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Show Covid, Vaccines, the Economy, and Law News To: Dean Elizabeth Kronk Warner Date: September 20, 2022 From: S.J. Quinney College of Law Career Development Office Covid Cases and Deaths, Omicron Subvariants, and Reformulated Vaccines The Covid pandemic has killed more than 6.5 million people worldwide, leaving more than 10.5 million children without one or both parents or primary caregivers. Southeast Asia and Africa were hardest hit – where one out of every 50 children lost a parent or caregiver. As of September 19th, the U.S. had 95.5 million officially reported Covid cases resulting in 1,050,000 officially reported Covid deaths since February 29, 2020. As of September 19th, the U.S. was averaging 57,246 new Covid cases a day (down from a week ago) and 410 new Covid deaths per day (down from a week ago). As of September 19th, there were 30,500 people in U.S. hospitals with Covid (down from a week ago), including those admitted for Covid or for something else and found to have Covid. On September 18th, on CBS’s “60 Minutes” program, President Biden We still have a problem with covid. We’re still doing a lot of work on it … but the pandemic is over.” Because Covid is becoming an endemic (i.e., always with us) disease like the seasonal flu, the coronavirus vaccine is likely to become an annual shot like the seasonal flu vaccine. The White House Covid response coordinator said an annual coronavirus shot should provide a “high degree of protection against serious illness all year.” In a recently published study, a resurgence of Covid symptoms in patients treated with Pfizer’s Paxlovid is far more frequent than initially reported by Pfizer, and Covid-rebounding patients risk spreading coronavirus after having Paxlovid treatment. President Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, and Dr. Anthony Fauci are among many Americans who got rebound Covid after being treated with Paxlovid. Another recent study links Covid in seniors to an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine reviewed more than six million health records and found that for every 1,000 seniors with Covid, seven will be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s within a year, which is above the five-in-a-thousand diagnosis rate for seniors who did not have Covid.. The American Academy of Dermatology reported that hair loss is the most common post-acute Covid syndrome. Of 203 hospitalized Covid patients, 11 reported hair loss between 18 and 45 days after testing positive. Covid does not cause the hair loss, which can occur when a person suffers from a fever, illness, or stress – which are correlated with Covid. The Covid-related hair loss is not permanent: hair eventually grows back in six to 12 months. During the pandemic, hospitals nationwide struggled with Covid admissions, overwhelming ICU units which did not have enough beds. As a consequence, many hospitals are now remodeling traditional care rooms with a flexible design that can be converted into intensive-care isolation rooms for infectious disease patients when needed. This gives hospitals isolation-room surge capacity during a pandemic without having to build new emergency department or ICU isolation rooms. The Economy In 2021, the second year of emergency pandemic aid from the federal government drove poverty in the U.S. to the lowest level on record and cut the number of poor children by nearly half. The poverty rate fell to 7.8%, down from 9.2% in 2020. Food insecurity in families with children also fell to the lowest level on record. Those changes reflect the trillions of dollars injected into the U.S. economy in 2021. Hundreds of billions of dollars went directly to Americans as stimulus checks, child tax credits, and housing assistance. These programs have now expired, and many families have again found themselves under financial strain. Consumer prices in August unexpectedly rose 0.1% compared to July, as food and housing continued to drive up the cost of living for millions of Americans. Mortgage rates went above 6% for the first time in 14 years. Although gasoline prices continued to decline – falling from a high of $5 per gallon to today’s low of $3.67 – food prices were up 0.8% for the month and up 8.3% compared to a year ago. The U.S. stock markets fell on August’s inflation news. On September 15th, President Biden announced a tentative agreement about a new contract between U.S. rail companies and the 12 unions that collectively represent 125,000 railroad employees. Over the next two weeks, rank-and-file union members must ratify the new contract. Until then, the current contract – which was set to expire at midnight on September 16th – will remain in force, and rail service is expected to run as usual. The President was personally involved in the contract talks and said, “This agreement can avert [the] significant damage that any shutdown would have brought.” The Federal Reserve is meeting today and tomorrow (September 20th and 21st). U.S. stock markets are expecting another three-quarter of a percentage point interest rate increase by the Fed. This would match the Fed’s three-quarter-point increase in July. Interest rate increases make borrowing more expensive, e.g., with the cost of a residential mortgage loan has doubled since the beginning of the year, which is cooling off the previously hot housing market. The Fed has raised rates four times this year and is expected to raise them again in September, November, and December. The Fed is still deeply worried that inflation will get baked into the U.S. economy – as it did in the early 1980s – and that concern will dominate the Fed’s interestrate decision making until there are clear signs that inflation is coming down. The Covid pandemic caused a huge increase in remote work-from-home, which enabled people to improve their work-life balance (e.g., by avoiding the commute time to and from work). Now, many workers are willing to take a lower-paying W-F-H job to preserve their work-life balance rather than return to business offices. Two-thirds of respondents in a recent poll said they would do so. The Covid pandemic also caused air travel to fall drastically in 2020 and in the first half of 2021. Leisure air travel – bolstered by huge numbers of tourists – is now back to 2019 pre-pandemic levels in the U.S., but business air travel remains about 25% below 2019 in the U.S. It is not clear whether business air travel will return to pre-pandemic volumes, as corporations become accustomed to smaller travel budgets and business trips are replaced by videoconferences. 2 Business conventions now typically offer a “hybrid” format where people can attend in person or online. Business air travel worldwide was worth more than $1.4 trillion in 2019 but plummeted by more than half in 2020 and 2021. Business air travel worldwide is estimated to be $933 billion in 2022, about 35% less than the pre-pandemic amount. Utah’s minimum wage is $7.25 per hour – the federal minimum. Utah’s minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 per hour – also the federal minimum. Some farmworkers get paid the minimum wage, but others like harvest laborers paid on a “piece rate basis” don’t have to be paid minimum wage. Of Utah’s 866,000 hourly employees, 13,000 had earnings of the minimum wage or lower. Law News With increasing interest rates and decreasing business values, M&A activity – that propelled much of Big Law’s profitability over the last two years – is slowing down. Law firm expenses have increased 14.7% in the first half of 2022, largely because of increases in lawyer compensation initiated last year. The expense growth for larger firms was 17.5%. During that same time, demand for legal services fell by 0.6% across the board and by 2.1% for global law firms. Productivity also dropped 5.1%. This year’s demand for associates no longer exceeds supply and the recruiting war among law firms for associates that occurred last year is ending as the economy cools. Some firms are reducing headcount through attrition with no new hiring. Lateral hiring is also on the wane. During the pandemic, and especially in 2021, law firms needed to hire associates to handle rapidly growing workloads. This triggered a bidding war in which law firms handed out signing, retention, and performance bonuses, as well as salary increases to attract and keep associates. But now, because associates can’t easily jump to another firm, they have much less leverage to demand flexible schedules and to work remotely. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is committing more attorneys and resources to False Claims Act (FCA) civil actions targeting companies that have fraudulently billed government agencies. In fiscal 2021 (ending September 30, 2021), the DOJ obtained $5.6 billion in FCA settlements and judgments, including a $2.8 billion settlement with Purdue Pharma of the opioid litigation brought against Purdue. In the healthcare industry, the DOJ is using data analytics and routine audits by other government agencies to spot fraud. On September 9th, Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court told lawyers and judges attending a Tenth Circuit Court conference in Colorado, “simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for questioning the legitimacy of the court.” A national poll – conducted after the Court overruled Roe v. Wade – found that public approval of the Court was down to 38%, compared to 60% a year ago. After a California nursing home resident died from Covid, the resident’s family sued the nursing home operators in state court. The defendants removed the case to federal court claiming the 2005 federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act) created exclusive federal court jurisdiction. The PREP Act gives healthcare providers immunity from suit and immunity from liability for actions taken to avert a national public health emergency when the healthcare provider uses an authorized countermeasure. The patient’s family contended that the 3 PREP Act’s affirmative defense can be raised in state court. The nursing home operators contended that only federal courts can develop consistent national standards for asserting the PREP Act’s affirmative defense. The federal district court granted the plaintiffs’ motion to remand the case to state court. The defendants appealed that remand order to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals which held the PREP Act does not create an exclusive federal cause of action that displaces state-law negligence claims that should be tried in state court. The nursing home operators now have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to interpret the PREP Act and declare that federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction to hear wrongful death and personal injury claims arising out of the Covid pandemic. 4 |
