FBI Says COVID Leaked From Chinese Lab

FBI Director Christopher Wray (above) has said that the bureau believes Covid-19 most likely originated in a Chinese government-controlled lab.  "The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident," he told Fox News.


It is the first public confirmation of the FBI's classified judgement of how the pandemic virus emerged.  Many scientists point out there is no evidence that it leaked from a lab.  And other US government agencies have drawn differing conclusions to the FBI's.


Some of them have said - but with a low level of certainty - that the virus did not start in a lab but instead jumped from animals to humans.  The White House has said there is no consensus across the US government on the origins.  A joint China-World Health Organization (WHO) investigation in 2021 called the lab leak theory "extremely unlikely".


However, the WHO investigation was deeply criticised and its director-general has since called for a new inquiry, saying: "All hypotheses remain open and require further study."  Mr Wray's comments come a day after the US ambassador to China called for the country to "be more honest" about Covid's origins.


In his interview on Tuesday, Mr Wray said China "has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate" efforts to identify the source of the global pandemic.  He said details of the agency's investigation were classified but the FBI had a team of experts focusing on the dangers of biological threats.


In response, Beijing accused Washington of "political manipulation".  "The conclusions they have reached have no credibility to speak of," said Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning.  Some studies suggest the virus made the leap from animals to humans in Wuhan, China, possibly at the city's seafood and wildlife market.


The market is near a world-leading virus laboratory, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which conducted research into coronaviruses.  READ MORE...

What Will 2023 Look Like?

Of course, the starting point, the contemporary context, would be:

• the recent history of COVID lockdowns; 
• massive government spending and inflation and constrictive energy policies driving up energy and food prices, as well as most “downstream prices,” and wiping out retirement savings; 
• Fed strategies depressing the market; war in Ukraine threatening nuclear confrontation; China’s rising political aggression; 
• political corruption of government institutions and apparent government-led attacks on the First Amendment, at least according to the “Twitter Files”; rising urban crime; 
• a surge in illegal immigration bringing drugs, crime and a disrupted labor market; a growing culture war on women, fueled both by the Dobbs decision and the rising political activism of the trans community; 
• and chaos in the American educational system, leading to a sharp decline in student performance.

Few would call 2020, 2021 and 2022 “good years” for America. Some might call them disasters — and 2023 may well be worse.

To begin with, there is no sign that the forces fueling these problems will abate or be reversed. If anything, they may become more intense.

Rightly or wrongly, the White House and the Democrat-led Senate, as well as most progressive interest groups, read the midterm elections as support for current policy directions. The White House will not make any centrist tack and will continue full speed ahead on high-spending and fossil fuel-constraining policies. 

The suicidal support for the omnibus budget and spending bill by Republicans in the Senate handicaps the incoming Republican-led House from moving to get the budget, appropriations, and spending under control. 

It also assures another round of inflation, and insulates the Democrats from political attack since Senate Republicans went along with it and now partly own the coming inflation, rising interest rates, and economic contraction or recession predicted by many financial leaders and economists.  READ MORE...

Preparing For More COVID

Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci testifies during a hearing before the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies of House Appropriations Committee at Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill May 11, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Alex Wong | Getty Images



Dr. Anthony Fauci has a sober warning for Americans: Don’t be surprised if a new, more dangerous Covid variant emerges this upcoming winter.

“We should anticipate that we very well may get another variant that would emerge, that would elude the immune response that we’ve gotten from infection and/or from vaccination,” Fauci said at an event with the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism this week.

Statistically, pandemic trends like hospitalizations and deaths are currently down nationwide: The seven-day moving average of new Covid deaths in the U.S. is 323 as of Wednesday, for example. 

That’s far lower than the country’s 1,000 to 2,500 in February and March, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

READ MORE...

Are You a COVID Super Dodger?

Back in the early 1990s, Nathaniel Landau was a young virologist just starting his career in HIV research. But he and his colleagues were already on the verge of a landmark breakthrough. Several labs around the world were hot on his team's tail.

"We were sleeping in the lab, just to keep the work going day and night because there were many labs all racing against each other," Landau says. "Of course, we wanted to be the first to do it. We were totally stressed out."

Other scientists had identified groups of people who appeared to be completely resistant to HIV. "People who knew they had been exposed to HIV multiple times, mainly through unprotected sex, yet they clearly were not infected," Landau explains.

And so the race was on to figure out why: "Are these people just lucky or did they really have a mutation in their genes that was protecting them from infection?'" he asks.

Now 25 years later, scientists all over the world are trying to answer the same question but about a different virus: SARS-CoV-2.


By this point in the pandemic, most Americans have had at least one bout of COVID. For children under age 18, more than 80% of them have been infected, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.

But just as with HIV, some people have been exposed multiple times but never had symptoms and never tested positive.

"We've heard countless anecdotes about nurses and health-care workers, being exposed without any protection and remaining negative over and over again," says pediatrician Jean-Laurent Casanova, who studies the genetics of viral resistance at Rockefeller University. "Or people share a household with someone who's been coughing for a couple of weeks, and one person stays negative."

So why haven't these people caught COVID? .

After two years of hunting, a team at the University of California, San Francisco has come pretty close to answering the question.  READ MORE...

Your COVID Protection

A used mask is seen on beach at marine protected area located in St. Martin's Island, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh on March 13. Greater COVID transmissibility due to Omicron variants means greater transmissibility in any setting, indoors or outdoors—even if outside is still safer, experts say.

MOHAMMAD SHAJAHAN—ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

The outdoors have always been a sanctuary—even more so since the advent of the pandemic.

Spreading COVID outside was possible, but not probable, experts advised in 2020, urging cooped-up citizens to turn to Mother Nature as an antidote to the isolation of lockdowns. Events, dining, and even entire classrooms were moved outside, when feasible.

But Omicron was a game changer, in more ways than one.

The original Wuhan strain of COVID-19 had a reproductive rate—also known as an R0 or R-naught value—of around 3.3, meaning that each infected person infected another 3.3 people, on average. That put COVID-19 among the least transmissible human diseases.

Slightly less transmissible were the 1918 pandemic strain of flu, which had an estimated R0 of 2, as does Ebola. On the higher end of the spectrum, mumps has an R0 of 12; measles tops the list at 18.

In order to outcompete, successful COVID variants have become more transmissible with time. Delta had a slightly higher reproductive rate of around 5.1. Then came Omicron, with an reproductive rate almost twice as large: 9.5.

So called “stealth Omicron,” nicknamed for its ability to evade detection on PCR tests, was about 1.4 times more transmissible than BA.1, so its reproductive rate was around 13.3, Adrian Esterman, a professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of South Australia, recently wrote on academic news website The Conversation.

New studies suggest that BA.4 and BA.5, currently sweeping the U.S. and countries around the globe, have a growth advantage over BA.2 similar to the growth advantage BA.2 had over BA.1. Thus, the latest dominant COVID subvariants have a reproductive rate of around 18.6, tying or surpassing measles, the world’s most infectious viral disease, according to Esterman.

Greater transmissibility means greater transmissibility in any setting, indoors or outdoors—even if outside is still safer, Maimuna Majumder, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and a computational epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, recently told NPR.

Upping the ante is the fact that recent subvariants like BA.4 and BA.5 are the most immune-evasive yet, with the ability to dodge antibodies from both vaccines and prior infection.

All this to say your protection outdoors isn’t what it was in 2020—and it may be time to begin thinking more critically about outdoor gatherings.  READ MORE...

New Covid Cases Rising

White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Ashish Jha says the “vast majority” 

of COVID-19 infections aren’t being counted.   GETTY IMAGES

While fears may be growing that another COVID-19 surge will be upon us in the coming months, there is some indication that the future is now.

There’s a reason data show that, while the U.S. positivity rate of COVID tests has spiked to five-month highs, and hospitalizations have steadily climbed to four-month highs, new daily COVID cases have held steady for the past couple of months.


The new cases are being undercounted because results of widely available at-home tests aren’t being reported for government tabulation. The Fourth of July holiday has also caused reporting delays. And many states have stopped providing daily updates, as the New York Times reported.

“There’s no question in my mind that we’re missing a vast majority of infections right now,” White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha said on NBC’s “Nightly News with Lester Holt” on Thursday. “The truth is, there are probably several hundred thousand, four or five hundred thousand, infections today happening across the country.”

That would put the daily case count at levels seen during the January surge of the omicron variant. The current outbreak is now mostly the result of the fast-spreading BA.5 subvariant, named the dominant strain this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  READ MORE...

Fighting COVID with Superstition

Columbia University reverted their COVID-19 policy, requiring students to mask indoors.

Gabriele Holtermann

Boy, is US higher education full of idiots: Columbia University, affiliated Barnard College and Pace University, among other schools, have all started requiring masking indoors again.

Columbia-Barnard only scrapped the mandate on March 14, so students got less than a month to breathe free, and now will be muzzled through June.

And all because campus administrators deem it more important to virtue-signal than to follow the actual science. They blame an uptick in COVID cases, though COVID poses no significant risk to their fully vaccinated student bodies.

Plus, as noted above, case numbers stopped being a useful indicator of coronavirus perils at least a year ago.

And just 0.001% of 15- to 24-year-olds are at risk of dying from COVID, per data from Johns Hopkins. And masking does very little to reduce transmission risks, anyway.

COVID is now endemic, not pandemic — meaning we’ll have to learn to live with the background risks it poses, just like the flu. It’ll help that learning process when the supposedly smartest folks in America stop relying on superstition to “fight” it.

China's COVID Crisis

The COVID wave crashing across China right now not only threatens the billion-and-a-half Chinese. It also poses a serious danger to the rest of the world.

Leaving aside the risk to already fragile global supply chains, there’s a chance that the surge of infections in China will give the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen ample opportunity to mutate into some new and more dangerous variant. If that happens, the progress the world has made against COVID since vaccines became widely available in late 2020 could slow, if not reverse.

“There’s the distinct possibility that things will get out of control in China,” John Swartzberg, a professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at the University of California-Berkeley's School of Public Health, told The Daily Beast. “If that happens,” Swartzberg added, “there will be a remarkable amount of viral reproduction occurring in people and this will increase the possibility of problematic variants being produced.”

Experts disagree just how likely it is that the next major variant—“lineage” is the scientific term—might emerge in China. Ben Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at The University of Hong Kong, said the next major lineage may come from countries where the virus has already swept through the population. Somewhere in Europe, or the U.S.

But there are unique dynamics that boost the chances of a new SARS-CoV-2 lineage appearing in China. The Chinese population is huge—and might be way less protected against infection and thus viral mutation than, say, Americans or Europeans.

This disparity is partly the consequence of China’s earlier success against COVID. For more than two years, the Chinese government and health establishment managed to suppress the novel-coronavirus. This despite the pathogen likely originating at a meat market in Wuhan in east-central China in late 2019.

Thanks to China’s frequently severe limits on crowds and travel daily, the country went two years with practically no COVID. Yes, there were a few tens of thousands of cases across the vast country during the initial wave of infections in the spring of 2020. But after that, almost nothing. So few cases that the 150 or so daily new infections authorities logged in mid-January 2021 qualified as a surge.  READ MORE...

Sweden - 4th Covid Shot

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK -- Sweden recommended a fourth COVID-19 vaccine dose to people 65 and over as well as those living in nursing homes or getting home care, authorities said Monday.

The new guideline drops the age from an earlier recommendation for a fourth shot to people 80 and older.

The recommendation also includes fourth shots for those between 18 and 64 years of age, with moderate to severe immune deficiency, Sweden's Public Health Agency said in a statement.

“The goal is just as before to prevent serious illness and death from COVID-19,” Agency chief Karin Tegmark Wisell said.

Tegmark Wisell added that it's “justified" to provide a second booster shot to a wider age range because infections in Sweden and other countries continue to significantly multiply and vaccine protection is starting to decline for older age groups.

“For people aged 65 and over, it is now four months since the previous vaccine dose, and the vaccine’s protective effect diminishes over time,” she said.

For most of the pandemic, Sweden has stood out among European nations for its comparatively hands-off response. It never went into lockdown or closed businesses, largely relying instead on individual responsibility to control infections.  READ MORE...

Catching COVID Again

In the early days of the pandemic, it was extremely rare to hear of people catching Covid twice.  That's not the case anymore, especially since the Omicron variant emerged in late November 2021.

Why are more people catching Covid again?
Part of it is Omicron itself - a variant that's better at sneaking past defenses built on old infections.

Part of it is a numbers game. So many of us have already been infected at some point, that a rising proportion of new infections are a second bout.

But getting Covid twice in a short space of time is still pretty unlikely, even with the latest version of Omicron which is widespread in the UK.  And for most people a second infection is less likely to make them very ill.

How likely are you to catch Covid twice?
Eventually, pretty likely - immunity fades and coronaviruses evolve.  Most people can expect to catch the other coronaviruses, such as those which cause common cold symptoms, many times in their life.

IMAGE SOURCE, GETTY IMAGES

But early in the pandemic, that didn't seem to be the case with Covid.  Fewer than 1% of all cases recorded in the UK before November 2021 were labeled as reinfections.  But then Omicron took over. This looks very different to the versions of coronavirus that we saw before.  Its differences give it a better chance of sneaking past the body's early defenses, which were based on exposure to previous Covid infections.

And so the rates of reinfection have been about 10 times higher this year compared with rates seen earlier in the pandemic.  READ MORE...

Cheating College Students

Mariam Aly, an assistant professor at Columbia University, has tried everything to keep her students from cheating. In her cognitive neuroscience class, she gives her students a week to complete an open-book exam. And, as part of that exam, the nearly 180 students in the class have to sign an honor code.

But they're still cheating. And dealing with student misconduct, she says, is the worst part of her job. "It's just awkward and painful for everybody involved," Aly says. "And it's really hard to blame them for it. You do feel disappointed and frustrated."

Her students are facing unprecedented levels of stress and uncertainty, she says, and she gets that. "I didn't go to school during a pandemic."

As college moved online in the COVID-19 crisis, many universities are reporting increases, sometimes dramatic ones, in academic misconduct. At Virginia Commonwealth University, reports of academic misconduct soared during the 2020-21 school year, to 1,077 — more than three times the previous year's number. 

At the University of Georgia, cases more than doubled; from 228 in the fall of 2019 to more than 600 last fall. And, at The Ohio State University, reported incidents of cheating were up more than 50% over the year before.  READ MORE...

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/27/1031255390/reports-of-cheating-at-colleges-soar-during-the-pandemic

A Global Reopening

Two years after the US went into its first lockdown, the country is getting nearer to a pre-pandemic existence. But what about the rest of the world?

When California issued a statewide stay-at-home order on 19 March 2020, most people thought that life would return to normal relatively quickly.

A full 24 months later, people are finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, with restrictions being eased in the US and several other countries.

But with some places experiencing record numbers of cases yet again, it's clear that the pandemic isn't ready to let go its grip just yet.

We asked our correspondents in the UK, Hong Kong, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, Peru and the US to give us a snapshot.

A very light touch - England
Nick Triggle, London


England's last remaining Covid restriction - the legal requirement to isolate after a positive test - was lifted at the end of February.

It came a month after the government lifted the requirement to wear masks in places such as shops and on public transport and the advice to work from home where possible.

But the truth is England has had a pretty light-touch approach to regulations compared to many places since the summer.

The masks mandate and working from home advice was only reintroduced in late 2021 as the Omicron variant took off.

The approach is based on the fact that vaccines are providing great protection and England has seen very good uptake among those groups most at risk - 95% of over-60s have had a booster jab.

It has meant that despite the surge in infections caused by the Omicron variant, the number of people dying has been similar to what would normally be seen during a normal winter.

There are signs infections may be starting to climb again, but it is causing little concern at the moment.  

TO READ MORE ABOUT COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD, CLICK HERE...

Queen Tests Positive

The monarch is experiencing "mild cold-like symptoms" but expects to continue "light duties" at Windsor over the coming week, the palace said."  She will continue to receive medical attention and will follow all the appropriate guidelines," it added in a statement.  The Queen, 95, had been in contact with her eldest son and heir, the Prince of Wales, who tested positive last week.


It is understood a number of people have tested positive at Windsor Castle, where the Queen resides.  Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted: "I'm sure I speak for everyone in wishing Her Majesty The Queen a swift recovery from Covid and a rapid return to vibrant good health."  The announcement comes weeks after the UK's longest reigning monarch reached her Platinum Jubilee of 70 years on 6 February.


On the eve of her Jubilee, she carried out her first major public engagement for more than three months, meeting charity workers at Sandringham House.  The Queen, who will be 96 in April, had her first vaccine in January 2021 and is believed to have had all her follow-up jabs after that.  BBC royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell said she had been taking life "rather more easily" since spending a night in hospital for medical checks in October last year.


Meanwhile, BBC health correspondent Jim Reed said newly-approved antiviral drugs could aid the Queen's recovery.  He said the drugs were now a key way to cut the risk of vulnerable people needing hospital treatment, adding it would be a fair assumption that they would be offered to the monarch.  Currently available antivirals need to be taken within three to five days of contracting Covid.


Prince Charles, 73, tested positive on Thursday last week, having met the Queen two days beforehand. Covid symptoms generally appear from two to 14 days after exposure to the virus.  On Tuesday, the Queen attended her first official engagement since coming into contact with Prince Charles, holding a virtual meeting with two new ambassadors to the UK.


The following day, she smiled as she suggested she had mobility problems during a meeting with defence staff. Standing while using a walking stick, she pointed to her left leg and said: "Well, as you can see, I can't move."  READ MORE...

Panic Buying & Isolation Dodging

‘Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law’. EPA/ Salvatore Di Nolfi

The coronavirus crisis has forced us to look at our behaviour in a way that we’re not used to. We are being asked to act in the collective good rather than our individual preservation and interest. Even for those of us with the best of intentions, this is not so easy.

This is a problem for governments. Practically, they need us to obey their recommendations and to only buy what we need. They can enforce these behaviours upon us through policing, but some, such as the UK government, have preferred to appeal to our sense of duty and morality to act in the interest of society as a whole. They say “we have to ask you” rather than “you must”. They are invoking a communal spirit to do what’s right. The key point being that we should follow guidelines out of a sense of duty rather than needing to be commanded. Judging from the fact that I am having to ration my coffee supply, this is having mixed success.

Friederich Nietzsche argues that appeals to morality are no less a system of power and discipline than the police. In his book The Genealogy of Morals, he argues that moral thinking arises first, not from a desire to be a good and happy human being, but from the upper classes as a way of distinguishing themselves from the lower classes – justifying why they had benefits those less fortunate did not.

He points out that, in most languages, the words for good and evil arise from the words for “clean” and “unclean”. The evidence of the moral nobility of the upper classes was their cleanliness and the decadence of the lower classes was proven by their dirtiness. This still seems to be true today, as we are told it is a moral duty to be clean and that those who do not obey the bodily discipline of handwashing, facial awareness and social distancing are not simply dangerous but selfish.  READ MORE..

The Ten Most Significant Science Stories of 2021

From amazing firsts on Mars to the impacts of climate change on Earth, these science stories stood out as the most important of 2021 Photo illustration by Meilan Solly / Photos via Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons

Covid-19 dominated science coverage again in 2021, and deservedly so. The disease garnered two entries on this list of our picks for the most important science stories of the year. But other key discoveries and achievements marked the year in science too, and they deserve more attention. NASA and private companies notched firsts in space. 

Scientists discovered more about the existence of early humans. And researchers documented how climate change has impacted everything from coral reefs to birds. Covid-19 will continue to garner even more attention next year as scientists work to deal with new variants and develop medical advances to battle the virus. But before you let stories about those topics dominate your reading in 2022, it’s worth it to take a look back at the biggest discoveries and accomplishments of this past year. To that end, here are our picks for the most important science stories of 2021.

The Covid Vaccine Rollout Encounters Hurdles

A healthcare worker receives a vaccine in Miami, Florida. Almost 40 percent of the United States population hasn’t been fully vaccinated. Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Last year the biggest science story of the year was that scientists developed two mRNA Covid vaccines in record time. This year the biggest Covid story is that the rollout of those vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna, and one other by Johnson and Johnson, haven’t made their way into a large proportion of the United States population and a significant portion of the world. 

As of this writing on December 21, roughly 73 percent of the U.S. population has received one dose, and roughly 61 percent of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated. An incomplete rollout allowed for a deadly summer surge, driven by the highly contagious Delta variant. Experts pointed out that vaccination rates lagged due to widespread disinformation and misinformation campaigns. It didn’t help that some popular public figures—like Packers’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers, musician Nick Minaj, podcast host Joe Rogan and rapper Ice Cube—chose not to get vaccinated. 

Luckily, by November, U.S. health officials had approved the Pfizer vaccine for children as young as five, providing another barrier against the deadly disease’s spread, and Covid rates declined. But while the wall against the disease in the U.S. is growing, it is not finished. As cases surge as the Omicron variant spreads around the country, building that wall and reinforcing it with booster shots is critically important. In much of the rest of the world, the wall is severely lacking where populations haven’t been given decent access to the vaccine. 

Only 8 percent of individuals in low-income countries have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and a WHO Africa report from this fall said that on that continent, less than 10 percent of countries would hit the goal of vaccinating at least 40 percent of their citizens by the end of the year. Globally, less than 60 percent of the population has been vaccinated. The holes in vaccination coverage will allow the virus to continue to kill a large number of individuals, and allow an environment where possibly other dangerous variants can emerge.

Perseverance Notches Firsts on MarsNASA's Perseverance rover will store rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on the surface of Mars to be retrieved on a future mission. NASA / JPL-Caltech

TO READ MORE ABOUT THESE SIGNIFICANT SCIENCE STORIIES, CLICK HERE...

Robots Already Taking US Jobs

GETTY

If we didn’t have enough to worry about—Covid-19, a nation divided, massive job losses and civil unrest—now we have to be concerned that robots will take our jobs.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) concluded in a recent report that “a new generation of smart machines, fueled by rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, could potentially replace a large proportion of existing human jobs.” Robotics and AI will cause a serious “double-disruption,” as the coronavirus pandemic pushed companies to fast-track the deployment of new technologies to slash costs, enhance productivity and be less reliant on real-life people.

Millions of people have lost their jobs due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and now the machines will take away even more jobs from workers, according to the WEF. The organization cites that automation will supplant about 85 million jobs by 2025. WEF says there’s nothing to worry about since its analysis anticipates the future tech-driven economy will create 97 million new jobs. Currently, approximately 30% of all tasks are done by machines—and people do the rest. However, by the year 2025, it's believed that the balance will dramatically change to a 50-50 combination of humans and machines.

Management consulting giant PriceWaterhouseCoopers reported, “AI, robotics and other forms of smart automation have the potential to bring great economic benefits, contributing up to $15 trillion to global GDP by 2030.” However, it will come with a high human cost. “This extra wealth will also generate the demand for many jobs, but there are also concerns that it could displace many existing jobs.”

In a dire prediction, WEF said, “While some new jobs would be created as in the past, the concern is there may not be enough of these to go round, particularly as the cost of smart machines falls over time and their capabilities increase.”

Concerns of new technologies disrupting the workforce and causing job losses have been around for a long time. On one side, the argument is automation will create better new jobs and erase the need for physical labor. The counterclaim is that people without the appropriate skills will be displaced and not have a home in the new environment.  READ MORE...

Boomer Wealth Surging

Many older Americans have reaped an unexpected pandemic bonanza, thanks to a combination of a stock market surge and rising home prices. That good fortune is evident in the St. Armands Circle shopping district in Sarasota, Fla., where visitors stroll past statues of Venus and Dionysus and lunch on Cuban sandwiches and sangria. The number of homes in the area selling for $3 million or more has shot up to 355 so far this year from a pre-pandemic 81 in 2019. And many of the buyers are of retirement age, says Drayton Saunders, president of Michael Saunders & Co., a real estate broker specializing in luxury properties.

A Covid-induced boom in early retirements is exacerbating America’s inequalities, especially along this stretch of the Gulf Coast. Sarasota and its environs are seeing an influx of cash-rich baby boomers and work-from-home professionals that’s pricing younger residents out of the housing market. Some also worry that a bigger senior population may worsen Florida’s historic difficulties in passing taxes for school and infrastructure projects. “They typically vote, and they may not vote for your schools unless their grandkids are in your schools,” says Jerry Parrish, chief economist of the Florida Chamber of Commerce’s research foundation.

Condo complexes facing Sarasota Bay.
PHOTOGRAPHER: ZACK WITTMAN/BLOOMBERG

By 2045 a quarter of Sarasota County will be 75 or older, and community activist Jon Thaxton wonders where the area will find enough care workers—often low-paid and with limited transportation—to staff all the luxury retirement homes “popping up like mushrooms after the rain.” An executive at the Gulf Coast Community Foundation, a civic advocacy group, he sees the coming crisis as a harbinger of a nationwide problem. “Our age demographic just happens to be 15 years ahead of the rest of the country,” Thaxton says. “We might be the canary in the coal mine.”

Homes under construction in Lakewood Ranch, Fla.
PHOTOGRAPHER: ZACK WITTMAN/BLOOMBERG

The obvious health toll notwithstanding, older Americans have largely prospered from government efforts to salve the economic pain Covid has caused. Boomers (born in 1946-64) accumulated more than $1.6 trillion in excess savings in the past two years, almost double what Generation X (born in 1965-80) put away, according to Federal Reserve data. Boomers also saw the biggest overall gain in wealth during the pandemic, with their combined wealth growing by $12.8 trillion, or about 23%. They edged out Generation X by about $100 billion, Fed figures show, but because that younger set has fewer people overall, it realized a larger per-capita wealth gain.  READ MORE...

Placebos

If you’ve had both of your COVID vaccinations, you may have suffered some side-effects – perhaps headaches, fatigue, fever or a sore arm. These effects are mainly caused by your immune system’s reaction to the vaccine. But most scientists agree that there is another cause: the human mind.

The ability of the mind to generate the symptoms of illness is known as the “nocebo” effect. The nocebo effect is the unpopular twin brother of the placebo effect. Whereas the placebo effect alleviates pain and the symptoms of illness, the nocebo effect does the opposite: it generates pain and symptoms.

A 2018 study found that almost half of participants in placebo trials experience side-effects, even though they are taking inert substances. 

There was a similar finding in the first major trial of the Pfizer COVID vaccine in 2020. In the placebo group – who were not given the vaccine – between a quarter and a third of people reported fatigue, a similar number reported headaches, and around 10% reported muscle pain.

Indeed, Martin Michaelis and Mark Wass, bioscientists at the University of Kent, recently suggested that “for some vaccinated people the knowledge that they have been vaccinated may be sufficient to drive side-effects”.  READ MORE

Disappearing Flamenco

(Image credit: Hugh Sitton/Getty Images)

Hard-hit by pandemic closures, Spain's flamenco venues struggle to survive long enough to reignite the art form.

Flamenco's trifecta of guitar music, vocals and dance ranks among Spain's most famous art forms. But in the country of its birth, this centuries-old craft that unites elegant physicality and raw human emotion is in danger of extinction.

Spain's tablaos – traditional flamenco venues named after the wooden platforms upon which performers spin, sing and strum – were particularly hard-hit by pandemic lockdown restrictions. In tablaos, spectators rub shoulders at tightly spaced tables and performers remain close enough to maintain an electric connection to their audience, one that encourages improvisation and turns flamenco into a nearly collaborative act.

The unique environment that fosters flamenco, though, presents serious challenges in the time of Covid-19. Shuttered for extended periods, the majority of Spain's tablaos remain empty.

According to Juan Manuel del Rey, president of the Spanish Tablao Association, tablaos employ 95% of the flamenco dancers in Spain. Before the pandemic, the country's 50,000 yearly shows accounted for all but 5% of the world's flamenco performances. Without tablaos, flamenco is losing its stage to the world.

Because tablaos don't have a specific license that recognise them as cultural providers, they're unable to receive needed support from the Spanish government, leaving both venues and performers scrambling for survival. A few venues have opened with limited capacity one or two nights a week, but many remain closed or have already closed permanently.  READ MORE

TSA Masks Extended

Facing criticism for his disastrous pullout of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden has instead turned his sights to fighting another war: the pandemic.

On Tuesday, the administration’s Transportation Security Administration announced that it would be extending Biden’s mask mandate through next year — until at least January 18, 2022. As one of his first acts in office, Biden enacted the federal mask mandate covering air, train, and bus transportation in the United States.

“The purpose of TSA’s mask directive is to minimize the spread of COVID-19 on public transportation,” a TSA spokesperson said, Reuters reported.

“The mask mandate has been controversial and has led to many encounters between passengers who don’t want to wear a mask and flight attendants asked to enforce the rule. The Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday that airlines have reported 3,889 incidents involving unruly passengers this year, and 2,867 — or 74% — involved refusing to wear a mask,” reported the Associated Press.

The agency’s mask mandate fell out of line with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year, when the health agency stated that vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks except on rare occasions. However, those guidelines were later revised, putting back in place more restrictions and urging fully vaccinated people to wear a mask indoors.

Regulations by the CDC and TSA have not been without their detractors. Republicans in Congress have pushed back on the guidance and regulations, with Sens. Ted Cruz and Kevin Cramer introducing legislation last week to ban mandatory masking and vaccine regulations.

Cruz wrote in a statement:
Thanks to vaccinations and the natural immunity of Americans who have recovered from COVID-19, America is reopening. America is recovering, our kids are going back to school, and small businesses are returning as our nation’s economic heartbeat. At the same time, President Biden is imposing unscientific and burdensome mandates to control Americans’ lives.

We as a country have taken extraordinary steps to defeat this disease, and I’m proud we’ve taken these steps. Unfortunately, we have also imposed enormous harms on our economy and people’s lives and livelihoods, and we need to balance all of this appropriately. My view on vaccines is simple. I got the vaccine because it was the right choice for me. But I also believe in individual freedom. No one should force anyone to take the vaccine-including the federal government or an employer. Americans should have the choice to make their own medical decisions in consultation with their doctor.

To protect the rights and privacy of Americans, I’ve introduced legislation that would prohibit federal COVID mandates. This means no mask mandates, no vaccine mandates, and no vaccine passports. My legislation also provides civil rights protections for employees from their employers, to stop discrimination based on vaccination status. The American people must have the freedom to exercise personal choice when it comes to protecting their health and the health of their families.