| OCR Text |
Show Covid, Vaccines, the Economy, and Law News To: Dean Elizabeth Kronk Warner Date: August 9, 2022 From: S.J. Quinney College of Law Career Development Office Covid Cases and Deaths, Omicron Subvariants, and Vaccines The U.S. has exceeded one million official Covid deaths, the highest death toll of any nation. As of August 9th, the U.S. had 92.3 million officially reported Covid cases resulting in 1,031,000 officially reported Covid deaths since February 29, 2020. As of August 9th, the U.S. was averaging 108,820 new Covid cases a day (down down from a week ago) and 499 new Covid deaths per day (up from a week ago). As of August 9th, the U.S. was averaging nearly 43,300 people in American hospitals with Covid (slightly down from a week ago). The Omicron BA.5 subvariant and future variants, which effectively evade immunity created by both vaccination and infection, may be the future of endemic Covid. Two peer-reviewed papers published in the prestigious journal Science conclude that the coronavirus pandemic began in multiple zoonotic viral spillovers to humans from live animals sold and butchered at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China. Which animals were involved and where they came from are not known. The “lab leak” contention – that the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese virology research lab – is not “disproved” but is “implausible.” The Huanan Market theory is the only theory that “actually explains all the data.” On July 21st, 78-year-old President Biden – who was fully vaccinated and twice boosted – tested positive for breakthrough Covid. After he recovered, he tested positive again on July 31st with “rebound” Covid but was asymptomatic. Rebound cases – where a person tests positive after recovering from symptoms and testing negative – can occur, especially among people who take the antiviral drug Paxlovid, which the President took shortly after he first tested positive. On July 29th, the FDA announced it is accelerating a fall booster campaign of a reformulated vaccine that targets new Omicron subvariants that are circulating widely in the U.S. The FDA said that people who get a booster shot now will still be eligible for the reformulated Omicrontargeting booster this fall. CDC researchers define long Covid as involving symptoms for four or more weeks after a Covid diagnosis. A new study published in The Lancet found that 1-in-8 American adults with Covid has symptoms months beyond their initial infection. Some researchers believe 26% of children in the U.S have had Covid, and 14 million children have tested positive. However, it is unclear how many children have long Covid. Children typically have some of the same symptoms of long Covid as adults do, including breathing problems, changes in taste and smell, brain fog, anxiety, depression, fatigue, and sleep disorders. Early in the pandemic, people believed that Covid was not that serious for children who often have less severe symptoms than adults do. However, children with long Covid are more likely than adults to have serious problems that involve their organs. The CDC says children with long Covid have a much higher chance of serious lung, heart, kidney, and pancreatic problems than children who do not get Covid. In other news about a different virus, the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary declared the monkeypox outbreak in the U.S. is a “public health emergency” which is the first step in empowering federal officials to expedite medical countermeasures (i.e., vaccines and therapeutics), without going through full-fledged federal reviews. Monkeypox comes from the same family of viruses as smallpox and spreads primarily through close contact, such as skin-toskin exposure with infectious lesions during sexual activity. The monkeypox outbreak is very high among gay male men but there have been some cases in women and children. Monkey pox symptoms are like smallpox symptoms but less severe. The U.S. needs three times as many doses of monkeypox vaccine to cover the 1.6 million Americans who are at high risk of contracting the disease, but there is not enough available vaccine to meet this need, so the Biden administration is considering allowing a method of injection that uses one-fifth as much vaccine per shot. One study showed that injecting a smaller dose of vaccine between skin layers induces an immune response comparable to a standard injection into the subcutaneous fat in the arm. This intradermal injection option is thought to be better than administering just one shot of the two recommended doses. Although the Biden administration invested more than $1 billion in developing a two-dose monkeypox vaccine manufactured by a Danish company, the administration was slow to order bulk vaccine stocks to be processed into vials after the disease surfaced in the U.S. in mid-May. So far, U.S. officials have distributed 600,00 doses of the vaccine to state and local health jurisdictions. The Economy On July 28th, the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that the U.S. economy has shrunk for a second straight quarter in 2022, raising concerns that the country is in a recession. Whether the U.S. is in a recession will be formally determined by eight economists selected by the National Bureau of Economic Research called the “Business Cycle Dating Committee” which sometimes doesn’t publicly declare the economy had a recession until after it is over. It is unusual in recession for GDP to contract while employment remains strong. While U.S. stock markets rose, oil prices fell. U.S. employers added 528,000 jobs in July – across nearly all types of business – an unexpectedly strong gain that shows the labor market is withstanding the economic impact of higher interest rates, at least so far. However, homebuilding slowed considerably, as rising mortgage rates erode affordability for many more potential home buyers. Total employment is back up to its February 2020 pre-pandemic lockdown level and provides new evidence the U.S. economy has not entered a recession. A Bank of America economist said, “We’re very unlikely to be falling into a recession in the near term.” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell does not believe the U.S. economy is in a recession. As the economy and labor demand begin to slow, job gains have been robust, and the unemployment rate has remained low. The Fed indicated that three more rate increases are coming this year. The Fed tends to focus on “core inflation” which excludes volatile food and 2 energy prices, whereas consumers focus on “headline inflation” which includes food, energy, and housing prices. The U.S. stock market responded favorably to the Fed’s interest rate hike. The unemployment rate was 3.5%, down from 3.6% in July, matching its 50-year low in February 2020. 52% of Americans said now is a good time to find a job, which means that people who left the job market during the Great Resignation in 2021, who are not seeking employment now, are unlikely to do so in the future. Wage growth climbed more quickly in July than economists had expected. Hourly earnings climbed 5.2% since the beginning of 2022. But even this robust wage growth is not enough to outpace inflation for most people. More than 90% of Americans said they were concerned about inflation, and this bad news on inflation is eclipsing the good news about job and wage growth. Stocks on Wall Street dropped after the stronger than expected jobs report for July, because this means the Federal Reserve is more likely to maintain its pace of raising interest rates to slow inflation. On July 27th, the Federal Reserve in its fourth increase this year raised interest rates by three-quarters of a point (0.75%), continuing its aggressive efforts to slow inflation, now at a 40year high. Credit card debt is surging as inflation pushes Americans to borrow more to keep up with higher prices this year. Mortgage payments saw the greatest increase, caused by the Federal Reserve’s increases in interest rates which have doubled just this year. Credit card debt has increased at the fastest pace in 20 years. Credit card balances increased $46 billion in the second quarter of 2022, a 5.5% increase from the first quarter of this year. In the second quarter, there were 233 million new credit card accounts opened, a high not since the Great recession in 2008. There are clear signs that consumer spending and residential real estate sales have softened. The housing brokerage company Homie laid off nearly a third of its employees in February. Government services company Maximus laid off more than 500 employees in April. Wayfair began a 90-day hiring freeze in May. On August 1st, NuSkin began laying off employees because the company’s second quarter revenue was “softer than expected” with ongoing complications due to Covid and stress in Europe caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Law News After student criticism of his concurring opinion in the Supreme Court’s Dobbs case overturning Roe v. Wade – in which Justice Clarence Thomas said the Court should overturn privacy-based rights to contraception access, same-sex intimate relations, and same-sex marriage – Thomas announced he was “unavailable” to continue teaching his seminar on Constitutional Law at George Washington University Law School. 3 |
