Coronavirus: Billions of people need basic income, says UN body

A temporary basic income for more than 2.5 billion of the world's poorest people is "desperately needed" as infection rates spike in developing countries, said the UN Development Program.
WE NEED A GLOBAL UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME NOW!


Nearly 3 billion of the world's poorest should receive a temporary basic income that could help slow the spread of the coronavirus by allowing them to stay home, said the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in a report on Thursday.

The basic income would help 2.7 billion people in 132 countries, the UNDP recommended.

Funding of $199 billion per month would be needed to provide the "means to buy food and pay for health and education expenses," the report stated.

Amid rising infection numbers in developing countries, measures to protect vulnerable populations were "urgently needed," according to the report.

Millions in such countries work in the informal economy with little access to government welfare or other support, meaning they are unable to follow stay-at-home guidelines that could slow the virus spread.

Read more: Just how helpful is the IMF's debt relief?

"Bailouts and recovery plans cannot only focus on big markets and big business. A Temporary Basic Income might enable governments to give people in lockdown a financial lifeline," said UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner. "Unprecedented times call for unprecedented social and economic measures."
How would the coronavirus 'basic income' work?

The report suggests three options for getting funds to people who need it. It could take the form of top-ups on existing average incomes or lump-sum transfers linked to differences in living standards across a country. Governments could also provide uniform lump sum transfers regardless of where someone lives in a country.

The UNDP claimed that countries could pay for a temporary basic income by repurposing billions of dollars that would have been spent repaying debts, albeit without addressing how creditors might react to that or exploring what effects national defaults might have on poor people in those countries.

In April, leaders of major economies known as the G20 agreed on a suspension of debt service payments for the world's poorest countries until the end of the year to help them deal with the coronavirus pandemic. Whether this moratorium would actually plug the $199 billion monthly hole — and whether governments might incur other unplanned costs amid the pandemic — was rather less clear.

Read more: World Bank head praises G20 over debt moratorium

The UN has previously warned that the pandemic and associated recession could see an increase in poverty worldwide for the first time since 1990 and push 265 million people to the brink of starvation.

The intergovernmental organization cautioned the virus could kill 1.67 million people in 30 low-income countries.

kmm/msh (Reuters, AFP, epd)

USA
The unemployment situation is really, really bad
Dion Rabouin, author of Markets AXIOS

Data: Department of Labor; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios

In the first week of July, nearly 1.5 million Americans were receiving unemployment benefits from the little-known Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation and Short-Term Compensation programs.

The state of play: For the week ending April 11, the first week for which data on the programs is available, PEUC and STC programs counted a little over 62,000 and 27,000 claimants each, respectively. That means both programs have seen approximately 15-fold increases in about three months' time.

Why it matters: As first-time claims for traditional unemployment benefits have held steady between 1 million and 1.5 million a week for 18 straight weeks, pandemic-specific unemployment insurance programs are spiking, showing greater job losses and weakness in the economy.

What it means: The PEUC program provides additional benefits for those affected by the pandemic who have exhausted traditional state unemployment benefits.

STC provides benefits to people who still have jobs but whose employers have reduced their hours significantly to avoid layoffs, providing a pro-rata share of weekly benefits based on the reduction in hours of work.

Between the lines: The continuous increase in PEUC claims likely means Americans are staying unemployed for longer and the consistent uptick in STC claims shows that even businesses that have not laid off employees yet have been cutting their hours and having the government pick up the slack.

The number of people receiving benefits under each newly created program is higher than the total number of people receiving unemployment benefits during any week in 2019.

The big picture: Such programs have helped uphold American consumers' spending, but have been quite costly — government spending in June totaled $1.1 trillion, according to CBO estimates — more than triple outlays in June 2019, or about a $763 billion increase.

What's next: The unemployment picture looks to be worsening right as the $600 in additional federal unemployment assistance expires.

According to the Census Bureau’s weekly Household Pulse Survey published Wednesday, the number of employed Americans declined by about 6.7 million from mid-June through mid-July, including a 4.1 million fall from the first to the second week of July.

Yelp reported that its tally of business closures that had been declining consistently since March has stalled out with temporary business closures now turning to permanent ones.
Yelp noted that permanent closures now account for 55% of all closed businesses since March 1, an increase of 14% from June.

THIRD WORLD USA
The pandemic is making schools even more unequal

Erica Pandey, author of @Work



Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios


No matter what's going on at home, schools have always been something of an equalizer — with all the neighborhood kids, richer and poorer, sitting behind the same desks in the same classrooms. Pandemic-induced remote learning is doing away with that.

The big picture: When you don't have kids from different backgrounds learning together, all of their differences become magnified — particularly when they can see into each other's homes, and especially when online learning shortchanges some students more than others.

What's happening: We didn't get the coronavirus pandemic under control over the summer, and a number of school districts — including big ones like Los Angeles and Maryland's Montgomery County — have announced plans to go online for the fall.
Taking school home "just emphasizes every difference," says Susan Ohanian, a longtime public school teacher in Vermont. "The poor kids are going to be the ones who really suffer."

Home conditions and family dynamics will be on display as kids attend classes over video calls.
Socioeconomic differences among classmates are even more pronounced when everyone can see what the inside of everyone else's home looks like.
And children who live in households steeped in pandemic chaos, where parents are too busy to get them ready for the day or set up their workstations, may show up for online school unkempt or in a messy environment.
For many young students, school is a safe space away from an unstable home. Now that safe space has disappeared, just as domestic abuse is on the rise.
And millions of kids have lost family members to the virus or are spending their days worried about a parent who is an essential worker or who has lost their job, says Patricia Hinchey, a professor of education at Penn State. Being at home all the time brings all of those stresses to the surface.

"These are all things that are traumatizing kids," Hinchey says. "And kids cannot learn when they're under emotional stress. They just can’t."

Food insecurity for children will also become a bigger issue as schools remain closed.
Around 22 million American kids count on free or reduced-price lunch at school. Some districts have committed to distributing lunches to the kids who rely on their schools for meals, but not all have done so.

The gaps in remote learning curriculums will affect lower-income students and students of color the most, potentially setting them back in the longer term.
The shift to remote learning in the spring exposed a stark digital divide, and the effects of that divide will only get worse in the fall. There are still millions of kids without reliable broadband access to stream lessons — and millions more who are sharing one computer or even one smartphone with siblings and parents.
On top of that, most schools have pared lessons back to the very basics in order to make them work remotely, meaning kids aren't getting nearly as much out of the teaching as they would in normal times.
Wealthier families will be able to afford tutors for their children. And kids living in two-parent households might have more access to adults who can help them.
Students without these privileges, who are relying solely on remote school, will fall behind.

The bottom line: If we're stuck with online school to keep teachers and students safe, we need to think harder about ways to make it more equitable, experts say.
"When we turn to technology, we simplify what education looks like. What gets lost are all the parts of school that have a huge amount of influence on how students learn, like social interaction and study habits and building self-esteem," says Kevin Kumashiro, former dean of the school of education at the University of San Francisco.
"Let’s make sure we’re thinking about the whole child and not getting caught up in just the academics."

ICE, CBP, TSA employees join lawsuit seeking hazard pay for work during pandemic

TRUMP CHEATS ALL HIS EMPLOYEES

July 23 (UPI) -- Employees from federal agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and the Transport Security Administration joined a class-action lawsuit seeking hazard pay for work conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lawsuit states that the Trump administration violated the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act by not providing employees with hazard pay equal to at least 25% of their wages for working in close proximity to "virulent biologicals.

The suit was originally filed in March on behalf of employees within the Bureau of Prisons, Agriculture Department and Department of Veterans Affairs.

Attorneys on Thursday added employees from nine new federal agencies to the suit.

The lawsuit states that the plaintiffs worked in close proximity to objects, surfaces, and other employees infected with COVID-19 without sufficient protective devices.

"Exposure to COVID-19 was not taken into account in the classification of the plaintiff's positions," it reads.

Heidi Burakiewicz, an attorney representing the employees, told The Washington Post that federal employees have been greatly impacted by the virus.

"This is hitting the federal workforce harder and harder. The federal government doesn't seem to have learned from mistakes in the past or improved at all to save people's lives," Burakiewicz said.

Poll: 75% of U.S. teachers fearful of COVID-1 in schools this fall

AMAZING THAT RIGHT WING POLITICO'S LIKE DEVOS WHO HATE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND PROMOTE HOME SCHOOLING ARE PUSHING TO OPEN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

THEY SURE DON'T HAVE FAITH IN HOME SCHOOLING DO THEY

By Clyde Hughes

Concerned educators, including St. Louis Public School first-grade teacher Cindy Digar, attend a protest at district headquarters in St. Louis. Mo., on July 13. Teachers nationwide have expressed some concern about resuming classes in the fall. Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo
July 24 (UPI) -- A vast majority of U.S. schoolteachers are concerned about exposure to COVID-19 in classrooms this fall, a Gallup survey Friday showed.

According to the poll, three-quarters of teachers from kindergarten through high school said they're either "very" (57%) or "moderately" (18%) concerned about COVID-19 exposure in the classroom. That's an increase of 16% from May.

The survey comes amid uncertainty across the United States about how and when schools can safely be reopened. Some health experts have warned against resuming classes too soon, while others -- including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief Robert Redfield -- have expressed confidence the next school year can safely begin on time.

The study found that teachers are far more concerned about coronavirus exposure than workers in other fields. Just 21% of other workers said they're very concerned and 29% said they're moderately worried.

RELATED Poll: More in U.S. have returned to work, 'always' using PPE

"This divergence in the views of teachers and workers in all other industries has grown since May," Gallup wrote. "While concern about workplace exposure has been fairly steady among workers who are not teachers, this unease has risen sharply among teachers."

Teachers have been working remotely since schools were closed in the spring. In Friday's survey, 74% of educators said they would continue to work remotely if it was up to them. That figure was 57% in May.

"They are increasingly saying they prefer to work remotely almost entirely because of concerns about the virus," Gallup noted.

RELATED Poll: Most in U.S. say COVID-19 is worse, but many are less vigilant

"Even if districts decide to go fully in-person, whether they will be able to do so depends on teachers' willingness to go into work and parents' willingness to send their children to school."

Gallup surveyed nearly 500 teachers and 2,600 non-education workers for the poll, which has a margin of error of between 4 and 9 points.

upi.com/7023942

Facebook has weathered many storms, but the latest are coming for its core

Facebook in the age of COVID-19: Pandemic wiping out the smaller businesses that buy the most Facebook ads, as big advertisers’ boycott pressures the social media platform to stop running political ads that would be a big boon in the coming months


Published: July 23, 2020 By Jon Swartz

MARKETWATCH PHOTO ILLUSTRATION/ISTOCKPHOTO

The coronavirus pandemic sent users to Facebook Inc.’s social-networking, messaging and live-streaming platforms in record numbers, but little else has gone right for Mark Zuckerberg’s company amid COVID-19’s spread.

Facebook FB, -3.03% is in the jaws of a world-wide advertising boycott, faces withering criticism of its hands-off policy toward President Donald Trump’s missives on its platform, and a deepening investigation of its business practices by federal regulators. Zuckerberg will testify at a Congressional antitrust subcommittee hearing July 27. Amid all of that, the social-media giant is bracing for a rare down quarter when it reports second-quarter earnings results on July 29.

Facebook should have experience with this kind of drama: The company has faced chaos before in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, and has continued to rack up record revenue, share prices and market valuations, but the twin storms of COVID-19 and social unrest are both aiming for Facebook’s core business, advertising.

More than 1,000 companies from Coca-Cola Co. KO, -0.41% to Verizon Communications Inc. VZ, +0.17% are boycotting Facebook ads because of hate speech on its platforms amid a larger social protest movement across the U.S. and around the world. While large advertisers publicly proclaim they will not use Facebook, small- and medium-size businesses — which account for three-fourths of Facebook’s advertising revenue —— are facing the most extreme damage from the pandemic and cutting their ad spending in response.

See also: Here are the major brands that have pulled ads from Facebook

If there is a silver lining, it could be the hundreds of millions of dollars in political ads Facebook should collect between now and the Nov. 3 general election. In last year’s third-quarter earnings call, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg estimated ads from politicians to be “less than 0.5% of our revenue next year.” This would be about $400 million, based on FactSet analysts’ forecast of $77.4 billion in revenue in 2020.

But that very notion — especially after the allegations of misleading information on Facebook played out during the 2016 election — is a pillar of the July boycott. Unless Facebook seriously cleans up this area, some major brands are likely to extend their pause in advertising on the platform, according to analysts and advertising experts.

Nearly three of four Americans (72%) do not want political campaigns to be able to micro-target them through digital ads, according to a recent poll from the Knight Foundation/Gallup. A majority (59%) believe online political ads should display who paid for them, how much, and who they target. And 20% favor an outright ban on digital election campaign ads.

The immediate impact of the boycott, as measured by what Facebook’s top 100 advertisers spent in the U.S. on July 1, was significant. They spent $11.2 million this year, down 18% from $13.8 million on July 1, 2019, according to research firm Pathmatics Inc.

The biggest blow came with the absence of The Walt Disney Co. DIS, -0.76% , Facebook’s top U.S. advertiser for the first six months of 2020. Disney spent about $210 million on Facebook ads for Disney+ in the U.S. in the first half of this year, Pathmatics estimates. From June 25-30, Disney spent $1.41 million. Another major ad customer, Starbucks Corp. SBUX, -2.43% , spent about $1.2 million on Facebook from June 25-30, before starting its boycott.

Read more: The Facebook ad boycott could pay off for companies more than advertising on Facebook

And yet, Facebook has been able to easily weather the storm because its top 100 advertisers account for less than 20% of revenue, and its top-50 make up just 6%, according to Ad Age magazine. The top 100 advertisers accounted for about 15% of daily U.S. revenue in 2019, based on data from Pathmatics. More significantly, 76% of ad sales come from some 8 million paying customers, many of whom are medium- and small-sized businesses that are coping with a major economic downturn. Some 160 million businesses have a presence on Facebook, the company confirmed.

“Given Facebook’s high auction density, we believe there are plenty of other advertisers who will step in take advantage of (potentially) lower-priced inventory,” J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth said in a July 15 note.

Business in the age of COVID-19: Read how other large companies will be affected by the coronavirus

Jefferies analyst Brent Thill expects the ban to be temporary as ad spending escalates in the second half of 2020. More than 100 U.S. brands and agencies plan to increase their digital budgets more than 25% year-over-year in the third quarter, according to an IAB survey in June. Conversely, in a March survey, the advertisers said they would reduce digital ad budgets by 20% in May and June.

“We do not expect a V-shaped recovery in ad demand, but we believe there is substantial evidence indicating digital advertising is more resilient than traditional channels like linear TV,” Thill wrote in a July 13 note. For Q2, he modeled average ad spending would decline 2% year-over-year, with growth in Q3 (9%) and Q4 (18%).

“We anticipate the share shift to digital advertising to accelerate in 2020,” Thill said. The long-term trend favors Facebook and Alphabet’s Google GOOGL, -3.07% GOOG, -3.36% over Twitter Inc. TWTR, +4.06% and Snap Inc. SNAP, -5.30% , he said.

Digital advertising will increase its share of the overall advertising market in the U.S. this year to 60% from 55%, according to eMarketer analyst Nicole Perrin. She expects digital to grow nearly 2% this year — a fraction of the 17% she predicted before COVID-19 — while television ad spending will decline 15% and print will dive 25%.

See also: Facebook is both benefiting and battered by the coronavirus impact
What the numbers are saying

Revenue: Analysts on average expect Facebook to report $17.3 billion in second-quarter revenue, according to FactSet, down from $20.57 billion expected at the end of 2019. Monthly active users, a key indicator of Facebook’s growth and advertising appeal, are projected at 2.62 billion by FactSet, up 8% from the 2.41 billion reported a year ago.

Earnings: Average analyst expectations from FactSet are for earnings of $1.39 a share, down from $2.13 a share at the beginning of the year.

Stock movement: Through Wednesday, shares are up 13% in 2020, with most of the gains coming since mid-March and outbreak of COVID-19. At a market value of about $685 billion, Facebook lags behind rival Alphabet but significantly ahead of Twitter and Snap. The broader S&P 500 index SPX, -1.23% is up 0.2% this year.
What the company is saying

July 4: Zuckerberg says he’s not worried about the boycott and has no intention of changing company policy, according to a new report. “We’re not gonna change our policies or approach on anything because of a threat to a small percent of our revenue, or to any percent of our revenue,” he said, according to The Information, which cited a transcript of remarks Zuckerberg gave at an employees-only virtual town hall.

June 28: Zuckerberg implemented policy changes during a virtual town hall meeting as more major advertisers joined a boycott of the platform and shares sank. Zuckerberg announced several steps to eliminate hateful content in ads, tamp down on false claims leading to the 2020 elections, and make progress on racial justice. He added Facebook will hide or block content considered hateful or that could harm voting, with no exception for politicians, as Twitter has done to President Trump and others. Zuckerberg had previously spoken out against Twitter’s approach.

April 29: Facebook reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue but missed on earnings. Still, the company managed to double its profit from a year ago, sending its shares up 10% in after-hours trading. Facebook warned its business “has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and, like all companies, we are facing a period of unprecedented uncertainty in our business outlook.”
What analysts are saying

• “About two-thirds of agencies and brands surveyed say Facebook/Instagram offers the best ROI with nearly one-third pointing to Google/YouTube as their best performing platform.” — Loop Capital Markets analyst Rob Sanderson, maintaining a buy rating on Facebook shares, while raising its price target to $265 from $215, on July 20.

• “FB remains one of our best ideas we continue to like it into 2Q earnings. Industry discussions checks suggest the online ad market has rebounded well since bottoming in April, w/FB benefiting from: 1) its large base of 8M+ advertisers; 2) heavy exposure to performance-based/DR ads; 3) strong user engagement scale; 4) proven ROI; 5) lower exposure to travel (LSD-MSD %).” — J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth, on raising his rating to overweight and price target to $290 from $245, on July 15.

• “We do not expect a V-shaped recovery in ad demand, but we believe there is substantial evidence indicating digital advertising is more resilient than traditional channels like linear TV… In 2020, we expect digital’s share of total spend to expand by 400bps to 54%, as advertisers value the flexibility, measurability, and surging usage of platforms like FB, GOOG, and SNAP.” – Jefferies analyst Brent Thill, on maintaining a buy rating and raising Facebook’s price target to $285 from $250, on July 13.

This article is part of a series tracking the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on major businesses, and will be updated. It was originally published on April 6.

Abigail Disney ‘confused’ by Disney reopening its Florida theme parks — and she still wants to be taxed more

The Disney heiress continued calling for a wealth tax to support COVID-19 relief

Published: July 16, 2020 By Nicole Lyn Pesce

Abigail Disney calls for a wealth tax and calls out Walt Disney reopening theme parks during the pandemic. GETTY IMAGES

Abigail Disney isn’t ready to be Disney World’s guest just yet.

The Walt Disney Co. DIS, -0.76% heiress, who does not have an operating role in the company, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday that she’s “confused” about why Disney has reopened some of its Florida theme parks even as coronavirus cases surge in the Sunshine State.

What’s more, just days after the Orlando area parks reopened, Hong Kong Disneyland announced it will shut down again following a spike in coronavirus cases there.

Disney, the granddaughter of Disney co-founder Roy Disney, admitted that she’s not looking at the same information that park operators have probably considered in making the decision to reopen some parks.

Related:‘The beginning of a horror movie’? Disney World slammed as doors reopen amid spiking coronavirus cases

“But given what I do know … from reading newspapers and so forth, I’m confused about how they think they can possibly protect their guests and their employees,” she said on the Comcast-owned CMCS, 1.81% news program. “I certainly know people who work there who are very uncomfortable, who have conditions like asthma and diabetes that put you at high risk, who are literally deciding whether they want to go back to work or buy food.”

Disney parks chairman Josh D’Amaro recently told CNBC that the company feels “really good” about the safety precautions it put in place.

Abigail Disney is no stranger to blasting the company that shares her name. Earlier in the pandemic, she attacked it for moving to furlough more than 100,000 workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic while still retaining some executive bonuses.

She has also said that former Disney CEO Bob Iger was overpaid, stating “Jesus Christ himself isn’t worth 500 times his median worker’s pay.”

Related:Abigail Disney attacks Disney’s decision to furlough workers: ‘What the actual f—?’

Disney also doubled-down on her recent open letter with the “Millionaires for Humanity” to increase taxes on wealthy individuals like herself to help fund COVID-19 relief. On Monday, Disney joined dozens of millionaires across the world, including Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield, former BlackRock managing director Morris Pearl, in asking governments to “raise taxes on people like us. Immediately. Substantially. Permanently.”

Read more:Tax us: Abigail Disney among 83 millionaires begging for higher taxes for coronavirus relief

Disney said that the effective tax rate for wealthy Americans has dropped from around 50% to 23% in the past 40 years, or roughly what the middle class pays. “I would be happy to go back to the 50%,” she said. “If that’s not politically feasible, let’s talk about 40 [percent], but we need to recognize that there are people in this country who are so wealthy that a 40% tax rate would do nothing to erode the quality of their life.

“It’s time for us to cough up a little bit more,” she said.

The tax windfall could be key to helping the 13.6 million people and counting who have been infected with COVID-19 worldwide, she argued, as well as the tens of millions who have lost their jobs as the pandemic has disrupted large sections of the economy. In fact, she says doing this before the pandemic could have cushioned the coronavirus’ blow.

“If we had invested more in our health systems, if we had invested more in making sure the low-income and middle-income workers had, for instance, some savings or owned their homes or anything that ensures a life that’s secure, we would be doing so much better,” she said.

“But you saw how quickly those lines formed at the food pantries. Millions and millions of people who work full time in this country did not have enough money laid by to ensure that they had enough to eat for the next week, much less however long this is gonna last,” she added.

Rule change for how hospitals report coronavirus data to government comes under fire

‘This decision raises more questions than answers,’ said one policy expert


Published: July 18, 2020 Jaimy Lee

CDC Director Dr. Robert R. Redfield GETTY IMAGES

A federal dashboard that provides information to the public about COVID-19 data that is provided by hospitals has not been updated since a rapidly implemented rule for how hospitals report that kind of data was put into place.

The new rule, issued July 10 by the Department of Health and Human Services, went into effect July 15. The last set of data is from July 14. Rather than send COVID-19-related data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as has been done since March, hospitals, hospital laboratories, and other acute-care facilities have been told to submit that information to a portal operated by TeleTracking Technologies Inc., a privately held data company.

Health officials say the new process will reduce “confusion and duplication of reporting,” create more flexibility with what data is collected during the pandemic, and better allocate medications such as Gilead Sciences Inc.’s GILD, -0.90% remdesivir. (The terms of the experimental drug’s emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration requires that the medication is allocated by the federal government.)

The decision prompted the National Governors Association to ask the Trump administration to delay the rule by 30 days. “Governors are requesting a 30-day delay of these new requirements, in order for hospitals to learn a new system, as they continue to deal with this pandemic,” the organization said Thursday. “In addition, governors urge the administration to make this information publicly available.”

CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield told reporters on Wednesday that “no one is taking access or data away from CDC.”

But health experts are questioning the viability of having hospitals change their data-reporting systems at the same time that they are struggling to care for growing numbers of COVID-19 patients, and asked if the decision has political motivations.

See:Maryland’s Republican governor slams Trump’s handling of coronavirus pandemic

“It’s quite important given how politicized this can be,” said Jen Kates, senior vice president and director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “This decision raises more questions than answers.”

There are two questions about the reporting change, she said: How will the new reporting rule improve the process of data collection? And will that data be made public to researchers and the public going forward?

The coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. is worsening by the day, with more than half of U.S. states now considered COVID-19 “hot spots,” based on case count increases over 14 days and high or growing positivity rates, according to the KFF. The rise in cases is in contrast to how countries in Europe and Asia have handled the pandemics within their borders.

The U.S. has reported about one-quarter of the world’s coronavirus cases (3.49 million) and deaths (137,420), according to data aggregated by the Johns Hopkins University.

See also:Walmart, Target, Best Buy now require customers to wear face coverings at its stores

The Johns Hopkins University and The COVID Tracking Project — which operate two commonly cited public sources of COVID-19 data in the U.S. — both say they don’t expect to be affected by the change in data collection. The JHU site sources some data from the project, which focuses on state-level data and was built by journalists at The Atlantic.

“We support more transparency and hope all the HHS data will be released,” The COVID Tracking Project tweeted Wednesday. “That said, there’s a reason we built a process to capture national numbers that doesn’t rely on our national government.”

Sen. Kamala Harris, a Democrat from California, agreed.



The data submitted to the federal government by hospitals incRule change for how hospitals report coronavirus data to government comes under fire

Published: July 18, 2020 at 11:16 a.m. ET

By Jaimy Lee

104

‘This decision raises more questions than answers,’ said one policy expert




CDC Director Dr. Robert R. Redfield GETTY IMAGES

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GILD

-0.90%

A federal dashboard that provides information to the public about COVID-19 data that is provided by hospitals has not been updated since a rapidly implemented rule for how hospitals report that kind of data was put into place.




The new rule, issued July 10 by the Department of Health and Human Services, went into effect July 15. The last set of data is from July 14. Rather than send COVID-19-related data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as has been done since March, hospitals, hospital laboratories, and other acute-care facilities have been told to submit that information to a portal operated by TeleTracking Technologies Inc., a privately held data company.




Health officials say the new process will reduce “confusion and duplication of reporting,” create more flexibility with what data is collected during the pandemic, and better allocate medications such as Gilead Sciences Inc.’s GILD, -0.90% remdesivir. (The terms of the experimental drug’s emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration requires that the medication is allocated by the federal government.)




Read: Global COVID-19 cases climb to 13.6 million after record one-day tally of 230,400 new infections




The decision prompted the National Governors Association to ask the Trump administration to delay the rule by 30 days. “Governors are requesting a 30-day delay of these new requirements, in order for hospitals to learn a new system, as they continue to deal with this pandemic,” the organization said Thursday. “In addition, governors urge the administration to make this information publicly available.”




CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield told reporters on Wednesday that “no one is taking access or data away from CDC.”




But health experts are questioning the viability of having hospitals change their data-reporting systems at the same time that they are struggling to care for growing numbers of COVID-19 patients, and asked if the decision has political motivations.




See:Maryland’s Republican governor slams Trump’s handling of coronavirus pandemic




“It’s quite important given how politicized this can be,” said Jen Kates, senior vice president and director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “This decision raises more questions than answers.”




There are two questions about the reporting change, she said: How will the new reporting rule improve the process of data collection? And will that data be made public to researchers and the public going forward?




The coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. is worsening by the day, with more than half of U.S. states now considered COVID-19 “hot spots,” based on case count increases over 14 days and high or growing positivity rates, according to the KFF. The rise in cases is in contrast to how countries in Europe and Asia have handled the pandemics within their borders.




The U.S. has reported about one-quarter of the world’s coronavirus cases (3.49 million) and deaths (137,420), according to data aggregated by the Johns Hopkins University.




See also:Walmart, Target, Best Buy now require customers to wear face coverings at its stores




The Johns Hopkins University and The COVID Tracking Project — which operate two commonly cited public sources of COVID-19 data in the U.S. — both say they don’t expect to be affected by the change in data collection. The JHU site sources some data from the project, which focuses on state-level data and was built by journalists at The Atlantic.




“We support more transparency and hope all the HHS data will be released,” The COVID Tracking Project tweeted Wednesday. “That said, there’s a reason we built a process to capture national numbers that doesn’t rely on our national government.”




Sen. Kamala Harris, a Democrat from California, agreed.




The data submitted to the federal government by hospitals includes important indicators such as intensive care unit bed capacity, the total number of mechanical ventilators in a facility, and the total number of hospitalized, suspected or confirmed positive COVID patients being treated in their facilities.




At least one online dashboard operated by the CDC sharing hospital bed capacity at the state level was taken down on Thursday and then reinstated, with a disclaimer noting that the most recent data is from July 14, the day before the rule went into effect.ludes important indicators such as intensive care unit bed capacity, the total number of mechanical ventilators in a facility, and the total number of hospitalized, suspected or confirmed positive COVID patients being treated in their facilities.

At least one online dashboard operated by the CDC sharing hospital bed capacity at the state level was taken down on Thursday and then reinstated, with a disclaimer noting that the most recent data is from July 14, the day before the rule went into effect.

A $5 billion ‘shadow debt’ market is helping keep for-profit colleges afloat, new report charges

These risky loan products can have interest rates as high as 35%, according to a report by the Student Borrower Protection Center.

USURY BY ANY OTHER NAME

Published: July 20, 2020 By Jillian Berman

A new report highlights the $5 billion 'shadow' student debt market. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP)

Roughly 44 million Americans are coping with $1.6 trillion in student-loans, but that staggering figure likely underestimates the debt borrowers are taking on to finance their education, a new report suggests.


Over the past decade, students have borrowed more than $5 billion through an opaque web of companies to pay for training at for-profit schools, the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group, found. These products, which aren’t traditional federal or private student loans, often carry high interest rates and other risks for borrowers, according to the SBPC.

In addition, by providing financing to students, this shadow credit system, as the SBPC dubs it, helps to keep programs training students for careers in fields like trucking and cosmetology in business — even when they’re prohibitively expensive for many and don’t provide graduates with a credential that’s valuable in the labor market.

“This whole cottage industry is allowed to prey on and rip off the most vulnerable borrowers in our country,” said Seth Frotman, the executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center. “These players are key cogs in the larger student-debt crisis, but also critical components of what allows predatory schools to thrive.”


The ‘shadow credit system’ has grown since the Great Recession

Though typically out of the public and regulatory eye, these products have taken on a more prominent role in the student finance landscape since the Great Recession, according to the SBPC’s report. In the past, for-profit colleges relied on traditional, private lenders to provide loans to students, which were bundled together and sold to investors. Often these loans were made to students with little regard for whether they would be able to repay them.

In the years since the financial crisis, traditional, private lenders have dramatically reduced their involvement in the student-loan market broadly. These so-called shadow lenders stepped in to fill the void for students financing career training at for-profit colleges, according to the report.

These companies work with schools in three key ways, the report found. The first is as an exclusive partner for students needing financing. In some cases that can mean developing a product for a specific program or helping a school lend to its students. The second is by offering an independent credit product that in some cases schools will promote through their website or financial aid materials.

The third is servicing or collecting on debt students owe to schools for tuition. In these cases, students will enroll in a course without paying anything up front, but wind up owing this money with interest. Some of the companies highlighted in the SBPC report work with schools to service and collect this debt, they found.

Steve Gunderson, the chief executive officer of Career Education Colleges & Universities, a trade group representing for-profit colleges, took issue with the report and, in particular, its 10-year scope. He said that by including the practices of large schools that have since shut down, such as Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute, the report “tries to find sins of the past and use them to define and describe the sector today.”


“A multi-generation, family-owned school in a community is going to do whatever they can to help the students,” he said. If the easiest option is to loan money directly to students, “they’re going to do it with the best of intentions even if they don’t have what you and I call the best of procedures.”


Interest rates as high as 35%

The products highlighted by SBPC are offered by at least 12 distinct companies and carry a variety of risks for borrowers, the report found. In some cases, interest rates are as high as 35%. In others, they carry fees that aren’t typical of federal and private student loan products.

But they’re not just costly; these products put borrowers at risk in other ways. One lender, TFC Tuition Financing, advertises to nursing schools interested in its loan program that a borrower’s certification can be taken away in the event of default, the report found. TFC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

In addition, some products require that borrowers be rejected by another lender before being approved; others advertise that they can provide financing without a credit check or underwriting.

Meanwhile for the colleges, the products allow a means to sidestep regulation, the report found. For schools that rely on federal financial aid, these products can help them comply with the 90/10 regulation, a rule that requires colleges receiving federal financial aid to get at least 10% of their funds from a source other than the government’s student loan program. By working with these opaque lenders, schools can create their own lending programs that students can use to finance tuition, which don’t count toward the 90% limit on federal financial aid financing.

For programs that aren’t accredited, and therefore can’t participate in the federal student loan program, these products provide a source of financing for students who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford the programs and a source of revenue for the schools.

The report urges governments at various levels to take a closer look at these companies, including by requiring them to register with state regulators and by creating a federal registry of all nonbank financial services firms, including those highlighted in the report.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft captures the first images of Ganymede’s icy north pole

It provides the first infrared mapping of the massive moon's northern frontier.

BYAMIT MALEWAR JULY 24, 2020

The north pole of Ganymede can be seen in center of this annotated image taken by the JIRAM infrared imager aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft on Dec. 26, 2019. The thick line is 0-degrees longitude. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM


The planet Jupiter has a total of 79 identified moons orbiting around it. The largest of these is Ganymede, which was discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Ganymede is the ninth-largest object in the solar system and is larger even than the planet Mercury.

Although it was found a long time ago, there was not enough technology to see it in detail until recently. Now for the first time, the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument of NASA’s Juno spacecraft snapped the first images of Ganymede’s northern frontier. The images, captured during a Jupiter flyby on December 26, 2019, provide the first infrared mapping of the north pole of the massive moon.
These images the JIRAM instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft provide the first infrared mapping of Ganymede’s northern frontier. Frozen water molecules detected at both poles have no appreciable order to their arrangement and a different infrared signature than ice at the equator. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM
Ganymede consists primarily of water ice. It is also the only moon in the solar system with its own magnetic field. Through the images, it was possible to notice an unusual form of ice that exists at the pole, a type that we don’t encounter on Earth. According to NASA, on Earth, the magnetic field provides a pathway for charged particles from the Sun, or plasma, to enter our atmosphere and create aurora seen in the polar regions.

However, as Ganymede has no atmosphere to impede their progress, the surface at its poles is constantly being bombarded by plasma from Jupiter’s gigantic magnetosphere. The bombardment has a dramatic effect on Ganymede’s ice.

Juno found that the ice near both poles of Ganymedean is in amorphous form, that is, it is not a crystalline structure, but a supercooled liquid. In fact, frozen water molecules detected at both poles have no appreciable order to their arrangement, and the amorphous ice has a different infrared signature than the crystalline ice found at Ganymede’s equator.

Analyzing and understanding these structures will provide further clues to understand the evolution of the 79 Jovian moons from the time of their formation to the present day. Jovian is a term that refers to the Jupiter family, which includes Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

At the time surrounding its closest approach of Ganymede – at about 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) – JIRAM collected 300 infrared images of the surface, with a spatial resolution of 14 miles (23 kilometers) per pixel.

“The JIRAM data shows the ice at and surrounding Ganymede’s north pole has been modified by the precipitation of plasma,” said Alessandro Mura, a Juno co-investigator at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome. “It is a phenomenon that we have been able to learn about for the first time with Juno because we are able to see the north pole in its entirety.”

In addition, Juno’s discoveries are preparing the next Jupiter mission. The Juno probe is, for now, the only one to explore the natural satellite that, however, should change soon. The European Space Agency‘s Jupiter ICy moons Explorer mission is scheduled to begin a 3 1/2-year exploration of Jupiter’s giant magnetosphere, turbulent atmosphere, and its icy moons Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa beginning in 2030.