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      Workers matter and government works: eight lessons from the Covid pandemic

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      Maybe it’s wishful thinking to declare the pandemic over in the US, and presumptuous to conclude what lessons we’ve learned. So consider this a first draft.1. Workers are always essentialWe couldn’t have survived without millions of warehouse, delivery, grocery and hospital workers literally risking their lives. Yet most of these workers are paid squat. Amazon touts its $15 minimum wage but it totals only about $30,000 a year. Most essential workers don’t have health insurance or paid leave. Many of their employers (including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, to take but two examples) didn’t give them the personal protective equipment they needed.Lesson: Essential workers deserve far better.2. Healthcare is a basic rightYou know how you got your vaccine without paying a dime? That’s how all healthcare could be. Yet too many Americans who contracted Covid-19 got walloped with humongous hospital bills. By mid-2020, about 3.3 million people had lost employer-sponsored coverage and the number of uninsured had increased by 1.9 million. Research by the Urban Institute found that people with chronic disease, Black Americans and low-income children were most likely to have delayed or foregone care during the pandemic.Lesson: America must insure everyone.3. Conspiracy theories can be deadlyLast June, about one in four Americans believed the pandemic was “definitely” or “probably” created intentionally, according to the Pew Research Center. Other conspiracy theories have caused some people to avoid wearing masks or getting vaccinated, resulting in unnecessary illness or death.Lesson: An informed public is essential. Some of the responsibility falls on all of us. Some of it on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms that allowed misinformation to flourish.4. The stock market isn’t the economyThe stock market rose throughout the pandemic, lifting the wealth of the richest 1% who own half of all stock owned by Americans. Meanwhile, from March 2020 to February 2021 80 million in the US lost their jobs. Between June and November 2020, nearly 8 million fell into poverty. Black and Latino adults were more than twice as likely as white adults to report not having enough to eat: 16% each for Black and Latino adults, compared to 6% of white adults.Lesson: Stop using the stock market as a measure of economic wellbeing. Look instead at the percentage of Americans who are working, and their median pay.5. Wages are too low to get by onMost Americans live paycheck to paycheck. So once the pandemic hit, many didn’t have any savings to fall back on. Conservative lawmakers complain that the extra $300 a week unemployment benefit Congress enacted in March discourages people from working. What’s really discouraging them is lack of childcare and lousy wages.Lesson: Raise the minimum wage, strengthen labor unions and push companies to share profits with their workers.6. Remote work is now baked into the economyThe percentage of workers punching in from home hit a high of 70% in April 2020. A majority still work remotely. Some 40% want to continue working from home.Two lessons: Companies will have to adjust. And much commercial real estate will remain vacant. Why not convert it into affordable housing?7. Billionaires aren’t the answerThe combined wealth of America’s 657 billionaires grew by $1.3tn – or 44.6% – during the pandemic. Jeff Bezos, with $183.9bn, became the richest man in the world. Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, added $11.8bn to his $94.3bn fortune. Sergey Brin, Google’s other co-founder, added $11.4bn. Yet billionaires’ taxes are lower than ever. Wealthy Americans today pay one-sixth the rate of taxes their counterparts paid in 1953.Lesson: To afford everything the nation needs, raise taxes at the top.8. Government can be the solutionRonald Reagan’s famous quip – “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem” – can now officially be retired. Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” succeeded in readying vaccines faster than most experts thought possible. Biden got them into more arms more quickly than any vaccination program in history.Furthermore, the $900bn in aid Congress passed in late December prevented millions from losing unemployment benefits and helped sustain the recovery when it was faltering. The $1.9tn Democrats pushed through in March will help the US achieve something it failed to achieve after the 2008-09 recession: a robust recovery.Lesson: The federal government did not just help beat the pandemic. It also did more to keep the nation afloat than in any previous recession. It must be prepared to do so again. More

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      in World Politics

      Expect an Uneven Rebound in MENA and Central Asia

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      Projections, no matter how well-grounded in analytics, are a messy business. Three years ago, COVID-19 was unheard of and then-US President Donald Trump’s politics caused uncertainty in international relations, with democracy in retreat across the world. Despite the best-informed prognostications, predictions failed to capture cross-border variables such as immigration and civil conflict that have yet to play out in rearranging local and regional economic prospects.

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      No region is more complex in terms of confusing signals than the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Central Asia. This is the subject of the latest report by the International Monetary Fund titled, “Regional Economic Outlook: Arising from the Pandemic: Building Forward Better.”

      What is clear from a review of the data is that 2020 was an outlier in terms of trend lines earlier in the decade, skewed by the COVID-19 pandemic, erosion of oil prices, diminished domestic economic activity, reduced remittances and other factors that have yet to be brought into an orderly predictive model. Even the IMF had to recalibrate its 2020 report upward for several countries based on rising oil exports, while decreasing marks were given countries slow to vaccinate against COVID-19 and that rely on service-oriented sectors.

      Mixed Outlook

      The numbers indicate a mixed picture, ranging from Oman growing at 7.2% and the West Bank at 6.9%, to Lebanon receiving no projection and Sudan at the bottom of the range with a 1.13% real GDP growth rate. Yet, so much can impact those numbers, from Oman’s heavy debt burden to continuing turmoil in intra-Palestinian and Palestinian-Israeli affairs.

      The good news is that real GDP is expected to grow by 4% in 2021, up from the projection last October of 3.2%. Much of the lift has come from two factors: a more optimistic trend line for the oil producers and the rate of vaccinations in countries that will promote business recovery.

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      As CNBC pointed out, Jihad Azour, director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia department, noted that recovery will be “divergent between countries and uneven between different parts of the population.” Key variables include the extent of vaccine rollout, recovery of tourism and government policies to promote recovery and growth.

      In oil-producing countries, real GDP is projected to increase from 2.7% in 2021 to 3.8% in 2022, with a 5.8% rise in the region’s sector driven by Libya’s return to global markets. Conversely, non-oil producers saw their growth rate estimates reduced from 2.7% to 2.3%. In fact, Georgia, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia, which are highly dependent on tourism, have been downgraded in light of continuing COVID-19 issues such as vaccination rollout and coverage.

      As the IMF report summary notes, “The outlook will vary significantly across countries, depending on the pandemic’s path, vaccine rollouts, underlying fragilities, exposure to tourism and contact-intensive sectors, and policy space and actions.” From Mauritania to Afghanistan, one can select data that supports or undercuts the projected growth rates. For example, in general, Central Asia countries as a group seem to be poised for stronger results than others. Meanwhile, Arab countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council face greater uncertainty, from resolving debt issues to unforeseen consequences of negotiations with Iran.

      So, how will these projects fare given a pending civil war in Afghanistan and the possible deterioration of oil prices and debt financing by countries such as Bahrain and Oman? Highlighting this latter concern, the report goes on to say that public “gross financing needs in most emerging markets in the region are expected to remain elevated in 2021-22, with downside risks in the event of tighter global financial conditions and/or if fiscal consolidation is delayed due to weaker-than-expected recovery.”

      An Opportunity

      Calling for greater regional and international cooperation to complement “strong domestic policies” focused on the need “to build forward better and accelerate the creation of more inclusive, resilient, sustainable, and green economies,” the IMF is calling on the countries to see a post-pandemic phase as an opportunity. This would involve implementing policies that promote recovery, sustain public health practices that focus on sustainable solutions, and balance “the need for debt sustainability and financial resilience.”

      There is great uncertainty assigning these projections without more conclusive data on the impact of the pandemic, the stress on public finance and credit available to the private sector, and overall economic recovery across borders that relies on factors such as the weather, oil demand, external political shocks and international monetary flows. The IMF report is a very helpful bellwether for setting parameters for ongoing analyses and discussions.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Republicans flout mask requirement in US House chamber

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      Republicans in Congress are rebelling against the mask requirement on the House chamber, which remains in place due to Covid-19 safety concerns from Democrats, who hold the majority.During votes on Tuesday, several Republican lawmakers refused to wear masks as they stood in the chamber and encouraged other members to join them.Lawmakers who refuse to wear a face covering are subject to a fine of $500 for the first offense and subsequent offenses can result in a $2,500 fine. In practice, however, the House sergeant-at-arms gives a warning for the first offense.The seven lawmakers who received warnings include Representatives Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Chip Roy of Texas, Bob Good of Virginia, Louie Gohmert of Texas and Mary Miller of Illinois, according to the Associated Press.Greene, a Republican extremist, posted a photo of herself with three other Republicans on the House floor without masks. The Georgia lawmaker tweeted: “End the oppression!” along with: “#FreeYourFace.”Massie also tweeted a card casting a “No” vote, along with a caption estimating that 10 Republicans were going maskless on the floor on Tuesday.The Republican stunt comes after the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said on Thursday that she would continue requiring masks to be worn on the floor of the chamber. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said earlier that day that fully vaccinated people can stop wearing masks in almost all settings, including indoors.When asked why she kept the mask rule for the chamber, Pelosi told Bloomberg that it’s not known how many lawmakers and their staff are vaccinated.Democratic lawmakers in both chambers of Congress have a 100% vaccination rate against Covid-19, according to answers from a CNN survey of Capitol Hill published on Friday. However, for Republicans, the numbers are less clear.In total, it is estimated that at least 44% of House members are vaccinated and at least 92% of senators are. More

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      in US Politics

      Fauci: Americans will probably need vaccine booster ‘within a year or so’

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      Dr Anthony Fauci said on Wednesday that Americans will probably need a Covid-19 booster shot “within a year or so” as Americans continue to receive vaccinations across the country.The booster may be needed because the durability of protection against the virus is “generally not lifelong”, the chief medical adviser to the president told Axios during a virtual event.On Tuesday, the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Dr Peter Marks, also said Covid-19 booster shots, similar to the flu shot, could be needed for fully vaccinated people within a year.Vaccine makers have shown so far that their shots offer strong protection for at least six months, and US health agencies are tracking the impact of new variants on Covid-19 vaccine development.During the interview, Fauci also clarified the new federal guidance on mask-wearing, stating that Americans were “misinterpreting” the announcement.“I think people are misinterpreting, thinking that this is a removal of a mask mandate for everyone. It’s not,” Fauci told Axios’s Mike Allen. “It’s an assurance to those who are vaccinated that they can feel safe, be they outdoors or indoors.”According to Fauci, the mandate “did not explicitly say that unvaccinated people should abandon their masks”.The mask guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last Thursday said fully vaccinated people did not need to wear a mask indoors or outdoors with the exception of healthcare settings, homeless shelters, prison and jails and on public transportation.While some are feeling a sense of freedom after 15 months of face coverings, others have met the guidance with confusion and skepticism. The agency’s announcement prompted major retailers, including Walmart and Starbucks, to lift mask mandates, and some states, including California, will keep their mask orders in place for another month.At least 37% of Americans are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. People are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after they receive a second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine. More

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      Big Short author Michael Lewis on the inside story of America’s failed Covid response

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      The author and journalist Michael Lewis discusses reporting on a group of individuals who tried to alert the US government to the dangers of its inaction as coronavirus cases began to rise at an alarming rate

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      The author and journalist Michael Lewis has made a career of writing about people who see things coming that most of us don’t. His book The Big Short, which was turned into an Oscar-winning film, followed a group of investors who predicted the collapse of the American housing market in 2007. He tells Rachel Humphreys about the group of individuals who have become the focus of his new book, The Premonition. As Covid case numbers began to rise at an alarming rate across America, Lewis discovered a group of medics and scientists who were trying to alert the US government to the dangers of its inaction. To order The Premonition, visit the Guardian bookshop. More

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      Biden aides defend controversial Covid mask guidance change

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      This week’s surprise reversal of mask-wearing guidance for those vaccinated against Covid-19 was a “foundational first step” towards returning the US to normal, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) insisted on Sunday, as the agency continued to draw criticism for the sudden and confusing advice.Dr Rochelle Walensky appeared on several Sunday talk shows to stress it was up to individuals whether to follow the guidance issued on Thursday.“This was not permission to shed masks for everybody, everywhere. This was really [a] science-driven individual assessment of your risk,” Walensky told NBC’s Meet the Press.“We are asking people to be honest with themselves. If they are vaccinated and they are not wearing a mask, they are safe. If they are not vaccinated and they are not wearing a mask, they are not safe.”A growing number of groups and health experts have questioned the new guidance, which reversed the CDC position that even those fully vaccinated should continue to wear masks indoors, and came 48 hours after Walensky was assailed in Congress on the issue.A number of mostly Republican-controlled states have subsequently said they are modifying their mask mandates and several large businesses, including Walmart and Starbucks, have dropped them altogether.The nation’s largest nurses union suggested on Saturday the CDC advice was not based on science and said any relaxation of protective health measures would place patients and caregivers at risk.Others were critical of the timing of the new guidance given that emergency approval was given only this week for those aged 12 to 15 to receive the Pzifer-BioNTech vaccine. Children aged 11 and under will likely not be able to receive a vaccine for months.In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, health commentator Dr Leana Wen said the CDC move was “sudden” and prompted “increasing confusion”, particularly for vulnerable groups.“Let’s say you go to the grocery store,” Wen wrote. “It’s crowded and few people there are masked. Perhaps everyone is vaccinated, but perhaps not. What if you’re vaccinated but not fully protected because you’re immunocompromised?“You can no longer count on CDC rules to help you keep safe. What if you don’t have childcare, so you had to bring your kids along? They didn’t choose to remain unvaccinated, the shots aren’t available for them. Surely it’s not fair to put them at risk.”Walensky acknowledged the concern but said some element of risk was inevitable as the US emerges from the pandemic.“We knew that there was going to be a time where we had the majority of Americans who wanted to be vaccinated and yet the children were not going to be eligible,” Walensky told CNN’s State of the Union.“This week we got news that we can vaccinate our 12- to 15-year-olds. We hope by the fall, by the end of this year, we’ll have vaccine eligible at even younger ranges. We recognize the challenge of parents who can’t leave their kids at home to go shopping, those kids should continue to wear masks in those settings and to the best of their ability to keep a distance. Those recommendations have not changed.”She repeated her assertion that it was “individual guidance”.“I want to convey that we are not saying that everybody has to take off their mask if they’re vaccinated,” she said. “It’s been 16 months that we’ve been telling people to mask and this is going to be a slow process.“The other thing is that every community is not the same, not all communities have vaccination rates that are high. These decisions have to be made at the community level”.Dr Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, told CBS’s Face the Nation the changed guidance was underpinned by “an accumulation of data”, including that the vaccines’ effectiveness had proved “even better than in the clinical trials”.Also, he said, “a number of papers have come out showing the vaccine protects even against the variants that are circulating, and we’re seeing that it is very unlikely that a vaccinated person, even if there’s a breakthrough infection, would transmit to someone else.”Fauci was referring to eight vaccinated members of the New York Yankees baseball team who tested positive but exhibited no symptoms.He did, however, appear to acknowledge the sudden switch of advice had been confusing. The CDC, Fauci said, will be “coming out very quickly with individual types of guidances, so people will say, ‘Well, what about the workplace? What about this, what about that?’“That’s going to be clarified pretty quickly I would imagine. Within just a couple of weeks you’re gonna start to see significant clarification of some of the actually understandable and reasonable questions that people are asking.” More

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      Republican Covid lies follow foreign strongmen’s lead – and are deadly for it | Robert Reich

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      A hospital in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, is being charged under the country’s National Security Act for sounding the alarm over a lack of oxygen that resulted in Covid deaths. The hospital’s owner and manager says police have accused him of “false scaremongering”, after he stated publicly that four patients died on a single day when oxygen ran out.Since Covid-19 exploded in India, the prime minister, Narendra Modi, seems to be trying to the control the news more than the outbreak. On Wednesday, India recorded nearly 363,000 cases and 4,120 deaths, about 30% of worldwide deaths that day. But experts say India is vastly understating the true number. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, estimates at least 25,000 Indians are dying from Covid each day.The horror has been worsened by shortages of oxygen and hospital beds. Yet Modi and his government don’t want the public to get the true story.One big lesson from the Covid crisis: lying makes it worse.Vladimir Putin is busily denying the truth about Covid in Russia. Demographer Alexei Raksha, who worked at Russia’s official statistical agency, Rosstat, but says he was forced to leave last summer for telling the truth about Covid, claims daily data has been “smoothed, rounded, lowered” to look better. Like many experts, he uses excess mortality – the number of deaths during the pandemic over the typical number of deaths – as the best indicator.Trump wants the credit for developing the vaccine. Then he also gets the blame for so few of his voters taking it“If Russia stops at 500,000 excess deaths, that will be a good scenario,” he calculates.Russia was first out of the gate with a vaccine but has fallen woefully behind on vaccinations. Recent polling puts the share of Russians who don’t want to be vaccinated at 60% to 70%. That’s because Putin and other officials have focused less on vaccinating the public than on claiming success in containing Covid.The US is suffering a similar problem – the legacy of another strongman, Donald Trump. Although more than half of US adults have received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine, more than 40% of Republicans have consistently told pollsters they won’t get vaccinated. Their recalcitrance is threatening efforts to achieve “herd immunity” and prevent the virus’s spread.Like Modi and Putin, Trump minimized the seriousness of the pandemic and spread misinformation about it. Trump officials ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to downplay its severity. He declined to get vaccinated publicly and was noticeably absent from a public service announcement on vaccination that featured all other living former presidents.Trump allies in the media have conducted a scare campaign about the vaccines. In December, Fox News host Laura Ingraham posted a story on Facebook from the Daily Mail purporting to show evidence that Chinese communist party loyalists worked at pharmaceutical companies that developed the coronavirus vaccine.As recently as mid-April, Fox News host Tucker Carlson opined that if the vaccine were truly effective, there’d be no reason for people who received it to wear masks or avoid physical contact.“So maybe it doesn’t work,” he said, “and they’re simply not telling you that.”Why then should anyone be surprised at the reluctance of Trump Republicans to get vaccinated? A recent New York Times analysis showed vaccination rates to be lower in counties where a majority voted for Trump in 2020. States that voted more heavily for Trump are also states where lower percentages of the population have been vaccinated.The Republican pollster Frank Luntz says Trump bears responsibility for the hesitancy of GOP voters to be vaccinated.“He wants to get the credit for developing the vaccine,” Luntz said. “Then he also gets the blame for so few of his voters taking it.”Trump’s Republican party is coming to resemble other authoritarian regimes around the world in other respects as well – purging truth tellers and trucking in lies, misinformation and propaganda harmful to the public.This week the GOP stripped Liz Cheney of her leadership position for telling the truth about the 2020 election. At last week’s congressional hearing about the 6 January attack on the Capitol, one Republican, Andrew Clyde, even denied it happened.“There was no insurrection,” he said. “To call it an insurrection is a bold-faced lie … you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”Biden says he plans to call a summit of democratic governments to contain the rise of authoritarianism around the world. I hope he talks about its rise in the US too – and the huge toll it’s already taken on Americans. More