Tag: Claims

Assessing Claims within the Coronavirus Stimulus Debate

Post author By
Post date February 27, 2021

Assessing Claims in the Coronavirus Stimulus Debate

Prior to the vote on President Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion stimulus package, lawmakers made a number of misleading claims to advance their position on the bill. Here is a fact-checking of some common discussion points.

Republicans wrongly characterized elements of the bill.

WHAT WOULD BE SAID

“This is supposed to be a Covid bill. Only 9 percent of this goes to Covid. – Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and minority leader of the House, in an interview this week on Fox News.

It is misleading. A spokeswoman for Mr McCarthy said the 9 percent related to the $ 160 billion for a national vaccination program, advanced testing and public health employment program as outlined by the Biden administration. In other words, 8.4 percent or $ 160 billion of the $ 1.9 trillion package will be dedicated specifically to fighting the coronavirus.

However, this is a fairly narrow interpretation of pandemic-related funding. The bill also includes other health expenditures such as subsidizing insurance coverage for laid-off workers, extending paid sick leave, and funding veterans’ care.

And like the first two relief bills signed by President Donald J. Trump and an alternative measure proposed by ten Republican lawmakers this year, much of the Biden Plan is devoted to providing financial aid to families and businesses made by the economic repercussions of the Pandemic. The $ 1,400 stimulus reviews and the unemployment benefit expansion are the two largest single expenditures, according to a breakdown by the Committee on Responsible Federal Budget.

WHAT WOULD BE SAID

“We put the numbers in and here’s your receipt, @SpeakerPelosi @SenSchumer” – Senator Marsha Blackburn on Twitter this week, breaking the bill into categories like art, museums and library services; Pelosis subway; Services including planned parenting; and “climate justice”.

It is misleading. Ms. Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, accused the Democratic leadership of drafting a $ 1.9 trillion bill that amounted to a liberal “wish list”. However, the four specific funding areas she highlighted add up to $ 547 million, or about 0.03 percent of the total $ 1.9 trillion.

“Pelosis Subway” refers to a project to expand the Bay Area Rapid Transit system to downtown San Jose, an hour south of San Francisco and represented by District Spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi. The project is actually in the district of another Democrat, Representative Zoe Lofgren.

A spokeswoman for the House Transportation Committee said the BART expansion did not receive any special funding, but “will simply be funded in proportion to other similar projects across the country.”

In total, the bill includes $ 30 billion for public transportation, the majority of which will cover the cost of running transportation systems across the country. Roughly $ 1 billion of this will go to a transportation funding program to ensure that approved transit projects – such as the BART expansion and rail improvements in Republican-run states like Indiana and Arizona – remain solvent.

“Art, Museums, and Library Services” refers to the $ 135 million earmarked for the National Endowment for the Arts and $ 200 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The bill also provides $ 50 million for family planning projects, which Ms. Blackburn described as “services including planned parenting.” The group is not specifically mentioned in the bill, but has previously received family planning grants. Other fellows include state and local health agencies (including the Tennessee Department of Health’s family planning program) and other nonprofit organizations.

Another US $ 50 million is earmarked for “environmental justice purposes,” the bill says, to address health inequalities caused by pollution and pandemics.

Updated

Apr. 26, 2021, 11:02 p.m. ET

WHAT WOULD BE SAID

“There are planned parenting bailouts and grants for illegal immigrant families.” – Indiana Republican representative Jim Banks in an interview this week on Fox News.

It is misleading. Mr Banks’ claim that “illegal immigrant families” receive incentive grants applies to families with mixed immigration status, not families in which all members are undocumented. Under the bill, couples filing their taxes together only need to have a valid social security number to receive a stimulus check. But the amount would be $ 1,400 for one person, not $ 2,800 for a couple.

In other words, American citizens or legal residents married to undocumented immigrants would receive the $ 1,400 but their spouses would not.

The first two rounds of stimulus testing had the same conditions with practically identical language.

Republicans also left out context.

WHAT WOULD BE SAID

“There is over a trillion dollars of money that was not spent on previous bipartisan auxiliary bills. The money is still in a bank account. – Rep. Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, in an interview this week on ABC.

“If you think about what’s already happened, there were $ 4 trillion in incentives. There’s still a trillion dollar worth, or nearly a trillion dollars, that hasn’t even been spent. – Senator Bill Hagerty, Republican of Tennessee, in an interview this week on Fox Business.

It is misleading. In a comment published this month by the Washington Post, Scalise linked up with the Committee on a Responsible Federal Budget’s coronavirus spending tracker as the source for that claim. About $ 3 trillion has already been spent, according to the tracker. However, that does not necessarily mean that $ 1 trillion is wasted.

The think tank stated in a blog post in January that “much of it is already allocated or earmarked for spending, and a small amount is never going to be spent”. According to the blog post, around $ 775 billion of the “unspent” funds came from the $ 900 billion stimulus package that came into effect at the end of December. Funding that is expected to be distributed over time (loans and Medicaid spending), as well as data delays, also explain some of the differences.

WHAT WOULD BE SAID

“In fact, 95 percent of that money won’t be able to be spent until 2022. Do you really want to wait until your child goes back to school until 2022? This bill will actually delay the reopening of the school. This is insane. “- Mr. Scalise in an interview this week on Fox News.

“We have to learn and follow science and get the kids back to school. This calculation doesn’t do that. “- Mr. McCarthy, in an interview this week on Fox News.

It is misleading. The bill provides $ 128.5 billion to fund K-12 schools through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Fund. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that $ 6.4 billion of this would be spent in fiscal 2021, which ends in September.

However, the Budget Office also said that the expenditure ratio it estimated was “subject to considerable uncertainty”.

In a letter to congressional leaders, the education groups wrote that the notion that schools would not need additional funding due to the size of their spending this year was “imprecise”.

“In conversations with our respective memberships, they report that the ‘spending ratio’ seems quite low for those unfamiliar with the financial procedures and requirements of state and regional schools, but they have budgeted every dollar they get from the Covid -Auxiliary bills are to be received and are still reckoning with greater costs that they cannot cover without additional federal funding, ”the groups wrote.

A spokeswoman for Mr McCarthy also noted that the bill “gives no assurance to families that schools will reopen” and that funding was not tied to school reopening.

Nothing in the bill specifically delays the reopening of the school, nor does it require funding for the reopening. However, a spokesman for the House Education and Labor Committee noted that this was never intended.

“Our position has always been that these decisions should be made by local school districts in consultation with public health officials,” said Joshua Weisz, the committee’s communications director. “Congress shouldn’t force schools to reopen.”

Mr Biden was inaccurate on some elements of the bill.

WHAT WOULD BE SAID

“If we don’t get the American bailout plan through, 40 million Americans will lose their food aid through a program we call SNAP, the old grocery stamp program. Aren’t we investing $ 3 million – $ 3 billion to save families from starvation? “- Mr. Biden on a remark last week at a Pfizer plant.

That is an exaggeration. FactCheck.org noted that the transcript of Mr Biden’s remarks to the White House added “some” in brackets before the words “nutritional aid”. That’s because breaking the bill wouldn’t cause Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to lose all of their benefits. Rather, the stimulus package signed in December temporarily increased the benefits of grocery stamps by 15 percent from January to June. Mr Biden’s current bill and plan would extend that increase through September.

WHAT WOULD BE SAID

“For example, if it – if we gradually increased it – if we indexed it at $ 7.20, if we indexed it through inflation – people would be making $ 20 an hour now.” – Mr Biden at a CNN City Hall event last week.

Not correct. The federal minimum wage was last raised to $ 7.25 in July 2009, which if indexed for consumer inflation would be around $ 8.81 today. Mr Biden most likely wanted to say “labor productivity” instead of inflation. Dean Baker, an economist at the Left Center for Economic and Policy Research, has estimated that if the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity it would be around $ 24.

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Tags Assessing, Claims, coronavirus, Debate, stimulus

Business

Jobless Claims Fall as Labor Market Continues Gradual Restoration: Reside Updates

Post author By
Post date February 25, 2021

Coronavirus caseloads have been dropping amid vaccination efforts, but until employers and consumers feel that the pandemic is under control, economists say, the labor market won’t fully recover.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…James Estrin/The New York Times

New claims for unemployment fell last week, the government reported on Thursday, the latest sign that the labor market’s recovery, however slow and unsteady, is continuing.

A total of 710,000 workers filed first-time claims for state benefits during the week that ended Feb. 20, a decrease of 132,000, the Labor Department said. In addition, 451,000 new claims were filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program covering freelancers, part-timers and others who do not routinely qualify for state benefits, a decline of 61,000.

Neither figure is seasonally adjusted. On a seasonally adjusted basis, new state claims totaled 730,000, a decline of 111,000.

Although initial jobless claims are nowhere near the eye-popping levels seen last spring, they are still extraordinarily high by historical standards. There are roughly 10 million fewer jobs than there were last year at this time.

Coronavirus caseloads have been dropping amid efforts to get vaccines to people who are most vulnerable. But until employers and consumers feel that the pandemic is under control, economists say, the labor market won’t fully recover.

“Until people feel this is sustained and that there’s not another huge wave coming, I can’t imagine we’re going to see big changes in jobless claims for a while,” said Allison Schrager, an economist at the Manhattan Institute.

Leaders at the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department have said that the damage to the labor market is much deeper than has been reflected in published government figures. They estimate that the true unemployment rate is closer to 10 percent than to the 6.3 percent recorded in the Labor Department’s most commonly cited measure.

Testifying before Congress this week, Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said: “The economic recovery remains uneven and far from complete, and the path ahead is highly uncertain.”

Those hardest hit are in the service industry, particularly in restaurants, hospitality, leisure and travel. At the career site Indeed, job postings over all are 5 percent higher than they were a year ago, with demand greatest for warehouse and construction workers and drivers, said AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at the company.

“We need job postings to stay elevated above prepandemic baseline to pull people back into the labor market,” she said.

Credit…Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Shares in GameStop were up 45 percent in premarket trading on Thursday, following another surge in the share price of the video game retailer that was at the center of a retail trading frenzy last month. On Wednesday, GameStop’s shares doubled to $91.71 and the volume of trading was more than 10 times the level of the previous day.

Some of the popular posts on Reddit’s Wallstreetbets forum, where users have been hyping up certain stocks in memes, read “ROUND 2!” and “THE COMEBACK!!!!!” Other meme stocks also rose: AMC shares gained 17 percent in premarket trading, and BlackBerry, Nokia and Koss were also among the gainers.

Earlier this week, GameStop announced its chief financial officer would leave the company next month. The company is under pressure from a large shareholder to shift from a brick-and-mortar business to a digital and e-commerce firm.

U.S. markets

Futures of U.S. stock indexes were little changed before the latest weekly report on state unemployment benefit claims. Economists expect a fall in the number, but the levels are still high by historical standards.
Bond yields continued to jump. The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes rose 5 basis points, or 0.05 percentage point, to 1.43 percent. This month, the yield has climbed 37 basis points.
Analysts at Bank of America raised their forecast for bond yields, expecting the 10-year yield to be at 1.75 percent at the end of the year because of stronger economic growth. Last month, they forecast 1.5 percent for year-end.
Federal Reserve policymakers have been playing down concerns about inflation. In a second day of testimony to lawmakers on Wednesday, the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, reiterated his message that a short-term jump in inflation, which is expected this year, is different from sustained higher inflation. And so the central bank could keep its easy money policies for awhile. Separately, the vice chair, Richard Clarida, said monetary policy was “entirely appropriate not only now, but — given my outlook for the economy — for the rest of the year.”

Europe

Most European stock indexes were higher. The Stoxx Europe 600 index rose 0.3 percent.
Shares in Mondi, a British company which sells packaging and paper products, dropped 1.2 percent after Bloomberg reported it was looking into a takeover of its rival DS Smith. Shares of Smith were up 6.6 percent.

Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

With the debate over raising the federal minimum wage heating up, Senator Bernie Sanders is putting the spotlight on some of the nation’s largest employers and their pay practices in a hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday.

Walmart and McDonald’s, which have not yet raised their starting wages to $15 an hour, will be the primary focus of Mr. Sanders’s scrutiny.

Mr. Sanders, a Vermont independent, plans to highlight research by the Government Accountability Office showing that Walmart and McDonald’s are among the companies with the highest number of employees qualifying for Medicaid and food stamps in many states.

“One of the scandals in the current economy is that there are millions of workers working for starvation wages,” Mr. Sanders said in an interview this week.

The chief executives of Walmart and McDonald’s were invited to attend Thursday’s hearing of the Senate Budget Committee but declined. W. Craig Jelinek, the chief executive of Costco, which pays some of the highest wages in the retail industry, is the only top executive who agreed to testify.

“A small percentage of our work force may come to us on public assistance and we welcome them,” Walmart said in an email to Mr. Sanders’s office last week. “We hire them, train them and give them the chance to earn a paycheck. And we are immensely proud of their work and their continued efforts to successfully support themselves and their families.”

McDonald’s responded in a similar vein in a letter to Mr. Sanders’s office on Tuesday: “We appreciate the findings of the G.A.O. report that identify a small percentage of our work force that may utilize public assistance, and we work to prepare them for career opportunities both inside and outside of the McDonald’s system.”

In its letter, McDonald’s added that its average wage was nearly $12 an hour, but the company did not provide its starting wage nor respond to a follow-up request from The New York Times for the number.

Last week, Walmart said that it was raising the wages of 425,000 workers and that about half of its work force in the United States would earn at least $15 an hour. But the company’s chief executive, Doug McMillon, stopped short of saying whether the company would eventually extend a $15 minimum to all employees.

Mr. Sanders said Walmart’s profits continued to be supported by taxpayers, who are paying for the health care and food expenses of the company’s lowest-paid workers and further enriching the retailer’s founding family and large shareholders, the Waltons.

“I think the American people really should not have to subsidize through their taxes the wealthiest family in the world,” Mr. Sanders said. “We are going to make that point over and over and over again.”

Credit…Ad Council

A broad promotional effort to combat Covid-19 vaccine skepticism began rolling out on Thursday, backed by the nonprofit advertising group Ad Council and a coalition of experts known as the Covid Collaborative.

The campaign, “It’s Up to You,” encourages Americans to seek out facts about the available vaccines. The Ad Council commissioned research that concluded that 40 percent of the public had yet to decide whether to be vaccinated as soon as possible. In Black and Hispanic communities, which have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, 60 percent of people do not feel fully informed, according to the study.

Public service announcements will appear in English and Spanish on television, social media and other platforms. More than 300 companies, community groups and public figures — including Facebook, iHeartMedia, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN — contributed to the $52 million push, as did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Several spots point viewers toward a landing page, GetVaccineAnswers.org, using messages such as “Getting back to the moments we missed starts with getting informed” and this one: “You’ve got questions. That’s normal.” A punchy video from Google shows animated arms with colorful post-vaccination bandages coalescing into the shape of the United States, while an offering from Verizon juxtaposes scenes of human connection with images of weddings and graduations conducted over video chat.

The Ad Council endeavor is one of several concurrent campaigns aimed at raising awareness and acceptance of the vaccines, including efforts from vaccine producers such as Pfizer and Moderna.

NBCUniversal built a vaccination push around the informational site PlanYourVaccine.com, while the #ThisIsOurShot campaign features health care workers who have been vaccinated. In Britain, an ad debunking myths about the vaccine was broadcast simultaneously across several television channels this month, focusing on ethnic minority communities.

Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times

The Biden administration is hoping that its nominee for U. S. trade representative, Katherine Tai, who is scheduled to appear for her confirmation hearing on Thursday morning before the Senate Finance Committee, can serve as a consensus builder and help bridge the Democratic Party’s varying views on trade, Ana Swanson reports for The New York Times.

Ms. Tai, the chief trade counsel to the House’s powerful Ways and Means Committee, has strong connections in Congress, and supporters expect her nomination to proceed smoothly. But if confirmed, she will face bigger challenges, including filling in the details of what the Biden administration has called its “worker-focused” trade approach.

As trade representative, Ms. Tai will be a key player in restoring alliances strained under former President Donald J. Trump, as well as formulating the administration’s China policy, where she is expected to draw on prior experience bringing cases against China at the World Trade Organization during her time working in the office of the United States Trade Representative, from 2007 to 2014.

She will also take charge on matters that divide the Democratic Party, like whether to keep or scrap the tariffs Mr. Trump imposed on foreign products, and whether new foreign trade deals will help the United States compete globally or end up selling American workers short.

Credit…Steven Ferdman/Getty Images

Coinbase, the most valuable cryptocurrency company in the United States, filed to go public on Thursday amid a surge in prices in digital money.

It is the latest milestone for Coinbase, which was founded in 2012 as a site for buying and selling cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and has now become a giant in the industry, with 43 million retail traders and 7,000 institutions as customers. Its fortunes have soared along with the price of Bitcoin, which was trading at more than $51,000 apiece as of Thursday.

Coinbase pulled back the curtains on its finances in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, revealing that it earned $322.3 million last year, on top of $1.3 billion in revenue. That compares with a $30.4 million loss atop $533.7 million in revenue for 2019.

The company makes money from fees charged for customer trades. In a letter to prospective investors, its co-founder and chief executive, Brian Armstrong, warned that the company’s financials may be volatile, because they are tied to the sometimes whipsawing prices of cryptocurrencies.

The company drew controversy last fall when Mr. Armstrong told employees to leave their social activism out of the workplace. Current and former employees have also complained about the company’s management of Black workers.

The company is planning a direct listing, where it simply puts its privately traded shares onto a public stock market — the Nasdaq, in this case — as opposed to a traditional initial public offering.

Such deals have gained popularity among technology companies in recent years for being a simpler way to going public, especially if they do not need to raise money. Last month, Coinbase said it was pursuing a direct listing.

Tags Claims, continues, fall, jobless, Labor, Live, market, recovery, slow, Updates

Politics

Congressional Committee Presses Cable Suppliers on Election Fraud Claims

Post author By
Post date February 22, 2021

Congressional Committee Presses Cable Providers on Election Fraud Claims

The legislature’s letter asked companies: “What steps have you taken before, on and after the November 3, 2020 elections and January 6, 2021 attacks to monitor the spread of disinformation, respond to it, and them? including encouraging or inciting violence through channels your business distributes to millions of Americans? “

“Are you planning to keep Fox News, OANN and Newsmax on your platform now and after the renewal date?” The letter goes on. “If yes why?”

Blair Levin, who served as the FCC’s chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, said a hearing could be a first step towards meaningful action. “You have to establish a state of affairs that in both the election and Covid, millions of Americans believe things that are just factually not true, and then try to figure out, ‘What is the appropriate role of government in changing these dynamics? ? ‘”Said Mr. Levin.

Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge, a nonprofit group focused on telecommunications and digital rights, suggested that lawmakers may not have easy ways to influence Fox, Newsmax, or OAN.

“You have a lot of people who are very angry about it, you have a lot of people who want to show that they are very angry about it, but you still don’t have a lot of good ideas about what to do about it,” he said.

Currently, defamation lawsuits filed by private companies have taken the lead in the fight against disinformation, which is being broadcast on some cable channels.

Last month, Dominion Voting Systems, another voting technology company that played a prominent role in conspiracy theories about voting in 2020, sued two Trump legal representatives, Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, in separate lawsuits, each more than $ 1 billion claimed in damages. Both appeared as guests on Fox News, Fox Business, Newsmax and OAN in the weeks following the election.

On Monday, Dominion sued Mike Lindell, the managing director of MyPillow, on the grounds that he defamed Dominion with unsubstantiated allegations of voting fraud on its voting machines.

Tags Cable, Claims, committee, Congressional, election, Fraud, presses, providers

Business

Dip in Unemployment Claims Gives Hope as New Virus Instances Ease

Post author By
Post date February 12, 2021

Dip in Unemployment Claims Offers Hope as New Virus Cases Ease

Following a pandemic-induced surge in layoffs due to new restrictions in many states, unemployment claims are falling, aided by a decline in new coronavirus cases.

Initial unemployment benefits fell last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, and were well below levels in December and early January.

The number of new coronavirus cases is down a third from two weeks ago, prompting states like California and New York to relax restrictions on indoor eating and other activities. This has given workers in the hardest hit industries some respite.

813,000 new state benefit claims were made last week, compared to 850,000 the previous week. Adjusted for seasonal fluctuations, the value for the last week was 793,000, which corresponds to a decrease of 19,000.

There were 335,000 new entitlements to Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a government-funded program for part-time workers, the self-employed, and others who are normally not eligible for unemployment benefits. That sum, which was not seasonally adjusted, fell from 369,000 the week before.

While claims remain extraordinarily high by historical standards, the improvement has raised hopes that layoffs will continue to slow as vaccinations spread and employers switch from laying off workers to adding workers.

“We’re stuck with this very high level of damage, but activity is picking up,” said Julia Pollak, employment economist at ZipRecruiter, an online job market. In fact, ZipRecruiter’s job postings are at 11.3 million, near the pre-pandemic 11.4 million level.

The improving pandemic situation has eased the burden on restaurants and bars, Ms. Pollak added. With nearly 10 million jobs deficit since the pandemic started and employers still cautious about hiring, the economy is facing major challenges.

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome H. Powell told the New York Business Club on Wednesday that policymakers should continue to focus on restoring employment, “Given the number of people who have lost their jobs and the likelihood that some struggle to find work in the post-pandemic economy. “

He found that employment for workers earning high wages had fallen by only 4 percent, but for the bottom quartile of those in work it was a “staggering 17 percent”.

Updated

Apr. 11, 2021 at 11:13 am ET

Many other signs of weakness remain. The Ministry of Labor reported that employers only created 49,000 jobs in January, underscoring the challenges facing the unemployed.

President Biden cited the poor performance to call for approval of a $ 1.9 trillion pandemic relief package. It would send $ 1,400 to many Americans, aid states and cities, and extend unemployment benefits, which is slated to run out to millions in mid-March.

The House Ways and Means Committee took an initial step on Wednesday when it began developing a measure that would continue emergency benefits through the end of August, increasing the weekly benefit premium from $ 300 to $ 400.

With the prospect of additional relief and a decrease in virus cases, some experts say a strong recovery is possible this year. Oxford Economics is forecasting economic growth of 5.9 percent in 2021, compared to a decline of 3.5 percent in the previous year.

According to economists at ZipRecruiter and another major online job board, Employers, employers are already putting out the welcome mat in certain areas.

Ms. Pollak said employer posts at ZipRecruiter in the past few days have offered hope. “We have seen employers exceed all of our expectations and show a lot of exuberance,” she said. “There are clear differences between different industries.”

In addition to strength in industries that benefit from the stay-at-home trend, such as B. Warehousing and deliveries, the recruitment of engineering, professional and business services has recently shown signs of life.

“Companies are looking to the future and are somewhat optimistic,” said Ms. Pollak.

AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, added that demand for pharmacists was up 23 percent year-over-year while openings for drivers were up 18 percent. “Everything is directly related to the pandemic,” said Ms. Konkel.

Nevertheless, there were regional differences. In cities like Washington, Seattle, Boston, and San Francisco, where many people work remotely, there were fewer vacancies in some areas than in places with more people back in the office.

“People don’t come to their local café on their way to work or stop at a store to pick up something when they work at home,” said Ms. Konkel, and that affects attitudes.

Restaurant openings have declined for a year, as have positions in arts and entertainment, hospitality and tourism.

At ZipRecruiter, the energy industry posted more jobs after heavy losses at the beginning of the pandemic. Manufacturing has also seen more openings lately.

“Some of the losers are finally coming back a bit,” said Ms. Pollak. “But so many industries are impossible to resume while the pandemic continues.”

Tags cases, Claims, Dip, Ease, hope, Offers, Unemployment, Virus

Health

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is barred from Instagram over false coronavirus claims.

Post author By
Post date February 11, 2021

Instagram on Wednesday deleted the report by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the political scion and prominent anti-vaccine activist, for providing false information related to the coronavirus.

“We removed this account because we repeatedly shared debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines,” Facebook, which owns Instagram, said in a statement.

Mr. Kennedy, the son of former Senator and US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, worked as an environmental attorney for decades but is now better known as a crusader against vaccines. A 2019 study found that two groups, including his nonprofit now called Children’s Health Defense, had funded more than half of the Facebook ads spreading misinformation about vaccines.

During the pandemic, he found an even wider audience on platforms like Instagram, which he had 800,000 followers on. Although Mr Kennedy has said he is not against vaccines while they are safe, he regularly advocates discredited links between vaccines and autism, arguing that it is safer to contract the coronavirus than to get vaccinated against it.

Facebook is becoming more aggressive in its efforts to stamp out misinformation about vaccines, and this week it says it would remove posts with flawed claims about the coronavirus, coronavirus vaccines, and vaccines in general, whether it was paid advertisements or user-generated Posts. In addition to Mr. Kennedy’s Instagram account, the company said it removed eight more Instagram accounts and Facebook pages on Wednesday as part of its updated policy.

They did not include Mr Kennedy’s Facebook page, which was still active early Thursday and making many of the same unfounded claims against more than 300,000 followers. The company said it has not automatically disabled accounts on its platforms and that there are no plans to delete Mr. Kennedy’s Facebook account “at this point.”

Children’s Health Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Members of Mr. Kennedy’s family have spoken out against his anti-vaccination efforts, including a brother, sister and niece who accused him of “dangerous misinformation” in a column they wrote for Politico in 2019 . Another niece, Kerry Kennedy Meltzer, a New York Presbyterian Hospital / Weill Cornell Medical Center doctor, wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times in December challenging his claims.

“I love my uncle Bobby,” she wrote. “I admire him for many reasons, including his decades of struggle for a cleaner environment. But when it comes to vaccines, he’s wrong. “

Tags Barred, Claims, coronavirus, False, Instagram, Kennedy, Robert

Business

The writer of League of Legends is investigating its C.E.O. after sexual harassment claims.

Post author By
Post date February 10, 2021

The publisher of League of Legends is investigating its C.E.O. after sexual harassment claims.

Riot Games, the video game publisher that produced the popular League of Legends, said Tuesday it is investigating allegations of sexual harassment and gender discrimination against its executive director Nicolo Laurent.

Mr. Laurent and Mr. Riot were sued in the Los Angeles Supreme Court in January by Sharon O’Donnell, a former executive assistant to Mr. Laurent. In court documents, Ms. O’Donnell said Mr. Laurent made repeated sexually stimulating remarks about her, asked her to work in his house when his wife was away, and told women who worked for Riot how to cope with stress bypasses The coronavirus pandemic was “having children”.

“Riot Games is a male-dominated culture,” the lawsuit said. Women workers like Ms. O’Donnell were “discriminated against, harassed and treated as second-class citizens,” it said.

When she denied Mr. Laurent’s advances, Ms. O’Donnell said in the lawsuit that he yelled at her, became hostile, removed some of her responsibilities, and finally fired her in July.

Ms. O’Donnell “believes this was because she refused to have sex or an affair with the defendant,” according to the lawsuit, which Daily Esports first reported Tuesday.

Riot denied Ms. O’Donnell’s allegation in a statement, saying she was “fired from the company over seven months ago due to several well-documented complaints from various people”.

According to Riot, an outside law firm was investigating Mr. Laurent and was overseen by a committee of the company’s board of directors. Riot said Mr. Laurent is cooperating with the investigation.

Riot, owned by the Chinese internet giant Tencent, has grown into one of the world’s most famous video game companies.

According to an estimate by research firm SuperData, the flagship League of Legends, released in 2009, had sales of more than $ 1.8 billion last year. And the series of professional competitions that Riot has built around the game has drawn tens of millions of fans, turning star gamers into esports celebrities that can make millions of dollars.

But Riot has also come under fire for its sexist, toxic workplace. In 2019, it was agreed to pay $ 10 million to the 1,000 women who had worked at the company since 2014 to settle a class action lawsuit for gender discrimination and unequal pay.

The California Department for Fair Employment and Housing, which has been investigating Riot since 2018, said last year the women could be eligible for up to $ 400 million, which Riot denied. Earlier this month it was said that court action would be taken to provide “class-wide relief” for the women who worked at Riot.

Tags CEO, Claims, harassment, investigating, League, Legends, publisher, Sexual

Health

Fb says it plans to take away posts with false vaccine claims.

Post author By
Post date February 9, 2021

Facebook says it plans to remove posts with false vaccine claims.

Facebook said Monday that it plans to remove posts with false claims about vaccines from its platform, including repealing claims that vaccines cause autism or that it is safer for people to contract the coronavirus than vaccinations receive.

The social network has increasingly changed its content policies over the past year as the coronavirus has risen sharply. In October, the social network banned people and companies from buying advertisements containing false or misleading information about vaccines. In December, Facebook announced it would remove posts with claims exposed by the World Health Organization or government agencies.

Monday’s move goes even further by targeting unpaid posts to the website and, in particular, to Facebook pages and groups. Rather than just aiming at misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, the update includes incorrect information about all vaccines. Facebook said it had consulted with the World Health Organization and other leading health institutes to come up with a list of false or misleading claims regarding Covid-19 and vaccines in general.

In the past, Facebook had announced that it would only “rank down” or push down on people’s news feeds, leading to misleading or false claims about vaccines, making it harder to find such groups or posts. Now posts, pages and groups that contain such untruths will be completely removed from the platform.

“Building trust in these vaccines is critical, so we’re launching the world’s largest campaign to help public health organizations share accurate information about Covid-19 vaccines and encourage people to get vaccinated as soon as possible they have vaccines available, “said Kang-Xing Jin, director of health at Facebook, in a company blog post.

The company said the changes were in response to a recent decision by the Facebook Oversight Board, an independent body that reviews decisions made by the company’s policy team and determines whether they are fair. In a decision, the board said Facebook needed to create a new standard for health-related misinformation because its current rules were “inappropriately vague”.

Updated

Apr 8, 2021, 7:52 p.m. ET

Facebook also announced that it would provide US $ 120 million in advertising loans to ministries of health, non-governmental organizations and United Nations agencies to help spread reliable Covid-19 vaccines and preventative health information. As vaccination centers became more prevalent, Facebook would help point people to places to get the vaccine.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, has been proactive against false information related to the coronavirus. He has Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, often hosted on Facebook for live video updates on America’s response to coronavirus. In his private philanthropy, Mr. Zuckerberg has also vowed to “eradicate all diseases” and pledge billions to fight viruses and other diseases.

However, Mr Zuckerberg was also a staunch advocate of free speech on Facebook and previously hesitated to contain most falsehoods, even if they were potentially dangerous. The exception was Facebook’s policy of not tolerating statements that could lead to “immediate, direct physical harm” to people on or outside the platform.

Facebook has been criticized for this stance, including for allowing President Donald J. Trump to stay on the platform until after the January 6 uprising in the U.S. Capitol.

Public health advocates and outside critics have questioned Facebook’s refusal to remove false or misleading claims about vaccines for years. This has resulted in an increase in false vaccine information, often by people or groups spreading other harmful misinformation on the website. Even when Facebook tried to update its guidelines, it often left loopholes that were exploited by misinformation spreaders.

Facebook announced on Monday that it was also changing its search tools to post relevant, authoritative results on coronavirus and vaccine information while making it harder to find accounts that are preventing people from getting vaccinated.

Tags Claims, Facebook, False, plans, posts, remove, Vaccine

Business

Inventory Market Dwell Updates: Jobless Claims, Merck CEO, 23andMe and Extra

Post author By
Post date February 4, 2021

Waiting for food donations in Pflugerville, Texas. Despite the rollout of coronavirus vaccines and a second federal relief package, applications for unemployment insurance remain high.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

The American job market continues to struggle, held back by the coronavirus, the slow rollout of vaccines and the loss of overall economic momentum.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week for the third straight week but remained at extraordinarily high levels by historical standards.

Last week brought 816,000 new claims for state benefits, compared with 840,000 the previous week. Adjusted for seasonal variations, last week’s figure was 779,000, an decrease of 33,000.

There were 349,000 new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federally funded program for part-time workers, the self-employed and others ordinarily ineligible for jobless benefits. That total, which was not seasonally adjusted, was down 55,000 from the week before.

The easing of new diagnoses and the partial relaxation of restrictions in some places seems to have taken off a bit of the pressure on employers that was evident a few weeks ago.

“These numbers were slightly encouraging,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “While still alarmingly high, it’s better than the spike that occurred at the beginning of January.”

Mr. Daco noted that the wait in passing a new stimulus package in December amid partisan battles in Washington may have delayed some claims that ended up being filed in January after it was signed into law. Now that surge seems to be clearing.

Nevertheless, for workers in the hardest-hit industries, conditions remain difficult.

“It’s been a rough winter, especially for folks in the leisure and hospitality sector and the food sector,” said David Deull, an economist at the research and analysis firm IHS Markit. “They were also the ones to suffer during the initial wave of shutdowns in the spring.”

The latest data strengthens the argument for more stimulus, economists say, a key policy position of the Biden White House. The $900 billion aid package passed in December helps many unemployed workers only through mid-March.

“I do think there is a need for more stimulus,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. “It’s a crucial part of this rebound.”

Credit…Mike Cohen for The New York Times

Kenneth C. Frazier, the chief executive of Merck who has led the pharmaceutical company for a decade, will step down from that post later this year, the company said Thursday.

Mr. Frazier will stay on after June as executive chairman during a transition period as Robert M. Davis, Merck’s chief financial officer since 2014, takes over as chief executive.

Shares of Merck, which also reported earnings that fell slightly short of analysts expectations on Thursday, were up a little less than 1 percent in premarket trading. The company’s share price has more than doubled since Mr. Frazier took the reins in January 2011, but this has lagged the S&P 500 index, which tripled over the same period.

Mr. Frazier is an outspoken advocate of racial justice. As Merck’s chief executive, he drew headlines for standing up to President Donald Trump over the violent Charlottesville demonstrations in 2017. As a Harvard-educated lawyer before that, he spent a decade successfully pushing for the exoneration of a wrongfully accused man on death row.

“The most important role of a leader is to safeguard the heritage and values of the company,” he told The New York Times in 2018.

He is one of just four Black chief executives of Fortune 500 companies, including Marvin R. Ellison at Lowe’s, René F. Jones at M&T Bank and Rosalind Brewer, who will take over at Walgreens next month.

The company said in a release announcing the transition that Mr. Frazier’s “belief in the importance of a strong, values-based culture, and his ability to attract and retain the best talent, will stand as an enduring testament to his concern and care for the people whose skill and commitment will be critical to Merck’s continued success.”

Credit…Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York Times

Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary, will meet on Thursday with officials from financial market regulators including the Securities and Exchange Commission to discuss the market volatility created by retail traders, the Treasury Department said, after the remarkable rise in prices of “meme stocks” such as GameStop.

The meeting, which will also include the heads of the Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is a sign of heightened scrutiny in Washington toward the frenzy in trading.

Shares in GameStop, a video game retailer, surged last week but have since fallen from their dizzying heights, testing the will of investors who joined in the fervor as a challenge to Wall Street investors. It shares soared 1,600 percent in January alone. Since Friday, the price of GameStop stock has plummeted to about $90 from $325.

The scrutiny in Washington comes as Gary Gensler, President Biden’s nominee to head the S.E.C., the principal overseer of capital markets, awaits Senate confirmation. Mr. Gensler served as head of the C.F.T.C. during the Obama administration and gained a reputation as a tough regulator.

Credit…Simon Dawson/Reuters

23andMe, one of the most popular consumer-DNA testing providers, said on Thursday that it planned to become a publicly traded company by merging with an investment fund backed by the British entrepreneur Richard Branson.

The company, which helped popularize at-home DNA testing after it was founded in 2006, will join the ranks of businesses that have found new homes in the public markets by merging with so-called special purpose acquisition companies. The company will be valued at $3.5 billion, including debt.

Commonly known as SPACs or blank-check funds, these vehicles have become one of Wall Street’s biggest crazes. They raise money from public-market investors for the sole purpose of buying a privately held company and giving them their stock tickers, bypassing the traditional cumbersome process of an initial public offering.

Last year, 248 blank-check funds raised $80 billion, shattering records, according to SpacInsider. They have grown so popular that their backers now include an array of unconventional figures, like the former Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane and the former House speaker Paul Ryan.

Mr. Branson was an early participant in the trend: In 2019, he took his Virgin Galactic space tourism company public by merging it with a SPAC. The company is now valued at more than $13 billion.

Now he is turning his attention to one of the biggest names in consumer DNA testing. 23andMe pitched itself as a way for people to screen their genetic data for potential health issues, but was temporarily ordered to stop by the Food and Drug Administration. The agency has since allowed it to offer those services.

Under the terms of the deal announced Thursday, 23andMe will combine with VG Acquisition Corporation, which is backed by Mr. Branson and his Virgin Group. Also investing in the transaction are the mutual fund giant Fidelity and 23andMe’s chief executive, Anne Wojcicki.

Credit…Andrew Testa for The New York Times

The Bank of England has told British banks that they should take whatever steps are necessary to prepare their systems for negative interest rates, opening up a pathway for the central bank to use this additional policy tool to encourage more lending.

But policymakers cautioned on Thursday that they weren’t trying to send the signal that rates would be cut below zero imminently. The markets responded accordingly: The British pound and short-dated bond yield rose as traders pared back expectations for a rate cut.

The central bank held interest rates at 0.1 percent and continued its asset-buying program at the same pace.

For months, there has been a debate about whether the Bank of England could introduce negative interest rates as another mechanism to bolster the economy. Other central banks in Europe and Japan have had negative interest rates for several years, but there were questions about how effective this move would be in the British economy.

After consulting with banks about whether it would be feasible to cut rates further, it found that most firms would need to make some changes to their systems and processes. On Thursday, it asked the banks to begin making these changes.

“While the Committee was clear that it did not wish to send any signal that it intended to set a negative Bank Rate at some point in the future, on balance, it concluded overall that it would be appropriate to start the preparations to provide the capability to do so if necessary in the future,” the minutes from February’s monetary policy meeting said. Banks should prepare “to be ready to implement a negative Bank Rate at any point after six months.”

The central bank also updated its forecasts for the British economy, which is in the midst of the pandemic and also dealing with the initial impact of Brexit, its divorce from the European Union’s single market and customs union. It said the economy didn’t suffer as badly at the end of 2020 as previously expected, but there would be a downturn in the first quarter of 2021 because of the long lockdown while vaccinations are rolled out.

Gross domestic product was forecast to fall 4.2 percent in the first three months of the year. That’s a downgrade from November’s forecast, when the central bank had predicted more than 2 percent growth.

Credit…David Zalubowski/Associated Press

Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, joined other energy giants this week in reporting sharply lower earnings on Thursday as the pandemic weighed on oil and gas prices and consumption.

Shell said that its adjusted earnings, a metric followed by analysts, fell 87 percent in the 4th quarter compared with the same period a year earlier, to $393 million. By the same metric, Shell’s profit for all of 2020 fell by 71 percent to $4.8 billion.

When including enormous write-downs on oil and gas fields and other assets during the year, Shell reported a loss of $21.7 billion for 2020.

Despite the disappointing results, Shell said it would increase its dividend payout by 4 percent in the first quarter of 2021. It had already increased its dividend by a similar amount in the third quarter of 2020 after a two-thirds cut earlier in the year, the company’s first since World War II.

Shell says it is able to afford the dividend increases because it pulled in about $21 billion in cash over the year after expenditures.

Shell is one of the largest oil producers in the Gulf of Mexico, but Ben van Beurden, the chief executive, said he did not “see any economic impact” on the company from the Biden administration’s decision to pause the granting of new leases on federal property. Mr. van Beurden, on a call with reporters, said that Shell had some 300 lease positions in the Gulf, giving the company “enough running room for the rest of the decade.”.

He did suggest that the administration’s approach might be shortsighted because it could lead to the United States importing oil and gas produced with greater carbon emissions from elsewhere.

Credit…Emile Ducke for The New York Times

U.S. markets

The S&P 500 index rose 0.3 percent at the start of trading after a small gain on Wednesday.
On Friday, the first major report on unemployment and hiring for 2021 will be released by the Labor Department. Despite the vaccine rollout, there are still signs that the labor market is struggling. This week, congressional Democrats and the Biden administration moved forward with their $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package.
Trading in “meme stocks” like GameStop and AMC Entertainment has calmed in the past few days. GameStop shares fell about 7 percent in early trading. Later on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will meet with financial market regulators to discuss the recent volatility caused by retail trading.

Europe

Most European stock indexes were little changed. The Stoxx Europe 600 was slightly higher with gains in health care stocks offset by losses in consumer and utilities companies.
Deutsche Bank posted its first annual profit in six years thanks to an increase in fixed-income trading revenue. But investors showed little interest in the beleaguered German bank’s stock, and its shares fell on Thursday.
Royal Dutch Shell reported a nearly 90 percent drop in its profit in the fourth quarter, the latest in a string of big oil and gas companies that have been beaten down by the pandemic, which has sapped demand. It adds pressure to the industry’s transition to greener energy.
Oil prices rose. Brent crude, the European benchmark, gained 0.7 percent, reaching $58.84 a barrel, the highest in nearly a year.

Asia

Credit…via YouTube

A regulator in Massachusetts wants to know if Keith Gill, an early endorser of GameStop also known as Roaring Kitty, broke any rules pertaining to his former day job when he promoted the video-game retailer on social media platforms.

Mr. Gill is a registered securities broker who worked for the insurer MassMutual as a financial wellness education director, and the company has told the state’s securities regulators that it was unaware that he had spent more than a year posting about GameStop on social media, online message boards and YouTube. The insurer also told regulators that had it known about Mr. Gill’s outside activities, it would have asked him to stop or possibly fired him, The New York Times’s Matt Goldstein reports.

Inspired in part by Mr. Gill’s cheerleading, thousands of small investors pushed stock in GameStop to as high as $483 a share and made Mr. Gill fabulously rich on paper. A picture he posted last week on the Reddit WallStreetBets forum showed his GameStop investment was worth $48 million, though his actual returns could not be independently verified.

Mr. Gill may also be summoned to testify before the House Financial Services Committee later this month, Representative Maxine Waters, the chairwoman of the committee, said on the Cheddar financial news channel on Wednesday.

Credit…David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Andy Jassy, the Amazon executive who will take over the company as chief executive when its founder, Jeff Bezos, steps aside later this year, spent more than two decades learning from Mr. Bezos.

In 2002, as a young executive, began following Mr. Bezos everywhere, including board meetings, and sat in on his phone calls, The New York Times’s Karen Weise and Daisuke Wakabayashi report.

The idea, said Ann Hiatt, who was Mr. Bezos’ executive assistant from 2002 to 2005, was for Mr. Jassy to be “a brain double” for Mr. Bezos so that he could challenge his boss’s thinking and anticipate his questions.

As Mr. Jassy followed Mr. Bezos, he also spearheaded Amazon’s move into a new field: cloud computing. That project became Amazon Web Services, now Amazon’s largest source of profit.

Tags 23andMe, CEO, Claims, jobless, Live, market, Merck, Stock, Updates

Health

West Virginia governor claims each individual over 65 might be vaccinated by Valentine’s Day

Post author By
Post date January 28, 2021

West Virginia governor claims every person over 65 could be vaccinated by Valentine's Day

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice praised the success of distributing coronavirus vaccines in his state, claiming that if the mountain state had the “Valentine’s Day doses,” everyone in that state, 65 years of age and older, would be vaccinated.

West Virginia has spent the past three weeks as the number one or number two state in the nation for vaccination doses per capita, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid-19 Vaccination Tracker. The state also has an administration rate for the first dose of 95.2% and a vaccination rate for the second dose of 46.8%. This is based on vaccine data released on West Virginia’s Covid-19 dashboard on Wednesday.

Justice broke his state’s “all-in” approach to spreading the Covid vaccine in CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith”.

“We didn’t necessarily take the federal approach, we took a practical approach and we took an all-in approach,” Justice said during an interview on Wednesday evening. “We brought our National Guard, our local pharmacies, our local health workers, our local health clinics and everything.”

Justice added that the West Virginia model “is not rocket science, it just moves and doesn’t sit back and plan a strategy”.

However, vaccine adoption remains slower than expected in several states in the country. Wisconsin, for example, has lagged behind, handing out only 42.5% of its Covid vaccine doses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Governor Tony Evers described the introduction of the state vaccine as “a bit bumpy”. Evers said his state did not get enough vaccines from the federal government and those who give vaccines needed more time to prepare.

West Virginia has delivered nearly 12,000 doses, 77% of their dose coverage. The judiciary emphasized the importance of putting older Americans at the forefront of a vaccination strategy.

“We just saw it that way and it was age and age and age and we knew we had to move,” Justice said. “We didn’t want vaccines on a shelf, we needed them in people’s arms.”

January 2021 is already the worst month in the United States since the coronavirus pandemic began, with more than 79,000 deaths, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins data. It’s a grim milestone that has broken the December record by more than a thousand deaths.

Tags Claims, Day, Governor, person, Vaccinated, Valentines, Virginia, West

Health

Eli Lilly Claims Drug Prevents Coronavirus An infection in Nursing Houses

Post author By
Post date January 22, 2021

Eli Lilly Claims Drug Prevents Coronavirus Infection in Nursing Homes

An unusual experiment to prevent nursing home employees and residents from being infected with the coronavirus is successful, drug manufacturer Eli Lilly announced on Thursday.

A drug containing monoclonal antibodies – laboratory-bred virus fighters – prevented symptomatic infections in residents who have been exposed to the virus, even in the frail elderly, who are most vulnerable. This is based on preliminary results from a study conducted in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health.

The researchers found an 80 percent reduction in infections in residents who received the drug compared to those who received a placebo and a 60 percent reduction in staff, results that were very statistically meaningful, Eli Lilly said.

The data has not yet been reviewed or published by experts. The company expects to present the results at a future medical meeting and publish them in a peer-reviewed journal, but did not say when.

The study included 965 participants in nursing homes: 666 employees and 299 residents. (The company had hoped more residents would attend, but it proved difficult to enroll. Many had dementia and others were suspicious of intravenous medication.)

There were four deaths from Covid-19 among study participants. All of them were among those living in nursing homes who were given a placebo, not the drug.

The drug Bamlanivimab already has an emergency approval from the Food and Drug Administration, which enables Eli Lilly to make it available to symptomatic patients early in the course of their infection.

However, this study asked if the drug could stop infections before they started. It was an unusual experiment: medical staff rushed to nursing homes in trucks equipped with mobile laboratories as soon as a single infection was found there. Once the workers arrived, they set up temporary infusion centers to administer the drug.

The research ended that weekend with an emergency meeting of the Data Protection and Monitoring Committee, an independent group that oversees the incoming results. The data was strong and convincing enough to bring the placebos to a halt.

Covid19 vaccinations>

Answers to your vaccine questions

If I live in the US, when can I get the vaccine?

While the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary from state to state, most doctors and residents of long-term care facilities will come first. If you want to understand how this decision is made, this article will help.

When can I get back to normal life after vaccination?

Life will only get back to normal once society as a whole receives adequate protection against the coronavirus. Once countries have approved a vaccine, they can only vaccinate a few percent of their citizens in the first few months. The unvaccinated majority remain susceptible to infection. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines show robust protection against disease. However, it is also possible that people spread the virus without knowing they are infected because they have mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. Scientists don’t yet know whether the vaccines will also block the transmission of the coronavirus. Even vaccinated people have to wear masks for the time being, avoid the crowds indoors and so on. Once enough people are vaccinated, it becomes very difficult for the coronavirus to find people at risk to become infected. Depending on how quickly we as a society achieve this goal, life could approach a normal state in autumn 2021.

Do I still have to wear a mask after the vaccination?

Yeah, but not forever. The two vaccines that may be approved this month clearly protect people from contracting Covid-19. However, the clinical trials that produced these results were not designed to determine whether vaccinated people could still spread the coronavirus without developing symptoms. That remains a possibility. We know that people who are naturally infected with the coronavirus can spread it without experiencing a cough or other symptoms. Researchers will study this question intensively when the vaccines are introduced. In the meantime, self-vaccinated people need to think of themselves as potential spreaders.

Will it hurt What are the side effects?

The vaccine against Pfizer and BioNTech, like other typical vaccines, is delivered as a shot in the arm. The injection is no different from the ones you received before. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines, and none of them have reported serious health problems. However, some of them have experienced short-lived symptoms, including pain and flu-like symptoms that usually last a day. It is possible that people will have to plan to take a day off or go to school after the second shot. While these experiences are not pleasant, they are a good sign: they are the result of your own immune system’s encounter with the vaccine and a strong response that ensures lasting immunity.

Will mRNA vaccines change my genes?

No. Moderna and Pfizer vaccines use a genetic molecule to boost the immune system. This molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse with a cell, allowing the molecule to slide inside. The cell uses the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus that can stimulate the immune system. At any given point in time, each of our cells can contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules that they produce to make their own proteins. As soon as these proteins are made, our cells use special enzymes to break down the mRNA. The mRNA molecules that our cells make can only survive a few minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is engineered to withstand the cell’s enzymes a little longer, so the cells can make extra viral proteins and trigger a stronger immune response. However, the mRNA can hold for a few days at most before it is destroyed.

“When I saw the results table, my jaw dropped,” said Dr. Myron Cohen, professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and principal researcher who helped design and conduct the study.

Although the study has ended, Dr. Daniel Skovronsky, Eli Lilly’s chief scientist, said the company would continue to rush to nursing homes on its study network if an outbreak is detected. “Everyone will get the drug,” he said.

Experts who did not take part in the study were delighted, but emphasized that they had not yet seen complete data. “I only see positive results here,” said Dr. Ofer Levy, director of the Precision Vaccination Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. “That’s a win.”

Dr. Kathleen Neuzil, director of the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health at the University of Maryland Medical School, was also encouraged.

“The mortality effect is remarkable,” she said, adding that the drug should be used more widely to prevent and treat Covid-19, “especially in populations such as nursing home residents who have high mortality rates and may not respond optimally to vaccines . ” ”

Vaccines also protect people from contracting the virus, of course, and nursing home staff and residents were among the first group to be prioritized for the shots. But supplies are inadequate, and many nursing home workers who fear the vaccines have refused to get them.

And after vaccination, it can take six weeks for the body to produce enough antibodies for maximum protection, said Dr. Srilatha Edupuganti, vaccine researcher at Emory University in Atlanta and study researcher.

Treatment with monoclonal antibodies could provide almost equivalent protection immediately, although it does not last as long as the protection offered by a vaccine.

Eli Lilly plans to reach out to the FDA for an emergency clearance to use the drug to help prevent infection in frail elderly populations, especially in nursing homes or long-term care facilities, said Dr. Skovronsky.

Tags Claims, coronavirus, Drug, Eli, homes, infection, Lilly, nursing, Prevents