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Tag: lockdowns

  • Biden, Trump, and RFK Jr. are all anti-freedom

    Biden, Trump, and RFK Jr. are all anti-freedom

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    Last week, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked me to moderate what he called “The Real Debate.”

    Kennedy was angry with CNN because it wouldn’t let him join its Trump-Biden debate.

    His people persuaded Elon Musk to carry his Real Debate on X, formerly Twitter. They asked me to give RFK Jr. the same questions, with the same time limits.

    I agreed, hoping to hear some good new ideas.

    I didn’t.

    As you know, President Joe Biden slept, and former President Donald Trump lied. Well, OK, Biden lied at least nine times, too, even by CNN’s count.

    Kennedy was better.

    But not much.

    He did acknowledge that our government’s deficit spending binge is horrible. He said he’d cut military spending. He criticized unscientific COVID-19 lockdowns and said nice words about school choice.

    But he, too, dodged questions, blathered on past time limits, and pushed big government nonsense like, “Every million dollars we spend on child care creates 22 jobs.”

    Give me a break.

    Independence Day is this week.

    As presidential candidates promise to subsidize flying cars (Trump), free community college tuition (Biden), and “affordable” housing via 3 percent government-backed bonds (Kennedy), I think about how bewildered and horrified the Founding Fathers would be by such promises.

    On the Fourth of July almost 250 years ago, they signed the Declaration of Independence, marking the birth of our nation.

    They did not want life dominated by politicians. They wanted a society made up of free individuals. They believed every human being has “unalienable rights” to life, liberty, and (justly acquired) property.

    The blueprints created by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution gradually created the freest and most prosperous nation in the history of the world.

    Before 1776, people thought there was a “divine right” of kings and nobles to rule over them.

    America succeeded because the Founders rejected that belief.

    In the Virginia Declaration of Rights, George Mason wrote, “All power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people.”

    By contrast, Kennedy and Biden make promises that resemble the United Nations’ “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” U.N. bureaucrats say every person deserves “holidays with pay…clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.”

    The Founders made it clear that governments should be limited. They didn’t think we had a claim on our neighbor’s money. We shouldn’t try to force them to pay for our food, clothing, housing, prescription drugs, college tuition.

    They believe you have the right to be left alone to pursue happiness as you see fit.

    For a while, the U.S. government stayed modest. Politicians mostly let citizens decide our own paths, choose where to live, what jobs to take, and what to say.

    There were a small number of “public servants.” But they weren’t our bosses.

    Patrick Henry declared: “The governing persons are the servants of the people.”

    Yet now there are 23 million government employees. Some think they are in charge of everything.

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.), pushing her Green New Deal, declared herself “the boss.”

    The Biden administration wants to decide what kind of car you should drive.

    During the pandemic, politicians ordered people to stay home, schools to shut down and businesses to close.

    Then, as often happens in “Big Government World,” people harmed by government edicts ask politicians to compensate them.

    After governments banned Fourth of July fireworks, the American Pyrotechnics Association requested “relief in the next Senate Covid package to address the unique and specific costs to this industry,” reported The New York Times. “The industry hopes Congress will earmark $175 million for it in another stimulus bill.”

    Today the politically connected routinely lobby passionately to get bigger chunks of your money.

    For some of you, the last straw was when the administration demanded you inject a chemical into your body.

    When some resisted vaccinations, Biden warned, “Our patience is wearing thin.”

    His patience? Who does he think he is? My father? My king?

    At least Kennedy doesn’t say things like that. But he does say absurd things. In a few weeks I’ll release my sit-down interview with him, and you can decide for yourself whether he’s a good candidate.

    This Fourth of July, remember Milton Friedman’s question: “How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect?”

    COPYRIGHT 2024 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

    The post Biden, Trump, and RFK Jr. Are All Anti-Freedom appeared first on Reason.com.

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    John Stossel

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  • Former NIH director: Ignoring ‘collateral damage’ inflicted by COVID-19 policies was ‘really unfortunate’

    Former NIH director: Ignoring ‘collateral damage’ inflicted by COVID-19 policies was ‘really unfortunate’

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    As federal officials considered how the government should respond to an emerging pandemic in 2020, Francis Collins recalled last year, “we weren’t really considering the consequences” of extreme measures such as business shutdowns, school closures, and stay-at-home orders. It was a startling admission from Collins, who played a major role in those conversations as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

    Collins, whose July 2023 comments recently attracted online attention, confessed that “public health people” made a “really unfortunate” mistake by ignoring the devastating side effects of the interventions they believed were necessary to curtail COVID-19 transmission. That mistake carries important lessons not just for future responses to communicable diseases but also for a wide range of public policies that inflict harm in the name of saving lives.

    Collins, who ran the NIH from 2009 to 2021, was speaking at a Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, conference sponsored by Braver Angels, an organization that aims to “bridge the political divide” by encouraging civil discussion between people with different ideologies and partisan allegiances. During a session with Wilk Wilkinson, a Minnesota trucking manager and podcast host who is sharply critical of the political reaction to COVID-19, Collins tried to explain the perspective of the scientists who shaped that response.

    “If you’re a public health person,” he said, “you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is, and that is something that will save a life. [It] doesn’t matter what else happens.”

    That seemingly noble impulse, Collins noted, encouraged public health specialists to overlook the unintended but foreseeable costs of the policies they recommended. “You attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life,” he said. “You attach a zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never might quite recover from.”

    The folly of attaching “infinite value” to a life saved by government regulation should be obvious. Economists and regulators, after all, routinely and rightly seek to balance the costs of new rules against their expected benefits, a calculation that entails estimating the “value of a statistical life.”

    If that value were infinite, it would justify any policy that promises to save lives, regardless of the cost. A universal speed limit of 25 miles per hour (or, more ambitiously, a ban on automobiles) would reduce traffic deaths, for example, but at a cost that few of us would consider acceptable.

    During the pandemic, the wisdom of weighing costs against benefits was not just forgotten but explicitly repudiated. Andrew Cuomo, then New York’s governor, insisted that the goal was to “save lives, period, whatever it costs,” because “we’re not going to accept a premise that human life is disposable.”

    Although Collins portrays that attitude as characteristic of “public health people,” there were dissenters even among experts who fell into that category. In October 2020, for example, three epidemiologists—Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff, Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta, and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya—issued the Great Barrington Declaration, which recommended taking steps to protect people who were especially vulnerable to COVID-19 while allowing “those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally.”

    At the Braver Angels conference, Collins described Kulldorff et al. as “very distinguished.” He was less respectful in an October 2020 email to White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci, saying “this proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists” demanded “a quick and devastating published take down of its premises.”

    During his exchange with Wilkinson, Collins explained that he was “deeply troubled” by the Great Barrington Declaration, which he viewed as reckless. “I regret that I used some terminology that I probably shouldn’t,” he said.

    Collins also regrets that he and his colleagues paid insufficient attention to the “collateral damage” caused by restrictions on social, economic, and educational activity. “We probably needed to have that conversation more effectively,” he said. Better late than never.

    © Copyright 2024 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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    Jacob Sullum

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  • With house prices this high, boomers may want to become renters

    With house prices this high, boomers may want to become renters

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    If you’re a retiree and you’re trying to square the circle of rising costs, longer lifespans, more expensive medical care and turbulent markets, don’t be afraid to run the numbers on your biggest investment.

    That would be your home — if you own it.

    U.S. house prices are now so high that it is almost impossible for seniors not to ask themselves the obvious question: “Should we cash in, invest the money, and rent?”

    Right now the average U.S. house price is nearly $360,000. That’s about a third higher than just a few years ago, before the COVID-19 pandemic. The lockdowns, the panic, the stimulus checks and 2.5% mortgage rates have all passed into history. But the sky-high prices remain — for now.

    After several years of double-digit percentage increases, apartment-rent growth is falling for only the second time since the 2008 financial crisis. WSJ’s Will Parker joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss.

    At these levels, analysts at Realtor.com — which, like MarketWatch, is owned by News Corp.
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    — say that in 45 out of 50 major U.S. metropolitan areas it is cheaper to rent than it is to buy a starter home. The Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank says national housing affordability is abysmal — about where it was in 2006 and 2007, during the big housing bubble.

    There is a similar story for seniors. Federal data show that the average U.S. house price is now nearly 17 times the average annual Social Security benefit — an even higher ratio than it was in August 2008, just before Lehman Brothers collapsed. At that juncture, the average house price was 15 times higher.

    U.S. National Home Price Index vs. average rent of primary residence in U.S. city, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Indexed: January 1987=100.


    S&P/Case-Shiller

    Our simple chart, above, compares average U.S. home prices with average U.S. rents, going back to 1987. (The chart simply shows the ratio, indexed to 100.) The bottom line? House prices are very high at the moment compared with rents — again, prices are about where they were in 2006-07.

    And the two must run in tandem over the long term, because the economic value of owning a house is not having to pay rent to live there.

    If there are times when, in general, it makes more financial sense for seniors to rent than to own, this has to be one of those.

    Seniors who own their own homes may think high interest rates on new mortgages don’t affect them. They most likely either already have a mortgage at a lower, older rate or they’ve paid off their home loan. But if you want to sell, you’ll almost certainly be selling to someone who needs a mortgage.

    If borrowing costs drive down real-estate prices, seniors who hold off on selling may miss out on gains they may never see again. After the last housing peak, in 2006, it took a full decade for prices to recover fully. Those who sold when the going was good had the chance to buy lifetime annuities at excellent rates or to invest in stocks and bonds that overall rose about 80% over the same period.

    As I mentioned recently, there is a broad basket of real-estate trusts on the stock market that are publicly traded landlords. You can sell your home and invest in thousands at a click of a mouse.

    But should you?

    Incidentally, there is also an exchange-traded fund that invests in residential REITs, Armada’s Residential REIT ETF
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    though in addition to single-family homes and apartment-complex operators, about 25% of the fund is invested in companies involved in manufactured-home parks and senior-living facilities.

    For each person, the math will be different, and there are a number of questions you need to ask. Where do you want to live? How much would you get if you sold your house? How much would you pay in taxes? How much would it cost to rent the right place? Do you want to leave a property to your heirs? And what would be the costs of moving — both financial and emotional?

    The conventional wisdom is that you should own your home in retirement.

    “I would advise any and all retirees against renting if at all possible,” says Malcolm Ethridge, a financial planner at CIC Wealth in Rockville, Md. “You need your costs to be as fixed as possible during retirement, to match your income being fixed as well. If you choose to rent, you’re leaving it up to your landlord to determine whether and by how much your No. 1 expense will increase each year. And that makes it very tough to determine how much you are able to allocate toward everything else in your budget for the month.”

    A key point here, from federal data, is that nationwide rents have risen year after year, almost without a break, at least since the early 1980s. They even rose during the global financial crisis, with just one 12-month period where they fell — and then by only 0.1%.

    “My general advice for clients is that owning a home with no mortgage in retirement is the best scenario, as housing is typically the highest cost we pay monthly,” says Adam Wojtkowski, an adviser at Copper Beech Wealth Management in Mansfield, Mass. “It’s not always the case that it works out this way, but if you can enter retirement with no mortgage, it makes it a lot easier for everything to fall into place, so to speak, when it comes to retirement-income planning.”

    “Renting comes with a lot of risk,” says Brian Schmehil, a planner with the Mather Group in Chicago. “If you rent, you are subject to the whims of your landlord, and a high inflationary environment could put pressure on your finances as you get older.”

    But it’s not always that simple.

    “With housing costs as high as they are now though, renting may be a viable solution, at least for the moment,” says Wojtkowski. “We don’t know what the housing-market trends will be going forward, but if someone is waiting for a housing-market crash before they move, they could very likely be waiting for a long time. We just don’t know.”

    “Any decision comes with pros and cons,” says Schmehil. “Selling when your home values are historically high and renting allows you to capture the equity in your home, which is usually a retiree’s largest or second-largest financial asset. These extra funds allow you to spend more money on yourself in retirement without having to worry about doing a reverse mortgage or selling later in retirement, when it may be harder for you to do so.”

    Renting also allows you to be more flexible about where you live, for example nearer your children or grandchildren, he adds.

    And as any experienced property owner knows, renting also brings another benefit: You no longer have to do as much work around the house.

    “Renting is great in that you don’t need to maintain a residence,” says Ann Covington Alsina, a financial planner running her own firm in Annapolis, Md. “If the dishwasher breaks or the roof leaks, the landlord is responsible.”

    Wojtkowski agrees, noting that many people no longer want to spend time mowing the lawn or shoveling snow in retirement. “Ultimately, one of the things that I’ve seen most retirees most concerned with is eliminating the general upkeep [and] maintenance of homeownership in retirement,” he says.

    Several planners — including Covington Alsina and Wojtkowski — note that one alternative to selling and renting is simply downsizing. This can free up capital, especially when home prices are high, like now, without leaving you exposed to rising rents.

    Many baby boomers have been doing exactly that. 

    Meanwhile, I am reminded of my late friend Vincent Nobile, who — after a long and fruitful life owning homes and raising a family — found himself widowed and alone in his 80s. He rented a small cottage on a New England sound and said how glad he was that he never had to worry about maintaining the roof or the appliances, or fixing the plumbing or the heating, or any one of a thousand other irritations. Or paying property taxes — which go down even more rarely than rents.

    When the regular drives to Boston got too onerous, he moved into the city and rented there. And he was glad to do it. The money he had made was all in investments — a lot less hassle both for him and his heirs.

    I once asked him if he would prefer to own his own home. He shook his head and laughed.

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  • IMF head joins chorus calling on China to adapt COVID strategy as officials pledge to boost vaccinations among elderly

    IMF head joins chorus calling on China to adapt COVID strategy as officials pledge to boost vaccinations among elderly

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    The head of the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday joined the chorus of people urging China to adopt a more targeted approach to the coronavirus pandemic as the country’s zero-COVID policy sparks protests over lockdowns and hobbles the world’s second-biggest economy.

    IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva urged a “recalibration” of China’s tough “zero-COVID” approach, which is aimed at isolating every case, “exactly because of the impact it has on both people and on the economy,” as the Associated Press reported.

    See also: Some markets cheer as China vows to vaccinate more elderly. Analysts see positive movement by officials.

    Georgieva made the comments in an interview with the AP on Tuesday, after protests erupted in Chinese cities and in Hong Kong over the weekend, marking the strongest public dissent in decades.

    “We see the importance of moving away from massive lockdowns, being very targeted in restrictions,” Georgieva said Tuesday in Berlin. “So that targeting allows [China] to contain the spread of COVID without significant economic costs.”

    Georgieva also urged China to look at vaccination policies and focus on vaccinating the “most vulnerable people.”

    A low rate of vaccinations among the elderly is a major reason Beijing has had to resort to lockdowns, while the emergence of more-contagious variants has made it increasingly hard to halt the spread of the virus.

    In a rare show of defiance, crowds in China gathered for the third night as protests against COVID restrictions spread to Beijing, Shanghai and other cities. People held up blank sheets of paper, symbolizing censorship, and demanded the Chinese president step down. Photo: Kyodo News/Zuma Press

    Chinese health officials said Tuesday they are preparing a push to get more older people vaccinated, the Guardian reported. The National Health Commission told reporters it would target more vaccinations at people older than 80 and would reduce to three months the gap between basic vaccination and booster shots for elderly people.

    But experts, including President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, have expressed concern that China’s homegrown vaccines are not effective enough. China has not yet approved the vaccines developed by Pfizer
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    BioNTech
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    and Moderna
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    for public use. The shortcomings of China’s vaccines have led Chinese doctors to warn that a lifting of the zero-COVID policy could lead to a massive surge in cases that could overwhelm China’s healthcare system.

    Now read: China’s strict zero-COVID policy isn’t worth the damage it does to its economy

    Meanwhile, with police out in force, there was little news of protests in Beijing, Shanghai or other cities on Tuesday, the AP reported separately.

    In the U.S., known cases of COVID are rising again, with the daily average standing at 41,755 on Monday, according to a New York Times tracker, up 6% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in 22 states, as well as Guam and Washington, D.C., and are flat in Nebraska. They are rising fastest in Arizona, where they are up 82% from two weeks ago, followed by Michigan, where they are up 77%.

    The daily average for hospitalizations is flat at 28,135, while the daily average for deaths is up 6% to 314.

    Physicians are reporting high numbers of respiratory illnesses like RSV and the flu earlier than the typical winter peak. WSJ’s Brianna Abbott explains what the early surge means for the winter months. Photo illustration: Kaitlyn Wang

    Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began

    Other COVID-19 news you should know about:

    • The World Health Organization has issued an emergency-use listing for the Novavax
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    protein-based COVID vaccine as a primary series for children ages 12-17 and as a booster for those ages 18 and older, Novavax said Tuesday. The WHO previously granted an emergency-use listing for the Nuvaxovid vaccine in adults ages 18 and older in December 2021, the company said. The new listing also paves the way for adults to get a booster shot of the vaccine about six months after completing the primary two-dose series.

    • New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said Monday his administration has launched a promised review of its handling of the pandemic, the AP reported. The administration hired regional law firm Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads — which has offices in the state as well as Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York — along with management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group to conduct the review. The review is expected to end with a report in late 2023, the governor said.

    • A Connecticut program that offered “hero pay” to essential workers at the peak of the pandemic got so many applicants that state lawmakers had to go back into session Monday to provide extra funding and put new limits on who could get the biggest bonuses, the AP reported. Initially, the state had expected to award about $30 million in bonuses to people who had to go to work, in person, in jobs in healthcare, food distribution, public safety and other essential services. But after getting 155,730 applications from eligible people, lawmakers realized they would have to either put more money in or slash benefits.

    Here’s what the numbers say:

    The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 641.8 million on Monday, while the death toll rose above 6.63 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

    The U.S. leads the world with 98.6 million cases and 1,079,477 fatalities.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 228.4 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.8% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.

    So far, just 37.6 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 12.1% of the overall population.

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  • U.S. unlikely to see another late-year omicron wave, but Fauci urges people to get new COVID booster

    U.S. unlikely to see another late-year omicron wave, but Fauci urges people to get new COVID booster

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    The U.S. is unlikely to suffer the same surge of COVID-19 infections this winter as it did last year, when the omicron variant first emerged and swept across the country, senior health officials said Tuesday.

    On Tuesday, Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, addressed reporters for the last time ahead of his retirement, saying that the current combination of infections and vaccinations means there’s “enough community protection that we’re not going to see a repeat of last year at this time.”

    But Fauci urged those Americans who have not yet gotten their updated booster to do so quickly, telling them it’s the best one so far. Only 35 million Americans have received the bivalent booster since it was rolled out in September.

    “[What] may be the final message I give you from this podium is that please, for your own safety, for that of your family, get your updated COVID-19 shot as soon as you’re eligible,” Fauci said.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that the new boosters, which target the original virus as well as the latest omicron variants, provide an additional 30% to 56% protection against symptomatic infection, depending on a person’s age, how many prior vaccine shots they have had and when they had them, as the Associated Press reported.

    The people who get the greatest benefit from the new booster are those who got two doses of the original COVID-19 vaccine at least eight months earlier and never got a prior booster, said the CDC’s Ruth Link-Gelles, who led the study.

    The original shots have offered strong protection against severe disease and death no matter the variant, but their protection against mild infection wanes. The CDC’s analysis has tracked only the first few months of the new boosters’ use, so it’s too early to know how long the added protection against symptomatic infection will last.

    But “certainly as we enter the holiday season, personally I would want the most possible protection if I’m seeing my parents and grandparents,” Link-Gelles said. “Protection against infection there is going to be really helpful, because you potentially would stop yourself from getting a grandparent or other loved one sick.”

     The Biden administration announced a six-week campaign urging people — especially older people — to get the boosters, saying the shots could save lives as Americans gather for the holidays.

    Physicians are reporting high numbers of respiratory illnesses like RSV and the flu earlier than the typical winter peak. WSJ’s Brianna Abbott explains what the early surge means for the winter months. Photo illustration: Kaitlyn Wang

    Don’t miss: Confused about COVID boosters? Here’s what the science and the experts say about the new generation of shots.

    In the U.S., known cases of COVID are rising again, with the daily average standing at 42,220 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times tracker, up 7% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in 25 states, led by Washington state, where they are up 279% from two weeks ago.

    The daily average for hospitalizations is flat at 27,923, while the daily average for deaths is up 3% to 319.

    Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began

    Other COVID-19 news you should know about:

    • Employees at the world’s biggest Apple
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    iPhone factory were beaten and detained in protests over contract disputes amid antivirus controls, according to witnesses and videos posted on social media Wednesday, as tensions mount over Beijing’s severe zero-COVID strategy, the AP reported. Videos reportedly filmed at the factory in the central city of Zhengzhou showed thousands of people in masks facing rows of police in white protective suits with plastic riot shields. Police kicked and hit one protester with clubs after he grabbed a metal pole that had been used to strike him. Frustrations have boiled over into protests in some parts of China where shops and offices have been closed and millions of people confined to their homes for weeks at a time with little warning. Videos on social media show residents in some areas tearing down barricades set up to enforce neighborhood closures.

    Footage shows police in protective suits beating workers at the Foxconn facility in Zhengzhou, China. The world’s biggest Apple iPhone factory had been under COVID-19 lockdowns in recent weeks. Screenshot: Associated Press

    • The Ohio Supreme Court has dismissed a lawsuit challenging Gov. Mike DeWine’s authority to end Ohio’s participation in a federal pandemic unemployment aid program ahead of the federal government’s 2021 deadline for stopping the payments, the AP reported. The court’s unanimous decision on Tuesday called the case “moot” without any additional explanation. At issue before the court was a weekly $300 federal payment for Ohioans to offset the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The federal government ended that in September of last year, but DeWine stopped the payments two months earlier, saying the need was over.

    • Infections from antibiotic-resistant pathogens known as superbugs have more than doubled in healthcare facilities in Europe, an EU agency said on Thursday, providing further evidence of the wider impact of the COVID pandemic, Reuters reported. The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said reported cases of two highly drug-resistant pathogens increased in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, then sharply jumped in 2021.

    • The National Institutes of Health has set up a website for people to anonymously self-report the results of at-home COVID-19 tests, whether positive or negative. The site, MakeMyTestCount.org, will gather the data and then share the information, stripped of personal identifiers, with the public-health systems that track COVID-19 test results provided by healthcare providers and laboratories. The widespread use of at-home COVID tests in 2022 meant the U.S. had a more limited understanding of COVID surges than in the past.

    Here’s what the numbers say:

    The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 639.1 million on Wednesday, while the death toll rose above 6.62 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

    The U.S. leads the world with 98.4 million cases and 1,077,800 fatalities.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 228.2 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.7% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.

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  • China locks down Peking University over one COVID case, showing commitment to zero-COVID policy

    China locks down Peking University over one COVID case, showing commitment to zero-COVID policy

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    Chinese authorities have locked down Peking University after finding a single COVID case, evidence of their continued commitment to the country’s zero-COVID policy.

    Beijing reported more than 350 new cases in the latest 24-hour period, representing a small fraction of its population of 21 million but still enough to trigger localized lockdowns and quarantines under China’s zero-COVID strategy, as the Associated Press reported. Nationwide, China reported about 20,000 cases, up from about 8,000 a week ago.

    Authorities are trying to move away from the lockdowns, such as those seen earlier this year in Shanghai, that have frustrated locals and prompted protests. And revised national guidelines issued last week instructed local governments to follow a targeted and scientific approach that avoids unnecessary measures. But that doesn’t mean an end to zero-COVID, a policy that has hurt the country’s economy.

    Peking University has more than 40,000 students on multiple campuses, most of them in Beijing. It was unclear how many were affected by the new lockdown. The 124-year-old institution is one of China’s top universities and was a center of student protest in earlier decades. Its graduates include leading intellectuals, writers, politicians and businesspeople.

    The news comes as known U.S. cases of COVID are climbing again for the first time in a few months. The daily average for new cases stood at 39,414 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times tracker, up 2% versus two weeks ago.

    Cases are climbing in 29 states, as well as Washington, D.C., Guam and Puerto Rico. They are up a staggering 868% in Nebraska from two weeks ago, with an average of 16 cases per 100,000 residents. Cases are up 77% in Utah, 54% in Oklahoma and 53% in Arizona.

    The U.S. daily average for hospitalizations is up 2% to 27,807, but it is up by higher rates in Western states, led by Colorado at 67%, Arizona at 60% and Nevada at 45%.

    On a brighter note, the daily death toll continues to decline and is now down 15%, to 292, from two weeks ago.

    Physicians are reporting high numbers of respiratory illnesses like RSV and the flu earlier than the typical winter peak. WSJ’s Brianna Abbott explains what the early surge means for the winter months. Photo illustration: Kaitlyn Wang

    Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began

    Other COVID-19 news you should know about:

    • A federal judge has approved a nearly $58 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit filed in response to the deaths of dozens of veterans who contracted COVID-19 at a Massachusetts veterans home, the AP reported. “It was with heavy hearts that we got to the finish line on this case,” Michael Aleo, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said Tuesday, the day after the settlement was approved by a U.S. district court judge in Springfield. The coronavirus outbreak at the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke in the spring of 2020 was one of the deadliest outbreaks at a long-term care facility in the U.S.

    • Australian health authorities have recommended against getting a fifth COVID vaccine shot, even as they urged those who are eligible to sign up for their remaining booster doses as the country’s latest COVID wave grows rapidly, Reuters reported. Average daily cases were 47% higher last week than the week before, said Health Minister Mark Butler at a press conference on Tuesday, announcing the new vaccination recommendations. But cases remain 85% below the previous late July peak.

    • A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Biden administration to lift Trump-era asylum restrictions that have been a cornerstone of border enforcement since the beginning of the pandemic, the AP reported separately. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled in Washington that enforcement must end immediately for families and single adults, calling the ban “arbitrary and capricious.” The administration has not applied it to children traveling alone. Within hours, the Justice Department asked the judge to let the order take effect Dec. 21, giving it five weeks to prepare. Plaintiffs including the American Civil Liberties Union didn’t oppose the delay.

    Here’s what the numbers say:

    The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 635.9 million on Wednesday, while the death toll rose above 6.61 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

    The U.S. leads the world with 98 million cases and 1,075,112 fatalities.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 227.8 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.6% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.

    So far, just 31.4 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 10.1% of the overall population.

     

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  • Manufacturing hub Guangzhou is latest Chinese city to face lockdowns as COVID cases rise

    Manufacturing hub Guangzhou is latest Chinese city to face lockdowns as COVID cases rise

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    The southern Chinese manufacturing hub of Guangzhou is the latest to see lockdowns amid a surge in COVID-19 cases, as the government presses ahead with the strict zero-COVID policy that has frustrated citizens.

    The latest lockdowns have further disrupted global supply chains and sharply slowed growth in the world’s second-largest economy, as the Associated Press reported.

    Residents in districts encompassing almost 5 million people have been ordered to stay home at least through Sunday, with one member of each family allowed out once a day to purchase necessities, local authorities said Wednesday.

    The order came after the densely populated city of 13 million reported more than 2,500 new cases over the previous 24 hours.

    China has retained its strict zero-COVID policy despite relatively low case numbers and no new deaths. The country’s borders remain largely closed, and internal travel and trade is complicated by ever-changing quarantine regulations.

    Apple
    AAPL,
    -3.32%
    and iPhone manufacturer Foxconn
    2317,
    -1.95%
    said over the weekend that restrictions are crimping production and will delay shipments of the high-end iPhone 14.

    For more, read: All eyes on China as Apple and Foxconn outline zero-COVID issues. Meanwhile, cases are rising again in the U.S.

    In the U.S., known cases of COVID are climbing again for the first time in a few months. The daily average for new cases stood at 39,578 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times tracker, up 5% versus two weeks ago.

    As always, the increase in cases is not uniform across the nation. Some states are seeing sharp spikes, led by Nevada, where cases are up 96% from two weeks ago. Tennessee is second with cases up 69%, followed by Louisiana with cases up 68%, New Mexico, where they are up 62%, and Utah, where they have climbed 61%.

    Cases are up by a double-digit percentage in 22 states.

    The daily average for hospitalizations was up 3% to 27,713, while the daily average for deaths was down 14% to 308.

    Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began

    Other COVID-19 news you should know about:

    • Novavax Inc.
    NVAX,
    -5.19%
    on Tuesday tweaked its full-year sales outlook to the low end of its expected range and reported a surprise quarterly loss, but sales for the COVID-19 vaccine maker were far better than expected. The company reported a net loss of $168.6 million, or $2.15 a share, compared with a loss of $322.4 million, or $4.31 a share, in the same quarter a year ago. Sales were $735 million, compared with $178.8 million in the prior-year quarter. Analysts polled by FactSet expected Novavax to earn $1.57 a share on revenue of $586 million.

    • A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee said this week that Veru Inc.’s
    VERU,
    +3.95%
    COVID treatment Sabizabulin demonstrated a clear clinical benefit with a favorable benefit-to-risk profile. Veru is seeking emergency-use authorization for treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients at high risk for acute respiratory distress syndrome.

    • A Massachusetts man who admitted to lying on his application for federal coronavirus business stimulus funds and using some of the $400,000 he received to pay his mortgage has been sentenced to 15 months in prison, federal prosecutors said, as the AP reported. In addition to the time behind bars, Adley Bernadin, 44, of Stoughton, was sentenced last week to three years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit more than $280,000, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office.

    Here’s what the numbers say:

    The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 633.5 million on Monday, while the death toll rose above 6.60 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

    The U.S. leads the world with 97.8 million cases and 1,072,943 fatalities.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 227.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 68.5% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots.

    So far, just 26.3 million Americans have had the updated COVID booster that targets the original virus and the omicron variants, equal to 8.4% of the overall population.

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