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World News

India’s Economic system, Slammed by Covid-19, Wants Its Misplaced Development

India’s Economy, Slammed by Covid-19, Needs Its Lost Growth

NEW DELHI – Coronavirus continues to weigh on India’s battered economy, putting growing pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to encourage an emerging recovery and get the country back to work.

The coronavirus, which struck in two waves, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and brought cities to a standstill at times. Infections and deaths have decreased and the country is back to work. On paper, economists predict that growth could skyrocket in the second half of the year.

However, it can take years for the damage to be repaired. According to India Ratings, a rating agency, economic performance from April to June this year was 9.2 percent lower than in the same period in 2019.

The coronavirus has essentially robbed India of the momentum it needed to create jobs for its young and rapidly growing workforce. It has also exacerbated longer-term problems that are already holding back growth, such as high debt, lack of competitiveness with other countries, and political missteps.

Economists are particularly concerned about the slow vaccination rate and the possibility of a third wave of the coronavirus that could prove disastrous for any economic recovery.

“Vaccination progress is slow,” said Priyanka Kishore, director of India and Southeast Asia at Oxford Economics, in a research briefing last week that only 11 percent of the population are fully vaccinated. The company reduced its growth rate for 2021 from 9.1 percent to 8.8 percent.

Even 8.8 percent growth would be a strong number in better times. Compared to the previous year, India’s economy grew by 20.1 percent from April to June, according to estimates by the Department of Statistics and Program Implementation on Tuesday evening.

But these comparisons benefit from comparing it to India’s dismal performance last year. The economy contracted 7.3 percent last year when the government shut down the economy to stop a first wave of the coronavirus. That led to huge job losses, which are among the biggest hurdles to growth today, experts say.

Real household incomes have continued to fall this year, said Mahesh Vyas, executive director of the Center for Monitoring the Indian Economy. “Until that is fixed,” he said, “the Indian economy cannot recover.”

At least 3.2 million Indians lost stable, well-paid jobs in July alone, Mr. Vyas estimated. Small traders and day laborers suffered greater job losses than others during the lockdowns despite being able to return to work after the restrictions were lifted, Mr Vyas said in a report earlier this month.

Updated

Aug. 31, 2021, 7:36 p.m. ET

“Salary jobs aren’t that elastic,” he said. “It’s difficult to get back a lost job.”

About 10 million people have lost such jobs since the pandemic began, Mr Vyas said.

Mr Modi’s administration this month sought to revitalize the economy by selling nearly $ 81 billion worth of stakes in state-owned assets such as airports, train stations and stadiums. Economists, however, largely see politics as a step towards generating money in the short term. It remains to be seen whether it will lead to more investment, they say.

“The whole idea is for the government to borrow this money from the domestic market,” said Devendra Kumar Pant, chief economist at India Ratings. “But what happens if this project goes to a local player and he has to take out loans in the home market? Your domestic credit demand will not change. “

Dr. Pant added that the question of the willingness of private actors to preserve these assets over the long term and how monetization policies would ultimately affect prices for consumers.

Understand US vaccination and mask requirements

    • Vaccination rules. On August 23, the Food and Drug Administration fully approved Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for people aged 16 and over, paving the way for increased mandates in both the public and private sectors. Private companies are increasingly demanding vaccines for employees. Such mandates are legally permissible and have been confirmed in legal challenges.
    • Mask rules. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in July recommended that all Americans, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks in public places indoors in areas with outbreaks, reversing the guidelines offered in May. See where the CDC guidelines would apply and where states have implemented their own mask guidelines. The battle over masks is controversial in some states, with some local leaders defying state bans.
    • College and Universities. More than 400 colleges and universities require a vaccination against Covid-19. Almost all of them are in states that voted for President Biden.
    • schools. Both California and New York City have introduced vaccine mandates for educational staff. A survey published in August found that many American parents of school-age children are opposed to mandatory vaccines for students but are more supportive of masking requirements for students, teachers, and staff who do not have a vaccination.
    • Hospitals and medical centers. Many hospitals and large health systems require their employees to receive a Covid-19 vaccine, due to rising case numbers due to the Delta variant and persistently low vaccination rates in their communities, even within their workforce.
    • New York City. Proof of vaccination is required by workers and customers for indoor dining, gyms, performances, and other indoor situations, though enforcement doesn’t begin until September 13th. Teachers and other educational workers in the city’s vast school system are required to have at least one vaccine dose by September 27, without the option of weekly testing. City hospital staff must also be vaccinated or have weekly tests. Similar rules apply to employees in New York State.
    • At the federal level. The Pentagon announced that it would make coronavirus vaccinations compulsory for the country’s 1.3 million active soldiers “by mid-September at the latest. President Biden announced that all civil federal employees would need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or undergo regular tests, social distancing, mask requirements and travel restrictions.

“In India, things are more likely to get worse than better,” he said, adding that the costs for users of highways and other infrastructure could increase.

During the second wave in May, Mr. Modi defied the demands of many epidemiologists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to reinstate a statewide lockdown.

The 2021 lockdowns were nowhere near as severe as the nationwide curbs last year that pushed millions of people from cities to rural areas, often on foot, because trains and other transportation had been shut down.

During the second wave, core infrastructure projects across the country employing millions of local migrant workers were exempted from restrictions. More than 25,000 miles of Indian highway projects as well as rail and urban subway improvements continued.

On Tuesday, Dr. Pant, India’s growth estimates of 20.1 percent for the period April to June are nothing more than an “illusion”. In roughly the same period last year, growth shrank by a record 24 percent so much that even double-digit growth this year would leave the economy where it was two years ago.

Economists say India will have to spend money, or even large, to realize the full potential of its huge low-skilled workforce. “There is a need for very basic primary health facilities, primary services to provide food for children,” said Mr. Vyas. “All of these are very labor intensive jobs, and these are mostly government services.”

One of the reasons Indian governments typically haven’t spent in these areas, Vyas said, is because it was viewed as “not a sexy thing”. Another is the “dogmatic fixation” of governments on keeping budget deficits under control, he said. The government simply cannot rely on the private sector alone to create jobs, Vyas said.

The “only solution,” he said, is for the government to spend and stimulate private investment. “You have a demotivated private sector because there is not enough demand. That is holding India back. “

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Entertainment

A Choreographer Finds His Approach, Getting Misplaced within the Stars

A Choreographer Finds His Way, Getting Lost in the Stars

Kyle Marshall’s pandemic year was all about change. He turned 30. He moved into his own apartment. He now depends on his dance company, which he formed in 2014, for his livelihood. And he’s working with new dancers, a major shift for a choreographer whose works were populated by close friends and roommates — fellow graduates from Rutgers University.

“That transition felt like a lot, but it also felt absolutely necessary because it brings new ideas forward,” he said in an interview. “It keeps me accountable to how I want my ideas to come across. I have to communicate in a different way. I have to work with less expectation, and I think that’s really healthy.”

In this next step of his career, he said, he’s more focused and more comfortable making decisions. But the pandemic made also him realize something else: Just how exhausted he was. Before the shutdown, in December 2019, his company performed two works exploring Blackness at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. “It took a toll on me,” Marshall said. “One thing that came out of Covid that I was grateful for was just the time to rest.”

“I wish I was better prepared,” he said of dealing with the stress of his dancing life, which also includes teaching and being a member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company. He added, “I wish I was in therapy sooner.”

The experiences of the past year have shifted both his work and the way he works. During the pandemic, Marshall started to embrace improvisation; he also found himself drawn to jazz, which led him to think about the role improvisation plays in Black art.

“I also thought improvisation would be a helpful way for performers to get back into material after not being onstage for so long,” he said. “I was in such a place of improvisation that it didn’t feel quite right for me to start dictating to people what to do with their bodies.”

This month, two new dances — one a film, the other live — will have their premieres. “Stellar,” a trippy piece inspired by Afrofuturism, jazz and science fiction, is a digital work for the Baryshnikov Arts Center, available for two weeks starting June 7. The other dance, “Rise,” is a celebration of club music that will be performed live at the Shed on June 25 and 26.

In each, there is a sense of elation, of wonder. “‘Stellar’ was thinking about something that was sci-fi and still rooted in Black culture and Black art-making, but stemming from other things besides just pain,” he said. “There’s more that I want to explore and more that I want to sit in to make work.”

For “Stellar” Marshall conjures a universe, meditative and otherworldly, in which three dancers, Bree Breeden, Ariana Speight and Marshall himself, move to a dreamy score by Kwami Winfield, featuring the cornet, bits of metal, a hand drum and a tambourine. The dancers, in painted and dyed sweatsuits designed by Malcolm-x Betts, practically glow, lending a sense of mysticism to the darkened stage where Marshall’s circular patterns and revolving bodies, seem to regenerate the space over time. There’s a weightlessness to them; at times, they seem like particles.

“Stellar” unfolds in five sections, each a different grouping or exploration. “The first opening, as we call it, is ‘expansion,’” Marshall said. “I was trying to create a body that was floating.”

The work has a ritualistic quality, which owes much to the music. Before he started working with the dancers, Marshall spent time figuring out the structure and the concept with Winfield. Sun Ra, the avant-garde musician with a passion for outer space, was a big influence.

“Sun Ra represents an alternate vision of the future — the potential to be more than what we’re born into as humans and specifically Black people in America,” Winfield said. “Sun Ra is sort of in between traditionalism in jazz and expanding it outward into noise. And something that Kyle and I talked about specifically was the way Sun Ra treats his keyboard like the controls of a spaceship.”

Marshall was also inspired by other jazz artists, including John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane and Albert Ayler. The sound that they produced felt out there to him — in a good way. And it also came as a surprise: His knowledge of experimental music was linked to the composer John Cage. But “these people were also working on breaking down boundaries of sound, creating distortion, creating noise, working in dissonance,” Marshall said. “That was not a part of my education, and I found it very empowering: Here are Black artists working in a very radical way.”

It led to him to consider his own improvisational practice as he tried to explore new ways of moving. The transcendence of Alice Coltrane’s music was particularly meaningful. “It’s just not playing to perform,” Marshall said. “It feels like she’s pulling something out of her. It felt like it held me and kept me feeling that I can access that for myself.”

And as Winfield — a former roommate of Marshall’s — worked on the piece, he also participated in the dancers’ warm-up. That gave him, he said, “a holistic understanding of my role in reference to everyone else — just knowing the energy and focus required to maintain connections to the material, time and each other in space.”

“Stellar,” which the dancers hope to perform live in the future, creates a world where even the makeup (by Edo Tastic) is a space for Marshall to explore Afrofuturism: “I thought it added a little royalty to it,” he said.

But nailing the right makeup — or anything related to the look of a dance — doesn’t come naturally to him. “I’m a very, like, structural, embodied person,” he said. “Everyone asks me: ‘What about hair? What am I doing with my hair?’ And I’m like: ‘Don’t. I don’t know.’ Hair and makeup and costumes don’t come last, but they’re not my strengths. I’m trying to embrace that a little bit more and to get more people involved and see how it can inform the work.”

The music for “Rise,” his first live group piece since the pandemic, is composed and performed by Cal Fish, and inspired by house music. The feeling Marshall is going for? “It’s what you get both in the church and the club — that kind of opening and uplift,” he said. “I’m thinking about uplift as both an energetic feeling, but also a choreographic idea that the work ascends: It goes from a low place to a high place. Leaning into that expectation is something I’ve never indulged in choreographically.”

Again, it’s all about change. “Creating something that actually feels joyful,” he said with a smile.

It might seem odd, but Marshall’s embrace of joy is in response to the death of George Floyd and his aversion, he said, to displaying more pain. “A lot of my work was thinking about trauma and either displaying it or showing it,” he said. “I just think that cycle is toxic. I think about displaying Black violence: What does that do for the viewer?”

And what, he wonders, do we need coming out of this time? “I need a bit more space in my life, a bit more dreaming,” he said. “More affirmation and positivity. I just don’t think that right now for me is the time to sit in my trauma. I need more joy in my life.”

Categories
Business

Nielsen information reveals viewers have misplaced curiosity in award reveals

Nielsen data shows viewers have lost interest in award shows

The Oscars are Hollywood’s biggest night out, but fewer and fewer people outside of that circle are attending the event.

Last Sunday, the audience for the annual Oscars show dropped to a new low. According to Nielsen data, 10.4 million people watched which film took home the best picture award. That’s a nearly 56% decrease from the 23.6 million viewers who turned on their televisions for the show last year.

The Academy’s third consecutive hostless show scored a 2.12 rating for adults between 18 and 49, a key demographic for advertisers, down 60% from 2020.

The decline in both metrics is not entirely surprising, given that awards shows have generally seen a decline in viewership over the past few years. And only a few of the nominees were considered mainstream as the cinemas have largely been closed for a year due to the pandemic.

The Emmy Awards, which aired in September, had the lowest attendance for such a ceremony in the history of the television academy. The show only drew 5.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen, which is a 14% decrease from last year’s event.

The Grammys also saw astounding declines. This year’s awards show drew 9.23 million viewers, a 51% decrease from 18.69 million who chose the program in 2020.

Do people get bored at big awards shows or do they just look at each other differently?

Some argue that the flood of too many live awards ceremonies has saturated the market and made world-class awards shows like the Grammys, Emmys, and Oscars less exciting for viewers.

The Golden Globes, Video Music Awards (VMAs), Billboard Music Awards, Country Music Awards, BET Awards, People Choice Awards, Critics Choice Awards, and countless other ceremonies have been televised in recent years. With so little curation, it wouldn’t be surprising if viewers felt tired.

Not to mention, younger viewers, many of whom have cut cables, aren’t as willing to watch the traditional 16-20 minute commercials per hour that come with a live TV broadcast. A three-hour show like the Oscars can be an hour’s worth of advertising.

There are also some who complain that Hollywood uses its awards shows to make political and social statements. Regina King, who opened the Oscars on Sunday, used her time to point out how Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of three charges last year in the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black.

“Now I know a lot of you at home will reach for your remote when you feel like Hollywood is preaching to you, but as a mother of a black son, I know the fear so many live with and no, the amount of fame or wealth changes that, “she said.

Then there are the nominees themselves. Nielsen’s data shows that more people were hired in the years that certain, more commercially popular films were nominated. The 2019 ceremony, which reached 29.6 million viewers, became nominees from popular films such as “Black Panther”, “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”, “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “A Star is Born”.

Even a decade ago, when Avatar, Up, Inglorious Basterds, District 9, The Hurt Locker and The Blind Side were nominated for best picture, ratings reached 41.6 million.

Of course, there is a chance that people might watch these awards shows, but they might see the programs differently. The Nielsen data does not include numbers for viewers who have chosen to watch one of the top awards shows on streaming platforms.

Dan Rayburn, a media and streaming analyst, said one obstacle is that the streaming industry has not yet agreed on a set definition of viewer. Each streaming service has a different method of reporting how many people have seen a particular movie, TV show, or live program. This can make it difficult to make comparisons between platforms and between those platforms and traditional cable providers.

Oscars 2021 coverage by CNBC

Read more about this year’s Academy Awards:

Categories
Health

Mother and father, Cease Speaking In regards to the ‘Misplaced Yr’

Parents, Stop Talking About the ‘Lost Year’

“They had a sense of resilience and ‘grit’, even prepandemic which I think served them well,” she said. “I see an ability to pan.”

In Dr. Luther’s research actually regressed reports of loneliness for seventh and eighth grade students between spring 2020 and spring 2021 – a reflection of how she suspects how alienating and lonely middle school is for many of them in “normal” times. (“The loners, the introverts, the kids who weren’t popular – they’re fine, thank you,” she said.)

Other new data suggests that the youngest teens may have got through the pandemic year with slightly less wear and tear than older teens. In the fall of 2020, a research team led by psychologist Angela L. Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania surveyed more than 6,500 high school students in a large, demographically diverse school district where families could choose whether their children would attend remotely or in school Person.

They found that students who attended school from a distance, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, exhibited significantly lower social, emotional, and academic wellbeing – with the exception of ninth graders, whose level remained roughly the same. (And who for most of the 20th century were considered to be in the same developmental category as seventh and eighth grade students, teaching in middle schools.)

Overall, according to Dr. Steinberg, the youth who fared best during the pandemic were more likely to be the ones who were able to keep in touch with their friends. And for many middle school students, that means having parents willing to relax their usual rules on social media and screen time.

“Social media mitigates some of the effects of isolation,” he said.

This message, often echoed by experts and educators, should provide some relief to the many parents who feel guilty about the screen time they have given their children over the past year.

Rabiah Harris, a Washington public middle school science teacher, holds a PhD in education that, as the mother of a nearly 12-year-old, allows her to take a philosophical viewpoint.

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Health

Companies fret over misplaced gross sales

Businesses fret over lost sales

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention again advised against travel Monday while business owners in Miami Beach, Florida worried about the chaos over the spring break.

Miami Beach officials declared a state of emergency and ordered a rare curfew over the weekend to avoid the spread of Covid-19 and stop large crowds and unruly behavior in the popular tourist destination.

Some companies in the region, looking to recover from a brutal year of pandemic that drove down tourist numbers, say they are being wrongly punished.

Police have arrested more than 1,000 people since February 3, 50 of whom were cited over the weekend. The 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. curfew could be extended for up to three weeks to control the crowd that businesses could hit during the main spring break.

“Everything is choppy,” said Ashley Swanson, bartender at Mac’s Club Deuce Bar in South Beach. “You’re blaming the wrong people. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be open before midnight.

“The problem is not mine, the problem is with me [authorities] manage a lot, “he added.

Swanson said Mac’s was closed for Covid-19 from March through October.

Florida, which was not closed during the pandemic like many other states, was a top travel destination last year but still suffered from the pandemic. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said on MSNBC Monday that the spring breaker crowd is drawn to the city for a number of reasons.

“It was a very difficult mix of cheap flights, cheap hotels and the fact that they are known to be probably the most open place in the country,” he said, adding that the crowd is causing some “very, very worrying incidents on the beach”.

According to an estimate by Visit Florida, the state tourism agency, the state recorded 86.7 million visitors last year, a 34% decrease from 2019.

“Curfews have been incredibly impressive to our business and extremely disappointing given the challenges we have faced over the past year,” said John Kunkel, founder and CEO of 50 Eggs Hospitality Group, which has 11 restaurants, including the Yardbird Southern Table & Bar in Miami Beach said in a written statement. “That said, the Miami Beach area is like nothing I’ve seen in 20 years and is totally unacceptable. Something has to be done to help us and all businesses in the area. It’s devastating.”

The demand for flights and hotel rooms has recently increased, and prices and tariffs have increased. This is a trend fueled by a surge in vaccinations and travelers looking to travel after much of the past year.

The Transportation Security Administration screened more than 1 million people at US airports in the past 11 days for the first time in more than a year. On Sunday, the TSA examined more than 1.5 million people, most in more than a year, but still 30% fewer than the 2.2 million people compared to the same day in 2019.

“People want out,” said Bill Talbert, president and CEO of the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau. He said hotel occupancy in Miami-Dade County rose to nearly 75% that month, although property is typically 80% booked this time of year.

He called the chaos and subsequent curfews “unfortunate,” but said the area is likely to continue to attract visitors for conventions, cultural attractions and vacations.

“We are in paradise,” he said.

Many colleges in the US have cut their spring break to prevent parties and new Covid infections. While Covid-19 cases have declined from the January peak, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Rochelle Walensky, warned that infections could occur when people travel on spring break.

“Now is not the time to travel,” she said at a press conference on Monday.

“We are concerned not only with what happens when you are on the plane yourself, but also with what happens when people travel, that is, they go out, they mingle, they mingle with people who are not vaccinated “, she said.

Categories
Politics

A Governor in Isolation: How Andrew Cuomo Misplaced His Grip on New York

A Governor in Isolation: How Andrew Cuomo Lost His Grip on New York

Longtime advisors and allies have helped the governor navigate the series of crises and provided advice. They include two former top advisors, Steven M. Cohen, former secretary to the governor, and William Mulrow, another former secretary to the governor who now works for private equity firm Blackstone. Melissa DeRosa, the governor’s chief adviser; Mr. Cuomo’s pollster Jefrey Pollock; and Beth Garvey, special adviser to the governor.

The result on Wednesday was an unusually unsettled board chairman, who apologized emotionally for his behavior but insisted that he had never “touched anyone inappropriately” and did not intend to resign.

“Aside from the palace intrigue, there is a job to do and the New Yorkers have elected the governor for it,” a governor spokesman Richard Azzopardi said in a statement. “So he’s focused on getting as many shots in the arms as possible to make sure New York gets its fair share of the Covid aid package in Washington and working on a state budget due in three weeks.”

Individuals in contact with Mr. Cuomo’s team described some employees – especially younger ones – as demoralized and exhausted as a number of controversies extend beyond a year of navigating Covid-19 in an exceptionally demanding environment.

Several employees have left his office in the past few days for various reasons. Among those who left are Gareth Rhodes, who served as a member of the state coronavirus task force and was a frequent guest star during Mr. Cuomo’s press conferences, and members of his press team.

As the legislature enters high-level budget negotiations, even Mr Cuomo’s traditional allies recognize that his influence has taken a blow.

“It made his job more difficult,” said Jay Jacobs, chairman of the New York State Democratic Party, who said he spoke to Mr. Cuomo on Thursday. “If you are under this pressure, it will affect the level, the degree of your political strength.”

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Entertainment

California Misplaced 175,000 ‘Inventive Economic system’ Jobs, Research Finds

California Lost 175,000 ‘Creative Economy’ Jobs, Study Finds

Arts officials and elected officials in California on Thursday called for additional government spending to stave off what an organization chief called the “impending cultural depression” sparked by the pandemic.

“There is no economic recovery in our region unless it is powered by a working creative engine,” said Karen Bass, a US Congressman who represents part of Los Angeles, in a video taped for a panel discussion .

“Congress needs to provide additional support to the creative industries and their millions of employees,” she continued, saying that her district can only fully recover if the local arts community leads the way.

Calls for more help were broadcast during a video conference held by Otis College of Art and Design, which released a report on the creative industries. Two business impact assessments by the Californians for the Arts advocacy group on Thursday were also discussed.

According to the Otis College report, total job losses in the “creative industries” between February 2020 and December 2020 reached about 13 percent nationwide and Los Angeles County 24 percent.

During that time, the state lost 175,000 jobs in that economy, including architecture and related services, creative goods and products, entertainment and digital media, fashion and the visual arts.

Updated

Apr. 25, 2021, 7:19 p.m. ET

Californians for the Arts polls were conducted between October 6 and November 20, 2020 and focused on nonprofit arts and cultural organizations. Creative businesses that rely on revenue from ticket sales, contract work, and sales, and commissions from works of art; and individual art workers.

Of the 607 organizations surveyed, 72 percent said they had laid off paid employees and half said they had laid off contractors. Of nearly 1,000 employees surveyed, 88 percent said they would lose income or other art-related income. Some considered giving up artistic work or leaving the state.

Art workers suffer from “fragile economic foundations” and “devastating and immediate loss of income,” said Julie Baker, executive director of Californians for the Arts. “We are facing a California creativity crisis and what is known as a cultural depression.”

Baker said government assistance, particularly unemployment benefits for the self-employed, is vital to the survival of arts organizations and workers and should continue.

She added that the surveys found racial differences in income loss and access to federal funds: those who identified themselves as black or African American reported a loss of income, while an average of 12 percent of those in all other races identified a similar loss.

And 18 percent of black, indigenous or colored people or organizations said they were denied funding under the federal law on aid, aid and economic security for coronavirus. The report added that 5 percent of other people and organizations said they had been turned down.

The panel and polls came a day after the Comptroller’s New York State Office released a report that found employment in New York’s arts, entertainment and leisure sectors rose 66 percent from December 2019 to December 2020 has decreased.

During Thursday’s panel, Ben Allen, a senator who represents a district that includes Santa Monica, West Hollywood, and Los Angeles neighborhoods, said he was calling on fellow Legislators to support a program that was “run by Works Progress Administration Inspired “is the New Deal that would employ artists to spread news about the coronavirus and document experiences during the pandemic.

“The arts can and must play an important role in rebuilding our society and getting us back on track,” he said.

Categories
Business

How Merck’s Vaccine Misplaced the Covid Race

How Merck's Vaccine Lost the Covid Race

Founded in 1891, Merck has been in the vaccines business for more than 100 years and has developed some of the world’s most famous vaccines, including mumps, hepatitis A and chickenpox. In 2019, it became the first company to receive approval for an Ebola vaccine from the Food and Drug Administration.

However, as the coronavirus spread around the world, Merck was slow to announce plans for a vaccine. By the time details of two vaccine candidates became known in late May, most of the main competitors had already announced contracts, and Pfizer and Moderna had begun early clinical trials.

But Merck didn’t have to be the first to win. Executives decided to pursue two projects that they believed had advantages over competitors. A vaccine developed in partnership with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative uses the same technology that is based on a harmless animal virus that led to their successful Ebola vaccine. The other, acquired through the purchase of Themis Bioscience, was based on an existing measles vaccine.

Both experimental Covid vaccines, the company said, would be tested with a single dose, and Merck was also looking to see if whoever used the cattle virus could be given orally – two big advantages over potential competitors, especially in developing countries.

In July, Kenneth C. Frazier, CEO of Merck, warned against acting too quickly. “I think if people tell the public that there will be a vaccine by the end of 2020, for example, they are doing the public a serious disadvantage,” Frazier said in an interview with a professor at Harvard Business School. Mr Frazier recently announced that he will be retiring as managing director later this year, a decision that has long been planned.

In an interview in August, Dr. Nicholas Kartsonis, Merck’s senior vice president of clinical research for vaccines and infectious diseases, said the company’s position as the leading vaccine manufacturer has given him the luxury of time. “We are a much bigger company. We’re not so obliged to be the first, ”he said.

Categories
Politics

How the US Misplaced to Hackers

How the United States Lost to Hackers

There’s a reason we believed in the fallacy that a crime could protect us: the crime was a bloody masterpiece.

Starting in 2007, the United States and Israel launched an attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear power plant, which destroyed around a fifth of Iranian centrifuges. Known as Stuxnet, this attack spread through seven holes in Microsoft and Siemens industrial software known as “zero days”. (Only one was previously announced but never patched). In the short term, Stuxnet was a complete success. It set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions years ago and stopped the Israelis from bombing Natanz and starting World War III. In the long term, it showed allies and opponents what they lacked and changed the digital world order.

In the next ten years an arms race was born.

NSA analysts left the agency to set up cyber weapons factories in Virginia like Vulnerability Research Labs, which sold click-and-shoot tools to American agencies and our closest English-speaking allies at Five Eyes. A contractor, Immunity Inc., founded by a former NSA analyst, started a more slippery slope. First, staff say, trained immunity advisors like Booz Allen, then defense company Raytheon, then the Dutch and Norwegian governments. But soon the Turkish army knocked.

Companies like CyberPoint took it a step further, stationing themselves overseas and sharing the tools and crafts that the UAE would eventually use to turn on its own people. In Europe, Pentagon spyware suppliers like the Hacking Team began selling the same tools to Russia and then Sudan that they were ruthlessly using.

As the market expanded beyond the NSA’s direct control, the agency continued to focus on crime. The NSA knew that the same vulnerabilities it found and exploited elsewhere would one day strike back Americans. The answer to this dilemma was to reduce the American state of emergency to an acronym – NOBUS – which stands for “Nobody But Us”. When the agency found a vulnerability that it believed could only be exploited, it hoarded it.

That strategy was part of what General Paul Nakasone, the current NSA director, and George Washington and Chinese strategist Sun Tzu before him, refer to as “active defense.”

In modern warfare, “active defense” means hacking enemy networks. It is a mutually assured destruction for the digital age: We hacked into the Russian troll networks and their grids as a sign of violence. Iran’s nuclear facilities to take out its centrifuges; and Huawei’s source code to penetrate its customers in Iran, Syria and North Korea for espionage and to set up an early warning system for the NSA to theoretically fend off attacks before they hit.

Categories
Entertainment

The Music Misplaced to Coronavirus, Half 2

The Music Lost to Coronavirus, Part 2

The Covid-19 pandemic has claimed over 450,000 lives in the United States alone. there are well over two million worldwide. Many musicians and people who are an integral part of the music business are part of that terrible sum.

In this week’s popcast, the second part of a recurring series, a handful of memories of musicians lost to the coronavirus:

  • Cristina, a downtown New York haute post disco diva from the early 1980s who died at the age of 64.

  • Fred the Godson, a Bronx rap classic and mixtape star of the 2000s, died at the age of 41.

  • Adam Schlesinger, a member of the influential power pop band Fountains of Wayne and songwriter and composer for countless film and television projects, died at the age of 52.

Guests:

  • Kurt B. Reighley, DJ and author of the liner notes for Cristina’s 2004 reissues.

  • Shawn Setaro, reporter and writer at Complex.

  • Ben Sisario, music reporter for the New York Times.