Tag: Weve

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Business

‘We have got to push additional downward’

'We've got to push further downward'

States are easing social distancing rules, but it’s “too early” to take Covid restrictions back, warned Dr. Atul Gawande on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith”.

“We are currently in cases that are still above the highest value of our last spike, so we didn’t even fall below the spike last summer,” said the surgeon and professor at the TH Chan School of Public Health at Harvard . “We still have 2,000 deaths a day. So this is not where we are in good shape to just hit a plateau. We have to keep pushing down.”

According to a CNBC analysis of the Johns Hopkins data, the US is currently seeing a 7-day average of 67,365 new US cases per day, a 73% decrease from a high of about 249,000 in mid-January.

Gawande reiterated the reopening concern shared by Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She said she was still “deeply concerned” about the virus.

“Our recent declines seem to be stalling – at over 70,000 cases a day,” Walensky said during a press conference Monday at the White House. “With these new statistics, I am very concerned about reports that more and more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from Covid-19.”

Gawande argued that the new variants of Covid that are circulating in the US, including the latest variant in New York, B.1.526, should be another reason for Americans to remain vigilant when it comes to coronavirus.

The CDC reports that nearly 25.5 million Americans are fully vaccinated, about 8% of the country’s population, and that the demand for shots is high due to the delay in production.

“I think the evidence is pretty solid that it would be a wise thing to just give people who reported they were previously infected a single shot and allow more vaccinations for others,” Gawande said of a temporary strategy to further expand the current offer.

Two new studies from the UK show that vaccination can provide “robust” protection for Covid survivors. However, the CDC is currently debating the issue. Gawande told host Shepard Smith that he would like to see the CDC publish its review as soon as possible.

The U.S. vaccination effort is now armed with the Johnson & Johnson shot, the third approved vaccine in its arsenal to fight Covid. The White House said Americans could get the single vaccine as early as Tuesday.

“In terms of the anticipated supply of Johnson & Johnson vaccines, we will be handing out 3.9 million doses this week,” said Jeffrey Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator. “That’s the entirety of Johnson & Johnson’s current inventory. We’re getting these cans out the door right now to make sure vaccines get in the arms as soon as possible.”

Categories
Business

The Week in Enterprise: We’ve Been Hacked

The Week in Business: We’ve Been Hacked

It’s going to be another bizarre holiday week. Here’s what you need to know to be sure for the days ahead in business and tech. – Charlotte Cowles

In one of the largest and most sophisticated cyberattacks in years, hackers breached the networks of a wide variety of government agencies, including treasury and commerce, as well as a number of large private companies. What’s worse is that the hacks took place last spring but went undetected until the last few weeks. The perpetrator, who is widely believed to be a Russian intelligence agency, has been lurking in government networks for most of 2020. The Trump administration said little about the attack or what information was compromised?

It’s raining antitrust lawsuits in Silicon Valley, and now it’s up to Google to grab an umbrella. Ten states (and counts) on Wednesday accused the company of illegally monopolizing the digital advertising business and using its ubiquity to overwhelm certain publishers with their ads. “If the free market were a baseball game, Google would position itself as a pitcher, batsman and referee,” said Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who led the case. A day later, more than 30 states accused Google of illegally manipulating search results to drive users away from their competitors and towards companies it was comfortable with. Google denied the claims and says it will defend itself.

Legislators ran to iron out the last few wrinkles in a much-needed pandemic relief bill and avoid a government shutdown. The latest bill of $ 900 billion (a third the size of what the Democrats originally proposed last May) includes $ 600 in payments for individuals, $ 300 a week in additional unemployment benefits, and help for small businesses. However, there is a lack of significant aid to state and local governments (a key item on the wish list for Democrats), as well as legal protections for businesses (which Republicans wanted) worried about liability for the virus spreading.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell is not known to offer overly rosy economic forecasts. But he sounded almost optimistic last week when he said that a “light at the end of the tunnel” was visible – despite warning that the next few months would be difficult. He predicted the economy will recover in the second half of 2021, provided enough people are vaccinated and can safely resume normal activities. (Such an outcome became even more possible when a second Moderna vaccine received a thumbs up from the Food and Drug Administration.) To bolster growth and calm markets, Powell said the Fed would keep rates near zero and continue Purchase of government debt. He also reiterated his call for more federal incentives to create a financial “bridge” for those in desperate need this winter.

Robinhood, a finance app that allows users to easily trade stocks for free, may sound too good to be true and has raised a number of red flags with regulators. Last Thursday, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Robinhood had misled its users about how it was paid by Wall Street firms to pass business and that it had benefited at the expense of its customers. Robinhood agreed to pay a $ 65 million fine to pay the SEC’s fees without admitting or denying guilt. In another case the day before, a Massachusetts securities regulator accused Robinhood of having “unscrupulous” encouraged undemanding clients to make risky investments.

As the coronavirus picked up pace this fall, it accelerated employment growth, travel plans and vacation spending. (Except for Christmas trees, which are selling at a record high.) Retail sales fell in both October and November, marking a shift from months ago when Americans continued to spend money, especially online, despite economic turmoil. Of course, Americans were empowered earlier this year by the federal government’s pandemic aid, including stimulus checks and additional unemployment benefits. Now that these funds have been used up, people’s Christmas trees may not have much to themselves this season.

Categories
Politics

We’ve Reached ‘Secure Harbor’ – The New York Occasions

We’ve Reached ‘Safe Harbor’ - The New York Times

  • With a flick of the wrist the Supreme Court reduce a Republican attempt to reverse the loss of President Trump in Pennsylvania. In a one-sentence ruling yesterday, the court declined to hear a challenge to the use of postal ballot papers in Pennsylvania without public opposition from the judges.

  • It was a clear rejection of Trump’s attempts to contest the election by a court that includes three judges he appointed and which he had hoped for after the election.

  • The country yesterday hit what electoral officials call the “safe harbor,” which is widely viewed as the date by which all state-level electoral challenges, such as recounts and audits, must be completed. State courts will likely commence a new lawsuit against the election after this period. Whether he openly admits it or not, Trump’s attempt to overturn the election seems nearing the inevitable end.

  • The White House submerged again Stimulus negotiations with Congressional Democrats yesterday with a $ 916 billion proposal that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin shared with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The deal would include one-time cash payments to Americans and aid to state, local, and tribal governments.

  • The proposal also includes a provision that gives employers who have employed workers during the pandemic full immunity. This is an important Republican request, but Democratic leaders have said they are unwilling to cross that line.

  • McConnell announced early yesterday that if the Democrats gave up seeking billions of dollars for state and local governments, he would be dropping his demand for full liability coverage. But democratic leaders were quick to reject the idea.

  • Now that it’s in a lame duck sessionCongress seems unusually busy. The House yesterday passed a military spending bill that includes the removal of Confederate names from American military bases, which President Trump has vetoed.

  • This creates the potential for the first veto suspension of Trump’s presidency. The law was passed with a veto-proof bipartisan majority of 335 to 78 and is now going to the Senate, where overwhelming support is expected.

  • Congress has passed a successful law on military spending for the past 60 years. But the president remains against it. “I hope the Republicans of the House will vote against the very weak National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that I will VETO,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

  • Joe Biden will elect Marcia Fudge to represent herThe Ohio Democrat is slated to serve as secretary for housing and urban development, bringing Tom Vilsack back to his old job as secretary of agriculture, according to people familiar with the president’s transition process.

  • Meanwhile, retired General Lloyd Austin, whom Biden wants to appoint as Secretary of Defense, encounters bipartisan opposition over concerns about choosing another former commander to run the Pentagon. The recent trend has defied the longstanding tradition of civilian control over the military.

  • Austin, who would become the country’s first black Secretary of Defense, would face a waiver from Congress because he left the service less than seven years ago. Congress granted Jim Mattis a waiver four years ago to serve as Trump’s first secretary of defense.

  • Adding to concerns about Austin, however, are its ties to Raytheon, a defense company that makes billions of dollars selling weapons and military equipment to the US and other countries, creates what critics have termed a conflict of interest.

  • Biden officially introduced the core team of health officials This will guide his response to the Wilmington, Delaware pandemic to announce an ambitious plan to “get at least 100 million Covid vaccine shots into the arms of the American people” in his first 100 days as president.

  • The promise poses at least some risk to Biden, as fulfilling the promise does not require any problems in making or distributing the vaccine and the willingness of Americans to be vaccinated.

  • As he spoke, Biden was flanked by members of his team, some of whom joined by video. These included Dr. Anthony Fauci, who will serve as Biden’s premier medical advisor while continuing to serve as the country’s foremost infectious disease expert, and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who will be director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  • Both made speeches, as did Xavier Becerra, Biden’s candidate for the Ministry of Health and Human Services, and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith from Yale University Medical School, who will lead a new Covid-19 Equity Task Force. The virus’s impact has been disproportionately focused on color communities, and Nunez-Smith spoke of “centering equity in our response to this pandemic rather than a secondary concern, not a checkbox, but a shared value.”

  • Britain became the first yesterday Land to begin administering the Pfizer BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to civilians, the start of a mass vaccination campaign unlike anything seen in recent times. (And trust the UK was very British indeed: the second person to receive the vaccine was none other than William Shakespeare, 81), a Warwickshire man who had been hospitalized for several weeks after having had a stroke was.)

  • The FDA is expected to approve the vaccine this week, and Trump celebrated the milestone at a “vaccine summit” near the White House. He spoke to a fully occupied, mostly masked crowd of industry representatives and members of his administration and declared the development of the vaccine a “monumental national achievement”.

  • When asked why he hadn’t invited Biden’s transition team to the summit, Trump reiterated his baseless claims that the election had been stolen and said he was still expecting another term.