Biden bets that he can remake economy without negative side effects
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden, fresh off a victory on a large stimulus package, is pitching another $4 trillion in spending to make bold investments in the nations physical infrastructure and human capital in what he says will spur growth, create a more equitable economy and make the United States more competitive with China – without any negative side effects.
It’s a bold experiment that hasn’t been tested in the modern U.S. economy. This year and next, forecasters are predicting a burst in hiring and growth that will rapidly heal most financial wounds from the pandemic. But how Biden’s big tax and spending proposals would impact the economic recovery for years to come is much debated.
The latest proposal in Biden’s economic agenda would spend another $1.8 trillion, mostly on education, child care and family and medical leave programs, but that would be on top of $2.3 trillion in proposed infrastructure investment and the $1.9 trillion that Congress passed in March as an emergency response to the pandemic.
The biggest concern is that the economy will overheat from so much stimulus, triggering rapidly rising prices that would make it difficult for middle-class families to afford goods and force policymakers to slow growth to contain inflation. Already there are pockets of concern with used car prices up nearly 10% and meat, including beef and pork chops, up almost 6% over the past year.
To pay for this new spending, Biden wants significant tax increases on the wealthy and corporations, but some economists and business leaders warn this has the potential to backfire. Higher taxes can stymie new investment in the private sector, curb enthusiasm for starting new businesses, and even push existing U.S. companies to move overseas.
Separately, some economists worry that spending so much to strengthen the government safety net has the potential to dissuade some lower-income workers from working, especially in lower-paying jobs that continue to dominate much of the service sector.
“The philosophy behind the Biden administration is everyone can have more. We can have the cake and eat it, too. There is no price to pay in terms of inflation, higher interest rates or slower growth,” said Sung Won Sohn, a professor of finance and economics at Loyola Marymount University and a former bank executive. “If they are wrong, the price tag will be pretty high.”
The White House argues there’s minimal risk of these negative consequences coming to pass and that the benefits for the economy – and people’s well-being – far outweigh any costs. Biden’s team also wants to see tangible improvements in reducing inequality and climate change, not just faster growth. But this debate about how big to go and what the trade-offs are will play out in the coming months, and the arguments will shape the thinking of key senate votes like those from Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
“The is not a stimulus package,” said Heather Boushey, a top Biden economic adviser. “These are long-term investments spread out over the next couple of years, depending on the program. I think that tempers the inflation risk.”
Boushey also stressed that expanding child care, paid leave and pre-K schooling should lead to more parents working, which also reduces the inflation risk.
The tab to repair damage from the pandemic is nearly $6 trillion, making Republicans and some Democrats queasy about spending another $4 trillion so soon. While the White House proposes raising some taxes to pay for the latest initiatives, there is nothing in the package to address the existing debt, which is already at the highest level since World War II, and widened by the recovery efforts.
“The big sea-change is the Democrats have very much let go of the worries about the size of the federal deficit or inflation that’s associated with it,” said Tim Duy, a professor at the University of Oregon and chief U.S. economist at SGH Macro Advisors. “There’s room for Biden to turn this into a 21st Century New Deal. Whether he can follow through on that remains to be seen.”
The American Families Plan that Biden unveiled Wednesday is Biden’s most liberal yet in many ways. It dramatically expands education in the United States, offering two years of free community college and preschool for all three and four-year-olds. It would eventually make 12 weeks of paid family leave available to all, along with reducing child-care costs for most and increasing government payments to low- and middle-income families with kids.
At heart, the Biden economic team’s rationale is that more Americans are likely to work if affordable child-care is more widely available, and it’s easier to obtain education beyond high school. Men without college degrees have been dropping out of the labor force for three decades as muscle jobs in factories declined in the increasingly digital economy. More recently, the pandemic wiped out a generation of women’s gains in the working world as many mothers had to scale back their jobs to care for children during the pandemic. The White House believes it can reverse these trends, which should boost growth in addition to making people’s lives easier.
“These investments are the kinds of investments that will boost labor supply, particularly for women and caregivers,” said Boushey, the White House economist.
Over the past decade, there has been a major push, especially on the left, to address the untapped potential of getting more women into the workforce and raising incomes for those at the bottom through a higher minimum wage and direct government payments to workers.
“We have ignored the whole human capital side of the economy too long,” said Diane Lim, an economist who writes the Economist Mom blog. “Republicans say these programs are just social welfare spending and that’s wasteful. The way to push back on that is to explain that there’s a lot of supply side human capital that will be freed up if caregiving is subsidized.”
Many of the policies in this latest Biden plan have public support. Some economists worry they will not be fully paid for. New spending programs would balloon the yearly deficit further, causing more government borrowing and potentially less private sector investment.
According to White House estimates, the latest plan would raise $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years from tax increases and tighter tax enforcement, which does not quite cover the $1.8 trillion cost. The White House says the plan would be fully paid over 15 years.
“This is very strange budgeting from my perspective. It is fuzzy. It is definitely fuzzy,” said William Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former Senate Budget Committee staff member. “They’re going to spend $1.8 trillion in this package over 10 years but pay for it over 15 years.”
The White House argues a 10-year budget “window” is arbitrary and the changes the president is proposing will likely bring in enough revenue over time to more than pay for the new programs.
“The way we budget for these plans is responsible,” said David Kamin, deputy director of the National Economic Council. “These are investments with long-term benefits for the economy. Using conservative assumptions, the plans are fully paid for over a 15-year period and would, in fact, produce deficit reduction over the long term.”
The White House is also hoping to raise $700 billion in new revenue over the next decade from the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing big companies and rich households. While there is a lot of support for doing this, some say it’s highly unlikely to raise that much revenue.
“I’m sure they’ll raise a great deal of money, but $700 billion is a tall order,” said Mark Everson, the former IRS Commissioner from 2003 to 2007 who is now vice chairman at alliantgroup, a tax consulting firm.
Another budget oddity is the American Families Plan only extends a key payment for families with children for a few years. Biden’s signature plan to reduce child poverty is a $3,000 per child payment (it would be $3,600 per child under age 6) to low- and moderate-income parents. Biden wants to make this a permanent new program, but his plan only calls for funding it through 2025.
Other economists are skeptical that anything outside of perhaps large-scale immigration can increase U.S. labor force participation, especially with so many baby boomers retiring from work. The latest U.S. Census from 2020 also shows the slowest population growth in 90 years as the nation’s birthrate continues to decline.
“I am not convinced any policies will change the long-term trend of declining labor force participation,” said economist Sohn.
Taken together, Biden’s three major economic policies ― the emergency spending bill, the infrastructure plan and this latest family plan ― represent a massive boost in government investment in the economy and a significant increase in the incomes of lower-income Americans who stand to gain the most from the various programs and tax changes.
“It is not enough to restore where we were before the pandemic. We need to build a stronger economy that does not leave anyone behind – we need to build back better,” wrote the White House in its announcement of the American Families Plan.
Economists, even on the Democratic side, say Biden is taking a gamble. If his team’s assumptions are correct that inflation can be kept under control while job options expand for many lower and middle-class Americans, it will be a significant policy win. But there’s also a chance his strategy leads to unwanted side effects like higher inflation that former Clinton and Obama adviser Larry Summers and others have warned about.
Inflation is the economic equivalent of a termite problem, it can often go under the radar for years and by the time it surfaces as a major red flag, it takes dramatic action to reverse its effects, such as having to send the U.S. economy into a recession to end the 1970s inflation problem.
For now, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell pledges he can keep inflation under control and that the economy can afford to have inflation a little high for a while since it has been so low for so long. But any sign that is changing will cause a quick reaction in markets, dinging confidence in the recovery.
“If there’s a unifying theme from both [Powell and Biden], it’s a desire to move quickly and impose massive medicine in a bold experiment to drive the economy – and employment – much higher despite the obvious inflation risks,” wrote Greg Valliere of AGF asset management in a note to clients. “At what point could the Biden and Powell medicine become an overdose? We may find out this summer.”
A more nuanced debate is taking shape over whether Biden’s policies might dissuade some lower-income Americans from returning to work, especially parents who are slated to begin receiving monthly child payments in July on top of stimulus payments and, for some, an extra $300 a week in unemployment. Fast food companies and other restaurants are complaining that they cannot find enough workers. Many liberal economists argue that if low-wage jobs paid more and did not have such harsh conditions, people would be more eager to return to work.
For many in Congress, the tax debate is likely to be the most fraught. The higher income tax on the wealthy would impact individuals and families earning over $400,000. And tax changes on corporations, while popular, often end up getting passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices or lower wages. And it can hurt long-run growth if businesses scale back on investments in new products and technologies.
But the Biden team is betting that Americans are ready to embrace bigger government that delivers more services and benefits to them, especially after two deep recessions and years of lackluster middle-class income growth.
Polling indicates that support for smaller government is at the lowest level since 1984. A recent Washington Post-ABC news poll found high support for larger government among people under 40 and minorities, suggesting a generational shift in what people want from government economic policy.
“Everybody was running around in 2008 trying to save the banking system. Now there’s a very different effort this time to save the day-care centers,” said Betsey Stevenson, a University of Michigan economist who served in the Obama administration. “We shouldn’t just be asking what policies will do for long-run growth. We should also be asking what they will do for our well-being.”
Biden will pledge to tackle immigration in address to Congress
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden will recommit himself to overhauling the immigration system Wednesday during his first address to Congress, while signaling openness to Congress passing smaller parts of his agenda that have bipartisan support, including guaranteeing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.
Biden will call on Congress to pass his immigration proposal, which includes a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants and funding for security upgrades at the border and ports of entry, according to an administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the address ahead of its public release. The move marks an attempt by Biden to show his seriousness on immigration policy at a time when he is under attack from Republicans over the migrant surge at the border and from Democrats over his handling of how many refugees should be allowed into the country.
Biden fulfilled his campaign promise to send an immigration bill to Congress on the first day of his administration, but the legislation has taken a back seat to more pressing issues for the White House, such as the recently enacted coronavirus relief bill and his infrastructure proposal.
Even without the political fallout from the administration’s handling of a surge of Central American migrants at the border, a comprehensive immigration bill would be difficult to get through Congress given the need to secure at least 10 Senate Republican votes for its passage.
Given this political reality, according to the official, Biden will also use his address to a joint session of Congress to push for more targeted legislation that would guarantee a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, known as “dreamers,” allow farmworkers already in the country to earn legal status and ease restrictions on visas for seasonal agricultural workers. Both bills passed the House with bipartisan support: The dreamers bill passed with nine Republican votes, while the farmworkers legislation had the support of 30 Republicans.
To make his sell, especially to skeptical Republicans, Biden will outline how immigrants play a crucial role in maintaining a healthy and competitive economy, the official said.
Former president Donald Trump made restricting immigration a signature issue during his time in office and often used harsh rhetoric, which was at times called racist, to describe foreigners seeking to come to the United States. Many Republicans rallied behind this agenda, including Trump’s campaign to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, making any bipartisan deals a nonstarter.
But with Trump out of office, there have been some signs that there could be agreement between the parties on some immigration issues.
A bipartisan group of 14 senators – five Republicans and nine Democrats – are meeting in hopes of striking a deal on a narrower immigration compromise that would marry border security priorities important to Republicans with a pathway to citizenship for farmworkers and dreamers. Senators are discussing all bills that have been introduced, including a bipartisan measure recently proposed by Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., on border security. These talks, however, are not very far along and a deal would be difficult to strike.
Biden is also expected to applaud Vice President Kamala Harris for her work on engaging with El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala – the Northern Triangle countries many migrants are leaving to escape violence and poverty. Republicans have criticized Harris for not traveling to the southern U.S. border to assess the situation there, but the White House has dismissed these attacks, noting that her assignment is to deal with the cause of the migration as other administration officials focus on problems at the border.
Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are continuing to push Biden to include parts of proposed immigration legislation into the second plank of his infrastructure package, the “American Families Plan,” which he plans to announce on Wednesday. Although it is not expected to be included, caucus members may be pleased with the president’s attention to immigration during his first speech before Congress.
The handful of caucus members who met with Biden last week urged him to mention his support of the bills already proposed in Congress.
In June 2012, President Barack Obama issued an executive order that allowed dreamers to stay in the country and work without the threat of being deported. Democrats have been seeking to codify that program ever since, particularly after it survived Trump’s attempt to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the policy’s official name.
Many Republicans have expressed support for permanently addressing the fate of dreamers, and it remains at the center of any potential immigration deal.
“I have always said that I’m open to finding – it doesn’t necessarily have to be the U.S. Citizenship Act, but it has to be more robust than dreamers,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “If dreamers is all that happens, the community won’t be happy and I won’t be.”
As for Republicans, several strategists responsible for political messaging said that striking a deal on immigration may dampen efforts to pressure Biden on the migrant surge at the border, which Republicans have grabbed onto as a political issue.
“What we really need is for [Biden] to admit that his policies and rhetoric caused the crisis. The results of this crisis are as predictable as they are disastrous – for both migrants and American citizens,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said on the House floor last week while the chamber debated legislation that would bar future presidents from implementing countrywide travel bans – a bill introduced in response to Trump’s attempt early in his administration to ban travelers from several majority-Muslim countries.
Biden rescinded Trump’s travel ban on Muslim countries during his first day as president, completing a campaign promise.
Republicans blame Biden policies – such as his decision to halt the construction of Trump’s border wall and an order clarifying that only undocumented immigrants who pose a national, border or public security risk should be deported – as reasons there are currently problems dealing with the number of migrants at the border.
“These priorities are almost a parody of left-wing governance,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said last week. “Not securing the border. Not a better plan for these children. Just ‘woke’ proofreading. This is not going to get the job done.”
Biden has defended his approach, saying many of Trump’s policies were inhumane and that the flow of migrants at the border is, in part, seasonal.
The president has faced the fiercest backlash from his party for breaking his promise to raise the cap on the number of refugees that can be admitted to the United States each year. The White House quickly reversed course and said it will have a new proposal out soon.
Biden faced sharp criticism from activists early on in his campaign for not paying enough attention to the Hispanic community, a mistake he tried to reverse by pledging to send Congress an immigration bill on his first day as president.
Since taking office, Biden has taken several actions on immigration to fulfill promises he made on the campaign trail, such as signing an executive order that created a task force to unite 600 children separated from their parents during the Trump administration. He has partially completed some promises, like preventing undocumented military veterans from deportation and streamlining the naturalization process. He also attempted to pause deportations for his first 100 days, a move that was blocked by a judge in Texas.
Russians reject vaccines as Kremlin fears new covid-19 wave
Facing a rising wave of covid-19 infections and a vaccination rate that isnt keeping up, the Kremlin is trying to contain the epidemic without alarming Russians. Even insiders worry it wont succeed.
Unofficial government statistics show the third wave has begun, according to two officials with knowledge of the situation, who asked not to be identified in order to speak candidly. Months of upbeat assessments from the Kremlin that the situation is under control have depressed demand for vaccines, as much of the population no longer fears the virus, the officials said.
“Of course, we expect demand for the vaccines will grow,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call Wednesday, adding that data shows there isn’t a third wave currently.
“Indeed, there is an upswing, but this is not a wave, but rather a gradual little rise,” Vadim Pokrovsky, head of the Russian healthcare watchdog’s epidemiology institute, told the Govorit Moskva radio station Wednesday.
Moscow’s seven-day average of new infections is at the highest since January and it is adding cases faster than the U.K., which has more than five times the population. The national total has stalled at around 9,000 new daily cases, down from nearly 30,000 in December.
Russia is publicly projecting confidence over its handling of the pandemic after President Vladimir Putin rejected a second lockdown in favor of prioritizing the economy when infections surged last year, in contrast to many European leaders. While the economy is rebounding, it has come at the cost of one of the world’s highest death tolls.
The government continues to reject new domestic restrictions, though it recently barred travel to some popular tourist destinations including Turkey to reduce risks from imported strains.
Putin on Friday ordered weekdays made non-working between Russia’s May 1 and May 9 holidays after officials said it would help reduce the spread of the virus by curbing travel.
“The new trend points to the situation possibly becoming more difficult,” Anna Popova, head of Russia’s public health watchdog, told the president.
It’s “absolutely wrong” to talk of a third wave currently, a spokesperson for Russia’s virus response center said Wednesday.
Persuading Russians to take one of three domestic vaccines developed against covid-19 is proving a harder task amid ingrained public skepticism toward officials. Moscow has resorted to offering gift cards worth 1,000 rubles ($13) to motivate people aged over 60 to get their shots.
About two-thirds of Russians say they don’t want the vaccine, said Denis Volkov, an analyst at the independent Levada Center pollster. “Many people say, ‘why should I get a vaccine if the state doesn’t force me to?'” he said.
Vaccination centers operate at shopping malls in the capital to encourage people to get the free shots, including at GUM on Red Square.
“There were lines only during the first few days,” said Svetlana Reshetina, an administrator at the center. “I haven’t gotten vaccinated myself. I don’t trust it yet.”
Eva Avenel, 47, said she traveled from a Moscow suburb to be vaccinated after learning that Putin had his shot last month. “My friends kept trying to talk me out of it, saying it was harmful,” but she trusts Putin and “if he’s done it, then so have I,” she said.
Putin has touted Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine as a world leader, though domestic uptake lags and only about 8% of the population has received a dose.
Vaccination rates are improving and some 12.1 million people have had a first shot, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said Tuesday.
Russia needs 69 million people with antibodies either from vaccines or through recovery from illness to achieve herd immunity, according to Golikova. Putin has called for that threshold to be reached by the fall.
There’s little help from many Russian physicians, who “don’t have enough information about the vaccines and have a high level of distrust in them,” said Evelina Zakamskaya, editor-in-chief of Russia’s Doctor television station. “Very often patients make their decisions based on doctors’ anti-recommendations.”
A third wave in Russia is unavoidable, according to Alexander Dragan, an independent data analyst who estimates less than half of Russians have antibodies.
“It’s still not clear how viable the idea of herd immunity is with covid,” Dragan said. “In Brazil, the latest wave has been worse than the previous ones, despite the clearly high percentage of people who have had it.”
Published : April 29, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Evgenia Pismennaya, Jake Rudnitsky
The CDC changed its mask guidance for vaccinated Americans. Other countries are taking different approaches.
With some countries rapidly inoculating their populations against the coronavirus, and pandemic fatigue deepening, a common question has reverberated around the world: When can the masks come off?
In the United States, fully vaccinated individuals can now leave their masks behind when walking, jogging, biking or dining with friends outdoors, federal officials said Tuesday. Ditching a mask at small outdoor gatherings is also deemed safe, but the CDC still recommends masks for indoor activities.
More than 52% of eligible people in the United States have received at least one shot, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance followed calls from public health experts to relax mask mandates outdoors, where transmission is less likely. But officials warned that crowded outdoor events – like sporting events and concerts – are still dangerous, so both vaccinated and unvaccinated attendees should keep their masks on.
Masks – and requirements to don them – have prompted debate around the world since the start of the pandemic. Widely accepted in some places, they have been protested or completely forgone in others. In the United States, federal guidelines have shifted over time, and individual states have imposed different requirements. Mask-wearing became highly politicized, complicating efforts to enforce usage. But in places like Hong Kong and Japan, face coverings were widely worn even before the pandemic, so everyday mask-wearing easily became routine.
Studies show that wearing masks is one of the most effective ways to reduce coronavirus transmission. Some public health experts argue that societal immunity isn’t yet high enough to take them off – particularly since vaccines are not 100% effective and questions remain about whether vaccinated people can transmit the virus. Some experts suggest that wearing a mask even if vaccinated can send a powerful signal to unvaccinated individuals – such as children – to do the same.
Other countries where sizable portions of the population are vaccinated have taken different approaches. Here’s a look at a few.
– Israel
With the majority of its population now fully vaccinated, Israelis are flocking to restaurants, bars and concerts. Life in Israel is beginning to resemble a pre-pandemic reality – as evidenced by the recent proliferation of bare Israeli faces.
Earlier this month, the Israeli government lifted a mask mandate that had been in place for more than a year. Israelis are no longer required to wear masks outdoors, though masks are still obligatory in indoor public places and the Health Ministry recommends that people continue to wear them outside and at large gatherings. In schools, kids still have to wear masks indoors but can shed them between classes, while eating, or during gym class, according to the Times of Israel.
New daily coronavirus infections, which peaked at around 10,000 per day, now hover in the 80s. But health officials have said the pandemic isn’t over – and they’re keeping an eye on new variants that could prove more resistant to vaccines.
Still, reflecting many Israelis’ newfound optimism that the pandemic is almost behind them, Tel Aviv beachgoer Tzuriel Arviv told The Washington Post this month that he’s beginning to let his guard down.
“We had all kinds of habits,” Arviv said. “We would check ourselves, ‘Do we have a mask?’ Who ever imagined such a thing before? But now, we can forget it.”
– The United Kingdom
Previously a global virus hot spot – and the place where a particularly infectious and deadly variant was first detected – the U.K. has seen covid cases drop substantially from a peak in January.
More than 33 million people have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the BBC. Nineteen percent are fully vaccinated – but since the government is now prioritizing distributing first jabs, it could be a while before the rest of the population catches up.
Mask rules and other virus-related restrictions vary across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In England, home of extensive debate over mask-wearing and an initially resistant government, face coverings became mandatory on public transportation in June and inside shops and supermarkets in July. A host of other indoor settings also joined the list. Violators can be fined, though enforcement has been spotty.
Northern Ireland has mandated face coverings in shops since August and banks, restaurants, cafes and certain offices since October – but in businesses where social distancing systems are in place, masks aren’t required. Scotland’s government puts it bluntly: “you need to wear a face covering even if you have been vaccinated.” Masks must be worn in most indoor public and communal spaces there, and Scottish authorities recommend wearing face coverings outdoors where social distancing is tricky. Wales, meanwhile, still mandates that people over the age of 11 wear masks in all indoor public places.
As its vaccination campaign proceeds apace, the U.K. is rolling back restrictions in stages this spring. Public health conditions permitting, England aims to remove all legal limits on social contact by the end of June. But Health Secretary Matt Hancock has said that even when requirements lift, he hopes masks become the norm on public transport as a matter of “personal responsibility.”
– The United Arab Emirates
As infections in Dubai spiked in April 2020, the U.A.E. imposed a mask mandate and fined violators around $800 for noncompliance. Face coverings are required in public places, public transportation or commercial centers, when walking in “high-density public areas” outside and in private transportation. They can be removed when driving alone or with family, eating or drinking at restaurants, exercising or undergoing certain medical and beauty treatments. Children under 6 and people with qualifying medical conditions are exempted from the mandate.
With a harsh lockdown and strict enforcement system, the Gulf country brought its first coronavirus wave under control by the summer. Dubai opened its doors to tourists from across the world late last year, marketing itself as a restriction-free holiday destination. The influx led to a surge of coronavirus infections in January, prompting a reimposition of some restrictions and adding urgency to the Emirates’ aggressive vaccination campaign.
The U.A.E. has run one of the fastest vaccination campaigns in the world, and everyone in the country has been eligible for a vaccine since mid-March. But there has been some concern about the efficacy of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine, a critical component of the U.A.E.’s vaccine drive. After a small number of people showed a weak antibody response after receiving two doses, some are being invited to receive a third booster shot.
For now, the mask mandate remains in place. But as the country races toward full vaccination, it appears the government may shift its focus to penalizing those who haven’t received the shot. Saif Al Dhaheri, a spokesman for the U.A.E.’s National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority, said in a statement last week that “strict measures are being considered to restrict the movement of unvaccinated individuals” and to bar them from entering certain places and accessing some services.
Glacial pace of vaccinations threatens Japans Olympic moment
In the race to vaccinate citizens against covid-19, Japan should be a front-runner. It has nearly universal health care coverage and pharmaceutical prowess, not to mention a pending national election, a large elderly population and the looming Olympics to motivate political leaders to move fast.
Yet it has the dubious distinction of being among the worst performers when it comes to inoculations. Japan has given enough doses to cover just 1.1% of its population, the lowest among the 37 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker. That compares to 36% in the U.S. and nearly 35% in the U.K.
Within Asia, it trails China, India, Singapore and South Korea and is only slightly ahead of lower-income nations like the Philippines and Thailand.
Following Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s declaration of a state of emergency in some areas on April 23 to tamp down a new wave of infections, some frustrated Japanese are looking enviously at vaccine programs elsewhere and asking why their government hasn’t moved as quickly. After a year of watching devastating scenes unfold in places like the U.S. while the pathogen was relatively contained at home, it now seems like the tables have turned.
“I want vaccinations to proceed at warp speed,” billionaire Hiroshi Mikitani, CEO of e-commerce giant Rakuten Inc., tweeted on Tuesday. “Like America.”
Until recently, Japanese could take comfort knowing their country had responded better to the pandemic than its peers in the West. Since there was never a dizzying surge in cases and deaths, they didn’t clamor for covid-19 shots. But with the Olympics in three months and a third state of emergency upon them, public frustration appears to be growing, raising the pressure on Suga’s government to move more quickly.
He’s now instructed the Defense Minister to use the military to set up a mass vaccination site in Tokyo, the capital city, the first time the national government has directly engaged in vaccination administration — which had been devolved to municipal officials to carry out. Suga faces a party leadership poll in September and must call a general election by October.
It’s too little, too late, for some citizens.
Ray Fujii, a Tokyo-based partner at L.E.K. Consulting whose clients include health-care companies, blames the government’s lackluster preparation for the delay. While a slow supply of vaccines from Pfizer Inc. was to blame early on, that’s no longer the case, he said. Japan has likely received more than 15 million doses of the Pfizer shot, according to figures and estimates provided by the government in March.
“It’s not about Pfizer not shipping enough vaccines or we don’t have enough vaccines yet,” he said, instead putting the blame on poor distribution and lack of preparation. “It delays everyone’s business opportunities in Japan, so that pushes back the economic recovery from covid-19.”
Domestic polls conducted in recent months show as many as 80% of residents want to be immunized, and nearly half of those in a global survey by Ipsos and the World Economic Forum said they would get the shot within a month if it were available to them.
Japan’s slow rollout stems from several factors. The nation has a history of vaccine skepticism, dating back to an unproven scare about the safety of MMR shots in the 1990s, which made officials tread cautiously.
It also has a conservative medical culture, with people trusting only doctors and nurses to administer vaccines. A recent proposal to have dentists join in the effort created a debate over whether they were qualified.
A law that hands the responsibility of vaccinations to local municipalities resulted in uneven progress and frustration with the glacial movement of some community authorities. “Testing” of a new online reservation system added weeks to the delay.
Spared the rising death rates of other countries, Japan’s politicians and regulators also moved more carefully in greenlighting immunizations. So far, Japan has only authorized the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
Like India and China, Japan has always required pharmaceutical companies to conduct clinical trials locally before applying for approval, rather than accept data from studies done elsewhere, a rule that slows the process down substantially. Unlike India and China, Japanese companies didn’t develop homegrown covid-19 vaccines.
“From a crisis management perspective, I do think this will kick off a discussion about the need to have a made-in Japan vaccine,” said Tetsuo Nakayama, a professor at the Kitasato Institute for Life Sciences, whose research focuses on vaccines. “Coronavirus won’t end, it’ll likely continue into next year and the next, and people will want a made-in-Japan vaccine.”
While Japanese companies like Tokyo-based Daiichi Sankyo Co. are working on vaccine trials, they are far behind Western rivals. Daiichi has started the first phase of a local trial for an mRNA vaccine and will need to conduct a larger study before the shot can be approved.
“In Japan, vaccine development is very difficult,” said Masayuki Yabuta, executive officer for Daiichi Sankyo’s biologics division, citing nervousness around the experimental technology. The Covid-19 pandemic is the first time that the mRNA platform has been used in a vaccine; it’s now proven to be extraordinarily effective.
The delay in rolling out vaccines “has made us question how advanced Japan is in the context of adopting new technologies or accelerating even the development of Japan-originated innovation,” said John W. Carlson, co-chair of the health-care committee at the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan.
Vaccinations are expected to speed up in May as municipalities get the hang of the process, said Taro Kono, the cabinet minister in charge of the vaccination rollout.
Still, even an increased pace won’t result in covering a significant percentage of the population before the Olympics. Kono has said the Games do not factor into his planning.
Instead of inoculation, the government has laid out strict measures to protect the country from infection risks when more than 10,000 athletes and their entourages from around the world arrive in July. Foreign tourists are banned from attending, while a decision is due likely by June on whether locals can watch the sporting events.
Meanwhile, Suga’s government says it wants to complete vaccination of senior citizens by the end of July. That could require an average of about 740,000 shots per day, according to Citigroup economists Kiichi Murashima and Katsuhiko Aiba in a report published April 25.
“This goal strikes us as quite ambitious,” they wrote. “We note that some experts are rather skeptical about the attainability.”
Even if the Olympics are pulled off without any virus spread to the community, Japan’s lagging vaccine rollout will have consequences as G-7 peers race to re-open their economies and global business activity resumes. For some, it’s also partially erased the goodwill from Japan’s relatively effective containment of the virus that managed to avoid prolonged lockdowns or large-scale fatalities.
L.E.K. Consulting’s Fujii is looking into getting a vaccine when he has to travel to the U.S. for business later this year.
“It’s unbelievable that I actually have to think about it as an option,” he said. “That’s ridiculous.”
Published : April 29, 2021
By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Bruce Einhorn, Lisa Du
Indias coronavirus death toll tops 200,000 as infections surge and anger grows
India on Wednesday reported another record number of coronavirus cases and deaths, nudging its official covid-19 death toll past 200,000 as the virus coursed through urban centers and out into rural areas, leaving broken families and communities in its wake.
In a new global record, Indian authorities logged 360,960 infections in a 24-hour period, bringing the total number of cases to more than 17.9 million. India also reported 3,293 deaths, even as experts warned that many virus fatalities were going uncounted.
India is driving a worldwide surge in cases, accounting for 38 percent of infections recorded in the seven-day period ending April 25, the World Health Organization said.
The global impact of the crisis has spurred some nations to step in and offer support, including the United States as President Biden who earlier this week pledged vaccine materials, therapeutics and oxygen concentrators.
Speaking Wednesday to “Good Morning America,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky said that the United States was “deploying a strike team this week to go and assist” and working to get supplies to India “as soon as we can.”
Canada said Tuesday that it was sending $10 million to India’s Red Cross to fund ambulance services and personal protective equipment. And Singapore on Wednesday was transporting hundreds of oxygen cylinders to India on two C-130 aircraft.
South Korea also pledged to send “urgent medical supplies,” India’s ANI news agency reported, quoting the embassy in New Delhi.
China has repeatedly offered assistance to India, but Delhi has yet to accept those offers, pointing to a widening rift between the two countries, CNN reports.
India’s hospitals have faced severe oxygen supply shortages as the devastating wave of cases overwhelms the country’s health-care infrastructure. Many Indians have taken to social media to crowdsource oxygen cylinders and lifesaving drugs, or even plead for information on open hospital beds.
“The state is not available anywhere,” political activist Sadaf Jafar said in an interview with The Washington Post.
On Wednesday, just 10 intensive care beds were available for covid-19 patients in the capital, New Delhi, a city of more than 17 million people, according to a government dashboard.
The government pledged to mobilize resources, including from the armed forces which said it was tapping into its own oxygen supply and pulling retired medical personnel back into service to assist with the crisis. Police in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, said they arrested dozens of people for selling oxygen cylinders and medicine used to treat covid-19 on the black market.
But in many places, that help may be coming too late. In some cities, including Delhi, makeshift crematoriums have been erected to cope with the growing number of dead. And over the past week alone, according to official figures, more than 2,000 infected people have died in India every day. That number is widely understood to be an underestimate: Journalists in the state of Gujarat found that more than 90 cremations and burials had taken place under coronavirus protocols in the past two days, but the state government’s data showed only eight deaths during that same time period.
“Cremations are now being held on pavements as bodies pile up,” India’s the Wire news website reported Tuesday from the city of Nashik, where last week an oxygen leak at a hospital killed 22 coronavirus patients.
The Scroll, another independent news website, reported that “people are dropping dead like flies” in villages in Uttar Pradesh, as the virus spreads to more rural regions of the country.
“In villages, people are dying of fever and breathlessness even before they can be tested for the disease,” the site reported.
Local media outlets reported Tuesday that the wave of fatalities has even reached the family of Prime Minister Narenda Modi, whose aunt died at 80 while undergoing treatment at a hospital.
The World Health Organization said Tuesday that multiple virus variants now circulating in India were accelerating the outbreak. At least two, which were first detected in Britain and South Africa, have been linked with higher rates of transmission.
One variant identified in India in December, known as B.1.617, has several mutations associated with increased transmissibility, the WHO said, but it was unclear if that variant was responsible for the surge.
Before the stunning increase in cases, the Indian government had described the virus as largely defeated and relaxed public health measures and allowed large crowds to gather for religious festivals and political rallies.
Outrage at the government over the crisis was growing. The Indian Medical Association issued a scathing statement describing Modi as a “failed prime minister” and “super spreader” who held massive political rallies instead of strengthening the country’s health care infrastructure.
On Wednesday, following a public outcry, authorities scrapped plans to use a luxury hotel in New Delhi as a coronavirus facility to treat India’s high court judges.
Government officials said the day before that they had reserved 100 rooms at the Ashoka Hotel to treat judges, court staff and their relatives, even as other hospitals in the city have turned away desperate and dying patients.
“Who is responsible for the oxygen and vaccine shortages? Where is the Indian state?” read a column posted Tuesday on the Wire.
Published : April 29, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Erin Cunningham, Antonia Noori Farzan
ตอนอายุได้ 22 ปีเธอร่วมทำงานกับบริษัท Hatch Labs ก่อนที่จะทำงานในบริษัทสตาร์ทอัพ Cardify ซึ่งเป็นโครงการที่นำโดย Sean Rad เมื่อโครงการถูกทิ้งร้างไป เธอ, Sean Rad และ Chris Gulczynski จึงร่วมกันเริ่มต้นก่อตั้งแอปพลิเคชันหาคู่ที่ชื่อว่า Tinder
ไบเดนแถลงครั้งแรกต่อสภาคองเกรส เนื้อหาสำคัญยังเน้นไปที่การแข่งขันกับจีน 
รัฐบาลญี่ปุ่นคาดความตกลง RCEP จะช่วยเพิ่ม GDP ของประเทศ 2.7% และสร้างงานถึง 570,000 ตำแหน่ง
รู้จัก Whitney Wolfe Heard เจ้าของแอปพลิเคชันหาคู่ ผู้หญิงที่สร้างตัวเองจนติดโผร่ำรวยที่สุดในอเมริกา
ทายาทซัมซุงเผยแผนการชำระภาษีมรดกกว่า 3 แสนล้านบาทรวมถึงบริจาคผลงานศิลปะสุดล้ำค่าให้ประเทศ
