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New York Metropolis’s Vaccine Passport Plan Renews On-line Privateness Debate

New York City’s Vaccine Passport Plan Renews Online Privacy Debate

When New York City announced on Tuesday that people will soon have to show evidence of at least one coronavirus vaccine to get into businesses, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the system was “simple – just show it and you’re in”.

The data protection debate, which rekindled the city, was less straightforward.

Vaccination records showing proof of vaccination, often in electronic form such as an app, are the foundation of Mr de Blasio’s plan. For months, these records – also known as health cards or digital health certificates – have been discussed around the world in order to provide a safe gathering for vaccinated people who are less at risk from the virus. New York will be the first U.S. city to include these passports in a vaccine mandate, and potentially trigger similar actions elsewhere.

But mainstreaming those credentials could also usher in an era of increasing digital surveillance, privacy researchers said. This is because vaccine passports can allow location tracking, although there are few rules about how people’s digital vaccine data can be stored and shared. While existing data protection laws restrict the exchange of information between medical providers, there is no such rule for uploading your own data to an app.

The moment is reminiscent of the months after the September 11, 2001 attacks, said privacy advocates. Back then, changes in the name of national security had lasting effects, including taking off shoes at airports and the data collection made possible by the Patriot Act.

Without security, presenting a digital vaccination record every time people enter a public place could result in a “global map of the people,” said Allie Bohm, a political advisor to the New York Civil Liberties Union. The information could be used for profit by third parties or disclosed to law enforcement or immigration authorities, she said.

“How do we make sure that in 20 years we won’t say, ‘Well, there was Covid, so now I have this passport on my cell phone, which is also my driver’s license and also all the health records I have ever had? and every time I go to a store, do I have to leaf through it? ‘”said Ms. Boehm.

She added that the passports could particularly disadvantage groups who are more concerned about privacy, including those without papers. The New York Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups have supported laws to prevent vaccination records from being shared with law enforcement and to ensure passports don’t become permanent health trackers.

Vaccination records were introduced in the United States largely without a national framework. President Biden has ruled out a national vaccination record so that states, cities and private companies can decide if and how to have their own electronic systems to keep track of people who have been vaccinated.

Some companies that have developed digital vaccination records have tried to forestall privacy concerns. Over 200 private and public organizations recently joined the Immunization Card Initiative, a coalition aimed at standardizing the collection and protection of vaccination data.

Many developers said they went out of their way to make sure the passports didn’t break the privacy boundaries. Clear Secure, a security company that has created a health passport that is used by over 60 organizations, including many sports venues, said that its users’ health information has been “treated with the utmost care” and protected by a variety of tools. Employers or venues can only see a red or green signal that indicates whether a user has been vaccinated, it said.

The Commons Project, a non-profit organization that developed a vaccine passport called CommonPass, stores vaccine and test data on users’ phones and only temporarily uploads the information to a server to verify that a traveler meets the requirements. Airlines that have introduced CommonPass, including JetBlue and Lufthansa, can only see if a passenger has been cleared for travel, it said.

JP Pollak, a co-founder of the Commons Project, said the group’s vaccination record is “trustworthy” as users’ data has not been stored in the cloud and the passport restricts the information companies can see.

But while vaccine passports are still in the making, Covid-19 contact tracing apps that were introduced earlier in the pandemic have already been used by more authoritarian countries in a way that raises privacy issues. That gives researchers little confidence about how those vaccine passports might be used later.

For example, in China, a program called “reportInfoAndLocationToPolice” within the Alipay Health Code, used by the Chinese government to assess people’s health, sends a person’s location, city name, and identification code number to a server once the user agrees software access to personal data.

In Singapore, officials said in January that data from the country’s coronavirus contact tracing system had been used in a criminal investigation, despite leaders originally saying it was only used for contact tracing. In February, Singapore passed law restricting such use to “serious” criminal investigations.

“One of the things we don’t want is that we normalize surveillance in an emergency and we can’t get rid of it,” said Jon Callas, the director of technology projects at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group.

Although such incidents do not occur in the United States, researchers already see potential for a handover. Several pointed to New York City, where proof of compulsory vaccination begins August 16 and will be enforced from September 13.

For evidence, people can use their paper vaccination cards, the NYC Covid Safe app, or another app called the Excelsior Pass. The Excelsior Pass was developed by IBM under an estimated $ 17 million contract with New York State.

To receive the pass, people upload their personal information. In the standard version of the pass, companies and third parties only see the validity of the pass and the name and date of birth of the person.

On Wednesday, the state announced the “Excelsior Pass Plus”, which not only shows whether a person has been vaccinated, but also provides additional information on when and where they were vaccinated. Companies that scan Pass Plus “may have the ability to save or retain the information it contains,” according to New York State.

The Excelsior Pass also has a “Phase 2” which could include expanding the use of the app and adding more information such as personal information and other health records that companies could review upon entry.

IBM said it used blockchain technology and encryption to protect user data, but didn’t say how. The company and New York State did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr de Blasio told WNYC in April that he understands the privacy concerns surrounding the Excelsior Pass but believes it will still “play an important role”.

Some federal states and cities are proceeding cautiously for the time being. More than a dozen states, including Arizona, Florida, and Texas, have announced bans on vaccination records in the past few months. The mayors of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle also said they would hold back on passport programs.

Some groups of companies and companies that have introduced vaccine passports said the privacy concerns were legitimate but addressable.

Airlines for America, an industrial trade group, said it supported vaccine passports and urged the federal government to put in place privacy standards. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, which helps its members work with Clear, said it was preferable to use the tools to ensure that only vaccinated people enter stores than to have companies close again when virus cases rise.

“People’s privacy is precious,” said Rodney Fong, President of the Chamber, but “when it comes to saving lives, privacy becomes a little less important.”

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Health

Covid Lab-Leak Idea Renews ‘Achieve-of-Perform’ Analysis Debate

Covid Lab-Leak Theory Renews "Gain-of-Function" Research Debate

In the United States, “there are no biosafety rules or regulations that have the force of law,” he said. “And this is in contrast to every other aspect of biomedical research.” There are enforceable rules, for example, for experiments with human subjects, vertebrate animals, radioactive materials and lasers, but none for research with disease-causing organisms.

Dr. Relman, who also supports the need for independent regulation, cautioned that legal restrictions, as opposed to guidelines or more flexible regulations, could also pose problems. “The law is cumbersome and slow,” he said. At one point in the evolution of laws relating to biological warfare, for example, Congress prohibited the possession of smallpox. But the rule’s language, Dr. Relman said, also seemed to ban possession of the vaccine because of its genetic similarity to the virus itself. “To try to fix it took forever,” he said.

The current H.H.S. policy also doesn’t offer much guidance about working with scientists in other countries. Some have different policies about gain-of-function research, while others have none at all.

Dr. Gronvall of Johns Hopkins argued that the U.S. government cannot dictate what scientists do in other parts of the world. “You have to embrace self-governance,” she said. “You’re not able to sit on everyone’s shoulder.”

Even if other countries fall short on gain-of-function research policies, Dr. Lipsitch said that shouldn’t stop the United States from developing better ones. As the world’s leader in biomedical research, the country could set an example. “The United States is sufficiently central,” Dr. Lipsitch said. “What we do really does matter.”

Ironically, the pandemic put deliberations over such issues on hold. But there’s no question the coronavirus will influence the shape of the debate. Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said that before the pandemic, the idea of a new virus sweeping the world and causing millions of deaths felt hypothetically plausible. Now he has seen what such a virus can do.

“You have to think really carefully about any kind of research that could lead to that sort of mishap in the future,” Dr. Bloom said.

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Health

Covid Lab-Leak Principle Renews “Achieve-of-Operate” Analysis Debate

Covid Lab-Leak Theory Renews "Gain-of-Function" Research Debate

In the United States, “there are no biosafety rules or regulations that have the force of law,” he said. “And this is in contrast to every other aspect of biomedical research.” There are enforceable rules, for example, for experiments with human subjects, vertebrate animals, radioactive materials and lasers, but none for research with disease-causing organisms.

Dr. Relman, who also supports the need for independent regulation, cautioned that legal restrictions, as opposed to guidelines or more flexible regulations, could also pose problems. “The law is cumbersome and slow,” he said. At one point in the evolution of laws relating to biological warfare, for example, Congress prohibited the possession of smallpox. But the rule’s language, Dr. Relman said, also seemed to ban possession of the vaccine because of its genetic similarity to the virus itself. “To try to fix it took forever,” he said.

The current H.H.S. policy also doesn’t offer much guidance about working with scientists in other countries. Some have different policies about gain-of-function research, while others have none at all.

Dr. Gronvall of Johns Hopkins argued that the U.S. government cannot dictate what scientists do in other parts of the world. “You have to embrace self-governance,” she said. “You’re not able to sit on everyone’s shoulder.”

Even if other countries fall short on gain-of-function research policies, Dr. Lipsitch said that shouldn’t stop the United States from developing better ones. As the world’s leader in biomedical research, the country could set an example. “The United States is sufficiently central,” Dr. Lipsitch said. “What we do really does matter.”

Ironically, the pandemic put deliberations over such issues on hold. But there’s no question the coronavirus will influence the shape of the debate. Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said that before the pandemic, the idea of a new virus sweeping the world and causing millions of deaths felt hypothetically plausible. Now he has seen what such a virus can do.

“You have to think really carefully about any kind of research that could lead to that sort of mishap in the future,” Dr. Bloom said.

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Health

F.D.A. Approves Alzheimer’s Drug Regardless of Fierce Debate Over Whether or not It Works

F.D.A. Approves Alzheimer’s Drug Despite Fierce Debate Over Whether It Works

“As soon as the product is approved, the cat is out of the bag and the horse out of the stable,” said Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, FDA Advisory Committee member, internist, epidemiologist, and expert on drug safety and efficacy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “There is no way to regain the ability to understand if the product really works after approval.”

Companies can conduct post-market studies with participants from other countries, but may face similar challenges in recruiting participants if those countries approve the drug before the studies are completed. the drug has not yet been approved outside of the United States, but Biogen has requested regulatory reviews in the European Union, Japan, Brazil, and elsewhere.

Aduhelm is a monoclonal antibody that targets a protein, amyloid, that clumps together in plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients and is believed to be a biomarker of the disease. Critics and supporters of the approval agree: the drug significantly lowers amyloid levels. The FDA said the drug’s effect on a biomarker qualifies it for the accelerated approval program.

However, reducing amyloid is not the same as slowing down symptoms of dementia. In more than two decades of clinical trials, many amyloid-lowering drugs failed to address symptoms, a history that some experts say made it particularly important that aducanumab’s data be convincing.

“Although the Aduhelm data are complicated in terms of clinical benefit, the FDA has determined that there is substantial evidence that Aduhelm reduces amyloid beta plaques in the brain and that reducing these plaques is likely to have important benefits for the patient, “said Dr Cavazzoni of the FDA wrote on the agency’s website.

Biogen officials said the drug provided long-awaited support for a theory that if done early enough, an attack on amyloid can help. Proponents of the approval also said it is possible that eliminating amyloid early could help contain the disease over time and provide added benefit beyond the slightly delayed early decline. However, Alzheimer’s experts point out that the assumption is completely untested.

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Health

F.D.A. Approves Alzheimer’s Drug Regardless of Fierce Debate Over Whether or not It Works

F.D.A. Approves Alzheimer’s Drug Despite Fierce Debate Over Whether It Works

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved the first new medication for Alzheimer’s disease in nearly two decades, a contentious decision, made despite opposition from the agency’s independent advisory committee and some Alzheimer’s experts who said there was not enough evidence that the drug can help patients.

The drug, aducanumab, which will go by the brand name Aduhelm, is a monthly intravenous infusion intended to slow cognitive decline in people, with mild memory and thinking problems. It is the first approved treatment to attack the disease process of Alzheimer’s instead of just addressing dementia symptoms.

Recognizing that clinical trials of the drug had provided incomplete evidence to demonstrate effectiveness, the F.D.A. granted approval on the condition that the manufacturer, Biogen, conduct a new clinical trial.

During the several years it could take for that trial to be concluded, the drug will be available to patients, the agency said. If the post-market study, called a Phase 4 trial, fails to show the drug is effective, the F.D.A. can — but is not required to — rescind its approval.

“The data included in the applicant’s submission were highly complex and left residual uncertainties regarding clinical benefit,” the F.D.A.’s director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, wrote on the agency’s website.

But, she said, the agency had decided to approve the drug through a program called accelerated approval, which is designed “to provide earlier access to potentially valuable therapies for patients with serious diseases where there is an unmet need, and where there is an expectation of clinical benefit despite some residual uncertainty regarding that benefit.”

Michel Vounatsos, Biogen’s chief executive, called the approval a “historic moment.” He said in a statement that the company believes the drug “will transform the treatment of people living with Alzheimer’s disease and spark continuous innovation in the years to come.”

Patient advocacy groups had lobbied vigorously for approval of the drug because there are so few treatments available for the debilitating condition and other drugs in clinical trials, while more promising, are most likely three or four years away from potential approval.

But the F.D.A. advisory committee, along with an independent think tank and several prominent experts — including some Alzheimer’s doctors who worked on the aducanumab clinical trials — said the evidence raised significant doubts about whether the drug is effective. They also said that even if aducanumab could slow cognitive decline in some patients, the benefit suggested by the evidence would be so slight that it would not outweigh the risk of swelling or bleeding in the brain that the drug caused in the trials.

Biogen, is expected to reap billions of dollars from the drug. The company has yet to announce a price, but it could be in the range of $10,000 to $50,000 per patient per year, Wall Street analysts project. Beyond that, there will most likely be tens of thousands of dollars in costs for diagnostic testing and brain imaging.

About six million people in the United States and roughly 30 million globally have Alzheimer’s, a number expected to double by 2050. Currently, five medications approved in the United States can delay cognitive decline for several months in various Alzheimer’s stages.

Although the clinical trials for aducanumab were conducted on specific populations of patients — those with mild cognitive impairment or early-stage Alzheimer’s whose brains contained high-than-normal levels of amyloid — the F.D.A.’s label for the drug does not contain any such restrictions. The label simply says the drug is “for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.”

The label says that patients should have a brain MRI within the year before starting the drug and should obtain additional MRIs before the seventh and twelfth monthly doses. The label says the “most common adverse reactions” include brain swelling, headache, brain microbleeds and falls.

Infusions will take about an hour and should start at a low dose, which should increase every two months until it reaches the high dose of 10 mg/kg.

In 2012, the F.D.A. revoked its approval of the drug Avastin as a breast cancer treatment after additional studies did not show enough benefit. But some other cancer drugs have retained approval even though additional trials failed to confirm the drugs were beneficial. The agency has also been criticized in the past for failing to make sure the follow-up studies are done.

Alzheimer’s trials are already challenging to conduct because it is often difficult to recruit enough participants. Because the condition can progress very gradually, trials need to be large and continue for many months in order to be able to see if a drug is slowing cognitive decline.

Several experts expressed skepticism that Biogen would be able to recruit many participants in the United States for a post-market trial because patients who can get a drug from their doctors are often reluctant to take the chance of receiving a placebo in a clinical trial.

“Once the product is approved, the cat’s out of the bag, the horse is out of the barn,” said Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, a member of the F.D.A. advisory committee, who is an internist, epidemiologist and expert on drug safety and effectiveness at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “There’s no way to recover the opportunity to understand whether or not the product really works in the post-approval setting.”

Companies can conduct post-market trials with participants from other countries, but may face similar challenges recruiting participants if those countries approve the drug before trials are completed. Aducanumab has not yet been approved outside of the United States, but Biogen has filed for regulatory review in the European Union, Japan, Brazil and elsewhere.

Aducanumab, a monoclonal antibody, targets a protein, amyloid, that clumps into plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients and is considered a biomarker of the disease. One thing both critics and supporters of approval agree on is that the drug substantially reduces levels of amyloid, and the F.D.A. said that the drug’s effect on a biomarker qualified it for the accelerated approval program.

Still, reducing amyloid is not the same thing as slowing symptoms of dementia. Over more than two decades of clinical trials, many amyloid-reducing drugs failed to address symptoms, a history that, some experts say, made it especially important that aducanumab’s data be convincing.

“Although the Aduhelm data are complicated with respect to its clinical benefits, FDA has determined that there is substantial evidence that Aduhelm reduces amyloid beta plaques in the brain and that the reduction in these plaques is reasonably likely to predict important benefits to patients,” Dr. Cavazzoni, of the F.D.A., wrote on the agency’s site.

Biogen officials said that the drug provided long-awaited support for a theory that attacking amyloid can help if done early enough. Supporters of approval also said that it’s possible that clearing amyloid early on could help rein in the disease down the road, providing additional benefit beyond slightly delayed early decline. But Alzheimer’s experts note that supposition is completely untested.

Doctors anticipate there will be tremendous demand for aducanumab from patients desperate to try any approved medication.

Because Alzheimer’s primarily affects older people, most costs are expected to fall to Medicare’s Part B program. Medicare has not yet said how it would cover the drug and its associated costs. The program does not generally pay for PET scans that may be needed to detect whether patients have amyloid levels that indicate if they have mild Alzheimer’s-related impairment.

The crux of the controversy over aducanumab involved two Phase 3 trials with results that contradicted each other: One suggested the drug slightly slowed cognitive decline while the other trial showed no benefit. The trials were stopped early by a data monitoring committee that found aducanumab didn’t appear to be showing any benefit. Consequently, over a third of the 3,285 participants in those trials were never able to complete them.

Biogen later said that it had analyzed additional data and concluded that in one of the trials a high dose of aducanumab could delay cognitive decline by 22 percent or about four months over 18 months. In the trial’s primary measurement, the high dose appeared to slow decline by 0.39 on an 18-point scale rating memory, problem-solving skills and function. A lower dose in that trial and high and low doses in the other showed no statistically significant benefit over a placebo.

“There’s so little evidence for effectiveness,” said Dr. Lon Schneider, director of the California Alzheimer’s Disease Center at the University of Southern California and one of many site investigators who helped conduct one of the aducanumab trials. He added, “I don’t know what caught the F.D.A.’s fancy here.”

At the time of the advisory committee meeting, in November 2020, there was not unanimity within the F.D.A. itself. An F.D.A. clinical analyst said there was a sufficient case for approval, but an F.D.A. statistician wrote that another trial was needed because “there is no compelling, substantial evidence of treatment effect or disease slowing.”

After the advisory committee’s blistering rejection, the F.D.A. extended its decision deadline by three months and sought additional information from Biogen, which hasn’t said what it submitted.

Biogen and some researchers who favored approval of the drug said that given the need for Alzheimer’s medications, the single positive trial, plus results from a small safety trial and aducanumab’s ability to reduce amyloid justified making it available to patients now.

Dr. Stephen Salloway, who has received research and consulting fees from Biogen but wasn’t paid for being an aducanumab trial site principal investigator, said that while he understood the concerns about the data, “the totality of the evidence favors approval, and F.D.A. approval will open the door to a new treatment era for Alzheimer’s disease that we can build on.”

The F.D.A. typically follows advisory committee recommendations and usually requires two convincing studies for approval, but it has made exceptions, especially for severe diseases that lack treatments. But some experts worry that aducanumab’s approval could lower standards for future drugs, allowing them onto the market before experts in the field are convinced the benefits outweigh any safety risks.

The risks with aducanumab involve brain swelling or bleeding experienced by about 40 percent of Phase 3 trial participants receiving the high dose. Most were either asymptomatic or had headaches, dizziness or nausea. But such effects prompted 6 percent of high-dose recipients to discontinue. No Phase 3 participants died from the effects, but one safety trial participant did.

Similar side effects have occurred in trials of previous amyloid-lowering drugs, but doctors consider them manageable if a patient is evaluated regularly with brain scans. Still, even supporters of approval said that conducting such safety monitoring was more difficult when not done in the carefully controlled regimen of a study.

“It’s going to be challenging when it’s applied more broadly, outside of a clinical trial,” said Dr. Salloway, director of neurology and the Memory and Aging Program at Butler Hospital in Providence, R.I.

Biogen is expecting to launch the drug quickly, with more than 600 sites across the country expected to administer it. Clinics for patients with cognitive problems have been scrambling to prepare.

Dr. Jeffrey Burns, director of the University of Kansas Health System’s memory clinic and a site investigator for one trial, said he expected “the phone to be ringing off the hook.” He estimates 25 to 40 percent of the clinic’s roughly 3,000 patients might be eligible, but it doesn’t have enough neurologists.

Several Alzheimer’s doctors who believe the case for approving aducanumab is too weak said they would now feel ethically compelled to make it available. They believe that many patients, even when told of the problematic evidence, would try the drug because they would assume there was a compelling reason it received F.D.A. approval.

“I had this conversation with a real patient who was very interested in it,” said Dr. David Knopman, a clinical neurologist at the Mayo Clinic and a site principal investigator for one trial who co-wrote an article saying the evidence was insufficient to show benefit. “I presented the data to the patient and her husband, and they didn’t hear a word I said about my concerns. All they heard was there might be benefit.”

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Business

Company Leaders Urged to Wade Into Debate Over Voting Legal guidelines: Dwell Updates

Ken Frazier, the Merck chief executive, has called on corporate executives to publicly state their support for broader ballot access.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Mike Cohen for The New York Times

More than 100 corporate leaders attended a Zoom meeting on Saturday afternoon to discuss what they should do, if anything, to shape the debate around restrictive voting laws under discussion across the United States.

On the call, which was organized by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale professor who regularly gathers executives to discuss politics, several senior business leaders spoke forcefully about the need for companies to use their clout to oppose new state legislation that would make it harder to vote.

The call began with Ken Chenault, the former American Express chief, and Ken Frazier, the Merck chief executive, urging the executives to publicly state their support for broader ballot access, according to several people who attended the meeting. Earlier this month, the two gathered 70 fellow Black leaders to sign a letter last month calling on companies to fight bills that restrict voting rights, like the one that recently passed in Georgia.

Mr. Chenault and Mr. Frazier have prepared a new statement that broadly supports voting rights, and they are asking big companies to sign it this week.

Later on the call, several other chief executives shared their views on the wave of restrictive new voting laws being advanced by Republicans, according to the people who attended the meeting.

Chip Bergh, the chief executive of Levi’s, called the movement a threat to democracy, while Mia Mends, a Black executive at Sodexo who is based in Houston, spoke about restrictive voting legislation that was making its way through the Texas state legislature.

Toward the end of the call, Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder, discussed the importance of having corporate leaders affirm that the last election was secure, and James Murdoch, the former chief executive of 21st Century Fox, talked about the importance of a healthy democracy.

The voting-rights debate is fraught for companies, putting them at the center of an increasingly heated partisan battle.

“C.E.O.s are grappling right now with what to do and how to respond,” said Daniella Ballou-Aares, chief executive of Leadership Now, who helped organize the call. “There is a lot of confusion.”

But beyond making statements, business leaders are at a loss over what they can do to influence the policy decisions made by Republican lawmakers who have embraced overhauling voting rights as a priority.

Companies like Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola lobbied behind the scenes before the Georgia law was passed last month, and the companies say their efforts had a hand in removing some of the most restrictive provisions, such as eliminating Sunday voting.

But after Delta and Coca-Cola came out in opposition to the final law, and other corporations began sounding the alarm about the voting legislation being advanced in nearly every state, Republican leaders lashed out.

“My warning, if you will, to corporate America is to stay out of politics,” Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, said last week. “It’s not what you’re designed for. And don’t be intimidated by the left into taking up causes that put you right in the middle of America’s greatest political debates.”

Yet the business community appears to be emboldened, with more companies and business groups preparing to get involved.

Brad Karp, chairman of the law firm Paul Weiss, who attended the meeting on Saturday but did not speak at it, said he was organizing the legal community in an effort to support voting rights, and potentially challenge new laws.

“We plan to challenge any election law that would impose unnecessary barriers on the right to vote and the would disenfranchise underrepresented groups in our country,” Mr. Karp said.

So far, however, there is little indication that the growing outcry from big business is changing Republicans’ priorities, with legislation in Texas and other states still moving ahead.

“Texas is the next one up,” said one chief executive who attended the meeting but asked to remain anonymous. “Whether the business commitments will have a meaningful impact there, we’ll see.”

A QR code in a London cafe, for use with the British government’s contact tracing app.Credit…Neil Hall/EPA, via Shutterstock

An update to the contact tracing app used in England and Wales has been blocked from release by Apple and Google because of privacy concerns, renewing a feud between the British government and the two tech giants about how smartphones can be used to track Covid-19 cases.

In an attempt to trace possible infections, the update to the app would have allowed a person who tests positive for the virus to upload a list of restaurants, shops and other venues they recently visited, data that would be used by health officials for contact tracing. But collecting such location information violates the terms of service that Google and Apple forced governments to agree to in exchange for making contact tracing apps available on their app stores.

The dispute, first reported by the BBC, highlights the supernational role that Apple and Google have played responding to the virus. The companies, which control the software of nearly every smartphone in the world, have forced governments to design contact tracing apps to their privacy specifications, or risk not have the tracking apps made available to the public. The gatekeeper role has frustrated policymakers in Britain, France and elsewhere, who have argued those public health decisions are for governments, not private companies to make.

The release of the app update was to coincide with England’s relaxation of lockdown rules. On Monday, the country began loosening months of Covid-related restrictions, allowing nonessential shops to reopen, and pubs and restaurants to serve customers outdoors.

An older version of the contact tracing app continues to work, but the data is stored on a person’s device, rather than being kept in a centralized database.

To use the app, visitors to a store or restaurant take a photo of a poster with a QR code displayed in the business, and the software keeps a record of the visit in case someone at the same location later tests positive.

Apple and Google are blocking the update that would let people upload the history of the locations they have checked into directly to health authorities.

The Department of Health and Social Care said it is in discussions with Apple and Google to “provide beneficial updates to the app which protect the public.”

Apple and Google declined to comment.

“We’re not talking about how the caregiving crisis is impacting the learning loss for kids and how it’s disproportionately impacting girls and girls of color,” said Reshma Saujani, the founder of the nonprofit group Girls Who Code.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

A year into the pandemic, there are signs that the American economy is stirring back to life, with a falling unemployment rate and a growing number of people back at work. Even mothers — who left their jobs in droves in the last year in large part because of increased caregiving duties — are slowly re-entering the work force.

But young Americans — particularly women between the ages of 16 and 24 — are living an altogether different reality, with higher rates of unemployment than older adults. And many thousands, possibly even millions, are postponing their education, which can delay their entry into the work force.

New research suggests that the number of “disconnected” young people — defined as those who are in neither school nor the work force — is growing. For young women, experts said, the caregiving crisis may be a major reason many have delayed their education or careers.

Last year, unemployment among young adults jumped to 27.4 percent in April from 7.8 percent in February. The rate was almost double the 14 percent overall unemployment rate in April and was the highest for that age group in the last two decades, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At its peak in April, the unemployment rate for young women over all hit 30 percent — with a 22 percent rate for white women in that age group, 30 percent for Black women and 31 percent for Latina women.

Those numbers are starting to improve as many female-dominated industries that shed jobs at the start of the pandemic, like leisure, retail and education, are adding them back. But roughly 18 percent of the 1.9 million women who left the work force since last February — or about 360,000 — were 16 to 24, according to an analysis of seasonally unadjusted numbers by the National Women’s Law Center.

At the same time, the number of women who have dropped out of some form of education or plan to is on the rise. During the pandemic, more women than men consistently reported that they had canceled plans to take postsecondary classes or planned to take fewer classes, according to a series of surveys by the U.S. Census Bureau since last April.

“We’ve focused in particular on the digital divide and the impact of that on the learning loss for kids,” said Reshma Saujani, founder of the nonprofit group Girls Who Code. “But we’re not talking about how the caregiving crisis is impacting the learning loss for kids and how it’s disproportionately impacting girls and girls of color.”

All of this can have long-term knock-on effects. Even temporary unemployment or an education setback at a young age can drag down someone’s potential for earnings, job stability and even homeownership years down the line, according to a 2018 study by Measure of America that tracked disconnected youth over the course of 15 years.

Decorating a restaurant before its reopening on April 12.Credit…Andrew Testa for The New York Times

For the past year, the British economy has yo-yoed with the government’s pandemic restrictions. On Monday, as shops, outdoor dining, gyms and hairdressers reopened across England, the next bounce began.

The pandemic has left Britain with deep economic wounds that have shattered historical records: the worst recession in three centuries and record levels of government borrowing outside wartime.

Last March and April, there was an economic slump unlike anything ever seen before when schools, workplaces and businesses abruptly shut. Then a summertime boom, when restrictions eased and the government helped usher people out of their homes with a popular meal-discount initiative called “Eat Out to Help Out.”

Beginning in the fall, a second wave of the pandemic stalled the recovery, though the economic impact wasn’t as severe as it had been last spring. Still, the government has spent about 344 billion pounds, or $471 billion, on its pandemic response. To pay for it, the government has borrowed a record sum and is planning the first increase in corporate taxes since 1974 to help rebalance its budget.

By the end of the year, the size of Britain’s economy will be back where it was at the end of 2019, the Bank of England predicts. “The economy is poised like a coiled spring,” Andy Haldane, the central bank’s chief economist said in February. “As its energies are released, the recovery should be one to remember after a year to forget.”

Even though a lot of retail spending has shifted online, reopening shop doors will make a huge difference to many businesses.

Daunt Books, a small chain of independent bookstores, was busy preparing to reopen for the past week, including offering a click-and-collect service in all of its stores. Throughout the lockdown, a skeleton crew “worked harder than they’ve ever worked before, just to keep a trickle” of revenue coming in from online and telephone orders, said Brett Wolstencroft, the bookseller’s manager.

“The worst moment for us was December,” Mr. Wolstencroft said, when shops were shut in large parts of the country beginning on Dec. 20. “Realizing you’re losing your last bit of Christmas is exceptionally tough.”

He says he is looking forward to having customers return to browse the shelves and talk to the sellers. “We’d sort of turned ourselves into a warehouse” during the lockdown, he said, “but that doesn’t work for a good bookshop.”

With the likes of pubs, hairdressers, cinemas and hotels shut for months on end, Brits have built up more than £180 billion in excess savings, according to government estimates. That money, once people can get out more, is expected to be the engine of this recovery — even though economists are debating how much of this windfall will end up in the tills of these businesses.

Monday is just one phase of the reopening. Pubs can serve customers only in outdoor seating areas, and less than half, about 15,000, have such facilities. Hotels will also remain closed for at least another month alongside indoor dining, museums and theaters. The next reopening phase is scheduled for May 17.

Over all, two-fifths of hospitality businesses have outside space, said Kate Nicholls, the chief executive of U.K. Hospitality, a trade group.

“Monday is a really positive start,” she said. “It helps us to get businesses gradually back open, get staff gradually back off furlough and build up toward the real reopening of hospitality that will be May 17.”

Part of Saudi Aramco’s giant Ras Tanura oil terminal. The company said it would raise $12.4 billion from selling a minority stake in its oil pipeline business.Credit…Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters

Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia, has reached a deal to raise $12.4 billion from the sale of a 49 percent stake in a pipeline-rights company.

The money will come from a consortium led by EIG Global Energy Partners, a Washington-based investor in pipelines and other energy infrastructure.

Under the arrangement announced on Friday, the investor group will buy 49 percent of a new company called Aramco Oil Pipelines, which will have the rights to 25 years of payments from Aramco for transporting oil through Saudi Arabia’s pipeline networks.

Aramco is under pressure from its main owner, the Saudi government, to generate cash to finance state operations as well as investments like new cities to diversify the economy away from oil.

The company has pledged to pay $75 billion in annual dividends, nearly all to the government, as well as other taxes.

Last year, the dividends came to well in excess of the company’s net income of $49 billion. Recently, Aramco was tapped by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s main policymaker, to lead a new domestic investment drive to build up the Saudi economy.

The pipeline sale “reinforces Aramco’s role as a catalyst for attracting significant foreign investment into the Kingdom,” Aramco said in a statement.

From Saudi Arabia’s perspective, the deal has the virtue of raising money up front without giving up control. Aramco will own a 51 percent majority share in the pipeline company and “retain full ownership and operational control” of the pipes the company said.

Aramco said Saudi Arabia would retain control over how much oil the company produces.

Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich neighbor, has struck similar oil and gas deals with outside investors.

Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said the economy was at an “inflection point.”Credit…Pool photo by Susan Walsh.

Global stocks drifted lower from recent highs on Monday ahead of a batch of first-quarter earnings reports.

The S&P 500 dipped 0.1 percent after reaching a record on Friday. The Stoxx Europe 600 also declined from a high reached on Friday, dropping 0.2 percent . The FTSE 100 in Britain was also down slightly.

Stocks have recently been propelled higher by expectations that the global economy will recover strongly from the pandemic this year. Much of the impetus is expected to come from the United States, where trillions of dollars are being spent on various economic recovery packages. On Sunday, Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, said the economy was at an “inflection point” and on the cusp of growing more quickly.

But there are still concerns about the uneven nature of the recovery within countries and between them. For example, parts of Europe and South America are still struggling to contain outbreaks of the coronavirus and the vaccine rollout is slower than in the United States and Britain.

  • Oil futures rose. Futures of West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, rose 2 percent to $60.49 a barrel.

  • Yields on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes were little changed at 1.66 percent.

  • Retail sales in the eurozone rose more than economists forecast, data published Monday shows. Sales jumped 3 percent in February from the previous month, compared with predictions of a 1.7 percent increase.

  • In England, nonessential retail stores opened on Monday for the first time in more than three months. Shares in JD Sports, a clothing retailer, rose in the morning and hit a record high. But by midmorning shares were down alongside several other large British brands, including Marks & Spencer and Next. Foot traffic in shopping locations across Britain was three times greater than last week, according to data from Springboard.

The deadline to file a 2020 individual federal return and pay any tax owed has been extended to May 17. But some deadlines remain April 15, Ann Carrns reports for The New York Times. So it’s a good idea to double-check deadlines.

Most, but not all, states are following the extended federal deadlines, and a few have adopted even more generous extensions.

But the Internal Revenue Service has not postponed the deadline for making first-quarter 2021 estimated tax payments. This year, the first estimated tax deadline remains April 15. Some members of Congress are pushing for the I.R.S. to reconcile the deadlines, but it’s unclear whether that will happen, with April 15 less than a week away.

Most states have retained their usual deadlines for first-quarter estimated taxes. One exception is Maryland, which moved both its filing deadline and the deadline for first- and second-quarter estimated tax payments to July 15.

During the pandemic, Amazon workers around the country have joined groups and staged walkouts to amplify their concerns about safety and pay.Credit…Elaine Cromie for The New York Times

Even as unionization elections, like the lopsided vote against a union at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., have often proven futile, labor has enjoyed some success over the years with an alternative model — what sociologist of labor calls the “air war plus ground war.”

The idea is to combine workplace actions like walkouts (the ground war) with pressure on company executives through public relations campaigns that highlight labor conditions and enlist the support of public figures (the air war). The Service Employees International Union used the strategy to organize janitors beginning in the 1980s, and to win gains for fast-food workers in the past few years, including wage increases across the industry, Noam Scheiber reports for The New York Times.

“There are almost never any elections,” said Ruth Milkman, a sociologist of labor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. “It’s all about putting pressure on decision makers at the top.”

Labor leaders and progressive activists and politicians said they intended to escalate both the ground war and the air war against Amazon after the failed union election, though some skeptics within the labor movement are likely to resist spending more revenue, which is in the billions of dollars a year but declining.

Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the retail workers union, said in an interview that elections should remain an important part of labor’s Amazon strategy. “I think we opened the door,” he said. “If you want to build real power, you have to do it with a majority of workers.”

But other leaders said elections should be de-emphasized. Jesse Case, secretary-treasurer of a Teamsters local in Iowa, said the Teamsters were trying to organize Amazon workers in Iowa so they could take actions like labor stoppages and enlist members of the community — for example, by turning them out for rallies.

Unfair housing, zoning and lending policies have prevented generations of Black families from gathering assets.Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

President Biden’s sweeping pandemic relief bill and his multitrillion-dollar initiatives to rebuild infrastructure and increase wages for health care workers are intended to help ease the economic disadvantages facing racial minorities.

Yet academic experts and some policymakers say still more will be needed to repair a yawning racial wealth gap, in which Black households have a mere 12 cents for every dollar that a typical white household holds.

The disparity results in something of a rigged game for Black Americans, in which they start out behind in economic terms at birth and fall further behind during their lives, Patricia Cohen writes in The New York Times. Black graduates, for example, have to take out bigger loans to cover college costs, compelling them to start out in more debt — on average $25,000 more — than their white counterparts.

The persistence of the problem affects the entire economy: A study by McKinsey & Company found that consumption and investment lost because of the gap cost the U.S. economy $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

It also has deep historical roots. African-Americans were left out of the Homestead Act, which distributed land to citizens in the 19th century, and largely excluded from federal mortgage loan support programs in the 20th century.

As a result, the gap is unlikely to shrink substantially without policies that specifically address it, such as government-funded accounts that provide children with assets at birth. Several states have experimented with these programs on a small scale.

“We have very clear evidence that if we create an account of birth for everyone and provide a little more resources to people at the bottom, then all these babies accumulate assets,” said Michael Sherraden, founding director of the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis, which is running an experimental program in Oklahoma. “Kids of color accumulate assets as fast as white kids.”

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Politics

The place Will the Gun Management Debate Go Now (if Anyplace)?

Where Will the Gun Control Debate Go Now (if Anywhere)?

New York Times Podcasts

My experience with the interview with Senator Bernie Sanders is that you usually speak to someone who realizes that they are rowing against the tide of American politics. They usually talk about what he thinks the president should do but not, or what the Democratic Party should but not support.

But the American rescue plan was different. It’s President Biden’s bill, of course, but it’s the kind of thing Mr Sanders has been fighting to get passed for years. This also applies to the next package for full employment through investment. And so I wanted to hear what Mr. Sanders thought of that moment when he apparently lost the election but won many of the arguments.

So I asked him on my podcast, and I got a much more upbeat Mr. Sanders than I’ve ever spoken before. “Congress doesn’t pass perfect bills,” he told me. “But for workers, this is the most important law passed since the 1960s.”

We also talked about the filibuster, which went from being a supporter to being rejected even during the 2020 campaign. and the struggles over language and culture, in which he clearly has concerns about where liberals are headed and how difficult it is to speak to voters who might otherwise economically agree with them.

“These cultural problems,” he said, “I don’t know how to fill the gap.” But “somehow, in some cases, the intellectual elite have a disdain for the people who live in rural America,” he said, arguing that the first step in winning those voters back is to prove that you respect them.

It’s an interesting, thoughtful conversation with a politician who is finally rowing with the tide and obviously excited to see how far he can go. I hope You will be listening by following “The Ezra Klein Show” Anywhere you can get your podcasts or read the transcript here.

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Politics

Senate Panel to Debate Gun Management After Two Mass Shootings

Senate Panel to Debate Gun Control After Two Mass Shootings

Senators quickly split by partisan standards on Tuesday as Democrats called for action after two mass shootings last week and Republicans denounced their calls to highlight the political divide that has fueled a decade-long cycle of inaction against gun violence.

At a Senate Justice Committee hearing scheduled ahead of the Atlanta and Boulder shootings that killed at least 18 people, Democrats argued that the recent slaughter left Congress with no choice but to issue stricter guidelines. They lamented the grim pattern of fear and outrage, followed by partisanship and paralysis that had become the norm after mass shootings.

“In addition to a moment of silence, I would like to invite a moment of action,” said Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the committee. “A moment of real care. A moment when we don’t allow others to do what we have to do. Prayer leaders have an important place here, but we are Senate leaders. What do we do?”

Even before the recent shootings, the Democrats had begun to push for stricter arms control measures, which face great opportunities in the 50:50 Senate. House Democrats passed two bills this month aimed at expanding and strengthening background checks on gun buyers by applying them to all gun buyers and extending the time it takes for the FBI to review those flagged by the national emergency inspection system.

But the two laws passed in the House were deemed too expansive by most Republicans – only eight Republicans in the House voted to push universal background scrutiny legislation. The bills would almost certainly not get the 60 votes required to clear a filibuster in the Senate.

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the panel, said in his opening address he was confident that Democrats and Republicans could work together to make “bipartisan, sensible” progress on gun control. But he said that the legislation passed by the House did not fit this bill as the measures would be passed almost entirely on a party-political basis.

“That’s not a good sign that all voices and perspectives are being considered,” said Grassley.

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, went further, slapping Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who said Republicans had offered “fig leaves” rather than actionable, meaningful gun control solutions.

“Every time there is shooting, we play this ridiculous theater where this committee comes together and proposes a number of laws that do nothing against these murders,” said Cruz. “But what they suggest – not only does it not reduce crime, it makes it worse.”

The renewed focus on gun control is expected to return attention to Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, who speaks out against the downsizing of the legislative filibuster but has long – unsuccessfully – endeavored to propose a bipartisan Say goodbye to gun control. Following the 2012 massacre of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Mr. Manchin signed a contract with Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, to fill legal loopholes that would allow people to buy firearms at gun shows or on the Internet , allow background checks to be avoided, but proponents could not muster enough support to pass them.

Mr Manchin told CQ Roll Call earlier this month that he was speaking out against the General Background Review Bill passed by the House, citing its provision citing checks for individual sales, but said he was in favor of a legislative revival from Manchin-Toomey interested.

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Health

Three Ft or Six? Distancing Guideline for Faculties Stirs Debate

Three Feet or Six? Distancing Guideline for Schools Stirs Debate

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are clear and consistent in their recommendation on social distancing: To reduce the risk of contracting the coronavirus, people should stay at least three feet away from other people who are not in their households . The guideline applies whether you’re eating in a restaurant, lifting weights in a gym, or studying a long pitch in a fourth grade classroom.

The directive was particularly relevant to schools, many of which have not fully reopened because they do not have enough space to keep students three feet apart.

With a better understanding of the spread of the virus and growing concerns about the harm caused by keeping children out of school, some public health experts are calling on the agency to reduce the recommended distance in schools from six feet to three feet .

“I’ve never noticed that six feet is particularly sensual for the purposes of damage control,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University School of Public Health. “I wish the CDC would just come out and say this isn’t a big problem.”

On Sunday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on CNN that the CDC was up Review the matter.

The idea remains controversial, also because few studies have directly compared different distancing strategies. But the problem also boils down to a devilishly difficult and often personal question: How safe is safe enough?

“There is no magical threshold for any distance,” said Dr. Benjamin Linas, an infectious disease specialist at Boston University. “There’s a risk at six feet, there’s a risk at three feet, there’s a risk at nine feet. There is always a risk. “He added,” The question is, what is the risk. And what do you give up for it? “

The origin of the six foot long distancing recommendation is a mystery. “It’s almost like it was pulled out of nowhere,” said Linsey Marr, a virus transmission expert at Virginia Tech University.

When the virus first appeared, many experts believed that it was mainly transmitted through large respiratory droplets that are relatively heavy. Ancient scientific studies, some dating back more than a century, suggested that these droplets did not travel more than three to six feet. That observation, plus an abundance of caution, may have led the CDC to make their six-foot-long proposal, said Dr. Marr.

However, this recommendation was not universal. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends three to six feet of social distancing in schools, but the World Health Organization recommends only one meter, or 3.3 feet.

And over the past year, scientists have learned that respiratory droplets are not the primary mode of coronavirus transmission. Instead, the virus mainly spreads through tiny droplets in the air known as aerosols. These can travel long distances and flow through rooms in unpredictable ways.

Data also suggest that schools appear to be a relatively low risk environment. Children under the age of 10 seem to be less likely to transmit the virus than adults.

There has been evidence in recent months that school may not require six feet of distance. Fall rates were generally low even in schools with loose distancing policies. “We know that many schools are less than six feet open and have not seen large outbreaks,” said Dr. Yeh.

Updated

March 16, 2021, 7:09 p.m. ET

In a 2020 analysis of observational studies in different environments, the researchers found that a physical distance of at least a meter significantly reduced the transmission rates of several different coronaviruses, including those that cause Covid-19. However, they found evidence that a two-meter guideline “might be more effective”.

“One of the really important data points that have been missing is a head-to-head, head-to-head comparison of locations that have been implemented three feet apart with six feet apart,” said Dr. Elissa Perkins, director of Infectious Diseases in Emergency Medicine Management at Boston University School of Medicine.

Dr. Perkins and her colleagues recently performed such a comparison using a natural experiment in Massachusetts. Last summer, the state’s Department of Education issued guidelines recommending three to six feet away in schools due to reopen in the fall. As a result, school policies were different: some districts enforced a strict six-foot distancing while others only required three. (The state required all staff, as well as second-grade students and above, to wear masks.)

The researchers found that the social distancing strategy had no statistically significant impact on Covid-19 case rates, the team reported in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases last week. The study also found that Covid-19 rates in schools were lower than in surrounding communities.

The authors say the results reassure schools that schools can relax their distancing requirements and still be safe, provided they take other precautions, such as enforcing wearing a universal mask.

“The masking still appears to be effective,” said lead investigator Dr. Westyn Branch-Elliman, an infectious disease specialist with the VA Boston Healthcare System. “Assuming we have universal masking mandates, I think it very sensible to move to a three-foot recommendation.”

Class disturbed

Updated March 15, 2021

The latest on how the pandemic is changing education.

Not everyone finds the study so convincing. A. Marm Kilpatrick, an infectious disease researcher at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said the school district’s data was too loud to draw any definitive conclusions. “It doesn’t really allow you to get an answer that you can really feel confident about,” he said.

The study’s authors admitted that they couldn’t rule out that increased distancing was of little benefit.

With aerosol transfer, safety generally increases with distance. The further the aerosols move, the more dilute they become. “It’s like being near a smoker,” said Dr. Marr. “The closer you are, the more you will breathe in.”

And apart from the distance, the more people there are in a room, the higher the likelihood that one of them will get infected with the coronavirus. A six-foot rule helps reduce that risk, said Donald Milton, aerosol expert at the University of Maryland: “When people are six feet apart, you can’t wrap them up. So it’s safer just because it’s less dense. ”

Masks and good ventilation go a long way in reducing the risk. With these measures, the difference between three and six feet should be relatively small, scientists said. And if Covid-19 isn’t very common in the surrounding community, the absolute risk of contracting the virus in schools is likely to remain small as long as that protection is in place.

“There is always something we can do to further reduce our risks,” said Dr. Marr. “But at some point you will see declining returns and you will have to think about the cost of trying to achieve these additional risk reductions.”

Some experts say a small increase in risk will be outweighed by the benefits of fully reopening schools. “Trying to follow the 6-foot guideline shouldn’t prevent us from bringing children back to school full-time with masks at least 3 feet away,” said Dr. Marr.

Others said it was too early to relax CDC guidelines. “Ultimately, I think there might be a place for this changing guide,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason University, said in an email. “But it’s not now when we’re struggling to vaccinate people we’re still seeing over 60,000 cases a day and we’re trying not to reverse the advances we’ve made.”

Even proponents of changing the guideline say that any switch to loose detachment must be done carefully and in combination with other precautionary measures. “If you are in an area where there is not a strong tendency to rely on masks, I don’t think it is advisable to extrapolate our data to that environment,” said Dr. Perkins.

Additionally, officials risk confusing the public health news by setting different standards for schools than other common spaces. “I’ve developed further,” said Dr. Linas. “Last summer I felt like, ‘How are we going to explain to people that it’s six feet everywhere except in schools? That doesn’t seem consistent and problematic. ‘”

But schools are unique, he said. They are relatively controlled environments that can enforce certain security measures, and they have unique benefits to society. “The benefits of school are different from the benefits of cinemas or restaurants,” he said. “So I’d be willing to take a little more risk just to keep it open.”

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Politics

Assessing Claims within the Coronavirus Stimulus Debate

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.

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.

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.”

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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