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Shutdowns by Democratic governors did not cause the pandemic jobs crisis

InternationalJan 26. 2021

By The Washington Post · Andrew Van Dam

The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 416,000 Americans and recently pulled the U.S. economic recovery into reverse. Some states have shut down again to get a handle on surging caseloads. And critics have blamed those states’ governors, typically Democrats, for job losses.

But pandemic-related economic research shows the shutdowns aren’t killing jobs; the virus is.

In the first outbreaks last spring, people stayed home to avoid contracting the deadly novel coronavirus, regardless of what their governor said.

Indiana University economists Sumedha Gupta, Kosali Simon and Coady Wing reviewed more than 60 pandemic and social-distancing studies for a review article forthcoming in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. With the input of those economists and other experts, we’ve reviewed the basic data and some of the strongest research. Four facts emerged from the spring shutdowns.

If stay-at-home orders poisoned an otherwise healthy economy, business should have crumpled the moment they kicked in. But cellphone activity data analyzed by Gupta, Simon and Wing show a different trend: People started to stay home well before states imposed shutdowns.

In the chaotic early days of the pandemic, most people didn’t wait for official stay-at-home orders, Simon said. In every state, they stopped going to work around the weekend of March 14, as uncertainty soared, stock markets collapsed and the World Health Organization officially declared the coronavirus outbreak to be a pandemic.

Typically, economic data is measured in months, quarters and years. But when dealing with a pandemic that spreads so fast that it creates an exponential curve of runaway devastation, economists needed to measure changes in a matter of days. To do so, they harnessed a new generation of indicators based on cellphone activity and other alternative data sets from the private sector.

“Most of the economic damage we’ve seen is produced by people’s reaction to the virus,” Wing said. “Social distancing policies mattered, too, but they were layered on top of a major change in personal behavior.”

Business collapsed so quickly in mid-March that it’s tough to disentangle correlation and causation. But several high-profile teams of economists, armed with that high-frequency data and sophisticated statistical methods, arrived at similar conclusions.

In one such study, economists Chad Syverson and Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business used anonymized cellphone tracking data to compare traffic at businesses in shutdown areas with similar businesses in the same metro area (really, commuting zone) that weren’t shut down.

Business fell by more than half (53%) regardless of whether a place shut down, as people everywhere were trying not to leave their homes. In shutdown areas, activity fell another 7%, meaning shutdowns caused less than an eighth of the drop in business.

“If pandemic concern or fear leads both to people staying home and policymakers imposing lockdowns, then the fear is the true driving force,” Syverson said. “Economic declines and lockdowns happen to be correlated because they’re pushed by the same thing, even though one isn’t necessarily causing the other.”

Goolsbee and Syverson found that business activity declined even more in areas with more covid-19 deaths, which emphasizes the role that the fear of the virus played in keeping people at home. (Goolsbee chaired President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Great Recession before returning to the University of Chicago.)

One other piece of supporting evidence? The economists found that businesses that drew the largest crowds before the pandemic were the same ones that saw the sharpest declines, relative to their size. That indicates consumers were spooked by the virus and sought out stores they knew were likely to have few customers. That trend was especially pronounced in areas with worse coronavirus outbreaks.

If the shutdowns had been the major obstacle to business activity, consumer spending built up during the shutdown period would have been unleashed in a torrent of pent-up demand when the shutdown was lifted.

Instead, Goolsbee and Syverson found, economic activity returned about 5% faster in places that lifted their shutdowns compared with those areas not shut down.

When business didn’t return appreciably faster in areas that lifted their shutdowns, it was clear that shutdowns couldn’t be the primary reason people were staying away from businesses, Goolsbee said.

The Washington Post often hears from readers who blame job losses on Democratic governors who have often imposed shutdowns when coronavirus cases surge. If Democrats are really responsible for job losses, we would expect to see employment fall off the cliff in blue states while employment in red states sail on untouched. But even the simplest analysis shows job losses don’t depend solely on the governor’s party. Some red states struggled; some blue states thrived.

Gupta notes that readers are oversimplifying when they equate “Democrat” and “shut down.” A large majority of Republican-led states also shut down. But a trend emerges in the chart below. Red states, on average, have recovered slightly faster than blue states.

Ohio State University economist Bruce Weinberg warns that charts like this can obscure an obvious truth: “The states that have Democratic governors differ in many ways from the states that have Republican governors.”

For example, Republican states tend to have lower population density, and states with lower population density have added jobs more rapidly. To tease apart that correlation, compare the jobs recovery in counties of similar population density within red and blue states.

When we looked at job losses by the governor’s party, rural and suburban areas of red and blue states lost jobs and began to recover at almost exactly the same pace, regardless of which party was in charge. It was only the densest counties in states with Republican governors that saw slightly faster recoveries than those with Democratic governors. To take two extreme examples, compare the Ohio county containing Cincinnati, which has seen almost a complete recovery from the crisis under Republican Mike DeWine, to the boroughs of New York City. Under Democrat Andrew Cuomo, the five boroughs are still missing about 1 in 7 jobs lost in the crisis, Labor Department data shows.

Economists are reluctant to attribute the gap entirely to additional rounds of shutdowns in the densest urban areas, such as the counties containing New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. They caution that some of the largest cities in Democratic-led states were hit harder and faster by the virus, and may host more workers and industries that are vulnerable to the pandemic.

For example, New York City was hit so hard with the coronavirus last spring and it remains so incredibly dense, with tens of thousands of people living in apartment buildings on small city blocks, that even when the shutdown eased, people tended not to go out.

(We’re looking at jobs here – indicators such as the unemployment and labor-force participation rates show a smaller gap between states led by Republican or Democratic governors.)

When we step back, the most striking thing about this data is that, as the first wave of shutdown research would predict, there’s little difference in employment between red and blue states despite some variation in policy. After all, regardless of politics, American states all had one enormous thing in common in 2020: the coronavirus.

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Moderna vaccine protects against British and South African variants, company says

InternationalJan 26. 2021

By The Washington Post · Carolyn Y. Johnson

The coronavirus vaccine developed by Moderna triggers an immune response that protected against two variants of the virus first detected in Britain and South Africa in laboratory tests, the company said Monday.

But the reassuring news that vaccine-elicited antibodies remained effective against concerning new variants was tempered by an ominous finding. Those antibodies were less efficient at neutralizing the South African variant in a laboratory dish – a sixfold reduction in response foreshadowed by a small, but mounting body of evidence that has trickled out recently showing that the variant may have the potential to elude parts of the immune response.

As a precaution, Moderna announced it will launch two new studies. The company will test adding a third shot of its current vaccine to boost its two-dose regimen. Scientists have already designed an all-new vaccine specific to the South African variant that could be used as a booster to prime the immune system to the new strain, and plan to test it in the coming months.

“The virus is changing its stripes, and we will change to make sure we can beat the virus where it’s going,” Stephen Hoge, president of Moderna, said in an interview. “The unknown is would we feel it’s necessary to do that, would public health officials want this at that point or would they still be comfortable? What we’re trying to do is create an option.”

The detection of both variants late last year triggered immediate concern, first because of evidence they were spreading far more easily. But many of the mutations in each variant – eight of those found in the British variant and 10 of those in the South African variant – drew special concern because they sit in the spiky proteins that dot the outside of the coronavirus and have been the key target for vaccines and therapeutics. That raised the specter that the current generation of vaccines might be rendered obsolete before they have even been rolled out.

The company’s announcement puts some of those fears to rest, suggesting the vaccines will still work against both variants.

Antibody-containing blood serum taken from people and monkeys who received the vaccine was just as effective at blocking the British variant as the original strain of virus in the study, and remained above the threshold for efficacy for the South African variant, despite the diminution in effectiveness. The work has been submitted to a preprint server, but has not been peer-reviewed and was not available for review before publication.

The company reported a sixfold decrease in the ability of antibodies to block the virus – a drop that Hoge said was concerning but not alarming – underscoring the need to remain vigilant.

The report comes after similar news from Pfizer-BioNTech, which released data last week, also not yet peer-reviewed, showing that antibody-rich blood serum samples from 16 vaccinated people showed that vaccine was equally as effective at blocking the British variant as it was against the original version of the virus that took hold in Wuhan, China, a year ago. That publication did not address the South African variant, which has been of most concern and shares many mutations with a concerning variant detected in Brazil.

Laboratories across the world have been scrambling to study whether vaccines and treatments, particularly monoclonal antibodies, are likely to be as effective against the new variants. So far, such tests have mainly relied on one part of the multifaceted immune response and found evidence the vaccines are likely to be effective – but have underscored the need to track changes in the virus and prepare for the eventuality that, like flu shots, a coronavirus vaccine might need to be updated and administered on a regular basis.

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Biden to push Congress on stimulus after senators question cost

InternationalJan 25. 2021Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah, center, departs the Senate Chamber at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Jan. 22, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Stefani Reynolds.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jordan Fabian

President Joe Biden will escalate appeals for Congress to back his top priority, $1.9 trillion in pandemic relief, seeking to overcome Republican opposition to the plan as he enters his first full week in office.

Biden’s top economic adviser, Brian Deese, spent more than an hour on Sunday discussing the proposal with a bipartisan group of lawmakers. Some asked the White House to further justify what would be the second-largest emergency spending measure in U.S. history and expressed interest in a much narrower bill focused on accelerating coronavirus vaccine distribution, according to Senator Angus King of Maine and people familiar with the matter.

Deese and other officials provided details and context in response to the senators’ questions, according to an administration official. Senior White House aides plan to keep talking with lawmakers in both parties this week to hear their concerns but also press for urgent action, the official said.

As the president’s team began its work with key lawmakers, Biden is moving forward with another round of executive actions, following on a series of orders signed soon after he took office. On Monday, he will sign an order directing federal agencies to buy more American-made products and is expected to take other actions on criminal justice, climate, health care and immigration.

The new orders will add to roughly two dozen actions Biden has signed since Inauguration Day in an effort to address the coronavirus pandemic, reverse former President Donald Trump’s agenda and point the nation in a new direction.

While girding for what may be prolonged negotiations with Republicans, Biden received welcome news with the Senate’s decision to delay the start of Trump’s second impeachment trial. The president had urged lawmakers to spend more time filling Cabinet posts and working on his agenda. The Senate this week is expected to take up the nomination of Janet Yellen to lead the Treasury Department, which would fill a key vacancy at a critical moment for the economy.

But agreement has been hard to come by in the 50-50 Senate, where Democratic and Republican leaders have yet to reach a power-sharing deal — much less come to terms on the White House’s stimulus proposal.

Taken together, the developments show the honeymoon period of Biden’s presidency could be coming to a close mere days after he took office. The challenges raise questions about whether Biden can keep his pledge to unify the country while pushing forward with an ambitious policy agenda that addresses thorny issues. Biden’s aides have expressed optimism.

“By and large, we’ve seen a lot of progress on this front,” White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The coming days will also test Biden’s personal relationships with members of Congress, which his team said would help him get big things done in a divided Washington. For now, his lieutenants are taking the lead in trying to build some support for his stimulus and immigration bills.

Deese on Sunday spoke to a bipartisan group of 16 senators, including moderate Republican Senators Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, all of whom have expressed reservations about the price tag for Biden’s virus relief proposal.

Before the call, Romney described the $1.9 trillion cost “shocking,” considering a $900 billion stimulus Congress passed in late December. Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Romney called for targeted relief measures focused on ending the pandemic rather than another major stimulus package.

King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, said the White House should provide hard figures to show why such a large package is needed on the heels of December’s stimulus law.

“Part of what we’re asking for is more data — where did you get the number?” said King, who participated in Deese’s call.

A Democrat on the call, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, said that lawmakers need more information on how the last stimulus was used.

“I think that case can be better made when we get more transparency and better numbers about how the last $900 billion – much of which has started to go out – but I think the administration needs to be very transparent about how those dollars have been delivered,” Warner said in an interview on NPR.

Facing pressure from liberals for quick action, the White House has brushed aside the idea of cutting off bipartisan talks by using a maneuver called “budget reconciliation,” which would conceivably allow much of the legislation to pass through the Senate with only Democratic votes. Under normal rules, major legislation often needs 60 votes to pass the Senate, meaning Democrats would need at least 10 Republicans to advance Biden’s relief plan.

Yet Biden’s team has also resisted making changes favored by Republicans, such as reducing the package’s size, breaking it into smaller pieces or removing controversial items like a minimum wage increase.

“We were going to move fast and we’re going to move bipartisan,” Klain said. “I don’t think bipartisanship and speed are enemies of one another. The need is urgent. Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, are dying. Kids’ schools that take care of both Democratic and Republican kids are closed. People are on unemployment. People are in food lines. That’s not a party issue.”

In the meantime, the president plans to spend part of each day next week signing executive actions. Monday’s order will start the process of strengthening requirements for federal agencies to buy U.S.-made goods and services, according to administration officials. It will also tighten standards for how much of a product needs to be manufactured in the U.S. in order to be considered American-made.

Another batch of orders are expected to be aimed at racial justice. Among them are directives to create a federal commission on police reform, limit the transfer of military equipment to police and wind down the use of private prisons.

Biden also plans to sign actions that elevate climate change as a national security and regulatory priority and convene a summit of world leaders on April 22 to discuss the issue.

The president is also expected to rescind a controversial rule blocking U.S. funding for foreign groups that provide abortions, known as the Mexico City policy, and sign an order bolstering Medicaid and Obamacare.

On immigration, Biden plans to sign actions that restore the U.S. asylum and refugee systems that largely ground to a halt under Trump. He’s expected to direct a review of a Trump-era rule that tightened criteria for refusing entry to potential immigrants on the grounds they would become dependent on government assistance. Biden also plans to form a task force to reunite migrant children with guardians separated from them under Trump’s border policies.

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Riots explode across Netherlands over covid restrictions

InternationalJan 25. 2021

By The Washington Post · Erin Cunningham

Dutch rioters who attacked police and destroyed property over the weekend while protesting new coronavirus measures are “criminals,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Monday, as law enforcement warned that the violence could last for weeks.

The unrest across the Netherlands, some of the worst in decades, had “nothing to do with protest,” Rutte told reporters outside his office in The Hague, news agencies reported.

“This is criminal violence and we will treat as such,” he said.

Protesters had gathered in defiance of lockdown orders in at least 10 towns and cities Sunday, looting stores and clashing with police after authorities imposed a new nighttime curfew – the first in the Netherlands since World War II.

The curfew, from 9:00 p.m. to 4:30 a.m., tightens an already strict lockdown aimed at curbing coronavirus infections and comes amid fears that a new, more contagious variant, first identified in Britain, will cause a surge in cases.

Bars and restaurants have been closed in the Netherlands since October and schools and shops were shuttered in December. The government has recorded some 944,000 coronavirus infections and more than 13,500 deaths.

On Sunday, police deployed dogs, a water cannon and mounted officers to disperse a demonstration in central Amsterdam, arresting nearly 200 people, the Reuters news agency reported. In the fishing village of Urk Saturday, youth torched a coronavirus testing center and clashed with local media and police.

Some of the worst violence flared in Eindhoven in the south, where rioters threw stones, knives and fireworks at police and damaged the local railway station, Dutch media reported.

A far-right, anti-immigration group, Pegida, had previously called a demonstration in the city and said they would use the protest to burn copies of the Quran. The protest in Amsterdam was also organized by anti-lockdown groups on the messaging app Telegram, according to local media.

“My city is crying, and so am I,” Eindhoven Mayor John Jorritsma told media Sunday night, the Associated Press reported. He called the rioters “the scum of the earth,” adding that he was afraid the country was headed toward “civil war.”

On Monday, a spokesperson for the national police union said that law enforcement was preparing for more unrest.

“I hope it was a one-off,” Koen Simmers said of the unrest this weekend, in an interview with the Dutch program Nieuwsuur. “But I’m afraid it was a harbinger for the coming days and weeks.”

“The police are well prepared,” he said. “But I hope that it is not necessary.”

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Mexican President López Obrador tests positive for the coronavirus

InternationalJan 25. 2021

By The Washington Post · Mary Beth Sheridan, Kevin Sieff

MEXICO CITY – Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced Sunday night that he had tested positive for the coronavirus and was experiencing “light” symptoms. He said he would step away from his daily news conferences while being treated for the illness.

López Obrador has frequently minimized the severity of the pandemic, and he has rarely worn a mask, even as covid-19, the illness the novel coronavirus can cause, has claimed nearly 150,000 lives in Mexico. That’s the fourth-highest total in the world, and the 19th-highest as a percentage of the population, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

After Mexico’s 70-day shutdown at the beginning of the pandemic, the president resumed his frequent travels through the country. He has been criticized for appearing in selfies with his supporters.

“I am sorry to inform you that I am infected with COVID-19,” the president said in a tweet. “The symptoms are light, but I am getting medical treatment. As always, I am optimistic. We will carry on.”

He added that he would remain in his living quarters at the National Palace and would have a telephone conversation as scheduled on Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss shipments to Mexico of the Sputnik vaccine.

At 67, and with hypertension, López Obrador could be at risk of developing complications from the virus. He had a heart attack in 2013. Mexico has administered about 600,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, but the president has said he would wait for his shot until after front-line medical personnel and older citizens received theirs.

Mexican authorities on Sunday reported 10,872 more confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus and 530 deaths. The government has tallied more than 1.7 million cases. But the real total is considered higher: A recent government study based on antibody tests estimated that one-quarter of the population of about 126 million people has been infected.

The president has been regularly tested for the virus, and he insists that he keeps strict social-distancing rules in his office.

López Obrador, a folksy icon of the left, took office in December 2018. He has remained popular, with approval ratings of about 60%, despite the mounting death toll from covid-19 and a severe economic crisis linked to the pandemic.

But the president’s decisions to rarely wear a mask in public, and his statements minimizing the pandemic, have frustrated many in Mexico.

“In a country where government and president are often the same thing, and where the president is a continuous presence both in social and traditional media, his minimizing of the pandemic and his refusal to wear a mask have definitely encouraged people to downplay the dangers of this deadly virus,” said Esteban Illades, a prominent Mexican journalist.

“Hopefully, the president’s covid diagnosis will show the general population that not wearing a mask makes it easier to become infected.”

Several cabinet members previously tested positive for the coronavirus. The president was in the state of San Luis Potosí over the weekend and was photographed without a mask.

López Obrador has been in close contact with a range of senior Mexican officials over the weekend, including the secretary of defense and the secretary of foreign relations, along with a number of well-known Mexican business leaders. There is now concern that the virus could spread widely within those circles.

Jaime Rodríguez Calderón, the governor of Nuevo León, met with López Obrador on Saturday and said he would “watch my symptoms so that if any appear, I’ll take a test.”

Carlos Bravo Regidor, a political analyst, said: “It is kind of surprising that [López Obrador] didn’t catch it before, particularly given his reluctance to wear a mask and his insistence on still having plenty of meetings with officials and even traveling, most recently to Guerrero, San Luis Potosí and Nuevo León.”

He noted that many public servants who frequently wear masks take them off in his presence – “probably as a very screwed-up sign of discipline or deference.”

Early in the pandemic, López Obrador was mocked for saying he could ward off the virus with religious amulets. His tone has since become more serious. The Mexico City region went into another shutdown in mid-December as cases soared during a period of holiday parties and shopping.

Critics have assailed the government for its handling of the pandemic, noting that the country has among the lowest percentage of testing of any in the hemisphere. López Obrador has defended his record, noting that Mexico scaled up its hospital capacity considerably and ordered more than 100,000 doses of vaccine.

Contributing to the country’s death toll are many factors, including widespread comorbidities such as obesity and diabetes, and Mexicans’ reluctance to go to the hospital until their cases are advanced. Nearly 60% of the population works in the informal sector, and many have needed to go to work despite the pandemic precautions. López Obrador has been criticized for not approving a major stimulus program to help such people stay home.

The news of the president’s diagnosis ignited an outpouring of good wishes from critics and supporters.

“You’re going to be fine President. I’m sure of that. Your strength, conviction and love for life and for what you represent give us this certainty,” tweeted Claudia Sheinbaum, the mayor of Mexico City, an ally of the president’s. She survived the coronavirus last year.

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Thai resident in Japan shares amazing experience with snow sculptures

InternationalJan 25. 2021Photo credit: Hokkaido Diary 北海道ソーグッド

By THE NATION

A Thai resident in the small town of Chippubetsu in Hokkaido prefecture shared notes and photographs of this year’s snow festival on her Facebook page “Hokkaido Diary”.

Photo credit: Hokkaido Diary 北海道ソーグッド

She said she helped local residents build a snow sculpture of the popular Japanese cartoon character Doraemon, complete with a face mask, and that later she was asked to carve out a Thai version of the message “don’t give up”.

Photo credit: Hokkaido Diary 北海道ソーグッド

The Facebook user said the sculpture took two days of hard work to complete, adding that she was impressed by people’s unity and teamwork. She said even people above the age of 60 gave them a helping hand.

Photo credit: Hokkaido Diary 北海道ソーグッド

The sculpture will stand tall outside city hall until February 7, when it will be torn down, she said.

Photo credit: Hokkaido Diary 北海道ソーグッド