ReportWire

Tag: Coronavirus pandemic

  • Fact check: The first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election | CNN Politics

    Fact check: The first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 election | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential candidates delivered a smattering of false and misleading claims at the first debate of the 2024 election – though none of the eight candidates on stage in Milwaukee delivered anything close to the bombardment of false statements that typically characterized the debate performances of former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner who skipped the Wednesday event.

    Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina inaccurately described the state of the economy in early 2021 and repeated a long-ago-debunked false claim about the Biden-era Justice Department. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie misstated the sentence attached to a gun law relevant to the investigation into the president’s son Hunter Biden. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis misled about his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, omitting mention of his early pandemic restrictions.

    Below is a fact check of those claims and various others from the debate, some of which left out key context. In addition, below is a brief fact check of some of Trump’s claims from a pre-taped interview he did with Tucker Carlson, which was posted online shortly before the debate aired. Trump made a variety of statements that were not true.

    DeSantis and the pandemic

    DeSantis criticized the federal government for its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, claiming it had locked down the economy, and then said: “In Florida, we led the country out of lockdown, and we kept our state free and open.”

    Facts First: DeSantis’s claim is misleading at best. Before he became a vocal opponent of pandemic restrictions, DeSantis imposed significant restrictions on individuals, businesses and other entities in Florida in March 2020 and April 2020; some of them extended months later into 2020. He did then open up the state, with a gradual phased approach, but he did not keep it open from the start.

    DeSantis received criticism in March 2020 for what some critics perceived as a lax approach to the pandemic, which intensified as Florida beaches were packed during Spring Break. But that month and the month following, DeSantis issued a series of major restrictions. For example, DeSantis:

    • Closed Florida’s schools, first with a short-term closure in March 2020 and then, in April 2020, with a shutdown through the end of the school year. (In June 2020, he announced a plan for schools to reopen for the next school year that began in August. By October 2020, he was publicly denouncing school closures, calling them a major mistake and saying all the information hadn’t been available that March.)
    • On March 14, 2020, announced a ban on most visits to nursing homes. (He lifted the ban in September 2020.)
    • On March 17, 2020, ordered bars and nightclubs to close for 30 days and restaurants to operate at half-capacity. (He later approved a phased reopening plan that took effect in May 2020, then issued an order in September 2020 allowing these establishments to operate at full capacity.)
    • On March 17, 2020, ordered gatherings on public beaches to be limited to a maximum of 10 people staying at least six feet apart, then, three days later, ordered a shutdown of public beaches in two populous counties, Broward and Palm Beach. (He permitted those counties’ beaches to reopen by the last half of May.)
    • On March 20, 2020, prohibited “any medically unnecessary, non-urgent or non-emergency” medical procedures. (The prohibition was lifted in early May 2020.)
    • On March 23, 2020, ordered that anyone flying to Florida from an area with “substantial community spread” of the virus, “to include the New York Tri-State Area (Connecticut, New Jersey and New York),” isolate or quarantine for 14 days or the duration of their stay in Florida, whichever was shorter, or face possible jail time or a fine. Later that week, he added Louisiana to the list. (He lifted the Louisiana restriction in June 2020 and the rest in August 2020.)
    • On April 3, 2020, imposed a statewide stay-home order that temporarily required people in Florida to “limit their movements and personal interactions outside of their home to only those necessary to obtain or provide essential services or conduct essential activities.” (Beginning in May 2020, the state switched to a phased reopening plan that, for months, included major restrictions on the operations of businesses and other entities; DeSantis described it at the time as a “very slow and methodical approach” to reopening.)

    -From CNN’s Daniel Dale

    Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations, said: “Donald Trump added $8 trillion to our debt, and our kids are never going to forgive us for this.”

    Facts First: Haley’s figure is accurate. The total public debt stood at about $19.9 trillion on the day Trump took office in 2017 and then increased by about $7.8 trillion over Trump’s four years, to about $27.8 trillion on the day he left office in 2021.

    It’s worth noting, however, that the increase in the debt during any president’s tenure is not the fault of that president alone. A significant amount of spending under any president is the result of decisions made by their predecessors – such as the creation of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid decades ago – and by circumstances out of a president’s control, notably including the global Covid-19 pandemic under Trump; the debt spiked in 2020 after Trump approved trillions in emergency pandemic relief spending that Congress had passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

    Still, Trump did choose to approve that spending. And his 2017 tax cuts, unanimously opposed by congressional Democrats, were another major contributor to the debt spike.

    -From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Katie Lobosco

    North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum claimed that Biden’s signature climate bill costs $1.2 trillion dollars and is “just subsidizing China.”

    Facts First: This claim needs context. The clean energy pieces of the Inflation Reduction Act – Democrats’ climate bill – passed with an initial price tag of nearly $370 billion. However, since that bill is made up of tax incentives, that price tag could go up depending on how many consumers take advantage of tax credits to buy electric vehicles and put solar panels on their homes, and how many businesses use the subsidies to install new utility scale wind and solar in the United States.

    Burgum’s figure comes from a Goldman Sachs report, which estimated the IRA could provide $1.2 trillion in clean energy tax incentives by 2032 – about a decade from now.

    On Burgum’s claim that Biden’s clean energy agenda will be a boon to China, the IRA was specifically written to move the manufacturing supply chain for clean energy technology like solar panels and EV batteries away from China and to the United States.

    In the year since it was passed, the IRA has spurred 83 new or expanded manufacturing facilities in the US, and close to 30,000 new clean energy manufacturing jobs, according to a tally from trade group American Clean Power.

    -From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

    With the economy as one of the main topics on the forefront of voters’ minds, Scott aimed to make a case for Republican policies, misleadingly suggesting they left the US economy in record shape before Biden took office.

    “There is no doubt that during the Trump administration, when we were dealing with the COVID virus, we spent more money,” Scott said. “But here’s what happened at the end of our time in the majority: we had low unemployment, record low unemployment, 3.5% for the majority of the population, and a 70-year low for women. African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians had an all-time low.”

    Facts First: This is false. Scott’s claims don’t accurately reflect the state of the US economy at the end of the Republican majority in the Senate. And in some cases, his exaggerations echo what Trump himself frequently touted about the economy under his leadership.

    By the time Trump left office and the Republicans lost the Senate majority in January 2021, US unemployment was not at a record low. The US unemployment rate dropped to a seasonally adjusted rate of 3.5% in September 2019, the country’s lowest in 50 years. While it hovered around that level for five months, Scott’s assertion ignores the coronavirus pandemic-induced economic destruction that followed. In April 2020, the unemployment rate spiked to 14.7% — the highest level since monthly records began in 1948. As of December 2020, the unemployment rate was at 6.7%.

    Nor was the unemployment rate for women at a 70-year low by the end of Trump’s time in office. It reached a 66-year low during certain months of 2019, at 3.4% in April and 3.6% in August, but by December 2020, unemployment for women was at 6.7%.

    The unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians were also not at all-time lows at the end of 2020, but they did reach record lows during Trump’s tenure as president.

    -From CNN’s Tara Subramaniam

    Scott said that the Justice Department under President Joe Biden is targeting “parents that show up at school board meetings. They are called, under this DOJ, they’re called domestic terrorists.”

    Facts First: It is false that the Justice Department referred to parents as domestic terrorists. The claim has been debunked several times – during the uproar at school boards over Covid-19 restrictions and anti-racism curriculums; after Kevin McCarthy claimed Republicans would investigate Merrick Garland with a majority in the House; and even by a federal judge. The Justice Department never called parents terrorists for attending or wanting to attend school board meetings.

    The claim stems from a 2021 letter from The National School Boards Associations asking the Justice Department to “deal with” the uptick in threats against education officials and saying that “acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials” could be classified as “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” In response, Garland released a memo encouraging federal and local authorities to work together against the harassment campaigns levied at schools, but never endorsed the “domestic terrorism” notion.

    A federal judge even threw out a lawsuit over the accusation, ruling that Garland’s memo did little more than announce a “series of measures” that directed federal authorities to address increasing threats targeting school board members, teachers and other school employees.

    -From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

    Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations and governor of South Carolina, said the US is spending “less than three and a half percent of our defense budget” on Ukraine aid, and that in terms of financial aid relative to GDP, “11 of the European countries have given more than the US.”

    Facts First: This is partly true. Haley’s claim regarding the US aid to Ukraine compared to the total defense budget is slightly under the actual percentage, but it is accurate that 11 European countries have given more aid to Ukraine as a percentage of their total GDP than the US.

    As of August 14, the US has committed more than $43 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, according to the Defense Department. In comparison, the Fiscal Year 2023 defense budget was $858 billion – making aid to Ukraine just over 5% of the total US defense budget.

    As of May 2023, according to a Council of Foreign Relations tracker, 11 countries were providing a higher share in aid to Ukraine relative to their GDP than the US – led by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

    -From CNN’s Haley Britzky

    Former Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that the Trump administration “spent funding to backfill on the military cuts of the Obama administration.”

    Facts First: This is misleading. While military spending decreased under the Obama administration, it was largely due to the 2011 Budget Control Act, which received Republican support and resulted in automatic spending cuts to the defense budget.

    Mike Pence, a senator at the time, voted in favor of the Budget Control Act.

    -From CNN’s Haley Britzky

    Christie said President Biden’s son Hunter Biden was “facing a 10-year mandatory minimum” for lying on a federal form when he purchased a gun in 2018.

    Facts First: Christie, a former federal prosecutor, clearly misstated the law. This crime can lead to a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, but it doesn’t have a 10-year mandatory minimum.

    These comments are related to the highly scrutinized Justice Department investigation into Hunter Biden, which is currently ongoing after a plea deal fell apart earlier this summer.

    As part of the now-defunct deal, Hunter Biden agreed to plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and enter into a “diversion agreement” with prosecutors, who would drop the gun possession charge in two years if he consistently stayed out of legal trouble and passed drug tests.

    The law in question makes it a crime to purchase a firearm while using or addicted to illegal drugs. Hunter Biden has acknowledged struggling with crack cocaine addiction at the time, and admitted at a court hearing and in court papers that he violated this law by signing the form.

    The US Sentencing Commission says, “The statutory maximum penalty for the offense is ten years of imprisonment.” There isn’t a mandatory 10-year punishment, as Christie claimed.

    During his answer, Christie also criticized the Justice Department for agreeing to a deal in June where Hunter Biden could avoid prosecution on the felony gun offense. That deal was negotiated by special counsel David Weiss, who was first appointed to the Justice Department by former President Donald Trump.

    -From CNN’s Marshall Cohen

    Burgum and Scott got into a back and forth over IRS staffing with Burgum saying that the “Biden administration wanted to put 87,000 people in the IRS,” and Scott suggesting they “fire the 87,000 IRS agents.”

    Facts First: This figure needs context.

    The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed last year without any Republican votes, authorized $80 billion in new funding for the IRS to be delivered over the course of a decade.

    The 87,000 figure comes from a 2021 Treasury report that estimated the IRS could hire 86,852 full-time employees with a nearly $80 billion investment over 10 years.

    While the funding may well allow for the hiring of tens of thousands of IRS employees over time, far from all of these employees will be IRS agents conducting audits and investigations.

    Many other employees will be hired for the non-agent roles, from customer service to information technology, that make up most of the IRS workforce. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.

    The IRS has not said precisely how many new “agents” will be hired with the funding. But it is already clear that the total won’t approach 87,000. And it’s worth noting that the IRS may not receive all of the $80 billion after Republicans were able to claw back $20 billion of the new funding as part of a deal to address the debt ceiling made earlier this year.

    -From CNN’s Katie Lobosco

    Trump repeated a frequent claim during his interview with Carlson that streamed during the GOP debate that his retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House was “covered” under the Presidential Records Act and that he is “allowed to do exactly that.”

    Facts First: This is false. The Presidential Records Act says the exact opposite – that the moment presidents leave office, all presidential records are to be turned over to the federal government. Keeping documents at Mar-a-Lago after his presidency concluded was in clear contravention of that law.

    According to the Presidential Records Act, “upon the conclusion of a President’s term of office, or if a President serves consecutive terms upon the conclusion of the last term, the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President.”

    The sentence makes clear that a president has no authority to keep documents after leaving the White House.

    The National Archives even released a statement refuting the notion that Trump’s retention of documents was covered by the Presidential Records Act, writing in a June news release that “the PRA requires that all records created by Presidents (and Vice-Presidents) be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at the end of their administrations.”

    -From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

    While discussing electric vehicles, Trump claimed that California “is in a big brownout because their grid is a disaster,” adding that the state’s ambitious electric vehicle goals won’t work with the grid in such shape.

    Facts First: Trump’s claim that California’s grid is currently in a “big brownout” and is a “disaster” isn’t true. California’s grid suffered rolling blackouts in 2020, but it has performed quite well in the face of extreme heat this summer, owing in large part to a massive influx of renewable energy including battery storage. These big batteries keep energy from wind and solar running when the wind isn’t blowing and sun isn’t shining. (Batteries are also being deployed at a rapid rate in Texas, a red state.)

    Another reason California’s grid has stayed stable this year even during extreme temperature spikes is the fact that a deluge of snow and rain this winter and spring has refilled reservoirs that generate electricity using hydropower.

    As Trump insinuated, there are real questions about how well the state’s grid will hold up as California’s drivers shift to electric vehicles by the millions by 2035 – the same year it will phase out selling new gas-powered cars. California state officials say they are preparing by adding new capacity to the grid and urging more people to charge their vehicles overnight and during times of the day when fewer people are using energy. But independent experts say the state needs to exponentially increase its clean energy while also building out huge amounts of new EV chargers to achieve its goals.

    -From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

    Trump and the border wall

    Trump claimed to Carlson, “I had the strongest border in the history of our country, and I built almost 500 miles of wall. You know, they’d like to say, ‘Oh, was it less?’ No, I built 500 miles. In fact, if you check with the authorities on the border, we built almost 500 miles of wall.”

    Facts First: This needs context. Trump and his critics are talking about different things when they use different figures for how much border wall was built during his presidency. Trump is referring to all of the wall built on the southern border during his administration, even in areas that already had some sort of barrier before. His critics are only counting the Trump-era wall that was built in parts of the border that did not have any previous barrier.

    A total of 458 miles of southern border wall was built under Trump, according to a federal report written two days after Trump left office and obtained by CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez. That is 52 miles of “primary” wall built where no barriers previously existed, plus 33 miles of “secondary” wall that was built in spots where no barriers previously existed, plus another 373 miles of primary and secondary wall that was built to replace previous barriers the federal government says had become “dilapidated and/or outdated.”

    Some of Trump’s rival candidates, such DeSantis and Christie, have used figures around 50 miles while criticizing Trump for failing to finish the wall – counting only the primary wall built where no barriers previously existed.

    While some Trump critics have scoffed at the replacement wall, the Trump-era construction was generally much more formidable than the older barriers it replaced, which were often designed to deter vehicles rather than people on foot. Washington Post reporter Nick Miroff tweeted in 2020: “As someone who has spent a lot of time lately in the shadow of the border wall, I need to puncture this notion that ‘replacement’ sections are ‘not new.’ There is really no comparison between vehicle barriers made from old rail ties and 30-foot bollards.”

    Ideally, both Trump and his opponents would be clearer about what they are talking about: Trump that he is including replacement barriers, his opponents that they are excluding those barriers.

    -From CNN’s Daniel Dale

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Will COVID-19 ever go away?

    Will COVID-19 ever go away?

    [ad_1]

    The newest coronavirus variant is spreading fast across many countries.

    It is no longer a global health emergency, but COVID-19 is still a threat. That’s according to the World Health Organization, which is now monitoring a new variant called EG.5.

    It’s not necessarily more dangerous than other variants, but it is spreading fast across several countries. From the United States to Japan and China, the strain appears to be highly transmissible.

    So is COVID-19 here to stay? And with so many variants constantly emerging, will booster shots even make a difference?

    Presenter: Nick Clark

    Guests:

    Paul Hunter – Professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia

    Oksana Pyzik – Lecturer at University College London School of Pharmacy

    Ishwar Gilada – Consultant on infectious disease

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Meta’s Threads is temporarily blocking searches about Covid-19 | CNN Business

    Meta’s Threads is temporarily blocking searches about Covid-19 | CNN Business

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Threads, the much-hyped social media app from Facebook-parent Meta, is taking heat for blocking searches for “coronavirus,” “Covid,” and other pandemic-related queries.

    The tech giant’s decision to block coronavirus-related searches on its service comes as the United States deals with a recent uptick in Covid-19 hospitalizations, per CDC data, and more than three years into the global pandemic.

    News of Threads blocking searches related to the coronavirus was first reported by The Washington Post.

    A Meta spokesperson told CNN that the company just began rolling out keyword search for Threads to additional countries last week.

    “The search functionality temporarily doesn’t provide results for keywords that may show potentially sensitive content,” the statement added. “People will be able to search for keywords such as ‘COVID’ in future updates once we are confident in the quality of the results.” 

    As of Monday, searches on the Threads app conducted by CNN for “coronavirus,” “Covid” and “Covid-19” yielded a blank page with the text: “No results.” Searches for “vaccine” also prompted no results. Typing any of these queries into the Threads app does, however, offer a link directing users to the CDC’s website on Covid-19 or vaccinations, depending on the search.

    Meta did not disclose what other keyword searches currently yield no results.

    Meta’s Facebook and other social media platforms faced controversy in the early part of the pandemic for the apparent spread of Covid-19-related misinformation online.

    Meta officially launched Threads in early July, and the app quickly garnered more than 100 million sign-ups in its first week on the heels of months of chaos at Twitter, which is now known as X. But much of the buzz faded somewhat in the weeks that followed as users realized the bare-bones platform still lacked many of the features that made X popular with users.

    Threads released its much-requested web version late last month, and its keyword search about a week ago. But the current limitations around its search function highlights how the platform still has some kinks to work through before it can fully replace the real-time search and engagement experience that social media users have historically relied on with X.

    –CNN’s Clare Duffy contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • The Republican Lab-Leak Circus Makes One Important Point

    The Republican Lab-Leak Circus Makes One Important Point

    [ad_1]

    For more than three hours yesterday, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic grilled a pair of virologists about their participation in an alleged “cover-up” of the pandemic’s origins. Republican lawmakers zeroed in on evidence that the witnesses, Kristian Andersen and Robert Garry, and other researchers had initially suspected that the coronavirus spread from a Chinese lab. “Accidental escape is in fact highly likely—it’s not some fringe theory,” Andersen wrote in a Slack message to a colleague on February 2, 2020. When he laid out the same concern to Anthony Fauci in late January, that some features of the viral genome looked like they might be engineered, Fauci told him to consider going to the FBI.

    But days later, Andersen, Garry, and the other scientists were starting to coalesce around a different point of view: Those features were more likely to have developed via natural evolution. The scientists wrote up this revised assessment in an influential paper, published in the journal Nature Medicine in March 2020, called “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.” The virus is clearly “not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” the paper said; in fact, the experts now “did not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible,” and that the pandemic almost certainly started with a “zoonotic event”—which is to say, the spillover of an animal virus into human populations. That analysis would be cited repeatedly by scientists and media outlets in the months that followed, in support of the idea that the lab-leak theory had been thoroughly debunked.

    The researchers’ rapid and consequential change of heart, as revealed through emails, witness interviews, and Slack exchanges, is now a wellspring for Republicans’ suspicions. “All of a sudden, you did a 180,” Representative Nicole Malliotakis of New York said yesterday morning. “What happened?”

    Based on the available facts, the answer seems clear enough: Andersen, Garry, and the others looked more closely at the data, and decided that their fears about a lab leak had been unwarranted; the viral features were simply not as weird as they’d first thought. The political conversation around this episode is not so easily summarized, however. Yesterday’s hearing was less preoccupied with the small, persistent possibility that the coronavirus really did leak out from a lab than with the notion of a conspiracy—a cover-up—that, according to Republicans, involved Fauci and others in the U.S. government swaying Andersen and Garry to leave behind their scientific judgment and endorse “pro-China talking points” instead. (Fauci has denied that he tried to disprove the lab-leak theory.)

    Read: If the lab-leak theory is right, what next?

    Barbed accusations of this kind have only added headaches to the question of how the pandemic really started. For all of its distractions, though, the House investigation still serves a useful purpose: It sheds light on how discussions of the lab-leak theory went so very, very wrong, and turned into an endless, stultifying spectacle. In that way, the hearing—and the story that it tells about the “Proximal Origin” paper—gestures not toward the true origin of COVID, but toward the origin of the origins debate.

    From the start, the problem has been that a “lab leak” could mean many things. The term may refer to the release of a manufactured bioweapon, or to an accident involving basic-science research; it could involve a germ with genes deliberately inserted, or one that was rapidly evolved inside a cage or in a dish, or even a virus from the wild, brought into a lab and released by accident (in unaltered form) in a city like Wuhan. Yet all these categories blurred together in the early days of the pandemic. The confusion was made plain when Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a hard-core China hawk, aired a proto-lab-leak theory in a February 16, 2020 interview with Fox News. “This virus did not originate in the Wuhan animal market,” he told the network. He later continued, “just a few miles away from that food market is China’s only biosafety-level-4 super-laboratory that researches human infectious diseases. Now, we don’t have evidence that this disease originated there, but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question.”

    Cotton did not specifically suggest that the Chinese “super-laboratory” was weaponizing viruses, nor did he say that any laboratory accident would necessarily have involved a genetically engineered virus, as opposed to one that had been cultured or collected from a bat cave. Nevertheless, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported that the senator had repeated a “fringe theory” about the coronavirus that was going around in right-wing circles at the time, that it had been manufactured by the Chinese government as a bioweapon. It was hard for reporters to imagine that Cotton could have been suggesting anything but that: The idea that Chinese scientists might have been collecting wild viruses, and doing research just to understand them, was not yet thinkable in that chaotic, early moment of pandemic spread. “Lab leak” was simply understood to mean “the virus is a bioweapon.”

    Scientists knew better. On the same day that Cotton gave his interview, one of Andersen and Garry’s colleagues posted the “Proximal Origin” paper on the web as an unpublished manuscript. (“Important to get this out,” Garry wrote in an email sent to the group the following morning. He included a link to the Washington Post article about Cotton described above.) In this version, the researchers were quite precise about what, exactly, they were aiming to debunk: The authors said, specifically, that their analysis clearly showed the virus had not been genetically engineered. It might well have been produced through cell-culture experiments in a lab, they wrote, though the case for this was “questionable.” And as for the other lab-leak possibilities—that a Wuhan researcher was infected by the virus while collecting samples from a cave, or that someone brought a sample back and then accidentally released it—the paper took no position whatsoever. “We did not consider any of these scenarios,” Andersen explained in his written testimony for this week’s hearing. If a researcher had indeed been infected in the field, he continued, then he would not have counted it as a “lab leak” to begin with—because that would mean the virus jumped to humans somewhere other than a lab.

    Read: There is no evidence strong enough to end the pandemic-origins debate

    Rather than settling the matter, however, all this careful parsing only led to more confusion. In the early days of the pandemic, and in the context of the Cotton interview and its detractors, too much specificity was deemed a fatal flaw. On February 20, Nature decided to reject the manuscript, at least partly on account of its being too soft in its debunking. A month later, when their paper finally did appear in Nature Medicine, a new sentence had been added near the end: the one discounting “any type of laboratory-based scenario.” At this crucial moment in the pandemic-origins debate, the researchers’ original, narrow claim—that SARS-CoV-2 had not been purposefully assembled—was broadened to include a blanket statement that could be read to mean the lab-leak theory was wrong in all its forms.

    Over time, this aggressive phrasing would cause problems of its own. At first, its elision of several different possible scenarios served the mainstream narrative: We know the virus wasn’t engineered; ergo, it must have started in the market. More recently, the same confusion has served the interests of the lab-leak theorists. Consider a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on pandemic origins, declassified last month. American intelligence agencies have determined that SARS-CoV-2 was not developed as a bioweapon, it explains, and they are near-unanimous in saying that it was not genetically engineered. (This confirms what Andersen and colleagues said in the first version of their paper, way back in February 2020.) “Most” agencies, the report says, further judge that the virus was not created through cell-culture experiments. Yet the fact that two of the nine agencies nonetheless believe that “a laboratory-associated incident” of any kind is the most likely cause of the first human infection has been taken as a sign that all lab-leak scenarios are still on the table. Thus Republicans in Congress can rail against Facebook for removing posts about the “lab-leak theory,” while ignoring the fact that the platform’s rules only ever prohibited one particular and largely discredited idea, that SARS-CoV-2 was “man-made or manufactured.” (In any case, that prohibition was reversed some three months later.)

    Where does this leave us? The committee’s work does not reveal a cover-up of COVID’s source. At the same time, it does show that the authors of the “Proximal Origin” paper were aware of how their work might shape the public narrative. (In a Slack conversation, one of them referred to “the shit show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release.”) At first they strived to phrase their findings as clearly as they could, and to separate the strong evidence against genetic engineering of the virus—and what Garry called “the bio weapon scenario”—from the lingering possibility that laboratory science might have been involved in some other way. In the final version of their paper, though, they added in language that was rather less precise. This may have helped to muffle the debate in early 2020, but the haze it left behind was noxious and long-lasting.

    [ad_2]

    Daniel Engber

    Source link

  • Trump and DeSantis trade shots in New Hampshire showdown | CNN Politics

    Trump and DeSantis trade shots in New Hampshire showdown | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis described former President Donald Trump as having over-promised and under-delivered on Tuesday, vowing in New Hampshire to “break the swamp” in Washington while faulting Trump for failing to deliver on his 2016 campaign promises to “drain” it.

    “If I tell you I’m going to do something, I’m not just saying that for an election,” DeSantis said in one of his sharpest attacks on the former president yet.

    Trump, meanwhile, mocked the size of DeSantis’ town hall crowds, telling attendees at a luncheon in Concord that “nobody showed up” to the Florida governor’s event a 40-minute drive south in Hollis.

    The two top-polling contenders for the GOP’s 2024 nomination circled each other Tuesday in New Hampshire, trading shots as they crisscrossed the state that hosts the first primary – after Iowa’s caucuses – and is a crucial momentum-builder.

    Their exchanges offered a preview of the months to come, with the Republican field having taken shape in recent weeks and the party’s first presidential debate less than two months away.

    Trump was blunt about why he was targeting DeSantis, rather than other GOP 2024 rivals, such as his former vice president, Mike Pence, or his former United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley.

    “Somebody said, ‘How come you only attack him?’” Trump told the crowd in Concord. “I said, ‘Cause he’s in second place.’”

    “‘Well, why don’t you attack others?’” Trump said, repeating the question he said he was asked. “Because they’re not in second place. But soon, I don’t think he’ll be in second place, so I’ll be attacking somebody else.”

    The former president even praised two other GOP contenders, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who he said is “actually a pretty good guy” after Ramaswamy said he would pardon Trump, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who he said “happens to be a very nice guy, actually.”

    Harping on early-state polls that show Trump with a lead in the GOP’s 2024 primary, Trump focused his attacks on DeSantis over his response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Florida and his past support for privatizing Social Security and Medicare.

    Trump argued that during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, DeSantis wanted “everything closed” in Florida and gave “very threatening speeches – you know, thinks he’s a tough guy.”

    He said DeSantis “loved Fauci,” referring to the government’s former top infectious disease expert, who was a central figure in the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic and recently retired during President Joe Biden’s administration.

    Trump’s remarks came shortly after DeSantis had fielded a voter’s question about Trump at a town hall in Hollis.

    A voter told DeSantis “most of us in this room voted to drain the swamp twice” and asked why he’s the one to “get it done this time as opposed to the other choice.”

    “I remember these rallies in 2016. It was exciting. ‘Drain the swamp.’ I also remember ‘Lock her up, lock her up,’ right? And then two weeks after the election, ‘Ah no, forget about it. Forget I ever said that.’ No, no, no. One thing you’ll get from me, if I tell you I’m going to do something, I’m not just saying that for an election,” DeSantis said.

    He said he doesn’t make promises he can’t follow through on, even if they might help him “marginally politically.” DeSantis also said just draining the swamp is not effective enough. Instead, he said he wants to “break” it.

    It was a riff on one of Trump’s signature 2016 campaign lines, and a suggestion that the former president had not delivered on his lofty promises to remake Washington.

    “The idea of draining the swamp, in some respects, I think it misses it a little bit,” DeSantis said. “We didn’t drain it. It’s worse today than it’s ever been by far. And that’s a sad testament to the state of affairs of our country. But even if you’re successful at draining it, the next guy can just refill it. So, I want to break the swamp. That’s really what we need to do.”

    The Florida governor said he would “drop the hammer” on some federal agencies, including the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service, and “end the weaponization of government.”

    “All of these agencies are going to be turned inside and out,” DeSantis said.

    His promise of a more aggressive approach than Trump’s ignores the potential legal hurdles he could encounter if elected next November. In Florida, more than a dozen legal battles testing the constitutionality of many of the victories DeSantis has touted on the campaign trail are ongoing. Critics say DeSantis has built his governorship around enacting laws that appeal to his conservative base but that, as a Harvard-trained lawyer, he knows are unconstitutional and not likely to take effect.

    The Florida governor’s remarks in New Hampshire came the day after he had taken aim at another signature Trump 2016 campaign pledge: DeSantis said that “not nearly enough” of the wall Trump had promised on the United States-Mexico border had been built.

    “For us, it’s going to be a national emergency on day one. This is going to be mobilizing all available assets on day one. We have a plan for all the different levers of authority that we have to be able to bring this to bear,” DeSantis said at the Rio Grande River on the U.S. Mexico Border in Maverick County, Texas, on Monday.

    In an effort to position himself to Trump’s political right on immigration enforcement, DeSantis also said he would be “more aggressive in terms of our plan than anything he did in empowering local officials to enforce immigration law.”

    Trump fired back on the issue later Tuesday in his second New Hampshire stop as he mingled with voters in Manchester at the opening of his campaign headquarters there, saying that DeSantis was promising to carry out policies that Trump had already enacted as president.

    “I saw DeSantis yesterday, he got up and said exactly what I was doing,” with his border and immigration policies, Trump said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • The Cancer-Drug Shortage Is Different

    The Cancer-Drug Shortage Is Different

    [ad_1]

    Last November, FDA inspectors found almost farcical conditions when they inspected an Indian manufacturing plant that supplies medical drugs to the United States. The plant, owned by Intas Pharmaceuticals, had hardly any working systems for ensuring the purity or sterility of its products. And its employees were trying to conceal evidence of these problems by shredding and hiding documents or, as one quality-control officer admitted, dousing them in acid.

    Intas provided America with a lot of frontline chemotherapy drugs—half of the country’s supply in some cases—that are used to treat more than a dozen types of cancer. When the disastrous inspection led the company to halt production, other manufacturers couldn’t make up the difference. Hospitals are now reeling: In a recent survey, 93 percent of U.S. cancer centers said they were experiencing a shortage of the drug carboplatin, while 70 percent were low on another, cisplatin.

    Even short delays in cancer treatment can increase a patient’s odds of death, and substitute medications may be less effective or more toxic, if they exist at all. Chemo drugs often run dry—“I can’t think of a year in the past 10 or 12 where we didn’t face some kind of shortage,” Yoram Unguru, a pediatric oncologist at the Herman & Walter Samuelson Children’s Hospital at Sinai, told me—but the current crisis is unprecedented in scale, for reasons that go beyond Intas’s woes. Fourteen cancer drugs are currently scarce, jeopardizing the care of hundreds of thousands of Americans. “I’ve been doing this forever, and this is absolute lunacy,” Patrick Timmins III, a gynecologic oncologist at Women’s Cancer Care Associates, told me.

    By delivering drugs at lower doses or over longer intervals, most oncologists are still managing to treat most of their patients—but barely. “Patients often say to us, I just need a plan,” Eleonora Teplinsky, an oncologist at Valley Health System, told me, and the shortages riddle every plan with question marks. Some institutes have already been forced to ration care. Timmins no longer has enough cisplatin and carboplatin to treat patients with recurrent tumors, even though those drugs can improve one’s quality of life or offer decent odds of another remission. “A lot of people are going to be hurt,” he told me. “Lives will be shortened.” Such tragedies are especially galling because the drugs in shortage aren’t expensive, state-of-the-art treatments that patients might struggle to access anyway, but cheap ones that have existed for decades. “It’s just unfathomable that a patient wouldn’t be able to receive them,” Amanda Fader, a gynecologic oncologist at Johns Hopkins, told me.

    Intas screwed up, but how could one manufacturer’s downfall trigger such widespread problems? The coronavirus pandemic made plain how reliant the U.S. is on brittle international supply chains, but this much-discussed fragility doesn’t explain the current shortages: Cancer drugs are not scarce for the same reasons that yeast, toilet paper, or couches were. They’re scarce because the market for some of our most important medicines—the ones that should be most accessible—is utterly dysfunctional, in a way that is both very hard to fix but also entirely fixable.

    Many recent supply-chain problems were caused by an external force—a pandemic, a hurricane, a stuck ship—that throttled a product’s availability, leading to surging demand and dwindling stocks. But most cancer-drug shortages are caused by internally generated problems, created within the market because of its structure. In other words, “they’re self-inflicted wounds,” Marta Wosińska, a health-care economist at the Brookings Institution, told me.

    Generic drugs such as cisplatin are sold at extremely low prices, which overall have fallen by more than 50 percent since 2016. These ever-tightening margins have forced many manufacturers to tap out of the market; for example, the U.S. gets all its vincristine, an anti-leukemia drug, from just one company.

    Such drugs are also hard to make. Because they’re injected into the bloodstream, often of severely ill people, they must be manufactured to the highest possible standards, free of microbes and other contaminants. But quality costs money, and generic drugs are so unprofitable that manufacturers can rarely afford to upgrade machinery or train employees. If anything, they’re compelled to cut corners, which makes them vulnerable to spontaneous manufacturing problems or disastrous inspections. And because they usually run at full capacity, any disruption to production has severe consequences. The affected manufacturer might fail to financially recover and leave the market too. Its competitors might struggle to ramp up production without triggering their own cascading shortages. And the drugs, which were never profitable enough to manufacture in surplus, quickly run out.

    These principles apply not only to cancer drugs but to generics as a whole, dozens or hundreds of which have been in shortage at any given time for the past decade. The markets that produce them are frail and shrinking. And even when a drug is manufactured by many companies, they might all rely on the same few suppliers for their active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs)—the chemicals at the core of their medicines. Mariana Socal, a pharmaceutical-market expert at Johns Hopkins, has shown that a third of the APIs in America’s generic-drug supply are made in just two or three (mostly overseas) facilities, and another third are made in just one.

    The supply chains that link these chemicals to finished drugs are also frustratingly opaque. Consider fludarabine, one of the cancer drugs that’s currently in shortage. The FDA has approved 12 companies to make it, but only five actually market it; only because of a Senate-committee inquiry is it publically known that of those five, only one makes the drug itself; two others get theirs from Europe, and one of those used to supply the final two. Meanwhile, six facilities are registered to make fludarabine’s API, but it’s again unclear which ones really do, or which manufacturers they supply, or even, for one of them, which country it is in. The fludarabine market is clearly weaker than it first appears, but how weak is hard to gauge. The same goes for cisplatin and carboplatin, Socal told me: She and other experts thought their markets looked resilient, until the Intas shutdown dispelled the illusion.

    This opacity masks not only the market’s weaknesses but also its strengths. Erin Fox, a drug-shortage expert at the University of Utah Health, oversees a drug budget of more than $500 million, and would love to spend it on manufacturers that make the most reliable medicines, even if their products cost a little more. But “we just don’t know which products are higher-quality than others,” she told me. The FDA has an internal scoring system that it uses to decide which facilities to inspect, Fox said, but because those data aren’t publicly available, manufacturers can distinguish themselves only through price. “We get a race to the bottom where companies undercut each other to get the lowest price, and then quit either because their manufacturing is so poor, or they can’t afford to make medicines anymore,” Fox said. As Wosińska and Janet Woodcock of the FDA identified in 2013, “The fundamental problem … is the inability of the market to observe and reward quality.”

    The average generic-drug shortage lasts for about a year and a half. Many people I spoke with hoped that the current wave could abate more quickly if other manufacturers slowly ramp up. The FDA is also looking to import scarce drugs from international suppliers, and has temporarily allowed a Chinese company to sell its cisplatin in the U.S. But ultimately, “it’s very hard to solve a shortage after it started,” Allen Coukell, of the nonprofit Civica Rx, told me. They need to be prevented from happening at all.

    Some commonly suggested preventive measures might not work very well, because they misdiagnose the problem. Politicians often focus on bolstering domestic manufacturing, but Wosińska, Fox, and others told me that many drug shortages have been caused by manufacturing problems in American facilities. Because American drugmakers are subject to the same flawed markets as foreign ones, moving the problem inshore doesn’t actually solve it. Nor does stockpiling generic drugs, though a worthwhile idea. These strategies work well against an external shock like a pandemic, Wosińska said: When faced with unpredictable external forces, it pays to build a large buffer. But because the shocks that cause drug shortages arise from predictable forces inherent to the market, the best bet is to reimagine the market itself—a “very difficult problem but a solvable one,” Stephen Colvill, the executive director and a co-founder of the nonprofit RISCS, told me.

    A few new initiatives show how this could be done. Civica Rx, which was launched in 2018, sources generic drugs from manufacturers that it vets for quality; it then builds up rolling six-month inventories of those drugs, which it supplies to hospitals through long-term contracts. (Civica is also building its own generics-manufacturing facility in Virginia.) RISCS, founded in 2019, uses confidential data from manufacturers to rate generic-drug products according to the robustness of their supply chains. The FDA has also been developing its own rating system—the “quality management maturity” (QMM) program—that assesses a manufacturer’s quality-control practices; the program successfully completed two pilots but is still being developed and has no firm launch date, an FDA spokesperson said.

    In theory, these initiatives should allow hospitals to make better purchasing decisions, and shift the market toward drug companies that are least likely to be responsible for shortages. In practice, Wosińska thinks that hospitals need to be pulled into such a culture shift. For example, she and her colleague Richard G. Frank argue that Medicare could reward hospitals for proactively choosing reliable vendors or participating in programs like Civica. The FDA could support such a scheme by finally launching its QMM program. Congress could require manufacturers to disclose more details about their products and suppliers, so that supply chains can be fully mapped. HHS could offer loans to generic-drug manufacturers for upgrading or expanding their facilities. The point, Wosińska told me, is to do all of this at once, and shift the market into a new stable state. The solution, she said, needs to be comprehensive.

    It also needs to be coordinated. The drug-shortage problem lingers partly because “it’s not obvious who’s responsible for solving it,” Joshua Sharfstein, a health-policy expert at Johns Hopkins, told me. The FDA is a candidate, but economic matters sit outside its wheelhouse. Instead, Sharfstein and others suggest that the drug-shortage problem could be owned by the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response. It already works to shore up medical supplies in the event of emergencies such as pandemics or natural disasters, and ongoing shortages of generic drugs are effectively a perpetual state of emergency that we’re trapped in.

    Meanwhile, the exact consequences of the shortages are hard to measure. Some of today’s cancer patients will suffer, or even die, because they couldn’t get treated in time, or were given lower doses, or were given more toxic drugs as substitutes. But it’s almost impossible to know if any individual person would have fared better in a world where shortages never happened: If they died, was it because of a few weeks’ delay or because their tumor was always going to be hard to treat? The impact of the shortages can only really be assessed at a population level, and that evidence takes a long time to collect. “I don’t think we’ll see the full downside for many years,” Yoram Unguru told me.

    The measures needed to prevent such shortages will also take years to implement—if they ever are. The coronavirus pandemic revealed just how frail our supply chains and health-care system are, but it also showed how quickly attention and resources can disappear once a problem is thought to abate. But the drug problem isn’t abating, and is actually compounding the problems the pandemic created. When health-care workers can’t help their patients, whether because their hospitals are inundated by COVID or because their drugs have run out, the resulting moral distress can be unbearable. Such conditions during the pandemic drove so many health-care workers to quit that “you can feel the system shaking,” Patrick Timmins III said. He worries that this exodus followed by the current drug shortages are “a one-two punch” that will be visible to outsiders only when they have neither the drugs to cure them nor the health-care workers to treat them.

    [ad_2]

    Ed Yong

    Source link

  • Djokovic can play at US Open as vaccine mandate to end

    Djokovic can play at US Open as vaccine mandate to end

    [ad_1]

    Djokovic can play after missing out on the US Open last year and being denied entry into the country earlier this year.

    Men’s tennis world number one Novak Djokovic will be able to compete at the US Open this year after the United States government announced plans to end its COVID-19 vaccination requirements for international travellers on May 11.

    The White House said on Monday that the requirements will end when the coronavirus public health emergency ends next week.

    Djokovic, one of the most high-profile athletes not vaccinated against COVID-19, missed the US Open in 2022 due to his vaccine status.

    The 35-year-old Serb was unable to enter the country this year after unsuccessfully applying to the US government for special permission to play at the Masters tournaments in Indian Wells and Miami.

    Djokovic missed last year’s Australian Open and was deported from the country due to his vaccine status and has said he would skip grand slams rather than have a COVID shot.

    However, with ease of restrictions by the Australian government later in 2022, the Serb took part in and won the 2023 edition of the tournament in Melbourne to equal Rafael Nadal’s record of 22 men’s grand slam titles.

    While Djokovic has refused to explicitly say whether he received any shots to protect against the coronavirus, he would not have needed an exemption to enter Australia in 2022 if he were fully vaccinated.

    In April 2020, he issued a statement saying: “Personally I am opposed to the vaccination against COVID-19 in order to be able to travel. But if it becomes compulsory, I will have to make a decision whether to do it or not.”

    Months later, he and his wife tested positive for the illness caused by the coronavirus after a series of exhibition matches he organised without social distancing or masking.

    In January 2022, Djokovic knew he had tested positive for COVID-19 when he attended a newspaper interview and photoshoot at his tennis centre in Serbia, admitting he made an “error of judgement” and should have immediately gone into isolation.

    Djokovic has won three of his 22 major titles at the US Open.

    This year’s tournament will be held from August 28 to September 10.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • John Oliver Exposes Some Of The Most ‘Horrific’ Working Conditions In America

    John Oliver Exposes Some Of The Most ‘Horrific’ Working Conditions In America

    [ad_1]

    John Oliver on Sunday night pointed out that much of America’s food is still picked by hand ― and most of those hands belong to some of the most poorly treated people in the nation: immigrant farm workers.

    They’re so critical that they were named “essential workers” during the coronavirus pandemic.

    “And yet while we claim they’re essential, we sure don’t treat them like it,” he said, noting that they’re among the lowest-paid workers in the nation while facing dangerous conditions on the job ranging from natural disasters to pesticide exposure to horrible bosses.

    That extends to when they’re not even working, as many are placed in living conditions so bad that one location Oliver found actually functioned as a haunted house on Halloween.

    “That is horrific,” Oliver said after showing footage of some of those living conditions. “No one would see that and say, ‘That is a good place for people to live.’ They maybe say ‘That’s a nice spot for ghosts to throw up’ and that’s it.”

    Oliver called for better conditions and a path toward citizenship for the farm workers who provide much of the nation’s food.

    “Farm workers provide this country with our most basic necessity, and in return we act like they either don’t matter or don’t exist,” he said. “The message that we have sent to them has consistently been: ‘You don’t count.’”

    See more from Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight”:

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Scientists parse another clue to possible origins of Covid-19 as WHO says all possibilities ‘remain on the table’ | CNN

    Scientists parse another clue to possible origins of Covid-19 as WHO says all possibilities ‘remain on the table’ | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    There’s a tantalizing new clue in the hunt for the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

    A new analysis of genetic material collected from January to March 2020 at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, has uncovered animal DNA in samples already known to be positive for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. A significant amount of that DNA appears to belong to animals known as raccoon dogs, which were known to be traded at the market, according to officials with the World Health Organization, who addressed the new evidence in a news briefing on Friday.

    The connection to raccoon dogs came to light after Chinese researchers shared raw genetic sequences taken from swabbed specimens collected at the market early in the pandemic. The sequences were uploaded in late January 2023, to the data sharing site GISAID, but have recently been removed.

    An international team of researchers noticed them and downloaded them for further study, the WHO officials said Friday.

    The new findings – which have not yet been publicly posted – do not settle the question of how the pandemic started. They do not prove that raccoon dogs were infected with SARS-CoV-2, nor do they prove that raccoon dogs were the animals that first infected people.

    But because viruses don’t survive in the environment outside of their hosts for long, finding so much of the genetic material from the virus intermingled with genetic material from raccoon dogs is highly suggestive that they could have been carriers, according to scientists who worked on the analysis. The analysis was led by Kristian Andersen, an immunologist and microbiologist at Scripps Research; Edward Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney; Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona. These three scientists, who have been digging into the origins of the pandemic, were interviewed by reporters for The Atlantic magazine. CNN has reached out to Andersen, Holmes and Worobey for comment.

    The details of the international analysis were first reported Thursday by The Atlantic.

    The new data is emerging as Republicans in Congress have opened investigations into the pandemic’s origin. Previous studies provided evidence that the virus likely emerged naturally in market, but could not point to a specific origin. Some US agencies, including a recent US Department of Energy assessment, say the pandemic likely resulted from a lab leak in Wuhan.

    In the news briefing on Friday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the organization was first made aware of the sequences on Sunday.

    “As soon as we became aware of this data, we contacted the Chinese CDC and urged them to share it with WHO and the international scientific community so it can be analyzed,” Tedros said.

    WHO also convened its Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of the Novel Pathogens, known as SAGO, which has been investigating the roots of the pandemic, to discuss the data on Tuesday. The group heard from Chinese scientists who had originally studied the sequences, as well as the group of international scientists taking a fresh look at them.

    WHO experts said in the Friday briefing that the data are not conclusive. They still can’t say whether the virus leaked from a lab, or if it spilled over naturally from animals to humans.

    “These data do not provide a definitive answer to the question of how the pandemic began, but every piece of data is important in moving us closer to that answer,” Tedros said.

    What the sequences do prove, WHO officials said, is that China has more data that might relate to the origins of the pandemic that it has not yet shared with the rest of the world.

    “This data could have, and should have, been shared three years ago,” Tedros said. “We continue to call on China to be transparent in sharing data and to conduct the necessary investigations and share results.

    “Understanding how the pandemic began remains a moral and scientific imperative.”

    CNN has reached out to the Chinese scientists who first analyzed and shared the data, but has not received a reply.

    The Chinese researchers, who are affiliated with that country’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, had shared their own analysis of the samples in 2022. In that preprint study posted last year, they concluded that “no animal host of SARS-CoV2 can be deduced.”

    The research looked at 923 environmental samples taken from within the seafood market and 457 samples taken from animals, and found 63 environmental samples that were positive for the virus that causes Covid-19. Most were taken from the western end of the market. None of the animal samples, which were taken from refrigerated and frozen products for sale, and from live, stray animals roaming the market, were positive, the Chinese authors wrote in 2022.

    When they looked at the different species of DNA represented in the environmental samples, the Chinese authors only saw a link to humans, but not other animals.

    When an international team of researchers recently took at fresh look at the genetic material in the samples – which were swabbed in and around the stalls of the market – using an advanced genetic technique called metagenomics, scientists said they were surprised to find a significant amount of DNA belonging to raccoon dogs, a small animal related to foxes. Raccoon dogs can be infected with the virus that causes Covid-19 and have been high on the list of suspected animal hosts for the virus.

    “What they found is molecular evidence that animals were sold at that market. That was suspected, but they found molecular evidence of that. And also that some of the animals that were there were susceptible to SARS-CoV2 infection, and some of those animals include raccoon dogs,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for Covid-19, in Friday’s briefing.

    “This doesn’t change our approach to studying the origins of Covid-19. It just tells us that more data exists, and that data needs to be shared in full,” she said.

    Van Kerkhove said that until the international scientific community is able to review more evidence, “all hypotheses remain on the table.”

    Some experts found the new evidence persuasive, if not completely convincing, of an origin in the market.

    “The data does point even further to a market origin,” Andersen, the Scripps Research evolutionary biologist who attended the WHO meeting and is one of the scientists analyzing the new data, told the magazine Science.

    The assertions made over the new data quickly sparked debate in the scientific community.

    Francois Balloux, director of the Genetics Institute at University College London, said the fact that the new analysis had not yet been publicly posted for scientists to scrutinize, but had come to light in news reports, warranted caution.

    “Such articles really don’t help as they only polarise the debate further,” Balloux posted in a thread on Twitter. “Those convinced by a zoonotic origin will read it as final proof for their conviction, and those convinced it was a lab leak will interpret the weakness of the evidence as attempts of a cover-up.”

    Other experts, who were not involved in the analysis, said the data could be key to showing the virus had a natural origin.

    Felicia Goodrum is an immunobiologist at the University of Arizona, who recently published a review of all available data for the various theories behind the pandemic’s origin.

    Goodrum says the strongest proof for a natural spillover would be to isolate the virus that causes Covid-19 from an animal that was present in the market in 2019.

    “Clearly, that is impossible, as we cannot go back in time any more than we have through sequencing, and no animals were present at the time sequences could be collected. To me, this is the next best thing,” Goodrum said in an email to CNN.

    In the WHO briefing, Van Kerkhove said that the Chinese CDC researchers had uploaded the sequences to GISAID as they were updating their original research. She said their first paper is in the process of being updated and resubmitted for publication.

    “We have been told by GISAID that the data from China’s CDC is being updated and expanded,” she said.

    Van Kerkhove said on Friday that what WHO would like to be able to do is to find the source of where the animals came from. Were they wild? Were they farmed?

    She said in the course of its investigation into the pandemic’s origins, WHO had repeatedly asked China for studies to trace the animals back to their source farms. She said WHO had also asked for blood tests on people who worked in the market, as well as tests on animals that may have come from the farms.

    “Share the data,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program, said Friday, addressing scientists around the world who might have relevant information. “Let science do the work, and we will get the answers.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Is Europe’s automotive industry ready for electric cars?

    Is Europe’s automotive industry ready for electric cars?

    [ad_1]

    From: Counting the Cost

    The European Union plans to halt the sale of fossil fuel cars by 2035 and wants to speed up the switch to electric vehicles.

    The manufacture of fossil fuel-powered cars employs millions of people across Europe. But the vehicles account for 15 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions in the European Union.

    The EU wants to drastically reduce exhaust fumes as part of its ambitious plans to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 and combat climate change. Petrolheads are now being told to prepare for a cleaner ride.

    Carmakers will be required to cut 100 percent of carbon emissions in new vehicles sold in the EU by 2035.

    Elsewhere, profits of global airlines are taking off for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Hong Kong scraps mask mandate after nearly three years | CNN

    Hong Kong scraps mask mandate after nearly three years | CNN

    [ad_1]


    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Hong Kong, one of the last major international cities requiring face masks, on Tuesday announced it will end its controversial mandate nearly three years after it was enacted to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

    The mandate, enforced through fines that could reach more than $1,000, had required facial coverings in all public spaces including outdoors, indoors and public transport. At one point, it had even been mandatory while exercising outside.

    The rule came into effect on July 15, 2020, though the vast majority of people in the city had begun wearing masks months earlier as reports of coronavirus infections spread, leading to panic buying and shortages as early as January that year.

    The mandate will be fully lifted on Wednesday, the city’s leader John Lee said at a news briefing Tuesday.

    “We are now returning to normalcy,” Lee said, as the Asian financial hub launches a major push to welcome back business travelers and tourists.

    Hong Kong has rolled back several other major controls in recent months, most notably mandatory quarantine for all international arrivals, in a move anticipated to boost tourism.

    Speaking at the same news briefing, Health Secretary Lo Mau-chung said that with the lifting of the mask mandate, “We have now removed all epidemic restrictions.”

    “I’m looking forward to seeing a smile on everyone’s face now,” he said. However, he added, there are still some recommendations in place to wear masks at “high risk” areas such as elderly care homes and hospitals.

    Most other places in Asia have either fully or partially eased their mask mandates in recent months, including South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

    The World Health Organization still recommends health workers wear masks, with Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead of WHO’s Covid response, warning that the virus was “circulating pretty much unchecked around the world at the moment.”

    This is a developing story.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • US energy dept says COVID probably came from a lab leak

    US energy dept says COVID probably came from a lab leak

    [ad_1]

    Investigations into the origins of a virus that has now killed nearly 7 million people have been hampered by politics and a lack of access and transparency.

    COVID-19 was probably the result of a leak from a laboratory, according to a newly updated classified report from the United States Department of Energy obtained by the Wall Street Journal newspaper.

    The new coronavirus — SARS-CoV-2 — first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 and quickly spread around the world, so far killing nearly 7 million people. It also created turmoil in the global economy as countries closed borders and ordered lockdowns to try and curb the spread of a virus against which there were, initially, no effective vaccines.

    The judgement for the latest classified report arose out of new intelligence and was made with “low confidence”, the Journal reported on Sunday. The energy department oversees a network of US laboratories, including some that undertake advanced biological research.

    The latest findings suggest a change in the view of the US energy department, which said previously it was undecided on how the virus emerged. The officials declined to elaborate on the intelligence that had prompted the department to change its position. It now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in saying the virus probably spread after a mishap at a laboratory, a conclusion the FBI reached in 2021 with “moderate confidence”.

    Four US intelligence agencies believe with “low confidence” that COVID-19 took place through natural transmission, while two others remain undecided, the Journal added.

    Despite the agencies’ differing analyses, the update reaffirmed an existing consensus that COVID-19 was not the result of a Chinese biological weapons programme, the people who had read the classified report told the newspaper.

    The report, extending to five pages, was prepared for the White House and members of Congress, the Journal said.

    White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said there were still a “variety of views” on the issue.

    Speaking on CNN on Sunday, he stressed US President Joe Biden had repeatedly asked the intelligence community to invest in trying to find out as much as possible about how the pandemic started.

    “President Biden specifically requested that the national labs, which are part of the Energy Department, be brought into this assessment because he wants to put every tool at use to be able to figure out what happened here,” Sullivan said.

    In mid-February, the World Health Organisation (WHO) promised to do everything possible “until we get the answer” on the origins of the virus, denying a report that suggested the agency had abandoned its investigation.

    After much delay, a WHO team travelled to Wuhan, China, in early 2021 to visit the Huanan market where the first cluster of cases emerged and which was closed and cleaned soon after the virus began to spread. Working alongside Chinese scientists, they also visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a biosecurity lab where researchers had been working on bats.

    The investigation faced criticism for lacking transparency and access, and for not sufficiently evaluating the lab-leak theory, which it deemed “extremely unlikely”. It said the most likely explanation was that the virus originated in a bat before crossing to an intermediary animal and making the jump to humans.

    China has accused the US of politicising the investigation and for ‘scapegoating’ the country after former US President Donald Trump dubbed SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, the “Chinese virus”.

    Finding the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is seen as crucial in order to better fight or even prevent another pandemic.

    WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has insisted that all hypotheses remain on the table and called on China to provide further access to investigate.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • US Energy Department assesses Covid-19 likely resulted from lab leak, furthering US intel divide over virus origin | CNN Politics

    US Energy Department assesses Covid-19 likely resulted from lab leak, furthering US intel divide over virus origin | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The US Department of Energy has assessed that the Covid-19 pandemic most likely came from a laboratory leak in China, according to a newly updated classified intelligence report.

    Two sources said that the Department of Energy assessed in the intelligence report that it had “low confidence” the Covid-19 virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan.

    Intelligence agencies can make assessments with either low, medium or high confidence. A low confidence assessment generally means that the information obtained is not reliable enough or too fragmented to make a more definitive analytic judgment or that there is not enough information available to draw a more robust conclusion.

    The latest assessment further adds to the divide in the US government over whether the Covid-19 pandemic began in China in 2019 as the result of a lab leak or whether it emerged naturally. The various intelligence agencies have been split on the matter for years. In 2021, the intelligence community declassified a report that showed four agencies in the intelligence community had assessed with low confidence that the virus likely jumped from animals to humans naturally in the wild, while one assessed with moderate confidence that the pandemic was the result of a laboratory accident.

    Three other intelligence community elements were unable to coalesce around either explanation without additional information, the report said.

    The Wall Street Journal first reported on the new assessment from the Department of Energy. A senior US intelligence official told the Journal that the update to the intelligence assessment was conducted in light of new intelligence, further study of academic literature and in consultation with experts outside government.

    A Department of Energy spokesperson told CNN in a statement: “The Department of Energy continues to support the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of COVID-19, as the President directed.”

    The Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence is one of 18 government agencies that make up the intelligence community, which are under the umbrella of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

    The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

    The latest intelligence assessment was provided to Congress as Republicans on Capitol Hill have been pushing for further investigation into the lab leak theory, while accusing the Biden administration of playing down its possibility.

    A spokesperson for House Oversight Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said in a statement that the committee was “reviewing the classified information provided” by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to a letter requesting information earlier this month.

    One of the sources said that the new assessment from the Department of Energy is similar to information from a House Republican Intelligence Committee report released last year on the origins of the virus.

    National security adviser Jake Sullivan said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that the intelligence community remains divided on the matter, while noting that President Joe Biden has put resources into getting to the bottom of the origin question.

    “Right now, there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this question,” Sullivan told CNN’s Dana Bash. “Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other. A number of them have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure.”

    Sullivan said Biden had directed the national laboratories, which are part of the Department of Energy, to be brought into the assessment.

    In May 2020, researchers at the government-backed Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory issued a classified report that found it was possible that the coronavirus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, which came at a time when that line of inquiry was considered taboo.

    The US began exploring the possibility that Covid-19 spread in a laboratory as early as April 2020, though the intelligence community has noted repeatedly that a lack of cooperation from Beijing has made it difficult to get to the bottom of the question.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Biden intends to end Covid-19 and public health emergencies on May 11 | CNN Politics

    Biden intends to end Covid-19 and public health emergencies on May 11 | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden intends to end the Covid-19 national and public health emergencies on May 11, the White House said Monday.

    The White House, in a statement of administration policy announcing opposition to two Republican measures to end the emergencies, said the national emergency and public health emergency authorities declared in response to the pandemic would each be extended one final time to May 11.

    “This wind down would align with the Administration’s previous commitments to give at least 60 days’ notice prior to termination of the (public health emergency),” the statement said.

    The statement added, “To be clear, continuation of these emergency declarations until May 11 does not impose any restriction at all on individual conduct with regard to COVID-19. They do not impose mask mandates or vaccine mandates. They do not restrict school or business operations. They do not require the use of any medicines or tests in response to cases of COVID-19.”

    The statement came in response to a pair of measures before the House that would end the public health emergency and the Covid-19 national emergency.

    The White House weighed in because House Democrats were concerned about voting against the Republican legislation to end the public health emergency that is coming to the floor this week without a plan from the Biden administration, a senior Democratic aide told CNN.

    “Democrats were concerned about the optics of voting against Republicans winding down the public health emergency, absent an understanding of whether and how we intended to do so from the White House,” the aide said. “As soon as we saw this bill, it obviously concerns the White House. So, it was important for them to weigh in.”

    The administration argues that the bills are unnecessary because it intends to end the emergencies anyway. The White House also noted the passage of the measures ahead of May 11 would have unintended consequences, such as disrupting the administration’s plans for ending certain policies that are authorized by the emergencies.

    The White House said it would extend the Covid-19 emergencies one final time in order to ensure an orderly wind-down of key authorities that states, health care providers and patients have relied on throughout the pandemic.

    A White House official pointed to a successful vaccination campaign and reductions in Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths as a rationale for lifting the emergency declarations. The official said a final extension will allow for a smooth transition for health care providers and patients and noted that health care facilities have already begun preparing for that transition.

    The administration is actively reviewing flexible policies that were authorized under the public health emergency to determine which can remain in place after it is lifted on May 11.

    The aide told CNN that it will be up to every member to decide what is best for their district and how they will vote on the legislation this week. Declaring an end to the public health emergency will also end the border restriction known as Title 42, which will also likely set up a showdown on Capitol Hill.

    The public health emergency has enabled the government to provide many Americans with Covid-19 tests, treatments and vaccines at no charge, as well as offer enhanced social safety net benefits, to help the nation cope with the pandemic and minimize its impact.

    “People will have to start paying some money for things they didn’t have to pay for during the emergency,” said Jen Kates, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “That’s the main thing people will start to notice.”

    Most Americans covered by Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance plans have been able to obtain Covid-19 tests and vaccines at no cost during the pandemic. Those covered by Medicare and private insurance have been able to get up to eight at-home tests per month from retailers at no charge. Medicaid also picks up the cost of at-home tests, though coverage can vary by state.

    Those covered by Medicare and Medicaid have also had certain therapeutic treatments, such as monoclonal antibodies, fully covered.

    Once the emergency ends, Medicare beneficiaries generally will face out-of-pocket costs for at-home testing and all treatment. However, vaccines will continue to be covered at no cost, as will testing ordered by a health care provider.

    State Medicaid programs will have to continue covering Covid-19 tests ordered by a physician and vaccines at no charge. But enrollees may face out-of-pocket costs for treatments.

    Those with private insurance could face charges for lab tests, even if they are ordered by a provider. Vaccinations will continue to be free for those with private insurance who go to in-network providers, but going to an out-of-network providers could incur charges.

    Covid-19 vaccinations will be free for those with insurance even when the public health emergency ends because of various federal laws, including the Affordable Care Act and pandemic-era measures, the Inflation Reduction Act and a 2020 relief package.

    Americans with private insurance have not been charged for monoclonal antibody treatment since they were prepaid by the federal government, though patients may be charged for the office visit or administration of the treatment. But that is not tied to the public health emergency, and the free treatments will be available until the federal supply is exhausted. The government has already run out of some of the treatments so those with private insurance may already be picking up some of the cost.

    The uninsured had been able to access no-cost testing, treatments and vaccines through a different pandemic relief program. However, the federal funding ran out in the spring of 2022, making it more difficult for those without coverage to obtain free services.

    The federal government has been preparing to shift Covid-19 care to the commercial market since last year, in part because Congress has not authorized additional funding to purchase additional vaccines, treatments and tests.

    Pfizer and Moderna have already announced that the commercial prices of their Covid-19 vaccines will likely be between $82 and $130 per dose – about three to four times what the federal government has paid, according to Kaiser.

    The public health emergency has also meant additional funds for hospitals, which have been receiving a 20% increase in Medicare’s payment rate for treating Covid-19 patients.

    Also, Medicare Advantage plans have been required to bill enrollees affected by the emergency and receiving care at out-of-network facilities the same as if they were at in-network facilities.

    This will end once the public health emergency expires.

    But several of the most meaningful enhancements to public assistance programs are no longer tied to the public health emergency. Congress severed the connection in December as part of its fiscal year 2023 government funding package.

    Most notably, states will now be able to start processing Medicaid redeterminations and disenrolling residents who no longer qualify, starting April 1. They have 14 months to review the eligibility of their beneficiaries.

    As part of a Covid-19 relief package passed in March 2020, states were barred from kicking people off Medicaid during the public health emergency in exchange for additional federal matching funds. Medicaid enrollment has skyrocketed to a record 90 million people since then, and millions are expected to lose coverage once states began culling the rolls.

    A total of roughly 15 million people could be dropped from Medicaid when the continuous enrollment requirement ends, according to an analysis the Department of Health and Human Services released in August. About 8.2 million folks would no longer qualify, but 6.8 million people would be terminated even though they are still eligible, the department estimated.

    Many who are disenrolled from Medicaid, however could qualify for other coverage.

    Food stamp recipients had been receiving a boost during the public health emergency. Congress increased food stamp benefits to the maximum for their family size in a 2020 pandemic relief package.

    The Biden administration expanded the boost in the spring of 2021 so that households already receiving the maximum amount and those who received only a small monthly benefit get a supplement of at least $95 a month.

    This extra assistance will end as of March, though several states have already stopped providing it.

    Congress, however, extended one set of pandemic flexibilities as part of the government funding package.

    More Medicare enrollees are able to get care via telehealth during the public health emergency. The service is no longer limited just to those living in rural areas. They can conduct the telehealth visit at home, rather than having to travel to a health care facility. Plus, beneficiaries can use smartphones and receive a wider array of services via telehealth.

    These will now continue through 2024.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Bangladesh to get $4.7bn IMF package

    Bangladesh to get $4.7bn IMF package

    [ad_1]

    The funding comes under a new programme which aims to help vulnerable middle-income countries and island states.

    The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) executive board has approved a support programme for Bangladesh worth $4.7bn at current exchange rates, making the South Asian country the first to access its new Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF).

    The funding announced on Monday includes $3.3bn under the IMF’s Extended Credit Facility and Extended Fund Facility programmes and $1.4bn under the new RSF, which aims to help vulnerable middle-income countries and island states.

    The board approval of a staff agreement reached last November allows the immediate disbursement of about $476m to Bangladesh, the IMF said.

    The IMF said the 42-month borrowing package “will help preserve macroeconomic stability, protect the vulnerable and foster inclusive and green growth”.

    The fund said it includes reforms focused on creating fiscal space to enable greater social and developmental spending, strengthening Bangladesh’s financial sector, boosting fiscal and governance reforms, and building climate resilience.

    The IMF announced the new RSF facility in October last year to provide policy support and affordable longer-term financing for low-income and vulnerable middle-income countries in addition to the existing lending toolkits that these countries had access to. RSF facilities come with a 20-year maturity and a 10-1/2-year grace period during which no principal is repaid.

    The funding from the RSF will help support the country’s climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts, the IMF said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Trump takes aim at DeSantis in first major campaign swing, says he’s trying to ‘rewrite history’ on his Covid-19 record | CNN Politics

    Trump takes aim at DeSantis in first major campaign swing, says he’s trying to ‘rewrite history’ on his Covid-19 record | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump took aim at Ron DeSantis Saturday, claiming the Florida governor and his team are “trying to rewrite history” regarding their Covid-19 pandemic response, and called the potential presidential run by his GOP rival “very disloyal.”

    “There are Republican governors that did not close their states,” Trump told reporters while aboard his plane. “Florida was closed for a long period of time.”

    “They’re trying to rewrite history,” he added. CNN has reached out to DeSantis for comment.

    In March 2020, the Florida governor issued an executive order closing bars and nightclubs, urging people to follow US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines to limit gatherings on beaches to no more than 10 people. By that September, DeSantis signed an order clearing restaurants and bars to fully open, which drew criticism from public health officials due to the Covid-19 spike that fall.

    Trump defended his management of the pandemic, saying he left decisions to governors.

    “I had governors that decided not to close a thing and that was up to them,” he said. The former president also took aim at DeSantis’ shifting posture on vaccines, saying the Florida governor had “changed his tune a lot.”

    That claim comes after DeSantis called on state lawmakers this month to make permanent existing penalties for companies that require all employees get the Covid-19 vaccination.

    The rivalry with Trump hangs over every move DeSantis makes. Their relationship traces back to the governor’s 2018 primary campaign, when an endorsement from Trump helped the little-known congressman win the nomination. A viral ad featuring DeSantis and his family, including two young children, highlighted his allegiance to Trump.

    But as talk of 2024 swirled in recent months, as Trump again declared his presidential candidacy, and DeSantis won re-election in a 19-point landslide in November, the pair grew increasingly at odds. Before and after the midterm election, Trump derided DeSantis as an “average governor” and mocked him with the would-be nickname, “Ron DeSanctimonious.”

    On Saturday, during his first major campaign swing to New Hampshire and South Carolina, Trump took credit again for helping elevate DeSantis during his 2018 bid for governor, saying “Ron would have not been governor if it wasn’t for me.”

    “So when I hear he might run, I consider that very disloyal,” Trump said.

    While taking aim at DeSantis, Trump told reporters aboard his plane that Nikki Haley – who served as his ambassador to the United Nations – called him in recent days to inform him that she is considering launching a 2024 presidential bid.

    “I talked to her for a little while, I said, ‘Look, you know, go by your heart if you want to run,’” Trump said. “She’s publicly said that ‘I would never run against my president, he was a great president.’”

    Trump said he told Haley that she “should do it.”

    Haley, who recently relocated her top aides to Charleston, is said to be weighing the timing of a campaign launch at this point, not wanting to be the first one to take on Trump by herself. In 2021, she said she would not challenge Trump if he ran again for the White House in 2024.

    CNN has reached out to Haley for comment.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Opinion: The rare bipartisan opportunity House Republicans should take advantage of | CNN

    Opinion: The rare bipartisan opportunity House Republicans should take advantage of | CNN

    [ad_1]

    Editor’s Note: Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, DC. He is also a former senior policy adviser to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. Follow him on Twitter. The views expressed in this piece are his own. View more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    With only a thin and fractious majority in the House, the GOP is facing two years of struggling to set any kind of positive agenda. But one thing every elected Republican would agree on is the need to scrutinize the Biden administration.

    Courtesy Patrick T. Brown

    Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the new chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has already been hard at work, firing off letters demanding answers to pointed questions on border photo ops, President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, presidential visitor logs, remote work among top federal employees and Hunter Biden.

    This is, of course, business as usual. The party that doesn’t control the White House will always seek to score political points on possible bureaucratic scandals. In return, Democrats’ instinctive reaction might be to circle up the wagons and seek to stonewall or downplay as many of these efforts as possible.

    But one area of focus for the Oversight Committee deserves to be taken seriously, not just as a political point-scoring operation, but as an earnest attempt to improve how government works. A genuine bipartisan commitment can and should be made to evaluate the extent of fraud in the pandemic-era safety net measures. A better understanding of where the system failed would not only shine a light on how some funds were misspent but also lay the groundwork for better administration of safety-net benefits, in ways applicable and valuable even outside of the unique circumstances of a global pandemic.

    Recall that as the initial wave of coronavirus cases hit US shores, economists feared we could be headed for an economic meltdown. People stopped going about their daily lives, stay-at-home orders went into effect and businesses responded by laying off workers left and right. The unemployment rate spiked to 14.7% in April 2020, the highest level in the post-World War II era.

    Congress wanted to provide aid as quickly as possible; there simply wasn’t time to sit around and construct the ideal policies. As part of the frenetic response, the federal government used the often-clunky unemployment insurance systems run by states to try to backstop households’ finances.

    Fraud became an issue due to a number of factors, according to a June 2022 report from the Government Accountability Office, including unclear federal guidance, ill-equipped state offices and a relaxation of normal eligibility rules. It didn’t help that 32 states run their unemployment insurance systems on outdated infrastructure, often developed in the 1970s and 1980s, according to that same report. These systems make it difficult for states to have the flexibility and responsiveness necessary to run benefit programs efficiently – even when there isn’t a global pandemic.

    The underlying structure of unemployment insurance may have been an issue as well – the federal government provides support and technical assistance, while states determine eligibility and ensure accurate payments. The jerry-rigged systems in many states couldn’t handle the surge of applicants and a newly created unemployment insurance program relied on self-certification. Without any requirements to prove lost income, the program opened the door to bad actors.

    But some of the headlines about the amount of fraud in pandemic assistance are likely overblown. One widely-repeated claim about the ubiquity of fraud was advanced not by a disinterested party but by a company that sells ID verification systems. The GAO report estimates the amount of unemployment insurance fraud is likely over $60 billion (or about 7% of total $878 billion spent), although the true amount may not be knowable.

    $60 billion sounds like a lot of money, but some could argue the result justified the leaky process. Research by the Brookings Institution found that the expanded unemployment benefits delivered the most aid to lower-income workers, stabilizing the broader economy by keeping consumption stable. At the peak of Covid’s impact, millions of workers every week were applying for unemployment insurance; if excessive concern about fraud had prevented rolling out the federal expansion of benefits, it could have taken a lot longer for the economy to recover.

    But with the worst of the pandemic in the rear-view mirror, cracking down on people who abused the system and making it harder for future scammers to do the same is an appropriate area for the Oversight Committee to focus on. A full, bipartisan Congressional inquiry could spotlight the weaknesses of the current system and where it was taken advantage of in order to lay the groundwork for future efforts to improve the way benefits are disbursed.

    Not doing so would allow distrust around government programs to fester. Some voters who hear stories about fraudsters taking advantage of pandemic-era assistance – especially blatant examples of people who listed their name as “N/A” or claimed that they owned nonexistent farms – may lose faith in government’s ability to function properly. Knowing that the expanded assistance helped the economy does nothing to change or address the fact that some people took advantage of loopholes in the system.

    Some initial steps have been taken to address this lingering concern. The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, which was created as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act in 2020, has provided publicly available data on how emergency pandemic funds were spent. Last summer, Congress passed bipartisan bills extending the statute of limitations to prosecute individuals who committed fraud through the Paycheck Protection Program or the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program. And Democrats, such as Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who previously served as the chair of a subcommittee on the coronavirus response, have rightly pointed out that small business aid during the pandemic was also plagued by fraud and improper payments.

    Yet more could be done. A GAO report in October 2021 made six recommendations about how the Department of Labor could stem fraud in unemployment insurance programs, but a recent follow-up found the department had not implemented any of them. The deluge of cases has left investigators overwhelmed, and Congress could beef up funding for the agents that investigate pandemic fraud.

    Last year, the Biden administration announced initial steps to combat fraud and identity theft in pandemic relief, but it hasn’t made a priority of supporting bills like the one introduced in 2021 by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, which would have modernized the unemployment insurance program. Helping states develop better systems of determining eligibility and automating basic safeguards could make it easier to keep scammers out and make sure the truly deserving get the benefits they need.

    Republicans are right to put the spotlight on those who took advantage of pandemic-era programs. Democrats should join them. Getting benefits into the hands of people who merit them and keeping them out of the hands of people who don’t should be something both parties agree on. Amid all the other controversies that take up political oxygen, a concerted effort to crack down on wrongdoing and improve how our social safety net functions could be a welcome breath of bipartisan air.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Fact check: Biden makes false and misleading claims in economic speech | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Biden makes false and misleading claims in economic speech | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden delivered a Thursday speech to hail economic progress during his administration and to attack congressional Republicans for their proposals on the economy and the social safety net.

    Some of Biden’s claims in the speech were false, misleading or lacking critical context, though others were correct. Here’s a breakdown of the 14 claims CNN fact-checked.

    Touting the bipartisan infrastructure law he signed in 2021, Biden said, “Last year, we funded 700,000 major construction projects – 700,000 all across America. From highways to airports to bridges to tunnels to broadband.”

    Facts First: Biden’s “700,000” figure is wildly inaccurate; it adds an extra two zeros to the correct figure Biden used in a speech last week and the White House has also used before: 7,000 projects. The White House acknowledged his misstatement later on Thursday by correcting the official transcript to say 7,000 rather than 700,000.

    Biden said, “Well, here’s the deal: I put a – we put a cap, and it’s now in effect – now in effect, as of January 1 – of $2,000 a year on prescription drug costs for seniors.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claims that this cap is now in effect and that it came into effect on January 1 are false. The $2,000 annual cap contained in the Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed last year – on Medicare Part D enrollees’ out-of-pocket spending on covered prescription drugs – takes effect in 2025. The maximum may be higher than $2,000 in subsequent years, since it is tied to Medicare Part D’s per capita costs.

    Asked for comment, a White House official noted that other Inflation Reduction Act health care provisions that will save Americans money did indeed come into effect on January 1, 2023.

    – CNN’s Tami Luhby contributed to this item.

    Criticizing former President Donald Trump over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden said, “Back then, only 3.5 million people had been – even had their first vaccination, because the other guy and the other team didn’t think it mattered a whole lot.”

    Facts First: Biden is free to criticize Trump’s vaccine rollout, but his “only 3.5 million” figure is misleading at best. As of the day Trump left office in January 2021, about 19 million people had received a first shot of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to figures published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The “3.5 million” figure Biden cited is, in reality, the number of people at the time who had received two shots to complete their primary vaccination series.

    Someone could perhaps try to argue that completing a primary series is what Biden meant by “had their first vaccination” – but he used a different term, “fully vaccinated,” to refer to the roughly 230 million people in that very same group today. His contrasting language made it sound like there are 230 million people with at least two shots today versus 3.5 million people with just one shot when he took office. That isn’t true.

    Biden said Republicans want to cut taxes for billionaires, “who pay virtually only 3% of their income now – 3%, they pay.”

    Facts First: Biden’s “3%” claim is incorrect. For the second time in less than a week, Biden inaccurately described a 2021 finding from economists in his administration that the wealthiest 400 billionaire families paid an average of 8.2% of their income in federal individual income taxes between 2010 and 2018; after CNN inquired about Biden’s “3%” claim on Thursday, the White House published a corrected official transcript that uses “8%” instead. Also, it’s important to note that even that 8% number is contested, since it is an alternative calculation that includes unrealized capital gains that are not treated as taxable income under federal law.

    “Biden’s numbers are way too low,” said Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute think tank, though Gleckman also said we don’t know precisely what tax rates billionaires do pay. Gleckman wrote in an email: “In 2019, Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabe Zucman estimated the top 400 households paid an average effective tax rate of about 23 percent in 2018. They got a lot of attention at the time because that rate was lower than the average rate of 24 percent for the bottom half of the income distribution. But it still was way more than 2 or 3, or even 8 percent.”

    Biden has cited the 8% statistic in various other speeches, but unlike the administration economists who came up with it, he tends not to explain that it doesn’t describe tax rates in a conventional way. And regardless, he said “3%” in this speech and “2%” in a speech last week.

    Biden cited a 2021 report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy think tank that found that 55 of the country’s largest corporations had made $40 billion in profit in their previous fiscal year but not paid any federal corporate income taxes. Before touting the 15% alternative corporate minimum tax he signed into law in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, Biden said, “The days are over when corporations are paying zero in federal taxes.”

    Facts First: Biden exaggerated. The new minimum tax will reduce the number of companies that don’t pay any federal taxes, but it’s not true that the days of companies paying zero are “over.” That’s because the minimum tax, on the “book income” companies report to investors, only applies to companies with at least $1 billion in average annual income. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, only 14 of the companies on its 2021 list of 55 non-payers reported having US pre-tax income of at least $1 billion.

    In other words, there will clearly still be some large and profitable corporations paying no federal income tax even after the minimum tax takes effect this year. The exact number is not yet known.

    Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, told CNN in the fall that the new tax is “an important step forward from the status quo” and that it will raise substantial revenue, but he also said: “I wouldn’t want to assert that the minimum tax will end the phenomenon of zero-tax profitable corporations. A more accurate phrasing would be to say that the minimum tax will *help* ensure that *the most profitable* corporations pay at least some federal income tax.”

    There are lots of nuances to the tax; you can read more specifics here. Asked for comment on Thursday, a White House official told CNN: “The Inflation Reduction Act ensures the wealthiest corporations pay a 15% minimum tax, precisely the corporations the President focused on during the campaign and in office. The President’s full Made in America tax plan would ensure all corporations pay a 15% minimum tax, and the President has called on Congress to pass that plan.”

    Noting the big increase in the federal debt under Trump, Biden said that his administration has taken a “different path” and boasted: “As a result, the last two years – my administration – we cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion, the largest reduction in debt in American history.”

    Facts First: Biden’s boast leaves out important context. It is true that the federal deficit fell by a total of $1.7 trillion under Biden in the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, including a record $1.4 trillion drop in 2022 – but it is highly questionable how much credit Biden deserves for this reduction. Biden did not mention that the primary reason the deficit fell so substantially was that it had skyrocketed to a record high under Trump in 2020 because of bipartisan emergency pandemic relief spending, then fell as expected as the spending expired as planned. Independent analysts say Biden’s own actions, including his laws and executive orders, have had the overall effect of adding to current and projected future deficits, not reducing those deficits.

    Dan White, senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics – an economics firm whose assessments Biden has repeatedly cited during his presidency – told CNN’s Matt Egan in October: “On net, the policies of the administration have increased the deficit, not reduced it.” The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group, wrote in September that Biden’s actions will add more than $4.8 trillion to deficits from 2021 through 2031, or $2.5 trillion if you don’t count the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill of 2021.

    National Economic Council director Brian Deese wrote on the White House website last week that the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill “facilitated a strong economic recovery and enabled the responsible wind-down of emergency spending programs,” thereby reducing the deficit; David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds, told Egan in October that the Biden administration does deserve credit for the recovery that has pushed the deficit downward. And Deese correctly noted that Biden’s signature legislation, last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, is expected to bring down deficits by more than $200 billion over the next decade.

    Still, the deficit-reducing impact of that one bill is expected to be swamped by the deficit-increasing impact of various additional bills and policies Biden has approved.

    Biden said, “Wages are up, and they’re growing faster than inflation. Over the past six months, inflation has gone down every month and, God willing, will continue to do that.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim that wages are up and growing faster than inflation is true if you start the calculation seven months ago; “real” wages, which take inflation into account, started rising in mid-2022 as inflation slowed. (Biden is right that inflation has declined, on an annual basis, every month for the last six months.) However, real wages are lower today than they were both a full year ago and at the beginning of Biden’s presidency in January 2021. That’s because inflation was so high in 2021 and the beginning of 2022.

    There are various ways to measure real wages. Real average hourly earnings declined 1.7% between December 2021 and December 2022, while real average weekly earnings (which factors in the number of hours people worked) declined 3.1% over that period.

    Biden said he was disappointed that the first bill passed by the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives “added $114 billion to the deficit.”

    Facts First: Biden is correct about how the bill would affect the deficit if it became law. He accurately cited an estimate from the government’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

    The bill would eliminate more than $71 billion of the $80 billion in additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that Biden signed into law in the Inflation Reduction Act. The Congressional Budget Office found that taking away this funding – some of which the Biden administration said will go toward increased audits of high-income individuals and large corporations – would result in a loss of nearly $186 billion in government revenue between 2023 and 2032, for a net increase to the deficit of about $114 billion.

    The Republican bill has no chance of becoming law under Biden, who has vowed to veto it in the highly unlikely event it got through the Democratic-controlled Senate.

    Biden said that “MAGA Republicans” in the House “want to impose a 30 percent national sales tax on everything from food, clothing, school supplies, housing, cars – a whole deal.” He said they want to do that because “they want to eliminate the income tax system.”

    Facts First: This is a fair description of the Republicans’ “FairTax” bill. The bill would eliminate federal income taxes, plus the payroll tax, capital gains tax and estate tax, and replace it with a national sales tax. The bill describes a rate of 23% on the “gross payments” on a product or service, but when the tax rate is described in the way consumers are used to sales taxes being described, it’s actually right around 30%, as a pro-FairTax website acknowledges.

    It is not clear how much support the bill currently has among the House Republican caucus. Notably, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNN’s Manu Raju this week that he opposes the bill – though, while seeking right-wing votes for his bid for speaker in early January, he promised its supporters that it would be considered in committee. Biden wryly said in his speech, “The Republican speaker says he’s not so sure he’s for it.”

    Biden claimed the unemployment rate “is the lowest it’s been in 50 years.”

    Facts First: This is true. The unemployment rate was just below 3.5% in December, the lowest figure since 1969.

    The headline monthly rate, which is rounded to a single decimal place, was reported as 3.5% in December and also reported as 3.5% in three months of President Donald Trump’s tenure, in late 2019 and in early 2020. But if you look at more precise figures, December was indeed the lowest since 1969 – 3.47% – just below the figures for February 2020, January 2020 and September 2019.

    Biden said that the unemployment rates for Black and Hispanic Americans are “near record lows” and that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is “the lowest ever recorded” and the “lowest ever in history.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claims are accurate, though it’s worth noting that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities has only been released by the government since 2008.

    The Black or African American unemployment rate was 5.7% in December, not far from the record low of 5.3% that was set in August 2019. (This data series goes back to 1972.) The rate was 9.2% in January 2021, the month Biden became president. The Hispanic or Latino unemployment rate was 4.1% in December, just above the record low of 4.0% that was set in September 2019. (This data series goes back to 1973.) The rate was 8.5% in January 2021.

    The unemployment rate for people with disabilities was 5.0% in December, the lowest since the beginning of the data series in 2008. The rate was 12.0% in January 2021.

    Biden said that fewer families are facing foreclosure than before the pandemic.

    Facts First: Biden is correct. According to a report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, about 28,500 people had new foreclosure notations on their credit reports in the third quarter of 2022, the most recent quarter for which data is available; that was down from about 71,420 people with new foreclosure notations in the fourth quarter of 2019 and 74,860 people in the first quarter of 2020.

    Foreclosures plummeted in the second quarter of 2020 because of government moratoriums put in place because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Foreclosures spiked in 2022, relative to 2020-2021 levels, after the expiry of these moratoriums, but they remained very low by historical standards.

    Biden said, “More American families have health insurance today than any time in American history.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim is accurate. An analysis provided to CNN by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies US health care, found that about 295 million US residents had health insurance in 2021, the highest on record – and Jennifer Tolbert, the foundation’s director for state health reform, told CNN this week that “I expect the number of people with insurance continued to increase in 2022.”

    Tolbert noted that the number of insured residents generally rises over time because of population growth, but she added that “it is not a given” that there will be an increase in the number of insured residents every year – the number declined slightly under Trump from 2018 to 2019, for example – and that “policy changes as well as economic factors also affect these numbers.”

    As CNN’s Tami Luhby has reported, sign-ups on the federal insurance exchange created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, have spiked nearly 50% under Biden. Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan pandemic relief law and then the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act temporarily boosted federal premium subsidies for exchange enrollees, and the Biden administration has also taken various other steps to get people to sign up on the exchanges. In addition, enrollment in Medicaid health insurance has increased significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic, in part because of a bipartisan 2020 law that temporarily prevented people from being disenrolled from the program.

    The percentage of residents without health insurance fell to an all-time low of 8.0% in the first quarter of 2022, according to an analysis published last summer by the federal government’s Department of Health and Human Services. That meant there were 26.4 million people without health insurance, down from 48.3 million in 2010, the year Obamacare was signed into law.

    Biden said, “And over the last two years, more than 10 million people have applied to start a small business. That’s more than any two years in all of recorded American history.”

    Facts First: This is true. There were about 5.4 million business applications in 2021, the highest since 2005 (the first year for which the federal government released this data for a full year), and about 5.1 million business applications in 2022. Not every application turns into a real business, but the number of “high-propensity” business applications – those deemed to have a high likelihood of turning into a business with a payroll – also hit a record in 2021 and saw its second-highest total in 2022.

    Trump’s last full year in office, 2020, also set a then-record for total and high-propensity applications. There are various reasons for the pandemic-era boom in entrepreneurship, which began after millions of Americans lost their jobs in early 2020. Among them: some newly unemployed workers seized the moment to start their own enterprises; Americans had extra money from stimulus bills signed by Trump and Biden; interest rates were particularly low until a series of rate hikes that began in the spring of 2022.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Japan considers downgrading Covid-19 to same level as seasonal flu | CNN

    Japan considers downgrading Covid-19 to same level as seasonal flu | CNN

    [ad_1]


    Tokyo
    CNN
     — 

    Japan will consider downgrading Covid-19 to the same category as seasonal influenza this spring, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced Friday.

    Kishida said he had instructed Health Ministry officials to discuss the move and his administration would also review rules on face masks and other pandemic measures.

    “In order to further advance the efforts of ‘living with Corona’ and restore Japan to a state of normalcy, we will transition the various policies and measures to date in phases,” Kishida said.

    While daily Covid-19 cases in Japan have declined in recent weeks, the country still faces around 100,000 new infections a day.

    Covid-19 is categorized as a Class 2 disease, the same status as tuberculosis and avian influenza, according to Japan’s Health Ministry. Officials will now discuss reclassifying it to Class 5 – the lowest rank, which includes seasonal flu.

    Japan fully reopened its borders to overseas visitors last October after more than two years of pandemic restrictions, ending one of the world’s strictest border controls.

    Influenza – or the common flu – and Covid-19 are both contagious respiratory illnesses with simlar symptoms, but they are caused by different viruses and require testing to confirm a diagnosis, the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says on its website.

    According to the CDC, the risk of death or hospitalization from Covid-19 is greatly reduced for most people due to high levels of vaccination and population immunity from previous infections.

    However, the World Health Organization still lists the coronavirus outbreak as a pandemic, and reiterated in its latest update a recommendation for people to wear masks following recent exposure or close contact with Covid-19, and for “anyone in a crowded, enclosed, or poorly ventilated space” to do the same.

    WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on governments last week to continue sharing the sequencing data of the coronavirus, as it remained vital to detect and track the emergence and spread of new variants.

    “It’s understandable that countries cannot maintain the same levels of testing and sequencing they had during the Omicron peak. At the same time, the world cannot close its eyes and hope this virus will go away. It won’t,” he said.

    The news came as South Korea announced it will lift its mask mandate for most indoor areas, with exceptions for public transport and health facilities. The changes will take effect on January 30, South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said Friday.

    The measure will be lifted after the Lunar New Year holiday, when a large number of people are expected to travel, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.

    New Covid-19 cases, severe cases and related deaths are all declining and the country’s medical response capacity remains stable, KDCA added.

    The agency has strongly recommended people wear masks if they have Covid-19 related symptoms, belong to a high-risk group, have been in contact recently with a positive case, or are in a crowded space.

    Masks will still be required on public transport and in health facilities after South Korea eases its indoor mask mandate on January 30, 2023.

    The prime minister said the easing of the mandate could result in a temporary surge of new cases and urged health authorities to stay vigilant.

    South Korea has scrapped most of its pandemic restrictions and eased its outdoor mask mandate in May 2022. It still requires people who test positive to undergo seven days of home isolation.

    The country has also restricted travel from mainland China and implemented testing requirements for people arriving from China, Hong Kong and Macau following Beijing’s easing of Covid restrictions.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Covid broke supply chains. Now on the mend, can they withstand another shock? | CNN Business

    Covid broke supply chains. Now on the mend, can they withstand another shock? | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    Minneapolis
    CNN
     — 

    The pandemic dislodged the global supply chain, hurling once smoothly running businesses, industries and economies into a state of disarray.

    After almost three years of enduring wild swings and extremes, the system is slowly getting up to speed and into better sync: Ocean freight timelines are on a steady decline, ports are less congested, labor strikes have been narrowly averted, product and worker shortages have eased, prices have fallen, warehouses are full (maybe too full), friendshoring, nearshoring and reshoring efforts have accelerated and China has lifted its “zero Covid” policy.

    “We’ve had a fundamental shift that started about six months ago,” said Timothy Fiore, chair of the Institute for Supply Management. “There are certain components, like integrated circuits [and] microcontrollers, that still are impacting manufacturers’ ability to flow material. But, by and large, the pressure has come off.”

    However, plenty of potential roadblocks still loom large.

    Globally, developments in China and Ukraine remain ongoing question marks, especially if the manufacturing megapower suffers another setback or lockdown, or if conditions worsen with Russia’s war in Europe.

    Domestically, exports have weakened and the state of consumer demand remains a wild card, said Phil Levy, chief economist with freight forwarder and consultancy firm Flexport.

    “I would not describe this as a machine that’s humming along at the moment,” he said. “It’s more getting its bearings and trying to figure out what’s next.”

    Among the potential bottlenecks: Warehousing capacity in certain locales, notably Southern California, is pretty near full, he said. Additionally, the inland distribution network — especially rail and areas where transfers are made from one mode to another — has experienced some challenges, he said.

    The system isn’t yet at a steady state where businesses have a good sense of how long it will take for production, shipping and, ultimately, selling.

    “I don’t think we have that,” Levy said. “There’s still a lot of uncertainty about how long it takes to move stuff. When we see the warehouses piled full, is this because demand is too low? Is it because people moved stuff too early? So there’s a lot of stuff that’s still sorting out.”

    Supply chain activity has yet to normalize, but it’s returning to pre-pandemic trajectories, said Zac Rogers, assistant professor of operations and supply chain management at Colorado State University.

    “There’s a sort of reaction-overreaction pattern that always tends to happen anytime there’s a major disruption,” Rogers said. “And Covid is the major-est disruption we’ve had.”

    Early in the pandemic, businesses canceled orders, believing consumer spending would be crushed. However, trillions of dollars were injected into the economy to try to keep consumers and businesses afloat. Americans, stuck at home with fewer outlets for discretionary spending, turned to e-commerce for their shopping.

    The surge in demand for finished goods at a time when supply was severely limited in part due to pandemic-related labor shortages and shutdowns —notably of cities, factories and manufacturing hubs in China — knocked the global logistics system out of whack.

    Ports grew congested, lead times got lengthy, and costs climbed considerably higher as shortages spiked throughout the supply chain.

    “Everyone way over-ordered, and around February and March of [last] year, everything got here — pretty much right in time for the invasion of Ukraine,” Rogers said.

    Gas prices and inflation soared, putting a huge dent in consumer spending.

    “The challenge for the last 10 months in supply chains has been to try to thread the needle between bringing inventories down to a reasonable level, while also not overreacting, yet again, and [landing] back into a shortage situation,” he said. “We’re getting back toward the trend line in a way that we haven’t in the last few years.”

    Helping that along is that supply chains are far more resilient now than they were at the end of 2019, Rogers said.

    “In 2019, we had basically all of our chips in on one hand, which was, things are built in East Asia, come on a boat through the ports in Southern California, they get on trains that go to Chicago and then on other trains or trucks to distribute to the East Coast,” he said.

    And while it’s nearly impossible to divorce from China, companies are embracing different paths for the supply chain, whether it be in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Central America or domestically, Rogers said.

    “Because of that, supply chains are not as brittle as they were three years ago,” he said. “And so if there is another shock — particularly if there’s a China-centric shock — I think we’ll be able to absorb it a little better than we had. … But you can’t price in something like the invasion of Ukraine or a viral outbreak that shuts down the world — no systems are built to handle that smoothly.”

    Rogers is also a researcher and co-author of the Logistics Managers’ Index, a monthly survey of supply chain executives conducted by a team of university researchers and the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals.

    The index’s December reading — which measures inventory levels and costs; warehousing capacity; utilization and prices; and transportation capacity, utilization and prices — came in at 54.6, a 1-point increase following eight months of declines.

    The majority of the LMI metrics were in the range of 40s, 50s and 60s, Rogers said, noting it’s the first time since the onset of the pandemic that the indices haven’t been in the 70s or 80s.

    The container ship Ever Libra (TW) is moored at the Port of Los Angeles on Monday, Nov. 21, 2022. The supply backlogs of the past two years -- and the delays, shortages and outrageous prices they brought with them -- have improved dramatically since summer.

    “If you’re in 40, that’s contraction, but 50s are normal, healthy rates of growth,” he said. “There could be another huge black swan event in a month that throws everything upside down; but for right now, it seems like respondents are predicting steadiness in the supply chain.”

    If anything, the pandemic’s shock to the supply chain should be a wake-up call, said Jack Buffington, director of supply chain and sustainability at First Key Consulting and assistant professor of supply chain management at the University of Denver.

    “I would categorize it as ‘efficiently broken,’” said Buffington, whose own book about supply chains, “Reinventing the Supply Chain: A 21st Century Covenant with America,” had its release delayed due to supply chain issues.

    “All supply chains really are is supply and demand, and there’s been so much disruption in materials and consumer demand related to labor and inflation and geopolitics,” he said. “Inherently, the foundation of the model is broken in comparison to what the demands are for today. The complexities related to a globalized supply chain, human systems aren’t capable of handling it.”

    He added: “Covid wasn’t the cause of the problems with the supply chain, it was a trigger to show how bad it was,” he said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link