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COVID Vaccine for Ages 12 and Up

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration plans to expand emergency use of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine by next week so that children as young as 12 can be immunized.

After Pfizer’s trial in adolescents showed its vaccine worked as well in teens as it does in adults, the FDA started preparing to add an amendment covering that age group to the vaccine’s emergency use authorization, The New York Times reported. Federal officials familiar with the agency’s plans who were not authorized to speak publicly relayed the information, the Times said.

Medical experts welcomed the news, calling it a major step forward in the U.S. vaccination campaign.

Vaccinating children is key to raising the level of immunity in the population, experts told the Times, and it could put school administrators, teachers and parents at ease if millions of students become eligible for vaccinations before schools open in September.

Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and the father of two teenage daughters, said the approval would be a big moment for families like his.

“It just ends all concerns about being able to have a pretty normal fall for high schoolers,” he told the Times. “It’s great for them, it’s great for schools, for families who have kids in this age range.”

Still, with demand for vaccines falling among adult Americans — and much of the world clamoring for the surplus of American-made vaccines — some experts said the United States should donate excess shots to India and other countries that have had severe outbreaks.

“From an ethical perspective, we should not be prioritizing people like them [adolescents] over people in countries like India,” Dr. Rupali Limaye, a Johns Hopkins University researcher who studies vaccine use, told the Times.

But Jha said that the United States now has enough vaccine supply to both give shots to young Americans and to help the rest of the world. As of Monday, the United States had about 65 million doses delivered but not administered, including 31 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, according to figures collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than 105 million adults in the United States have been fully vaccinated, but 44 percent of American adults still have not yet received even one shot.

While most adolescents seem to be spared from severe COVID-19, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Biden administration’s top COVID-19 adviser, has stressed the importance of expanding vaccination efforts to include them and even younger children.

Herd immunity may be an elusive goal

While more than half of American adults have gotten at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, many scientists and public health experts now believe that herd immunity cannot be reached in the foreseeable future.

Instead, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will circulate in the United States for years to come, causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers, the Times reported.

How much smaller depends to a great degree on how many get vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves. The virus is changing quickly, new variants are spreading easily and vaccination is moving too slowly for herd immunity to be established as quickly as some experts had hoped.

“The virus is unlikely to go away,” Rustom Antia, an evolutionary biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, told the Times. “But we want to do all we can to check that it’s likely to become a mild infection.”

The drive for herd immunity convinced many Americans it was worthwhile to be vaccinated, so vaccine skeptics may use the latest thinking from public health experts to avoid being vaccinated, the Times noted. But vaccinations remain the key to turning the virus into a threat that can be tamed, experts said.

Fauci acknowledged the shift in thinking.

“People were getting confused and thinking you’re never going to get the infections down until you reach this mystical level of herd immunity, whatever that number is,” he told the Times. “That’s why we stopped using herd immunity in the classic sense. I’m saying: Forget that for a second. You vaccinate enough people, the infections are going to go down.”

Early on, herd immunity was estimated to be about 60% to 70% of the population. Most experts, including Fauci, thought the United States could reach that threshold once vaccines were available.

But as vaccine distribution hit its stride this spring, the threshold target rose, mostly because of the emergence of more contagious variants of the virus. The predominant variant now circulating in the United States, called B.1.1.7 and first spotted in the U.K., is about 60 percent more transmissible.

Experts now estimate the herd immunity threshold to be at least 80 percent. If even more contagious variants develop, or if scientists find that immunized people can still transmit the virus, the threshold estimate will rise again, the Times reported.

“What we want to do at the very least is get to a point where we have just really sporadic little flare-ups,” Carl Bergstrom, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, told the Times. “That would be a very sensible target in this country, where we have an excellent vaccine and the ability to deliver it.”

Vaccination rates among police officers remains low

Although police officers were among the first front-line workers to have access to coronavirus vaccines, their vaccination rates are lower than or about the same as those of the general public, new data from some of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies shows.

At the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, just 39 percent of employees have gotten at least one dose, officials said, compared to more than 50 percent of eligible adults nationwide. In Atlanta, 36 percent of sworn officers have been vaccinated, the Washington Post reported. And a mere 28 percent of those employed by the Columbus Division of Police — Ohio’s largest police department — report having received a shot.

“I think it’s unacceptable,” Joe Lombardo, the head of Las Vegas police and sheriff of Clark County, said of the meager demand for the shots within his force.

Because officers have high rates of diabetes, heart disease and other conditions, their hesitancy puts them at greater risk of serious illness from the coronavirus while also undermining force readiness, experts told the Post. Police officers were more likely to die of COVID-19 last year than of all other causes combined, according to data compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

Vaccine hesitancy among the police also means they can spread the virus to vulnerable people with whom they interact.

“Police touch people,” Sharona Hoffman, a professor of law and bioethics at Case Western Reserve University, told the Post. “Imagine having a child in the car who’s not vaccinated. People would want to know if a police officer coming to their window is protected.”

One solution is for departments to make vaccination compulsory, just as some health-care settings and universities have begun doing, experts said.

But police department leaders and union officials said in interviews with the Post that such requirements could backfire or lead to lengthy litigation. Of more than 40 major metropolitan police departments contacted by the Post, none had made vaccination mandatory.

“I hate to sound like I don’t care, but I really don’t,” Vince Champion, the Atlanta-based southeast regional director of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, said of low vaccination rates. “It’s a personal decision. We fight [the virus] every day. We’re out among every disease in the world.”

Officers have voiced nervousness about the novelty of the shots and the speed with which they were developed, along with confidence that they can avoid the virus with proper protective gear, the Post reported. And many officers think previous COVID-19 infections have given them immunity, explained Sean Smoot, director and chief legal counsel of the Police Benevolent and Protective Association of Illinois. That assumption runs counter to federal health guidance, which states that recovered people should be vaccinated because how long infection confers protection is unknown.

As of Tuesday, the U.S. coronavirus case count neared 32.5 million, while the death toll topped 577,500, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, nearly 153.6 million cases had been reported by Tuesday, with more than 3.2 million people dead from COVID-19.

Originally Appeared On: https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=256079

Volunteer Firefighters Have High Levels of Potentially Toxic Chemicals

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Volunteer firefighters have higher levels of so-called “forever chemicals” in their bodies than the general population does, a new study finds.

It also found that levels of these potentially toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in volunteer firefighters’ bodies rise with years of service.

PFAS are found in everyday items like electronics and carpeting, and they have been linked with heart disease and other health conditions that strike firefighters.

In this study, researchers from Rutgers University in New Jersey examined levels of nine PFAS chemicals in the blood of 135 members of an N.J. volunteer fire department, and compared them to the general public.

Levels of two PFAS — perfluorododecanoic acid (PFDoA) and perfluorodecanoic acid (PFDA) — were higher in the volunteer firefighters.

“Notably, we found PFDoA levels in 80% of the firefighters, but little in the general public,” said study author Judith Graber, an associate professor at Rutgers School of Public Health.

Higher chemical levels were associated with the number of years of firefighting. On average, the firefighters in the study had 20 years of experience.

The study was published recently in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Volunteer firefighters represent more than 65% of the U.S. fire service.

“The primary cause of line-of-duty death among firefighters are heart attacks. They also get and die from many types of cancer more often than other people,” Graber said in a Rutgers news release.

“More than 95% of the U.S. population have these chemicals to some degree in their bodies, but firefighters have heightened exposure to PFAS through their protective gear and fire suppression foam and the burning materials they encounter that release particles, which can be inhaled or settle on gear and skin,” she explained.

“Further research is needed to better understand the sources of these chemicals and to design effective foam and protective clothing that do not use these chemicals,” Graber said.

Originally Appeared On: https://consumer.healthday.com/b-5-4-volunteer-firefighters-have-high-levels-of-potentially-toxic-chemicals-2652858820.html

How will the at-home economy change post-pandemic?

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A lot of products and businesses saw sales go through the roof during this pandemic. We were stuck at home, and we bought a lot of paint and furniture and exercise equipment and groceries.

“But now, the discretionary income that went towards that is going to start to go more and more towards travel and leisure,” said Randy Burt, a managing director at AlixPartners.

Air travel is recovering, Burt said. People want to be out in the world. But “everybody has a limit to what they can spend,” he said. “So they have to make a choice.”

And when faced with the choice between, say, new flooring and a trip to Puerto Rico, someone who’s been stuck at home for a year might lean toward the trip.

But predicting how much sales of all these things for the home will drop — if they’ll drop — gets a little complicated.

“I don’t see that all those categories will be suffering with people going back more to public life, because people also adopted more new habits in the pandemic, and some of them will linger,” said Denise Dahlhoff, a senior researcher at The Conference Board.

For instance, a lot of people who are currently working from home plan to continue doing that, which means they will still have those moments where they’re staring at that cracked, stained tile floor, thinking, “I just can’t look at this anymore.” So home improvement might do OK.

Eric Easter, CEO of Kittle’s Home Furnishings, a furniture and mattress store in Indianapolis, said another thing working in his company’s favor: The savings rate is at an all-time high.

“People’s individual balance sheets are stronger than they’ve been in many, many years,” he said. “So yes, they can probably take a trip, but they can also afford some new furniture.”

At least, that’s his hope.

Originally Appeared On: https://www.marketplace.org/2021/04/21/what-happens-at-home-economy-when-pandemic-ends/

Facebook Testing Business News Feed Features

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Facebook is rolling out a news feed discovery tool to enable users to click on the information that matters to them most and engage with businesses they are interested in knowing more about. The new tool also enables businesses to like and comment on Facebook posts as a business entity.

The social media giant said it will initially test the waters in the U.S., and is hopeful the tool will be a win-win for both consumers and businesses. 

“As we learn from this initial test, we’ll look to expand this experience to more people and businesses,” Facebook said in a blog post on Thursday (April 15). The company said this is the first time businesses can interact as themselves in order to better connect with potential customers. “With a new dedicated business news feed, separate from your personal one, businesses can more easily engage with their communities and find relevant content from other businesses,” per the post.

Facebook business users can tap the professional dashboard to make it easier to aggregate tools and get a deeper understanding of actionable insights. The new solution also enables business owners to better manage their pages, with streamlined task-based permissions that corral administrators, editors and other users associated with the page’s upkeep.

The company recently built out its eCommerce portal — called Shops — which has to date surpassed one million sellers and over 250 users interacting with goods and services. Facebook introduced Shops in May 2020 to facilitate eCommerce and social selling.

Facebook’s Global State of Business report released earlier this month indicated that small business closures have increased worldwide. About 24 percent of business respondents said they shuttered operations, compared to 16 percent in October 2020. The survey was comprised of 35,000 small business leaders in 25 countries.

Originally Appeared On: https://www.pymnts.com/news/social-commerce/2021/facebook-testing-news-feed-features-for-business-discovery/

Can Covid research help solve the mysteries of other viruses?

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Barie Carmichael lost her sense of taste and smell while traveling in Europe. She remembers keeping a dinner date at a Michelin-starred restaurant but tasting nothing.

It may sound like a case of COVID-19. But Carmichael, 72, a fellow at the University of Virginia’s business school, lost her ability to taste and smell for three years in the 1990s. The only respiratory infection she’d had was bronchitis.

Scientists say that although the complications of COVID have riveted peoples’ attention, many symptoms — like a loss of smell — are not unique to COVID. Heart inflammation, lung and nerve damage and small blood clots in the lining of lungs occur in a small but noticeable percentage of patients who have had other respiratory and viral infections.

No one is saying COVID is the equivalent of, say, the flu. But COVID-19 is providing a new opportunity to understand the complications of many common viral infections.

Before the pandemic, research grants to study a loss of smell were hard to come by, said Danielle Reed, associate director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a nonprofit research group in Philadelphia.

But now, she said, “there is an explosive growth of interest among funders.” (She added that most who say they have lost a sense of taste have really lost a sense of smell.)

Monell researchers want to compare how often people lose their sense of smell after a bout with the flu versus a bout with COVID-19 — and how long the loss lasts. Is there a genetic predisposition to this complication?

Researchers at other institutions want to know who is susceptible to heart infections, blood clots or lung damage after having a respiratory virus like the flu.

Heart problems following a viral infection are among the best studied. Every year, myocarditis — an inflammation of the heart muscle — affects as many as 1.5 million people worldwide, most of whom had a prior respiratory virus infection. Most recover fully.

But symptoms like fatigue are often not recognized as being related to myocarditis. And Dr. Bruce McManus, an emeritus pathology professor at the University of British Columbia, suspects that the fatigue that sometimes follows a bout with COVID-19 might be caused by this heart problem.

“We think of COVID-19 and influenza as respiratory diseases, and in fact they are,” McManus said. “But the reason many patients reach their demise in many instances is myocardial.”

Originally Appeared On: https://www.wionews.com/science/can-covid-research-help-solve-the-mysteries-of-other-viruses-378386

The Race Is On For Recreational Cannabis In Pennsylvania

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In the past two months, both New York and New Jersey have officially legalized recreational cannabis for adult use — which means the heat is on for Pennsylvania to follow suit.

Medical cannabis has grown in Pennsylvania to a much larger industry than in either of its neighbors to the north and east, but the decision to legalize it for recreational use could be the difference between a significant acceleration and a massive missed opportunity.

“It could significantly impede both short- and long-term revenue if we wait too long [to legalize recreational cannabis],” state Sen. Sharif Street told Bisnow. “It also makes [keeping cannabis illegal] a little pointless if people cross state lines to get it, so we’re not accomplishing anything to prevent people from using it. We’ll probably also have an uptick in arrests as people bring it across state lines.”

Street, who represents a large swath of North Philly, has co-sponsored legislation in the Pennsylvania state Senate with Republican Sen. Dan Laughlin of the Erie area to legalize adult-use cannabis with some of the same social justice-focused components as those passed in New Jersey and New York, including a provision to expunge all nonviolent, marijuana-related convictions. The bill will enter committee hearings once a suitable number of further co-sponsors join, Street said.

Though Street stressed the importance of Pennsylvania citizens making their voices heard in getting the legislation passed — “The energy outside the building is going to drive the progress inside the building,” he said — those in the industry have expressed confidence that recreational cannabis in the commonwealth is a matter of when, not if.

“I think that it will happen within the next two to three years,” said Stephanie Thomas, who consults for cannabis business development through her company Fifth and Olney and for cannabis-related site selection under the banner of Arrow Real Estate Services. “The whole East Coast is falling in line and Pennsylvania is right there in the middle. But it takes time to get things done here, because it has to go through the legislature.”

New Jersey’s adult-use law passed through a ballot measure in November, and the most recent states to pass similar bills through their legislatures, New York and Virginia, have Democrat control in both their state houses and governors’ mansions. Gov. Tom Wolf and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman are both publicly in favor of adult-use legalization, but Republicans control both state houses in Pennsylvania and as a party have historically been opposed to the concept. The electorate in the commonwealth, just as it is nationally, is heavily in favor of recreational cannabis being legalized, but opposition remains stiff in the state’s GOP, despite Laughlin’s co-sponsorship of the bill.

Building cultivation facilities or dispensaries without a medical license in hand is illegal, so construction solely in anticipation of adult-use legalization is a nonstarter, but the industry is growing and drawing new investors from out of state just the same.

“You have a lot of the major national operators securing licenses and recognizing that Pennsylvania is going to be a very valuable state over the next five to 10 years in the cannabis industry,” NewLake Chief Investment Officer Anthony Coniglio said. “We see a significant amount of proposals for canopy build-out [infrastructure needed to grow cannabis], and we think that’s people wanting to be in position to move quickly once there’s clarity on legalization.”

National cannabis heavyweight Trulieve Cannabis Corp. has operated a combined cultivation and retail facility in the South Jersey suburb of Bellmawr for over five years, and it is well set up to apply for a recreational permit when they become available, Wolf Commercial Real Estate Director of Community Relations David Spector said. Meanwhile, without any dispensaries in Camden, Bellmawr is the likeliest threat of cannabis dollars crossing the Ben Franklin Bridge.

Pennsylvania is at a rare moment of opportunity, considering how advanced its medical program — legalized in 2016 — is compared to New Jersey and New York, which have only 16 and 40 medical dispensaries up and running, respectively. Pennsylvania has over 100 in operation and could approach 200 by the end of the year, Jushi founder and President Erich Mauff said.

The commonwealth has more than twice as much square footage devoted to cultivation and processing of cannabis as New York and New Jersey combined, he said.

“Of all the states on the East Coast, PA is the best poised to introduce adult use and still serve medical patients,” Mauff said. “Plus, it has the infrastructure for additional expansion to be able to service the adult-use population easily.”

Neither New Jersey nor New York has a timeline for when the first cannabis will be sold to someone without a medical card, but until that happens, Pennsylvania has the opportunity to catch up in a meaningful way.

“If there were to be a green light by the end of this year, then by Jan. 1, 2023, I think PA would be very ready for adult use,” Mauff said. “It will literally be light years ahead of New York and New Jersey.”

Jushi’s production facility for the state is in Scranton, where its canopy is 33K SF and services its 11 Beyond/Hello dispensaries in the state, two of which are in Center City, with a third under construction on Lancaster Avenue just north of University City. Jushi is already working on tripling its canopy to 100K SF in Scranton, which Mauff said is purely in response to the amount of demand for medical products.

“If we were to know adult-use [legalization] was coming, we may be more aggressive in our expansion,” Mauff said.

For real estate purposes, two impediments to cannabis business stand out: how to finance it and where to put it. The abundance of land outside of major metros in the state means finding cultivation sites isn’t an issue, keeping at least one element of cost down.

“Generally, the grow process tends to be somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where you don’t have to do as much odor mitigation,” Thomas said. “You can get anywhere in the state and back in one day. It may be a long drive to get from Philly to Pittsburgh and back in one day, but you can do it. Being centrally located would be good, but it doesn’t have to be in Carlisle.”

For dispensaries, the issue is much more complex, as the desire to be close to a dense customer population runs up against use restrictions preventing locations within a certain proximity of schools, religious centers and daycare centers, among others.

The suburbs of Philadelphia are more spread out, but not to the degree that a dispensary can easily avoid any local use restrictions, Thomas said. Then there is the NIMBY factor, which can be more intense in the suburbs.

“Smaller towns, if you go to a community meeting and announce your intent to place a cannabis shop, all the torches and pitchforks come out,” Thomas said.

Still, Jushi has seemingly cracked the code of how to find space in Philadelphia’s most potentially lucrative areas.

“We have not found it difficult to find stores,” Mauff said. “If you put your shoulder to the wheel, you can have a store. Maybe people are upset they can’t be in the perfect location, but I don’t think site selection in PA has been prohibitively difficult.”

As for financing, encouraging signs have emerged in that regard as well. The SAFE Banking Act, which would strike down the ban on lending to cannabis-related businesses for any bank or financial institution receiving federal insurance, passed the House of Representatives on Monday. If it passes the Senate, it would break down a massive barrier to entry for the communities that have been disproportionately harmed by the war on drugs, which could in turn make those communities more amenable to dispensaries that are run by one of their own, Coniglio said.

Adult-use legalization would also allow for more types of business, like pure retail that would have a much easier time buying wholesale from cultivators and distributors if the supply chain becomes regulated more like the alcohol industry than like a prescription drug, Mauff and Street agreed. A possibility even exists for use restrictions to be eased in some circumstances.

“I think that use restrictions [for adult use] could be somewhat similar [to medical cannabis], though there may be an opportunity to revisit some of them,” Street said. “Obviously there would be more establishments, so how many feet they can be away from each other and things like that may change somewhat.”

All specifics of implementation will have to be sorted out if and when the legislation itself passes, which Coniglio and Mauff agree would likely take from nine months at the absolute quickest to a year — time that has to be factored in when considering Pennsylvania’s position relative to its neighbors.

Local players waiting on adult-use legalization to start their businesses would benefit the most from a speedy process. The continued growth of cannabis all over the country has given operators like Trulieve the capital required to make investments ahead of time to a much greater degree than even 18 months ago, Coniglio said.

“The companies that get to market early will have pricing power,” Coniglio said. “For companies that aren’t in the state, now is the time … Pennsylvania absolutely will legalize it; it’s just a matter of when. So they’re willing to commit the capital for when it does happen.”

Originally Appeared On: https://www.bisnow.com/philadelphia/news/economy/pennsylvania-recreational-cannabis-not-if-but-when-race-against-time-108615

Cooling economy a worry

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Federal Reserve officials are just as worried about an inflation rate that runs too cold as one that runs too hot.

While rising prices are in the spotlight now as the economy reopens and demand surges, the longer-run trends that have suppressed costs globally could re-emerge as the pandemic ends, some policymakers warn. That would make it harder to deliver on their new strategy of running inflation above their 2% target for a time in order to achieve that goal in the long term.

“We are probably more likely to be successful with the new monetary policy regime than if we didn’t have it,” Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said in a Bloomberg News interview last week. But based on the experience of the past decade “you have to take seriously the idea that it is not going to be that easy to get 2% inflation.”

Policymakers at the central bank have been pressed in recent weeks about whether an expected spike in prices — as the U.S. rebounds from pandemic shutdowns — will be a temporary blip or something more permanent and dangerous to the economy after a wave of unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus over the past year.

For years, major economies including the U.S., Japan and the euro zone have struggled to raise inflation to 2% despite aggressive monetary policy actions. Aging populations, the impact of new technology and the disinflationary force of globalization are not things central banks can wish away, while rates stuck at zero — or below — telegraph the limits of their power.

Inflation pessimism shows up in forecasts released by Fed officials’ at their March meeting as well. Even after taking account of the passage last month of President Joe Biden’s additional $1.9 trillion stimulus package in their forecasts, more than half of the 18 Fed officials estimated inflation would be around 2% or slightly below next year. A majority also forecast prices in a range of 1.9% to 2.2% for 2023.

On the other hand, a sharp jump in consumer prices last month is a reminder that the risks are two-sided. Both goods and services prices rose last month with the consumer price index rising 0.6% after a 0.4% gain in February as the end of pandemic lockdowns drove up the cost of gasoline, car rentals and hotel rooms, according to data released Tuesday.

Rosengren said the Fed has never tried to shift to a new policy regime while exiting a pandemic amid aggressive fiscal stimulus. “We have to be pretty humble about how confident we are about what the inflation outcomes are going to be,” he said.

Some indicators of longer-run inflation are starting to move higher, a sign that the Fed is at least getting the public’s outlook pointing in the right direction. The rate on the five-year, forward swap contract for consumer-price inflation is hovering around 2.4%.

That is up from a low last year of just under 1% during the peak pandemic lock down period. When adjusting for measurement differences between CPI and the Fed’s preferred measure — the personal consumption expenditures price index — it puts longer-run inflation pricing in at just a touch over the central bank’s 2% target.

However, some market watchers — like Fed policymakers — see an enduring rise in inflation as a challenge.

Interest-rate derivative markets don’t foresee the Fed lifting its policy rate beyond about 2% during the upcoming tightening cycle. That’s below the 2.5% Fed officials forecast last month for their long-run policy rate. This backdrop signals that traders don’t see much risk of inflation unmooring or growth getting too robust before the next downturn.

“We are looking for a core CPI running closer to 1.9% or so,” after temporary base effects filter through the data, said Phoebe White, interest-rate strategist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. “That’s still pretty soft and we think the underlying trend in inflation is going to be pretty gradual to build as we look into 2022.”

There are a range of forces that are likely to keep inflation low from the Fed’s perspective, including the millions of still-unemployed Americans. Slow changes in pandemic behavior — even as vaccines roll out — weak wage-bargaining power and an aging workforce could also keep overall demand moderate and prices muted.

“We are of the view that we are going to continue to be in a lower inflationary environment both in the U.S. and globally,” said Steven Oh, head of fixed income at PineBridge Investments. “We are not necessarily going to be successful in reaching inflation targets on a sustainable basis.”

The Fed also has limited tools. In its recent statement, the Fed pledged to keep rates at zero until “inflation has risen to 2% and is on track to moderately exceed 2% for some time.”

But a pledge to do nothing also raises questions about the potency of policy. The U.S. central bank has a legacy of missing its 2% inflation target consistently since it was installed in 2012.”Really it’s about changing peoples’ mindsets and experience for the last ten years,” said Tiffany Wilding, economist at Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co.”You are going to need several periods, maybe several years, of inflation that is running above the Fed’s 2% target to really anchor those expectations, because they have moved down.”

Originally Appeared On: https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2021/apr/18/cooling-economy-a-worry/

The findings suggest that winters in Europe and in eastern US may get warmer and wetter

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A new study led by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science provides evidence that humans are influencing wind and weather patterns across the eastern United States and western Europe by releasing CO2 and other pollutants into Earth’s atmosphere.

In the new paper, published in the journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, the research team found that changes in the last 50 years to an important weather phenomenon in the North Atlantic — known as the North Atlantic Oscillation — can be traced back to human activities that impact the climate system.

“Scientists have long understood that human actions are warming the planet,” said the study’s lead author Jeremy Klavans, a UM Rosenstiel School alumnus. “However, this human-induced signal on weather patterns is much harder to identify.”

“In this study, we show that humans are influencing patterns of weather and climate over the Atlantic and that we may be able to use this information predict changes in weather and climate up to a decade in advance,” said Klavans.

The North Atlantic Oscillation, the result of fluctuations in air pressure across the Atlantic, affects weather by influencing the intensity and location of the jet stream. This oscillation has a strong effect on winter weather in Europe, Greenland, the northeastern U.S. and North Africa and the quality of crop yields and productivity of fisheries in the North Atlantic.

The researchers used multiple large climate model ensembles, compiled by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, to predict the North Atlantic Oscillation. The analysis consisted of 269 model runs, which is over 14,000 simulated model years.

The study, titled “NAO Predictability from External Forcing in the Late Twentieth Century,” was published on March 25 in the journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science. The study’s authors include: Klavans, Amy Clement and Lisa Murphy from the UM Rosenstiel School, and Mark Cane from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

The study was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Climate and Large-Scale Dynamics program (grant # AGS 1735245 and AGS 1650209), NSF Paleo Perspectives on Climate Change program (grant # AGS 1703076) and NOAA’s Climate Variability and Predictability Program.

Originally Appeared On: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210419094035.htm

Filed Under: US

Restaurants struggle to find workers despite gains in U.S. economy

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Restaurant owners said workers are not applying for open jobs, and some are still not back to full staff.

As more people receive vaccinations for COVID-19 and consumers reportedly regain confidence, some Knoxville restaurants said they’re struggling to find workers.

Owners said that there is demand from customers, but some are still not back to full staff. The owners of Sweet P’s and Northshore Brasserie said they are not receiving applications for open jobs.

“Some people are not wanting to get back into the workforce, which is understandable,” said Chris Ford, a co-owner of Sweet P’s. “You’ve got a lot of stimulus money out there and quite frankly, we’re all competing, all these restaurants, for the same pool. There’s just a lot of options for people.”

The restaurant is in the process of opening a new location in Fountain City, set to be open for business this summer.

Around 744,000 people applied for unemployment benefits across the U.S. last week, an increase of 16,000. They remain high by historical standards, since dropping from their record highs towards the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite the rise in unemployment benefits, the U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 6% during March. Consumer confidence also increased, according to reports.

“We’re running a smaller crew right now,” said Brian Balest, the owner of Northshore Brasserie. “We’re running kind of a core group of people. We’re focused on dinner right now. So we’re getting through it. And I do think it’ll get better. I think it’s going to be a minute though.”

Most economists said they think the still-high level of unemployment applications should gradually fade.

Originally Appeared On: https://www.wbir.com/article/money/business/some-knoxville-restaurants-struggle-to-find-workers-despite-gains-in-us-economy/51-6ee4bf85-f51b-4f07-b9ff-ca68b84817fe

U.S. economy rebounding, helped by stimulus and vaccines

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The survey credited a range of factors, from vaccinations to the payments of up to $1,400 for individuals from the $1.9-trillion relief package that President Joe Biden pushed through Congress last month.

The survey, known as the beige book, will form the basis for discussions when Fed officials meet on April 27–28 to discuss what to do about interest rates.

Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial, said the message from the beige book is that business activity is picking up but “the economy still has a lot of room to strengthen further.”

While private forecasters have been busy boosting their economic projections for this year, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has continued to stress that the central bank is not close to raising rates. The Fed released projections last month that indicated it will hold off raising rates until after 2023.

The beige book report, based on information from business contacts supplied by the Fed’s 12 regional banks, said that manufacturing activity continued to expand, with half of the Fed districts reporting robust manufacturing growth. Those gains came despite supply-chain disruptions in such critical areas as computer chips.

The survey found that the Fed’s regional bank in New York is seeing growth for the first time since the pandemic shut down the economy a year ago and that the expansion is “broad-based across industries.”

The Fed’s Philadelphia regional bank found that demand for goods and services is “on fire” but myriad severe supply constraints are continuing to hamper various industries.

Cleveland reported improvements in the hard-hit hotel and restaurant sectors. Similar improvements were reported by the Fed’s Atlanta regional bank, which covers tourist destinations in Florida.

Dallas reported that supply-chain disruptions have led to sharp increases in prices of goods, while the San Francisco district reported that residential construction remains strong.

The Fed survey found that many of its districts are seeing moderate price increases, specifically for materials such as metals, lumber, food and fuel.

The beige book reported that employment growth picked up as economic activity increased. It noted strong job gains in manufacturing, construction, and leisure and hospitality.

In an appearance Wednesday before the Economic Club of Washington, Powell acknowledged rising concerns about inflation following a report Tuesday that consumer prices rose 0.6% in March, the biggest one-month gain since 2012.

But Powell, who has been predicting a temporary spike in inflation this spring, repeated the view that the central bank wants to see inflation rise “moderately above 2% for some time” to make up for a decade when inflation has failed to reach the Fed’s 2% inflation target.

Originally Appeared On: https://www.advisor.ca/news/economic/u-s-economy-rebounding-helped-by-stimulus-and-vaccines/