies, like Google, have also rejected what they say is the weaponization of their technology.

But Microsoft has long courted Defense Department work, including a $10 billion contract to build a cloud-computing system. Amazon had been seen as a front-runner to win the contract, but the Defense Department chose Microsoft.

Amazon claimed that President Donald J. Trump had interfered in the process because of his feud with Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive and the owner of The Washington Post. A legal fight over the contract is still active.

Soldiers have tested the Microsoft headsets for two years, the company said. The Army said the devices would be used in combat and training.

Microsoft said its testing of the headsets had helped the Defense Department’s “efforts to modernize the U.S. military by taking advantage of advanced technology and new innovations not available to military.”

The devices will “provide the improved situational awareness, target engagement and informed decision-making necessary” to overcome current and future adversaries, the Army said in a news release.

In 2018, Microsoft won a $480 million bid to make prototypes of the headsets. The Army said Wednesday that the new contract to produce them on a larger scale was for five years, with the option to add up to five more years.

Categories
Entertainment

With Open Ears, Indian Ragas and Western Melodies Merge

With Open Ears, Indian Ragas and Western Melodies Merge

Amit Chaudhuri, a writer and singer, combines memoir and musical appreciation in Finding the Raga: An Improvisation of Indian Music, which is now available on the New York Review Books. In it, Chaudhuri records a personal journey that began with a western-oriented love of the singer-songwriter tradition, followed by a headless immersion into Indian classical music.

This legacy remained overwhelming for him until an accident that he describes as “deafness” drew his attention to the elements that ragas and Western sounds have in common – a finding that led to his ongoing recording and performance project “This Is Not Fusion ”.

In the book, Chaudhuri reflects on the raga, the framework of Indian classical music. Resisting the urge to find an analogue to Western tradition, he writes: “A raga is not a mode. That is, it is not a linear movement. It is a simultaneity of notes, a constellation. “Elsewhere he adds that it is neither a melody, nor a composition, nor a scale, nor the sum total of its notes. In an interview, Chaudhuri gave a brief introduction to the raga and described the development of his musical life from childhood to “This Is Not Fusion”. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

One of the first musical experiences I had was with my mother singing Tagore songs. I grew up in Bombay and remember the calm energy of their style. it wasn’t sentimental, but it was alive. Without realizing it, I was drawn deeply into the sensual immediacy of tone and tempo, and also into a precise style whose emotion lies more in the tone than in the added feeling.

Of course there was also “The Sound of Music” and “My Fair Lady”. I was in love with Julie Andrews for a while. Then when I was 7 or 8 years old my father bought a HiFi turntable that came with some free records that I probably played a role in choosing without being informed in any way. I think one of them was from the Who, which I liked a lot; “I Can See for Miles” was one of my favorite songs. I also had a thing for the early Bee Gees and of course the Beatles.

I started playing guitar when I was 12 and when I was 16 I composed songs in a kind of singer-songwriter form. At the same time I became interested in Hindustani classical music for the first time.

There were several reasons. I had a youthful attraction to difficulty and was more interested in complex tonalities. I listened to Joni Mitchell, and I loved that she could be melodic and open in her harmonic compositions, while being quite complex at the same time. I also knew people like Ravi Shankar, partly because of the Beatles. When we thought of Indian classical music, we basically thought of instrumental music: tabla players playing really exciting rhythmic patterns, getting applause at the end of their improvisational spells, and of course the sitar and sarod. Vocal music seemed a little out of the way, arcane.

But then I heard Vishmadev Chatterjee – what an amazing voice. And at that time there was also this man, Govind Prasad Jaipurwale, who started teaching Hindi devotions to my mother. I realized that while teaching he was doing tiny improvisations with his voice that indicated a different kind of imagination and training. I began to be receptive to the kind of Indian classical music that had always existed but that I had excluded. I asked my mother if I could learn classical music.

For some time different types of music lived side by side. I played a little bit of rock guitar. And I was working on an album that I thought was my way of being a singer-songwriter. My song “Shame” comes from this time. Its melody begins with the note of C sharp, then the word “shame” returns to C sharp in the chorus. It goes to that note after touching C – so chromatic notes are introduced at the end of the chorus with some degree of alienation since the chords are C major and A major. I think I’ve already reacted here to the way notes in North Indian classical music create a hypnotic effect through small shifts.

Then I started practicing a lot of Indian classical music, about four and a half hours a day. And I spent a lot of time listening to music, understanding what happened to the time cycles, and then singing and improvising. Obviously, that took over some of the other musical activities.

I should say that a raga is not a melody. It is not a note, a scale, or a composition – although the raga is sung as part of a composition. However, you can identify the raga by a specific arrangement of notes related to the way they ascend and descend. A certain pattern on the ascent and a certain pattern on the descent characterize the raga.

You can’t introduce notes that aren’t in the raga, but you can slow them down. You can escape the immediate display of the demarcation. Part of this workaround is imagination and creativity. You could climb up to the octave and then you would be done with a series of notes that could be sung in a song in a minute. But doing this for 30, maybe even 40 minutes – that becomes an expansive idea of ​​creation that not only outlines or indicates, but finds different ways of speaking. That is what is at work here, especially in the khayal form.

The extended time cycle allows you to explore these notes to make the ascent and descent very slow. The ear may recognize the fast version of the ectal rhythm system, which sounds like the normal version.

When this additional space occurs, you are not maintaining time in the ordinary sense, but you are aware that the 12 beats of the ektaal have been multiplied by four beats each until they end and you are returning to the beginning.

So there is still so much time left to sing and talk about the progress. That is an extraordinary modernist development. You can hear it in Raga Darbari by Ustad Amir Khan. It’s an amazing shot.

Ragas are basically found material. Indians might say there are eighty-three of them, or a thousand; I dont know. In the North Indian classical tradition, no more than 50 ragas are sung today. And maybe there are 30 that you hear over and over again, considering that we don’t hear the ragas in the morning and afternoon because there are concerts in the evenings.

This is because ragas have specific times and seasons. The Raga Shree is associated with twilight and evening.

And the Raga Basant, which has almost the same notes, is sung in the spring.

If architecture is a language with which one can understand space and time, so is raga. It’s like language too. For example, you don’t use the word evening to refer to the morning. Likewise, one does not sing the morning raga Bhairav ​​in the evening. However, with recordings, if you wish, you can listen to ragas at any time of the day. Until the recording studios hit, ragas only came to life for a short time.

So that was mainly the music that I was practicing. The singer-songwriter had finally retired. But by the late nineties the zeal of the convert who had obsessed me in my youth was gone, and I began to return to my record collection and listen to Jimi Hendrix. Curved notes, the blues, the Gujri Todi raga – it all came together as I listened. A moment of “misheard” occurred when I thought I heard the riff from “Layla” in that raga.

It happened again a week or two later. I was standing in a hotel lobby and someone was playing this Kashmiri instrument and suddenly it seemed to start in “Auld Lang Syne”. Of course it wasn’t. But then I thought: is it possible to create a musical vocabulary – not about consciously bringing things together, East and West, but about the kind of instability of who I am and the richness of what I had discovered in that moment? capture. And that’s why I call it “no fusion”.

“Summertime” happened around the time I was creating these pieces. In it I improvise on the Raga Malkauns, but in the form of “Summertime”, an early type of jazz composition based on the blues. I show that it is possible to improvise on Malkauns according to this form, as a jazz pianist does. But I’m bringing in a different tradition.

The same thing happens in “Norwegian Wood”. I take the raga bageshri and improvise in the space that each piece gives me. “I once had a girl, or should I say she once had me” – that gives me space to improvise on these notes. What I do is a characteristic of Khayal. So I would say again, it’s not a fusion, because fusion artists don’t. What they do is they sing their own stuff in a western setting.

Research into these ideas has been profoundly gratifying. Has my musical journey closed? I didn’t become a singer-songwriter again, but I put everything I know together. When you are a creative artist, the things you know come back to you in some way. I am very happy that this happened to me.

Categories
Health

How Sporting a Masks Can Scale back Allergy Signs

How Wearing a Mask Can Reduce Allergy Symptoms

As we head towards our second pandemic, many of us may itch when we give up our masks. But for the 19.2 million American adults who suffer from seasonal allergies, there’s another reason to keep wearing your mask.

While cloth and medical masks protect us well from virus particles, studies show that masks can also be effective at filtering common allergens that are usually floating around in much larger sizes, making them easier to block. Pine pollen, for example, is about 800 times larger than the coronavirus, said Dr. David Lang, an allergist at the Cleveland Clinic. Even before the pandemic, he advised patients with severe allergies to wear a mask outside, especially during prolonged activities such as gardening or gardening.

Using masks to relieve allergy symptoms can take a bit of “trial and error,” said Dr. Purvi Parikh, an allergist and immunologist at NYU Langone Health. But overall: “If less pollen gets into the nose and mouth, the likelihood of an allergy attack is less,” she said.

Israeli researchers recently examined how much of a difference wearing a mask can make for allergy sufferers with mild, moderate, and severe symptoms. Using data from 215 nurses who used surgical masks or N95 masks over a two-week period, they found that nearly 40 percent of 44 nurses with severe allergy symptoms had fewer sneezes, runny noses, and nasal congestion when they had surgery wore or N95 mask. Among the 91 nurses with moderate symptoms, 30 percent improved when they wore a surgical mask; that rose to 40 percent when they wore an N95. Among the 80 nurses who started the study with mild symptoms, 43 nurses, or about 54 percent, felt their symptoms improved when they wore a surgical or N95 mask, said Dr. Amiel Dror, a physician-scientist at Galilee Medical Center and Bar-Ilan Medical School, Azrieli University and lead author of the study.

The use of masks was also more effective in nurses with seasonal allergies than in nurses with year-round symptoms. Wearing a mask didn’t solve the problem of itchy eyes, according to the September report published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Although the results suggest that wearing a mask may relieve allergy symptoms in some people, the researchers noted that more study is needed. It could be that the nurses had fewer symptoms because when they were not working they stayed at home avoiding the crowds during lockdown and therefore had less exposure to allergens in the environment. The fact that wearing a mask covering the nose and mouth was associated with improvement in nasal symptoms but not eye irritation suggests that masking likely helped reduce many allergy symptoms.

Wearing a mask not only filters out allergens, but also makes the air in our nasal cavities warmer and more humid, said Dr. Dror. “We know that dry and cold air sometimes have the ability to trigger a reaction in the nose,” he said. “This is an added benefit of wearing a mask. With all the bad, you can find something good. “

The protection varies from mask to mask, depending on the fit and, in the case of fabric masks, on the weave of the fabric. And if you don’t always wear a mask, you may still be affected by indoor allergens like dust mites or pollen, which are carried through open windows in spring breezes.

“It can help, but it won’t necessarily eliminate all of your symptoms,” said Dr. Sandra Lin, professor of ear, nose and throat medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “Pretty much everyone wears masks most of the time now, and people are still getting allergy symptoms.”

Here are some more tips to help reduce your symptoms during allergy season.

  • Protect your eyes. Dr. Lang recommends allergy sufferers to wear glasses or sunglasses outdoors to prevent allergens such as tree pollen from making direct contact with the eyes.

  • Wash and change your mask frequently. “The last thing you want is for allergen to get trapped in it,” said Dr. Parikh. She recommends that patients change when they come home and shower before bed to make sure pollen doesn’t stick to their skin and wash reusable masks frequently. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend washing a cloth mask after each use.

  • Find a mask that won’t irritate your skin. Choosing the right mask for an allergy-prone wearer can also be important. People with sensitive skin may react to dyes in some cloth masks and should use fragrance-free detergents. Or choose a surgical or medical mask that is less irritating to the skin. “My allergy sufferers have very sensitive skin because the same animals that make them sneeze or cough can also irritate their skin,” said Dr. Parikh.

  • Talk to a doctor if your allergy symptoms are severe. “If people continue to have symptoms that interfere with normal activity – if they are absent from work, absent from school, sleep is disturbed at night – see a doctor,” said Dr. Long. “There are other ways we can help. You shouldn’t suffer unnecessarily. “

    Do you have a health question? Ask well

Categories
Business

Retirees able to hit the street ought to test their Medicare protection

Retirees ready to hit the road should check their Medicare coverage

aldomurillo | E + | Getty Images

Retired, Vaccinated, and Ready to Hit the Street? Don’t forget to check if your Medicare plan will travel with you.

While coverage when away from home will depend in part on where you are going, it will also depend on the specifics of your coverage. Whether the care you receive is routine or emergency can also play a role.

Around 70% of people 65 and over have now received their first Covid shot, and 43% are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As more people get vaccinated against the virus, the people who huddled together over the past year are thinking about travel again.

Here’s what you should know about the differences in Medicare coverage outside of your home.

The essentials

Basic or original Medicare consists of Part A (health insurance) and Part B (outpatient care). Individuals who choose to keep this coverage rather than opting for a benefit plan usually combine it with a standalone prescription drug plan (Part D).

If this is your situation, coverage when traveling in the US and its territories is pretty straightforward: you can go to any doctor or hospital that accepts Medicare (most do), whether for routine care or an emergency. When you venture beyond US borders, it gets tougher.

“When you travel outside of the United States, Medicare only covers you in very limited or infrequent circumstances,” said Danielle Roberts, co-founder of insurance company Boomer Benefits.

More from the new path to retirement:
Required minimum distributions are back – and different
How marginal and effective tax rates differ
How social security services have changed during the pandemic

These exceptions include when you are on a ship in the territorial waters bordering the country – within six hours of a U.S. port – or traveling from state to state, but the nearest hospital for treatment is in a foreign country (i.e., a foreign country) H. You are in Canada while traveling to Alaska from the 48 contiguous states.

Note that in light of the ongoing pandemic, the State Department has plenty of advice to travel abroad. In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention require that all passengers – including citizens – flying to (or returning) to the United States have evidence of a negative Covid test or evidence of a recent recovery from the virus provide.

However, if you are considering another country for a vacation, you can get some overseas coverage by combining basic Medicare with supplemental insurance – also known as Medigap.

If you are traveling outside of the United States, Medicare will only cover you in very limited or infrequent cases.

Danielle Roberts

Co-founder of Boomer Benefits

These policies, which are generally standardized across states but differ in cost, provide some coverage for the cost sharing associated with basic Medicare such as medical insurance. B. Copays and Co-Insurances. Some of them also have limited overseas travel coverage, said Elizabeth Gavino, founder of Lewin & Gavino and independent broker and general agent for Medicare plans.

“A member pays a deductible of $ 250 and 20% of the cost of medical treatment received, up to a lifetime maximum of $ 50,000,” said Gavino.

Note that this coverage is for emergency medical care and there may be other restrictions according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Benefit plans

For beneficiaries who receive their Medicare benefits – Parts A, B, and usually D – through a benefit plan, it is worth checking to see if you can get emergency cover abroad. And even if you didn’t leave U.S. soil, see what your plan would cover.

While benefit plans are required to cover your emergency care anywhere in the United States, you may be hooked for routine out-of-service care.

“With a traditional HMO plan, you only have emergency coverage when you travel outside of the network,” said Roberts. “With a PPO, you have both emergency coverage and off-network coverage for non-emergencies [but] will pay more for these out network services. “

There are also hybrid plans that could allow limited off-network treatment in certain circumstances, Roberts said.

It is possible for your benefit plan to deregister you if you are outside of the service area for a period of time – usually six months. In this situation, you would switch to Medicare.

Some beneficiaries, regardless of their specific coverage, take out travel health insurance for trips overseas, Gavino said.

Categories
Health

U.S. begins testing Moderna’s Covid vaccine booster photographs for variant from South Africa

U.S. begins testing Moderna's Covid vaccine booster shots for variant from South Africa

A nurse draws a vaccine for Moderna Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) on March 5, 2021 at the East Valley Community Health Center in La Puente, California.

Lucy Nicholson | Reuters

The National Institutes of Health have started testing a new coronavirus vaccine from Moderna, which is designed to protect against a problematic variant first found in South Africa, the agency said on Wednesday.

According to the agency, the phase 1 study, which is led and funded by the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases of the NIH, will test how safe and effective the new shot is against the variant known as B.1.351 in around 210 healthy adults .

The study, which has already had some of the first vaccinations, will include approximately 60 adults who participated in Moderna’s original Covid-19 vaccine studies last year, as well as approximately 150 people who have not yet received a Covid-19 vaccine at one Statement.

Returning participants, who were given two syringes of the original vaccine 28 days apart at different doses early last year, will split up.

Some of them get a single booster shot with the new vaccine at a higher dose while others get the new vaccine at a lower dose, the statement said. Remaining participants will be offered a booster shot with the original vaccine “as part of a separate clinical trial protocol”.

Researchers will take blood samples from participants throughout the study, which can be tested against other circulating strains of the virus to see if the vaccine elicits an immune response.

The study will recruit volunteers in the Atlanta, Cincinnati, Seattle and Nashville, Tennessee areas and should be fully enrolled by the end of April, the agency said.

Variant B.1.351, first discovered in South Africa at the end of last year, has given scientists more cause for concern compared to other variants. The variant appears to spread more easily than the original “wild-type” strains, and research shows that it may evade some of the safeguards created by therapeutics and vaccines.

So far, 312 Covid-19 cases with variant B.1.351 have been identified in the United States, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Preliminary data shows that the COVID-19 vaccines currently available in the US should provide adequate protection against SARS-CoV-2 variants,” said NIAID Director and Chief Medical Officer of the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci, in a statement.

“However, out of caution, NIAID has continued its partnership with Moderna to evaluate this variant vaccine candidate should an updated vaccine be required,” said Fauci.

The US Food and Drug Administration has already announced that it will accelerate the approval process for the updated vaccines, which target the problematic variants, so that no lengthy clinical trials are required.

However, an independent safety monitoring committee will continue to monitor the trials to ensure the shots are safe, the NIH statement said.

Categories
Politics

Biden Administration Proclaims Advert Marketing campaign to Fight Vaccine Hesitancy

Biden Administration Announces Ad Campaign to Combat Vaccine Hesitancy

WASHINGTON – The Biden government announced Thursday morning an ambitious publicity campaign to encourage as many Americans as possible to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.

The campaign, with advertisements in English and Spanish that will air on network television and cable channels across the country and online throughout April, comes as the administration rapidly expands access to coronavirus vaccines.

President Biden announced a new goal last week of giving 200 million doses by his 100th day in office, doubling his original goal of 100 million bullets in the arms of Americans when he was in office. And last month, in an address to the nation, he announced a goal of vaccine qualification for all adults in the United States by May 1. Governors and public health officials in more than 40 states have said they will meet or exceed this deadline.

However, deep skepticism about the vaccine remains a problem, especially among blacks, Latinos, Republicans, and white evangelicals. Administration officials believe that if many Americans continue to refuse to be vaccinated, supply will soon exceed demand. And widespread resistance to vaccinations could hinder returns to more normal lifestyles as the virus continues to spread.

Two hundred and seventy-five organizations will participate in the government’s new public awareness boost – including NASCAR, the Catholic Health Association of the United States, and the North American Meat Institute – aimed at communities where vaccine reluctance remains high. Organizations include many Catholic and Evangelical groups that are expected to help address religious concerns about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which uses abortion-derived fetal cell lines.

The group is collectively known as the Covid-19 Community Corps, administrative officials said, and the participating organizations can reach millions of Americans who trust these individual groups.

A new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation this week found that the number of black adults ready to be vaccinated has increased significantly since February. Overall, 13 percent of respondents said they would “definitely not” receive a vaccine. Among Republicans and White Evangelical Christians, nearly 30 percent of each group said they would “definitely not” get a shot.

Updated

April 1, 2021, 7:26 a.m. ET

Government officials said their research showed that vaccine news from medical professionals and community leaders, rather than celebrities or the president, was often more convincing.

“We’re not always the best messengers,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last month when speaking about the hesitation of the vaccine among conservatives.

The full list of participating organizations includes health professionals, scientists, community organizations, religious leaders, corporations, rural interest groups, civil rights organizations, sports leagues, and athletes. The Department of Health and Human Services is also helping to educate people about vaccines by posting “Let’s Get Vacceted” frames for Facebook users to add to their profile photos.

Part of the challenge of convincing skeptical Americans is the personal and varied reasons behind the vaccine’s hesitation.

“I have a couple of bags that cite religious reasons for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine,” said Shirley Bloomfield, executive director of NTCA – The Rural Broadband Association, which told the White House what she heard from members of her group . “There are a lot of pockets that people have already had Covid in and feel like, ‘Well, we’ve all got it, so we’re not really under pressure.'”

The tone of the ads is hopeful and is intended as a call to action. Everyone can help end the pandemic by getting vaccinated.

To further emphasize this point, the Department of Health and Human Services has separately purchased a multimillion-dollar advertisement in black and Spanish language media and outlets reaching Asian-American and tribal communities to reaffirm the message about safety and effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines.

The government announced last week that it is allocating nearly $ 10 billion to improve access to vaccines and confidence in minority communities hardest hit by the pandemic.

Biden officials have worked with many of the groups involved in the Covid-19 Community Corps since the presidential change, but the formal launch of an advertising campaign had to wait until vaccine supplies were at a level where people could be quick to those provided to them Information reacts.

Categories
Business

Truth, or Company Fiction? – The New York Instances

Fact, or Corporate Fiction? - The New York Times

The April Fool’s Day false news announcement is one of America’s most popular occasions for shameless publicity stunts. But if $ 69 million worth of Stonks, Dogecoin, and JPG files are real things worthy of serious business coverage, the risk of jokes being taken seriously could hardly be higher. Some say this is a good reason to skip them, not to mention the gravity a pandemic has thrown over things.

With that in mind, can you see the prank among these recent announcements? (Scroll down for the answer.)

A: To celebrate National Burrito Day today, Chipotle is giving away $ 100,000 worth of Bitcoin.

B: Volkwagen’s US business changes its name to “Voltwagen” to underline the company’s foray into electric vehicles.

C: Robinhood doesn’t do a confetti animation when app users complete a stock trade to reduce the “distraction”.

D: Krispy Kreme gives anyone who shows evidence of Covid-19 vaccination a free donut per day for the rest of the year.

E: Goldman Sachs managers are giving junior bankers gift baskets of fruit and snacks in response to complaints of burnout.

Corporate groups challenge President Biden’s proposed corporate tax hikes. The Business Roundtable and the US Chamber of Commerce praised Mr Biden’s plan to spend trillions on infrastructure, among others. But they rejected his idea of ​​paying for it through tax hikes, saying it would jeopardize economic recovery.

The recent setbacks in fighting the pandemic. Johnson & Johnson said it would delay future deliveries of its vaccine after a mix-up at a manufacturing facility. A senior EU official said the bloc would allow “zero” shipments of AstraZeneca’s vaccine to the UK until the drugmaker honors its commitments to Brussels. And France announced a third nationwide lockdown as its cases surge and vaccination efforts lag.

A tough day for an IPO. With Deliveroo having “the worst IPO in London history,” other bids also struggled. In the US, SoftBank-backed real estate agent Compass was on the lower end of a reduced range, while budget airline Frontier sold on the lower end of expectations. And in Canada, space tech company MDA’s price was below its reach.

Microsoft wins a major contract to manufacture augmented reality headsets for the US Army. The tech giant will receive up to $ 22 billion to equip soldiers with sensors based on its HoloLens technology. It’s another big defense deal for Microsoft that Amazon beat Amazon to provide a $ 10 billion cloud computing system for the Pentagon.

A day after 72 black executives signed a letter urging companies to fight more restrictive electoral laws, executives began to speak more directly about laws restricting access to ballot papers. However, their testimony came too late to sway a sweeping law passed in Georgia last week that added new postal voting requirements, dropboxing restrictions, and other restrictions that are having an over-the-top impact on black voters.

In business today

Updated

March 31, 2021, 6:27 p.m. ET

Delta and Coca-Cola reversed course. Ed Bastian, Delta CEO, told employees, “I need to make it clear that the final invoice is unacceptable and does not match Delta’s values.” James Quincey, CEO of Coca-Cola, said he wanted to be “crystal clear” that “The Coca-Cola Company does not support this legislation because it is harder for people to vote, not easier.”

  • The statements by Atlanta-based companies angered local politicians, including Governor Brian Kemp. In the past, corporate booths on controversial issues have led to political retaliation: In 2018, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle passed a tax break proposal on a bill that would benefit Delta after the airline ended a promotional discount for NRA members. The State House passed a similar measure yesterday, but the Senate did not take it until the Houses were adjourned for the year.

  • Retaliatory measures also go in the other direction: In an interview with ESPN, President Biden said he would “strongly support” the move of the all-star game of Major League Baseball out of Atlanta in July.

“It is unfortunate that the sense of urgency came after the laws were passed and incorporated into the law.” said Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation who is a board member at Pepsi, Ralph Lauren and Square.

Other Georgia-based companies remained cautious. A UPS spokesman said the company was “ready to continue to help ensure that every Georgian voter can vote”. A Home Depot spokesman reiterated the company’s stance that “all elections should be accessible, fair and safe”. A spokesman for Inspire Brands, the owner of Dunkin ‘Donuts and Arby’s, said it “values ​​inclusivity” and that “every American should have equal access to voting rights.”

– Judge Samuel Alito, who rated the “stark picture” college athletes painted in an antitrust case against the NCAA that the Supreme Court heard yesterday.

RedBird Capital Partners confirmed its agreement to purchase a stake in Red Sox parent Fenway Sports Group, a transaction valued at $ 7.35 billion. DealBook spoke to RedBirds founder Gerry Cardinale and Fenway’s chair Tom Werner about what’s next.

Buy and build. RedBird Plans to Add More Teams: Mr. Cardinale noted that his company has no teams in the NBA, NHL, or MLS. For its part, Fenway plans to open up new opportunities in the areas of ticketing, sponsorship and media. (As part of the RedBird deal, NBA star LeBron James bought a stake in Fenway.) In the media, Fenway controls NESN, and RedBird has a stake in the YES network. “You should expect that we will continue to seek innovation in this area,” said Cardinale, who helped build the YES network.

  • A deepening of relationships with online gambling is also on the table. “We have an excellent relationship with DraftKings,” said Werner, “and we have had several discussions with them about partnerships.”

The deal was better suited to the private market than a SPAC. Executives said after talks to bring Fenway to the public through a blank check company failed. “In the middle of Covid, with a mandate to redraw the next wave of growth for Fenway Sports Group, it would probably be better to do so privately and then give us the option,” Cardinale told Public. He also called the current SPAC market “very frothy”.

Founded in 2008, WeWork rose spectacularly, hitting a valuation of $ 47 billion, and known to crash ahead of a planned IPO in 2019. (It was announced last week that it would go public by partnering with a blank check company valued at roughly $ 8 billion.) A new documentary, “WeWork: Or the Make and Break of a $ 47 billion unicorn, “seeks to learn from the ups and downs. It’s streaming on Hulu starting tomorrow.

Jed Rothstein, the director, told DealBook that he believes what is most compelling about WeWork isn’t what went wrong, but how it initially managed to turn strangers into some sort of tribe. “We still need that,” he said.

“WeWork’s core idea met a real need for community.” Mr. Rothstein said. “The gaps that people were trying to fill just got more real.” After a year of social distancing, he likes the idea of ​​curated common spaces that WeWork offered. Speaking to early WeWorkers who bought the Vision and later felt cheated, he was amazed at how much the company gave to its followers, especially the feeling of being part of something bigger. This is worth recognition in a world where people are increasingly remote in their careers and work for many different companies, Rothstein said.

WeWork co-founders Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey both shared childhood experiences. Mr. Rothstein said he thought they sincerely wanted to repeat the good in group life and inspired people who had not seen this before. But Mr. Neumann also focused on what he didn’t like – and shared it equally – and emphasized the “Eat what you kill” mentality. Ultimately, his hunger turned the community dream into a nightmare for many.

  • After speaking to people who followed the original vision, the director changed his perspective. “The people in the film experienced real growth and fulfillment mixed with their anger,” he said. “I realized that the story is much more nuanced.”

deals

  • The media conglomerate Endeavor went public for the second time and raised $ 1.8 billion to gain full control of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. It also added Elon Musk to its board of directors. (WSJ, CNBC)

  • Vice Media is reportedly in talks to go public through the merger with a SPAC. And the SEC issued two notices for companies looking to go public through SPAC. (The information, SEC)

  • Junior bankers aren’t the only ones feeling burned out. Young lawyers too. (Business insider)

Politics and politics

  • New York was the 15th state to legalize recreational marijuana. (NYT)

  • Efforts by aides to Governor Andrew Cuomo to hide the Covid-19 death toll in New York state coincided with his efforts to win a multi-million dollar book deal. (NYT)

  • Accidental disclosure by the IRS resulted in a $ 1 billion tax dispute with Bristol Myers Squibb. (NYT)

technology

The best of the rest

  • The German advertising agency doubles the referral bonus for black applicants. (Insider)

  • Amazon wants most of its employees to be back in its offices, while the Carlyle Group and IBM prefer hybrid work models. (Insider, Bloomberg)

  • Paul Simon is the newest musician to sell his entire back catalog: Sony Music Publishing will purchase the collection, including classics like Bridge Over Troubled Water, for an undisclosed amount. (NYT)

Do you feel burned out? As more and more employees are thinking about returning to the office, our colleague Sarah Lyall writes about anxiety and exhaustion in late pandemics. Tell her how you are.

Answer to the April Fool’s joke quiz: B. If you are fooled by the Volkswagen prank, you are in good company. Volkswagen reportedly told journalists that drafting the announcement was no ploy. It later just called the stunt “a bit of fun”.

Categories
World News

Some Johnson & Johnson Covid Vaccine Doses Delayed in U.S. by Manufacturing facility Combine-Up

Some Johnson & Johnson Covid Vaccine Doses Delayed in U.S. by Factory Mix-Up

Workers at a Baltimore plant that made two coronavirus vaccines accidentally merged the ingredients a few weeks ago, contaminating up to 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and forcing regulators to delay approving the plant’s production lines.

The facility is operated by Emergent BioSolutions, a manufacturing partner of Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, the Anglo-Swedish company whose vaccine is not yet approved for use in the United States. Federal officials attributed the error to human error.

The mix-up has delayed future shipments of Johnson & Johnson cans in the U.S. while the Food and Drug Administration investigates what happened. Johnson & Johnson has strengthened its control over the work of Emergent BioSolutions to avoid additional quality defects.

The mistake is a major embarrassment for both Johnson & Johnson, whose single-dose vaccine is credited with accelerating the national vaccination program, and Emergent, its subcontractor, who has received heavy criticism for its strong lobbying for federal contracts, particularly for the emergency Government Health Stock.

The bug does not affect any Johnson & Johnson cans currently shipped and used nationwide, including shipments that states are anticipating next week. All of these cans were made in the Netherlands, where the operations were fully approved by federal regulators.

More shipments of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine – expected to be 24 million doses next month – should come from the huge Baltimore facility. These supplies are now in question while quality control issues are being resolved according to those familiar with the matter.

Federal officials are still expecting enough doses from Johnson & Johnson and the other two approved coronavirus vaccine manufacturers to meet President Biden’s commitment to provide enough vaccines to immunize every adult by the end of May.

Pfizer is shipping its doses ahead of schedule, and Moderna is about to approve the supply of vaccine bottles of up to 15 doses instead of 10, further strengthening the country’s inventory.

The problems arose at a new facility the federal government hired last year to manufacture vaccines from Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. The two vaccines use the same technology, which uses a harmless version of a virus – known as a vector – that is transferred into cells to make a protein, which then stimulates the immune system to produce antibodies. However, the Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca vectors are biologically different and not interchangeable.

At the end of February, one or more employees somehow mixed up the two during the production process and raised questions about training and supervision.

Vaccine manufacturing is a notoriously capricious science, and errors are often expected to occur and ruin batches. However, Emergent’s mistake went undetected for days until Johnson & Johnson quality controls discovered it, according to people familiar with the situation. By then, up to 15 million cans were contaminated, people said.

None of the cans ever left the plant and the lot has been quarantined.

Johnson & Johnson reported the mishap to federal regulators, who opened an investigation that delayed approval of the plant’s production lines. The company has increased the number of its own employees overseeing Emergent’s work and has introduced a number of new controls to protect against future errors.

Johnson & Johnson was already grappling with a manufacturing delay that caused the company to fail to meet its obligations to the federal government, but it appeared to be on track to catching up. 20 million doses had been administered by the end of March, and promises were made to deliver around 75 million additional doses by the end of May.

White House officials backed up their predictions in a phone call with governors on Tuesday. They forecast certain shipments from Pfizer and Moderna, but warned that Johnson & Johnson shipments would fluctuate.

In a statement late Wednesday, the company said it expected the steps it is now taking with Emergent would allow it to drop 24 million doses by the end of April, or whatever the federal government expects. However, this depends on Johnson & Johnson’s compliance with the Food and Drug Administration regulations.

Categories
Business

Europe’s altering guidelines prompts confusion

Europe's changing rules prompts confusion

LONDON – There are signs that the different – and changing – rules of use in Europe regarding the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University are creating further confusion and suspicion among citizens.

Not only have EU citizens faced a barrage of negative sentiment towards the vaccine, even from top officials themselves, but they have seen the shot suspended by more than a dozen European countries after concerns about a small number of blood reports clots became loud.

The European Medicines Agency and World Health Organization, after safety reviews of the data, recommended continued use of the shot, saying its benefits outweighed the possible risks. But those fears have not gone away and there is now confusion about which age group should and can take the vaccine.

On Tuesday, Germany stopped using the AstraZeneca shot on all citizens under 60, citing renewed concerns after a small number of reports of rare but serious blood clots. Earlier this week, some hospitals in Berlin initially stopped vaccinating women under the age of 55 with AstraZeneca’s shot.

Germany initially only allowed the vaccine to be used under 65 years of age due to insufficient data to show that it was safe and effective for the elderly, despite reversing that decision in early March.

Meanwhile, Spain decided on Wednesday to extend the use of the vaccine to key workers over 65 years of age. The vaccine was previously limited to the 55 to 65 age group, but is now made available to priority groups in this age group such as health workers, police officers and teachers.

In France, the AstraZeneca vaccine was initially not approved even for people over 65 years of age. French President Emmanuel Macron has now been criticized by many French commentators for his chair epidemiology, falsely saying that the vaccine is “virtually ineffective” for those over 65.

France later reversed that stance when more clinical trial data emerged, saying the vaccine would be approved for people with comorbidities, including those between the ages of 65 and 74.

Confused? You’re not alone. Comments on Twitter indicate that people on both sides are confused about the official stance on the vaccine.

A Twitter user based in Germany noted that “you can’t blame people for confusion” after listing the twists and turns that characterized AstraZeneca’s vaccine timeline.

Another user, Aetera, based in Germany, noted that “everyone here is confused whether it is good or bad” while another UK Twitter user, Mike Carrivick, said the reverse of the rules of use around the vaccine was going on the “irony of irony”, but one with potentially serious consequences. He remarked, “No wonder so many are confused and lives in danger.”

London-based Kristen Covo was another Twitter user who expressed confusion over AstraZeneca’s safety data after being suspended in a handful of European countries and resuming use following recommendations from the EMA and WHO.

Regarding the question of giving the second dose of vaccine to younger people who have already received a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the German vaccine committee announced that it would issue guidelines on the matter by the end of April.

The ambivalent and changing attitudes of European countries towards the vaccine were made all the more confusing by an accompanying narrative (and major argument) about the delivery of the shot.

The EU has repeatedly accused the drug maker of failing to meet its delivery schedule, while various EU officials and heads of state and government have cast doubts about the vaccine’s effectiveness, which in turn has made many EU citizens skeptical about vaccines.

A Brussels-based BBC reporter noted that it had been dubbed the “Aldi vaccine” after the cheap grocery store because people viewed the shot as a budget option. There have been other reports from people requesting Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna shots instead of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

As an English Twitter user named gazztrade asked on Wednesday, does the EU want “the AstraZeneca vaccine or not”?