NUCLEAR NEWS
Canada gives one for the team


As Natural Resource Canada’s nuclear director, Diane Cameron helped chart the country’s nuclear roadmap and brought the technology into the climate change conversation. Ahead of her move to OECD-Nuclear Energy Agency, she sat down with NEI contributor Jacquie Hoornweg to reflect on her career and the path forward



Diane Cameron is tracing back through her career to explain her pivot from a career destined for distinguished service in the Canadian government to take on her new role as head of the Nuclear Technology Development and Economics Division at the OECD-Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA).

2 September 2021

Her journey has been powered by her intellect but as she speaks, it’s clear her career choices have been driven by her heart. Her internal compass points her toward solutions to climate change at a time when the planet is under duress from the strains of its effects.

One important contributor to climate change mitigation is low-carbon energy. Lots of it. One way to generate it, nuclear power.

Cameron joined NEA earlier this year following seven years as director of the Nuclear Division for Natural Resources Canada (NRCan). Before taking that role, she says, she had seen increasing evidence of the powerful role nuclear could play in climate change mitigation.

In May 2014, six months before the Canadian government announced the final piece in its restructuring of Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. (AECL), Cameron moved posts from Canada’s foreign affairs department into the nuclear division directorship, an open role left unfilled for years prior. Her time in the role serves as a map of the country’s nuclear programme itself, during that time.

The department had been working in quiet mode as the federal government undertook the review and restructuring of AECL, the crown corporation that gave the world CANDU technology and operated several national nuclear facilities, including the national research lab at Chalk River where the Nuclear Research Universal (NRU) reactor operated for more than 70 years before a well-earned retirement in 2018.

As Cameron arrived, the restructuring, which included sale of the crown corporation’s nuclear reactor division to SNC-Lavalin and the formation of government-owned, company-operated, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, was just wrapping up. As Cameron describes it, her role was to chart a new direction into unknown territory.

“It was sort of carte blanche, almost. I had to rebuild the team essentially from scratch, which was a challenge but also an opportunity, obviously,” says Cameron. “Every little growth step was pitching a vision to senior management of what we could accomplish; pitching an idea of a role we could play and incrementally building a team.”

Fast forward to February 2021 when Cameron left NRCan to join the NEA. The NRCan team had grown to 24. But the U
V heft was not just in the head count. The team accomplished milestones on the national and international front, which have set the table for Canada’s nuclear sector’s future, should federal and provincial governments choose to pursue it.

In Canada, constitutionally nuclear energy falls within the jurisdiction of the federal government. The government’s role spans across research and development, as well as regulation of nuclear materials and activities. The government’s nuclear priorities, and related legislation, are in health, safety, security and the environment.

However, the decision as to which technologies to invest in for electricity generation rests with the country’s 13 provinces and territories.

To date, only two provinces use nuclear power though one of them, Ontario, is the country’s largest province. In in both Ontario and New Brunswick, nuclear is a major contributor to the grid. So, while nuclear accounts for only 15 per cent of Canada’s generation capacity, for more than 40 per cent of Canadians, the primary source of electricity is nuclear power. The nuclear industry hopes to expand on that. Cameron and her team believed there were some important reasons to help them.

“The nuclear sector supports many different types of priorities: economic and innovation as well as environment, climate change and public health,” says Cameron. “The nuclear sector can support a range of different national priorities, so it was a question of starting to tell the story and framing Canada’s nuclear story (first) within the government’s other priorities.”

Illustrative of their progress, has been several speeches from the sector’s top elected official, NRCan Minister Seamus O’Regan who has delivered some of the most bullish speeches about nuclear in recent memory. He’s gone so far as to say, Canada cannot meet its net-zero carbon emissions without nuclear energy.

By the mid-2015s, with AECL’s nuclear division privatised and its national research programme and liabilities under private-sector management, NRCan’s nuclear division, could have coasted into babysitting mode.

Cameron, however, is not that type of bureaucrat. Leading up to and early in her tenure with NRCan, Cameron says, the evidence and modelling increasingly demonstrated the essential role nuclear could play in addressing climate change. She recognised the importance of contributing that evidence in broader policy conversations. In her role as director, she says, it was her job to move that forward because public service boils down to two over-riding points, fearless advice and loyal implementation.

“The fearless advice is around bringing in a non-partisan, non-partial evidence-based analysis and then (based on that), advice. Part of my role as a public servant was to make sure I surfaced and shone a light on a part of the conversation, that, not only in Canada but around the world was pretty quiet,” she says. “Many, many of these conversations were silent on nuclear. It is not as if they brought the nuclear option or evidence to the conversation and took a values-based decision against it. It was just silent. I saw that my role as a public servant, very clearly, was to ensure nuclear was positioned in those conversations.”

Cameron’s background lent itself well to the task. When she joined NRCan, she had clocked seven years in Foreign Affairs serving as deputy director for trade and environment, from which she brought knowledge and contacts. She also brought a unique pairing of technical and social expertise.

Cameron earned her undergraduate degree in systems engineering with a minor in society, technology and values, the latter reflecting a deep personal interest in social justice, likely inherited from her father and mentor, a professor in social work.

After several years working for a consultancy in Princeton New Jersey, where she honed skills in business management and efficiency optimisation, she went back to school and earned a master’s in technology policy from MIT, a programme targeted to people like Cameron who want to marry technical skills with policy development.

MIT also gave her an introduction to nuclear energy and the role it could play as a tool to combat climate change. While at MIT, she worked under Ernest J. Moniz, who would later serve as US Secretary of Energy from 2013-2017.

While Cameron came to the NRCan role already understanding the value of nuclear, it was while she was there that she learned about Canada’s important contribution to the technology development. “In every objective measurable way,” she says, “Canada’s nuclear industry is a nuclear rock star.”

In early days in role, as she investigated the terrain, Cameron says, “I learned about the talent in Canada, the Canadian story. I was meeting with Canadians working in this sector and their accomplishments, yet the public policy discussions were not giving this a voice.”

She says she observed that many people in the provinces where nuclear is generated did not appreciate the benefits it delivers. “I think we owe it to have a much more public policy debate with Canadians about some of the really tough choices ahead of us.”

Perhaps driven by that conviction, during her tenure, Cameron was tireless in a campaign of personal appearances to spread information about the role of nuclear and the data that supported that.

Darroch Harrop, an early recruit who joined Cameron’s team in 2015, jokes that he and his colleagues tried to count how many webinars, seminars, podcasts and conferences she participated in but gave up the futile exercise.

He says, as impressive as Cameron’s commitment to these appearances, it is her ability to build coalitions and “get people to sit around the table” that helped drive the visibility and measurable progress during her time at NRCan.

“She is an alliance builder,” he says. “She finds the win-wins. The number of perspectives she brings together is huge.”

Dan Brady, deputy director for the nuclear division says Cameron’s ability to work inside government, across multiple ministries to create visibility for nuclear has been important in moving the conversation beyond energy industry stakeholders and has helped break log jams to get nuclear onto broader policy agendas. He talks about initiatives Cameron created specifically to prompt conversations, including one that drove required briefings for every deputy minister across government, consequently requiring the staffers to also get up to speed on the file.
Tracking the progress

An early visible indicator of the work going on in Cameron’s department arose in the government’s response to a 2017 UV Standing Committee for Natural Resources report Nuclear at a Crossroads. The report reflected the status of nuclear in Canada, with the AECL restructuring behind it, the end of operation of the NRU reactor just in front of it and the end of operation at Canada’s oldest commercial nuclear site, Pickering Nuclear (3100MW), coming up fast with no new-build CANDU planned to replace it. Three other Canadian nuclear stations, Darlington and Bruce Power in Ontario
and New Brunswick Power’s Point Lepreau station had either undergone or were committed to moving forward with refurbishments. The refurbishments represent a massive investment in nuclear infrastructure. But as the industry considered development beyond the refurbishments, a question hung in the air, “What’s next?”

From the Standing Committee report, five themes emerged including the importance of the federal government as a partner, the value of nuclear energy in addressing climate change, the need for cross-sector partnerships and the spectrum of policy areas where nuclear can be positively impactful.

From these themes, came a series of recommendations. They included strengthening the government’s work with industry, Indigenous governments and communities, as well as other levels of government and the sector. They reinforced the government’s role in supporting research and development, working with international partners, support for Canadian technology development and commercialisation, strengthening public education and training, and, importantly, support for new technologies and the development of small modular reactors.

The report gave Cameron’s team a mandate and from its response, a blueprint emerged that would serve to guide their work through the remainder of her tenure.
Canada’s SMR Roadmap

A year after the Standing Committee report, the 2018, multi-stakeholder authored Canadian SMR Roadmap was released followed in December 2020 by release of Canada’s Action Plan. The two encapsulate almost every theme from the Standing Committee’s report.

The roadmap engaged more than 180 individuals representing 55 organisations across 10 sectors and subsectors, including multiple levels of government, civil society, academia and industry. The Action Plan includes chapters from 117 organisations. Both used a pan-Canadian approach to bring together disparate voices of many interests to create a common vision for development of a Canadian approach to small modular reactor development. An outcome that can be traced back to the SMR Roadmap and related work by government and industry working together, includes the 2021 agreement by four provinces – Alberta, New Brunswick, Ontario and Saskatchewan – to collaborate on SMR deployment as part of a strategy to meet Canada’s net-zero targets. In a marrying of technical and social intersection, the Roadmap brought in voices from Canadians who had never been engaged in conversations about nuclear energy and helped start meaningful engagement on low-carbon infrastructure and the relevance to their lives.

Cameron herself describes the roadmap as “impactful in Canada and globally” and truly reflective of a “coalition of the willing.” The work also provided an opportunity to validate the economic assumptions about the value of SMR development in Canada. One assessment by a third-party organisation indicated the global impact in the ballpark of CA$300 billion by 2040.

Cameron’s role in the roadmap was pivotal, says Fred Dermarkar, president of AECL and former president of CANDU Owners Group.

“Diane was the key driver behind the SMR roadmap,” he says. “She created a vision that inspired politicians, government, industry, academia and the international community. For example, when France announced the launching of its SMR project at the IAEA GC in September 2019, the CEO of EDF referenced Canada’s SMR Roadmap.”

Canada on the world stage

In fact, some point to Cameron’s work to bring Canada more prominently into the international community as one of her most significant accomplishments.

Explaining the international emphasis, Cameron says, “An important input on Canadian policy work is to be able to turn to international peer-reviewed studies, modelling, forecasting and analysis,” and conversely, she says, “Canadian expertise contributes to international knowledge.” As well she adds, being part of the international community “also showcases Canada’s expertise and provides it a source of influence.”

Further, this work contributed to her personal desire to “normalize” nuclear in the climate change conversation.

In 2018, Canada, the United States and Japan teamed together to form the Nuclear Innovation: Clean Energy Future initiative that introduced nuclear into the annual Clean Energy Ministerial talks. Following a “modest side event” at the Copenhagen CEM talks, in 2019, nuclear was fully integrated when CEM was held in Vancouver. By then, nine countries had signed on to NICE Future.

As CEM 2019 host, Cameron says, “We wanted to ensure nuclear literacy and we wanted nuclear to be part of the main conversation.” Several strategies were employed to fully integrate nuclear into the forum, and the measure of success, says Cameron, was the fact that for anyone attending CEM for the first time, “it would have looked unremarkable to have nuclear at those tables,” which was exactly the point.
A different form of public service

There is a spiritual connection with the number seven. It is said seven years represents a cycle in our lives and a sense of completeness.

In her seventh year in role, Cameron left NRCan for the NEA, taking the work she’d done on a national level to apply it in a global role. As she stood, straddled between the two roles, she said it was a “moment of reflection” as she set on the path where she believes she can make the most impact in the fight against climate change.

She hopes the various levels of government, back in Canada, will act on the early promise in SMR development and together with industry can solidify nuclear’s contribution to meeting Canada’s net-zero targets and socio-economic goals both domestically and globally.

Internationally, Cameron sees COP26 as the next test. Whether nuclear can achieve “unremarkable” status as a natural player at the table remains to be seen. But chances are good, if you are in Glasgow, you will see the NEA’s new head of nuclear making a very evidence-based case as to why it should be considered in the energy mix.

Jacquie Hoornweg is Managing partner at Querencia Partners

Canada's nuclear reactors may not be fit for service

Joyce Nelson

RABBLE.CA

On July 13, Bruce Power announced that two reactors at its Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Kincardine, Ontario had violated its operating license.

It had "higher than anticipated readings" of hydrogen-equivalent concentration (Heq) in pressure tubes in two units. Pressure tubes must not exceed the allowable limit of 120 parts per million of Heq. Each pressure tube in a reactor contains 12 bundles of uranium, which are the basis for the nuclear reaction, but the pressure tubes also contain the coolant that keeps the fuel from overheating and triggering a meltdown. Pressure tubes with high levels of Heq can develop cracks and fractures, thereby compromising a reactor's safety.

As The Globe and Mail reported:

"In response to Bruce Power's contraventions, on July 13, the CNSC [Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission] ordered the company, along with fellow CANDU [Canada Deuterium Uranium] operators Ontario Power Generation (OPG) and New Brunswick Power, to review the fitness for service of their pressure tubes and report back no later than the end of July."

Aging reactors

Many of Canada's aging CANDU reactors are older than their design-life for pressure tubes, which originally was designated as 210,000 effective full power hours (EFPH), or about 30 years.

When Hydro Quebec's Gentilly-2 CANDU reactor reached that limit, it closed the plant.

As The Globe and Mail reported:

"Thierry Vandal, chief executive at the time, testified before Quebec's national assembly that he considered 210,000 EFPH 'the extreme limit' beyond which his management team dared not go. 'I would no more operate Gentilly-2 beyond 210,000 hours than I would climb onto an airplane that does not have its permits and that does not meet the standards,' he said, according to a translated transcript."

Under industry pressure, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission subsequently raised the limit to 247,000 EFPH in 2014, and then to 295,000 EFPH in 2018.

In 2018, the CNSC extended OPG's license for its Pickering Nuclear Generating Station for 10 years. Rather than require that OPG replace aging pressure tubes, the regulator mandated more frequent inspections.

When asked how often pressure tubes are checked, retired nuclear scientist and radioactive chemistry expert Dr. Frank Greening answered by email:

"Pressure tubes are checked for their hydrogen/deuterium concentrations about every two years, but it's a little more complex than that. Each CANDU unit contains about 400 tubes and each tube is about six meters in length. This means it's next to impossible to check every tube at every location, so only about 10 tubes are checked at a time. In addition, corrosion and [hydrogen/deuterium] pickup are expected to be most significant at the hot, outlet end of each tube, so samples are usually restricted to this location."

As a result of such limited inspections, the industry relies on mathematical models to predict how long the untested tubes can safely remain in service. But this modeling is not necessarily accurate, as evidenced by the July 13 "higher than anticipated readings" at Kincardine.

Indeed, in March 2021, The Globe reported:

"Documents obtained under the federal Access to Information Act by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin, and provided to The Globe, show that since 2017, CNSC staffers had grown increasingly concerned about unreliable data arising from OPG's inspections of pressure tubes…The whole method by which operators assessed fitness for service of pressure tubes had been called into question."

Another Fukushima?

It is somewhat disconcerting that, while discussing the pressure tube situation in Canada, three nuclear experts have made reference to the ongoing, 2011 nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan.

As The Globe reported in March:

"In a worse-case scenario, a ruptured tube could lead to a series of 'cascading failures not unlike what happened at Fukushima' says Sunil Nijhawan, a nuclear engineer and consultant who once worked for OPG and specializes in accident and safety assessments."

At Fukushima, the loss of coolant led to three reactor meltdowns.

In April, Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, told the National Observer:

"Cooling the fuel is essential in nuclear power. If you don't cool the fuel even after shutdown, you can have a meltdown. That's what happened at Fukushima. I'm not saying every loss of coolant will lead to a meltdown, but that's the precipitating cause that could lead to a meltdown. So therefore the integrity of the piping is a prime concern."

The aging nuclear plant at Pickering is of special concern. Slated for closure in 2024, OPG has been lobbying the Doug Ford government to keep the plant open until 2025. Pickering reached its operational-life limit in about 2015, but the nuclear regulator has kept allowing it to remain in service.

The Ontario Clean Air Alliance says a moratorium should be imposed until OPG can prove that the Pickering plant poses no risk to public safety. In 2018, the Clean Air Alliance commissioned a study by Ian Fairlie, an independent consultant on radioactivity.

As reported in April by the National Observer, Fairlie's report about the Pickering plant found that "a Fukushima-level accident" at Pickering "could cause approximately 26,000 cancers, require the evacuation of more than 150,000 homes and more than 650,000 people, and trigger a $125-billion loss in the value of single-family homes in the Greater Toronto Area."

How serious?

When asked about the seriousness of the pressure tube situation, Greening said a lot depends on the CNSC.

"I would definitely expect the CNSC to demand OPG and Bruce Power do a lot more sampling and analysis of selected tubes in each and every reactor they are operating. Then we will see how widespread this problem is.

"However, given the logistics of doing this, it would take months to complete all the necessary sampling, and each reactor would have be shut down for several weeks to do this. This would cost tens of millions of dollars and result in a serious loss of nuclear energy production. Then, of course, if many units are found to have [hydrogen/deuterium] concentrations well above 120 ppm in many of the examined tubes, the CNSC, and the whole of Canada's nuclear industry would be in a real pickle!"

As Greening explained: "In Canada, we have one reactor design -- the CANDU. If there is a design flaw discovered in one unit, then every operating unit is likely to have the same problem sooner or later."

So "if the CNSC does the right thing" by ordering the sampling and analysis of pressure tubes in all reactors, "it will cost millions."

However, Greening suspects that "the nuclear operators are probably going to say that the current limit of 120 ppm is far too restrictive and could be increased without jeopardizing plant safety."

The CNSC has catered to that argument before, raising the limit from 100 ppm to 120 ppm.

"Believe it or not, our wonderful nuclear regulator, the CNSC, has in fact used that very option to deal with exceedances of things like [deuterium]-pickup, feeder pipe thinning, etc. in the past," Greening said.

By the end of July, the CNSC had given such contradictory requests to Bruce Power that Greening was asking: "Does the CNSC's left hand know what its right hand is doing?"

As he wrote to CNSC president Rumina Velshi back on July 14, "maybe it would be better to admit that the CNSC and the Canadian nuclear industry are collectively unable to predict pressure tube corrosion and hydrogen pickup in operating CANDU reactors…and in the interest of public safety, permanently shut down these very old reactors."

In an email to rabble.ca Greening stated that a good place to start this shut down would be Pickering unit 6 and unit 7, which are both long past their fit for service date.

Otherwise, the consequences could be dire.

August 11, 2021

Canadian freelance writer Joyce Nelson is the author of seven books. She can be reached via www.joycenelson.ca

Image: Chuck Szmurlo/Wikimedia Commons 

Is smaller better when it comes to nuclear?

David Suzuki    RABBLE.CA

Nuclear power hasn't been in the news much since the 2011 Fukushima meltdown in Japan. Thanks to a push by industry and governments, you might soon hear more about how nuclear reactors are now safer and better. 

Specifically, the conversation has shifted to "small modular nuclear reactors" or SMNRs, which generate less than 300 megawatts of electricity, compared to up to 1,600 MWe for large reactors.  

Some of the 100 or so designs being considered include integral pressurized water reactors, molten salt reactors, high-temperature gas reactors, liquid metal cooled reactors and solid state or heat pipe reactors. To date, the industry is stuck at the prototype stage for all models and none is truly modular in the sense of being manufactured several at a time -- an impediment considering the speed at which global heating is worsening. 

The benefits touted by industry have convinced many countries, including Canada, to gamble huge sums on nuclear, despite the poor odds. The Small Modular Reactor Action Plan hypes it as the possible "future of Canada's nuclear industry, with the potential to provide non-emitting energy for a wide range of applications, from grid-scale electricity generation to use in heavy industry and remote communities." 

Canada would reap economic benefits from an expanded nuclear industry. We have the largest deposits of high-grade uranium and a long history of nuclear power development and export. But uranium mining creates problems: impacts on Indigenous communities, workers exposed to radiation, radioactive contamination of lakes, habitat destruction and more.  

The World Nuclear Association says small reactors' modular construction means they can be built faster and for less money than conventional nuclear, and several modules can be combined to create larger facilities. They're seen as a cleaner replacement for diesel or gas power in remote oil and gas operations and isolated communities.  

The association says they're "designed for a high level of passive or inherent safety in the event of malfunction" and that "many are designed to be emplaced below ground level, giving a high resistance to terrorist threats." They can also produce steam for industrial applications and district heating systems, and used to make value-added products such as hydrogen fuel and desalinated drinking water. 

But, given the seriousness of the climate emergency and the various options for transforming our energy systems to combat it, is nuclear -- regardless of size or shape -- the way to go? We must rapidly reduce emissions now, and we have readily available technologies to do so. 

New nuclear doesn't make practical or economic sense for now. Building reactors will remain expensive and time-consuming. Studies estimate electricity from small nuclear can cost from four to 10 times that of wind and solar, whose costs continue to drop. SMNRs will require substantial government subsidies. 

Even when nuclear has to compete against renewables prepackaged with storage, the latter wins out.  

One recent study of 123 countries over 25 years published in Nature Energy found that renewables are much better at reducing greenhouse gas emissions than nuclear -- whose benefits in this area are negligible -- and that combining nuclear and renewables creates a systemic tension that makes it harder to develop renewables to their potential.  

Like all nuclear reactors, SMNRs produce radioactive waste and contribute to increased nuclear weapons proliferation risk -- and Canada still has no effective strategy for waste. Nuclear power also requires enormous amounts of water. 

Corporate interests often favour large, easily monopolized utilities, arguing that only major fossil fuel, nuclear or hydro power facilities can provide large-scale "baseload" power. But many experts argue the "baseload myth" is baseless -- that a flexible system using renewables combined with investments in energy efficiency and a smart grid that helps smooth out demand peaks is far more efficient and cost-effective, especially as energy storage technologies improve. 

Even for remote populations, energy systems that empower communities, households, businesses and organizations to generate and store their own energy with solar panels or wind installations and batteries, for example, and technologies like heat-exchange systems for buildings, would be better than nuclear. 

Renewables cost less than nuclear, come with fewer health, environmental and weapons-proliferation risks and have been successfully deployed worldwide. Given rapid advances in energy, grid and storage technologies, along with the absolute urgency of the climate crisis, pursuing nuclear at the expense of renewables is costly, dangerous and unnecessary. 

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Writer and Editor Ian Hanington.            

July 28, 2021

Learn more at davidsuzuki.org. 

Image: Nuclear Regulatory Commission/Flickr

THE DOMINATION OF EXCHANGE VALUE OVER USE VALUE 
Collectible prices skyrocket, to the dismay of hobbyists

By KEN SWEET

Austin Deceder sorts Magic cards in his home office Friday, Aug. 27, 2021, in Kansas City, Mo. Prices of the collectable cards and vintage video games that Deceder and others buy and sell have skyrocketed in the past few months to the dismay of hobbyists. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans have become obsessed with collectibles, bidding up prices for trading cards, video games and other mementos of their youth. The frenzy has brought small fortunes to some, but a deep frustration for those who still love to play games or trade cards as a hobby.

Among the items most sought after — and even fought over — are the relics of millennials’ childhoods. These include copies of trading cards such as Pokemon’s Charizard and Magic: The Gathering’s Black Lotus as well as Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. game cartridges. Some cards are selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars and an unopened Super Mario game recently sold for an astonishing $2 million.

This is more than a case of opportunistic collectors looking to cash in on a burst of nostalgia triggered by the pandemic. Everyone seemingly is angling for a piece of the pie.

The corporations who own franchises such as Pokemon are rolling out new editions as quickly as they can print them; internet personalities are hawking the products and raking in advertising money; companies that tell collectors how much their possessions are worth are doing unprecedented businesses — and in at least one case getting financial backing from a prominent private equity firm looking to get in on the action.

But while some collectors and investors see dollar signs, others complain about the breakdown of their tight-knit communities. Players looking to play in-person again after the pandemic are unable to find the game pieces they want; if the pieces are available, prices have gone up astronomically. Critics of rising prices have become targets of harassment by those who now consider trading cards, comics and video games no different than a stock portfolio.

“Prices are going up, and access is going down,” said Brian Lewis, who operates a YouTube channel under the name Tolarian Community College.

The collectibles frenzy has been fueled partly by a self-fulfilling cycle of YouTube personalities driving hype around collecting and the rising prices of collectibles. This can lead to big paydays as advertisers notice the frenzy stirred up among the influencer’s dedicated followers.

With more than 23 million subscribers, Logan Paul made several videos where he simply opens up boxes of vintage Pokemon cards, hyping the prices he’d paid and bringing in millions of views. Australian YouTube personality Michael Anderson, who goes by the moniker UnlistedLeaf, has garnered millions of views doing similar videos

“It may be a burgeoning industry, but this is still big business. Brands want to reach these audiences,” said Justin Kline, co-founder of Markerly, an influencer marketing agency. Based on standard industry metrics, he estimates Anderson earns upward to $50,000 in advertising revenue doing unboxing videos, while Logan Paul may earn six figures per video.

The hype has sent collectors scrambling to find out if their Pikachu, Charizard, Mox Emerald or Ancestral Recall cards might be worth a fortune. To do so, they turn to grading services, which have been flooded with orders.

The grading service Beckett’s has effectively stopped accepting any cards to grade unless the customer is willing to pay $250 per card for its ultra-fast turnaround service typically reserved for the costliest collectibles. The turnaround time for basic grading services is more than a year, the company says.

In response to record demand, companies are releasing new versions of the games, including premium products that command higher prices. Whether the momentum is sustainable, at least when to comes to prices, is unknown. Other fads like Beanie Babies or Pogs blew up in the ’90s only to crater, leaving most collectors holding worthless junk. Pokemon and Magic have been around for decades, and have seen surges of interest before.

In the meantime, auction companies and grading companies are making fortunes riding the current speculative frenzy.

Based in Portland, Brian Lewis produces several videos a week under the nickname “The Professor,” in hopes of teaching new and existing players about his favorite hobby, Magic: The Gathering. With more than 600,000 subscribers, he also comments on the state of the game, particularly the issue of rising prices, both on the secondary market (cards purchased from shops) as well as the prices companies are charging for products like Magic.

“I worry deeply that these rising prices will have an impact on the average person’s access to the game,” he said. “There’s a growing class of investors in Magic, and I think it’s not having a positive impact on the game.”

But the frenzy goes beyond trading cards. The U.S. Mint released a 100th Anniversary collection of the Morgan silver dollar, considered by coin collectors to be one of the most beautiful designs ever made, early this summer. The products sold out in minutes.

Three weeks ago, an unopened copy of Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System sold for $2 million, making it the most expensive video game sold. Only a few weeks earlier, a copy of Super Mario 64 sold for a then-record $1.6 million. An unopened copy of Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda from 1987 sold for $870,000 in early July.

Some members of the video game collecting community have questioned whether the prices paid have been exaggerated by the involvement of third parties like Rally, which sells “shares” in collectibles.

Meanwhile, the trading card community is seeing its own lofty prices as players scramble to find coveted pieces for their collection.

A mint condition Black Lotus from Magic: The Gathering’s first set known as Alpha, sold in January for more than $510,000. That price is double what a card in similar condition sold for six months before in July 2020.

Austin Deceder, 25, primarily buys and sells cards on Facebook and Twitter as a middleman between players wanting to get out of their games and new players. Based in Kanas City, he now travels the country buying collections as his full-time job, having to balance his enjoyment of the game with now being involved financially.

Deceder had a used Black Lotus card that he says he sold for $7,000 in September 2020. “Here we are now and the price on that same card has doubled.”

It’s not just the ultra-rare cards seeing inflation. Take the widely available Magic: The Gathering card named “Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer.” The card, depicting a bespectacled monkey sitting on a hoard of treasure, was $30 earlier this summer. The card now sells for closer to $90, Deceder says, as game stores have reopened after the pandemic.

“Now that people can play in person, card prices are moving up again,” he said.

Not everyone is happy, however. Some enthusiasts say the frenzy has brought out the worst in fans and speculators. Nowhere is this more evident than among collectors of Pokemon cards, with its motto “Gotta Catch ’Em All!”

The frenzy in Pokemon began late last year when Logan Paul did his first unboxing videos, which only led other content creators to make similar videos and collectors to bid up prices on cards new and vintage, said Lee Steinfeld, 34, a long-time collector in Dallas who does videos, including unboxings, under the name Leonhart.

“That’s when things went super crazy,” he said.

Since then, boxes of Pokemon trading cards have been routinely sold out at hobbyist shops and big-box retail stores. Fistfights have broken out, requiring chains like Target to restrict the number of packs an individual customer can purchase. The Pokemon Company says it is trying to print as many cards as possible to keep up.

“Pretty much the entire Pokemon community has deteriorated,” said Shelbie, a creator of Pokémon videos under the name Frosted Caribou on YouTube.

While most of Shelbie’s content features unboxings or discussions about upcoming products, one of her most popular uploads was an hour-long video focused on the problems in the Pokemon collecting community since the frenzy began last year. Shelbie, who declined to give a last name to avoid being a target of harassment, said some harassment in the past has come from some of the community’s biggest collectors, particularly when she has talked about prices.

Later this year, Pokemon will be releasing a set to celebrate its 25th anniversary. While typically an anniversary set would garner interest from any collector, this time Shelbie said she’s hesitant.

“The set is going to be amazing. It’s also going to be impossible to get. It’s going to be awful actually,” she said.

But the surge of interest has been good for the corporations and Wall Street.

Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast division makes the tabletop role-playing game “Dungeons & Dragons” as well as Magic: The Gathering. Wizards reported second-quarter revenue of $406 million, more than double year-ago revenue. Hasbro executives told investors in July they would soon be raising product prices. Wizards has introduced premium packs of cards with harder-to-find game pieces that sell for four to five times more than a regular packs.

Wall Street has also ridden the wave of interest. Private equity giant Blackstone purchased a majority stake in Certified Collectibles Group, a company that grades collectibles like trading cards, in July for $500 million. The company has doubled its employee count since last year and is buying another 30,000 square feet of office space, President Max Spiegel said.

Whether that’s good for the players who have long participated in these hobbies is unknown. Long-time collectors likely stand to make money in the future, but those who recently entered these communities may be purchasing overpriced cards hyped by those who stand to benefit the most, community leaders said. It’s not unlike the stock market craze that drove prices of GameStop and other “meme” stocks higher earlier this year.

“There’s now a whole subculture who are using Pokemon as a stock market. I don’t know how those people can look at the community and say this is healthy,” Shelbie said.

Use-value and exchange-value

In Capital Volume I, Marx discusses the concept of use-value verses exchange-value. According to Marx, use-value is inherent in a commodity while exchange-value is subject to change based upon an ever-changing market. This concept is very similar to Adam Smith’s natural and market price. Smith stated that the natural price of a commodity is static while the market price is subject to change based on supply and demand (see Volume I, Book I of the Wealth of Nations, page 63).

Marx goes on to further examine commodities in a social context. He states that there are “material relations between persons and social relationships between things” in a capitalist society (321). Marx believes that only when this social exchange occurs do objects gain exchange-value. He believes that this exchange allows commodities to have exchange-values separate from their use-values. I think it is important to also consider Marx’s idea of “material relations” that exist between people in a capitalist society. This relationship seems to once again point out the social alienation of the worker that we have discussed in regards to previous excerpts by Marx. How is it that inanimate objects can have social relationships while each individual worker has material relationships with his fellow man?

Use-value, exchange value, value (libcom.org)

Law of Value- 4. Use-value, Exchange-value and Value (draft) | Kapitalism101 (wordpress.com)

Guatemala’s former anti-corruption prosecutor faces arrest

By SONNY FIGUEROA

FILE - In this April 3, 2019 file photo, Juan Francisco Sandoval, Guatemala's lead prosecutor against impunity, poses for a photo during an interview in Guatemala City. Guatemalan officials confirmed on Sept. 3, 2021 that they're trying to arrest Sandoval, the former anti-corruption prosecutor whose ouster led the U.S. to reduce cooperation with Guatemala's legal system, while under investigation for allegedly leaking confidential information. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo, File)


GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — Guatemalan officials confirmed Friday they are trying to arrest a fired anti-corruption prosecutor whose ouster led the United States to reduce cooperation with the Central American nation’s legal system.

The arrest warrant for Juan Francisco Sandoval was confirmed by the spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, Juan Luis Pantaleón, a day after Attorney General Consuelo Porras said on Twitter that he was under investigation for allegedly leaking confidential information, among other allegations.

Later Friday, Pantaleón said the attorney general’s office was launching an investigation into alleged bribes that President Alejandro Giammattei had received from Russian businessmen, following media reports about the alleged bribes.

“There is an investigation regarding the issue on information released in media interviews and publications,” said Pantaleón, adding that he was referring to reports that a person linked to a Russian businessman had given money to Giammattei inside a carpet.

Sandoval, who said he had been investigating Giammattei for the same reason, as well as other senior officials, was fired on July 23 and fled to the United States, saying he feared for his safety.

Sandoval responded to Porras by accusing her of “leading a strategy to criminalize and persecute all the people who have contributed for years to strengthening justice and combating corruption and impunity.”

He accused her of meddling in the probe into suspected bribery of the president involving a major port. No charges have been filed in that case.

Sandoval’s ouster led the U.S. government to say in July that it had lost confidence in Guatemala’s commitment to battling corruption and it temporarily suspended cooperation with the Attorney General’s Office.

Many Guatemalans, too, staged street protests in recent weeks accusing the government of quelling attempts to root out corrupt officials.

Suspicions were fed on Thursday when the country’s top court issued a ruling that could keep some corrupt officials out of prison. The Constitutional Court overturned a law that had barred those sentenced for corruption to terms of five years or less from paying a fine instead of serving time behind bars.

It applies to convictions for crimes by public servants and those in the courts involving charges including fraud, bribery, passive embezzlement, abuse of authority and influence trafficking.

Among potential beneficiaries of the decision is one of the court’s justices, Néster Vásquez, who has been accused by the Office of the Special Prosecutor Against Impunity of manipulating the election of judges to other

Vazquez was included in a recently published U.S. list of allegedly corrupt officials in the region, along with former President Alvaro Colom, who was accused of involvement in fraud and embezzlement.

In 2019, then-President Jimmy Morales forced out a U.N.-backed anti-corruption mission that had worked with local prosecutors to root out graft and had led to the imprisonment of several senior officials, including former President Otto Perez Molina.

On Friday, the former head of that U.N. mission, Iván Velásquez, issued a statement of solidarity with Sandoval, “whom the corrupt Guatemalan prosecutor Consuelo Porras ordered captured.

“Sooner rather than later, the people will restore the state of law and the corrupt of all sorts will pay for their misdeeds.”

Study documents dramatic loss of remaining Pyrenees glaciers

By ARITZ PARRAyesterday


A view of the Petit Vignemale glacier, left, and the Oulettes, right, on the Vignemale massif's north face in the Pyrenean mountain range, as seen from the Gaube valley in southern France, Sunday, Aug. 3, 2020. Spanish scientists say Europe's southernmost glaciers will likely be reduced to ice patches in the next two decades due to climate change. The study also found that the shrinking of ice mass on the Pyrenees mountain range is continuing at the steady but rapid speed seen at least since the 1980s. 

(AP Photo/Aritz Parra)


MADRID (AP) — Europe’s southernmost glaciers will likely be reduced to ice patches in the next two decades due to climate change, as the shrinking of ice mass on the Pyrenees mountain range continues at the steady but rapid speed seen at least since the 1980s, Spanish scientists say in a new study.

The Pyrenees, marking the natural border between Spain and France, saw three glaciers disappear or become reduced to stagnant strips of ice since 2011. In 17 of the two dozen remaining ice sheets, there’s been an average loss of 6.3 meters (20 feet) of ice thickness.

Their mass also shrank over one-fifth on average, or 23%, in nearly one decade, according to the study published last week in the peer-reviewed Geophysical Research Letters. Its findings were announced to the media on Friday.

The Spanish scientists blamed climate change for the retreat, and in particular a 1.5-degree-Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) overall temperature increase in the Pyrenean region since the 19th century.

 

“What we are seeing here is an advance warning of what may happen in other mountains, like in the Alps,” said Jesús Revuelto, one of the study’s authors. “Their glaciers have much more mass and entity, but we are showing them the way.”

Geologist Ixeia Vidaller, another leading author, said that the loss of ice mass was also a “tragedy” for the Pyrenean landscape, with yet-to-be-seen effects on biodiversity.

The researchers work for the Pyrenean Institue of Ecology, or IPE, a branch of Spain’s main public scientific research body, the CSIC. They used high-resolution satellite imagery and visuals obtained by research flights in 2011 to map the ice mass evolution, comparing it with data obtained in field visits and 3D models of the mountain ridges produced last summer with the help of drones.

The scientists found a loss of up to 20 meters (66 feet) of ice thickness in parts of some of the fastest-melting glaciers. The diminishing of the four largest of them is more consistent than that of the smaller-sized among the studied ice sheets, they said, as the ice in many cases has already retreated to the shade of ridges carved by centuries of erosion.

Comparing to other existing studies about past ice loss, IPE’s research also found that the annual rate of ice mass loss has not slowed down since the 1980s.

“We can argue with confidence that Pyrenean glaciers are in extreme jeopardy and could disappear or become residual ice patches in about two decades,” the scientists wrote.

A recent major report by scientists for the United Nations calls climate change clearly human-caused, “unequivocal” and “an established fact.” It also says that temperatures in about a decade will probably blow past a level of warming that world leaders have sought to prevent.

The Mediterranean basin, shared by southern Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa, is being identified by U.N. experts as a “climate change hot spot,” likely to endure devastating heat waves, water shortages and loss of biodiversity, among other consequences.

Judge rules U.S. turning back asylum seekers unconstitutional



A judge has ruled that it is unconstitutional for the United States to deny migrants access to its asylum process at ports of entry. File Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo


Sept. 3 (UPI) -- A federal judge has ruled the United States' practice of systematically denying migrants access to the asylum process at ports of entry under the pretext that they were act capacity was unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Bashant of the Southern District of California ruled Thursday in favor of a lawsuit filed four years ago by advocacy group Al Otro Lado and 13 people who sought asylum in the United States.

"After over four years, a U.S. federal court concluded what our team at Al Otro Lado has known all along, that the [Customs and Border Protection's] turning away of asylum seekers from ports of entry and metering are illegal and violate the rights of the individuals and families most in need of our protection," Nicole Ramos, border rights project director at Al Otro Lado, said Thursday in a statement.

In her 45-page ruling, Bashant said that under U.S. law, the government must inspect and process all asylum seekers when they present themselves at ports of entry.

According to the court document, this act known as metering began under the Obama administration in 2016 in response to a surge in Haitian immigrants arriving at the San Ysidro port of of entry in San Diego, Calif.

As the high volume in asylum seekers continued, the act of metering was adopted by other ports of entry though its implementation varied. Under the Trump administration, the policy was officially adopted and expanded in 2018.

In March 2020, the United States implemented COVID-19 preventative measures that allow border officials to deny entry to asylum seeks. Early last month, the Biden administration extended the measure known as Title 42.

In her ruling, Bashant gave the U.S. government and Al Otro Lado until Oct. 1 to submit supplemental briefs on the appropriate remedy in the case and to explain how it may be impacted by Title 42.

Al Otro Lado had argued the CPB used lies, threats and coercion to deny migrants access to the asylum process.

"This decision affirms what people fleeing persecution and immigrant rights advocates have argued for years: the U.S. government's denial of access to the asylum process at ports of entry is blatantly illegal," Melissa Crow, senior supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which joined the class action lawsuit in 2018, said in a statement. "The court properly recognized the extensive human costs of metering, including the high risk of assault, disappearance and death when CBP officers flout their duty to inspect and process asylum seekers and instead force them to wait in Mexico."

Hyundai Genesis to go all-electric by 2025

Kim Hye-ran & Kim Tae-gyu, UPI News Korea


Shown above is the GV60 electric crossover of Hyundai Motor’s Genesis brand, which is to go all-electric by 2025. Photo courtesy of Hyundai Motor

SEOUL, Sept. 3 (UPI) -- Genesis, the luxury brand of South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor, announced it will not release new internal combustion models after 2025.

Instead, Hyundai Chief Executive and President Chang Jae-hoon said Thursday that Genesis will start rolling out only electric vehicles and hydrogen cars to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035.

"Starting in 2025, all new vehicles to be launched will be electric vehicles," Chang said in a live video on the Genesis YouTube channel. "By 2030, Genesis will establish itself as a 100 percent zero-emission vehicle brand that aims to reach sales of 400,000 cars."

Genesis said it plans to reach that goal by selling only electric vehicles across its sales networks, including dealer shops.

RELATED Hyundai launches high-end Genesis electric vehicle

To achieve the goal, the Seoul-based carmaker said that it will also be required to realign its entire value chain, including raw materials, components and factory operation.

For example, Hyundai is vying to develop a new fuel cell system and better lithium-ion batteries.

The transition toward electric models is in line with that of global players like Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and General Motors, which are trying to phase out internal combustion cars running on gasoline or diesel.

In addition to its initial announcement, Hyundai Genesis announced the release of the GV60 electric crossover, which will be produced on the E-GMP, the automaker's dedicated electric vehicle platform. Hyundai Ioniq5 and the Kia EV6 were built on the E-GMP.

In early July, Genesis announced the launch of the G80 EV, its first electric car. But that model was not built on the E-GMP.

"Five years ago, we launched Genesis -- a luxury brand. So far, it has been an intensive, bold and successful journey," Hyundai Chairman Chung Eui-sun said in the video.

RELATED LG Chem shares fall due to Chevy Bolt recall

"And now, Genesis is once again at the starting point of another audacious journey: the journey toward a sustainable future," he said.

Observers pointed out that Hyundai is attempting to elevate its Genesis brand by releasing electric cars.

"Electric vehicles have quickly become important in the global market, but few models have succeeded," Daelim University automotive professor Kim Pil-soo told UPI News Korea.

"It seems that Hyundai Motor is trying to preempt the high-end electric vehicle market through its Genesis brand," he said.

A FISH YOU DO NOT CATCH & RELEASE

Man reels in invasive fanged fish from Massachusetts lake


Sept. 3 (UPI) -- A man reeled in an unusual fanged fish from a Massachusetts lake that was identified by experts as an invasive species that isn't native to North America.

Mike Powell of Canton said he was fishing in the Canton Reservoir when he reeled in a nearly 6-pound fish with a mouth full of sharp fangs.



"Let's be honest, I'm out here chasing big bass. To catch that when I'm not looking for it, I mean I was wearing one of these things that tells you your heart rate, thing was going through the roof," Powell told WCVB-TV.

Wildlife experts identified the 30-inch fish as a northern snakehead, an Asian species considered invasive in North America.

"There are very few species you can confuse with snakeheads," Todd Richards from MassWildlife said.

He said the fish was likely an illegal pet that was released into the reservoir when it became too big for its tank.

"They are an injurious species, so you can't possess them. MassWildlife regulates the possession of the fish that can live in our waters, and we don't issue permits for snakeheads," Richards said. "I fished this lake my entire life and when I saw that I was like, 'This doesn't belong here.'"

Experts urge slowdown on COVID-19 vaccine booster shots

WHO SAYS VACCINATE THE REST OF THE WORLD FIRST

By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News

HEALTH NEWS
SEPT. 3, 2021 /

Experts say COVID-19 vaccine booster shots, in the United States and elsewhere, should not be considered until more of the world has received initial doses because that would go farther to slow down global coronavirus spread and potentially prevent the next deadly variant. 

File Photo by Debbie Hill/UPI | License Photo

Opposition is mounting among U.S. and international health experts against President Joe Biden's push to make COVID-19 booster shots available later this month.

The scientific evidence simply isn't there to support booster shots, and those doses would be better used in the arms of the unvaccinated around the world to prevent future mutations of COVID-19, infectious disease experts said in an interview with HealthDay Now.

"The important thing to remember is this is being driven by the unvaccinated. That's what's in the hospital right now. It's not vaccinated people that are the issue in this pandemic," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

"The whole debate over boosters needs to be framed by that, because putting third doses into highly vaccinated populations isn't going to change what's happening in the United States," Adalja said.

RELATEDU.S. plans booster for Pfizer, Moderna COVID-19 shots starting in September

Unfortunately, the Biden Administration's advocacy for booster shots has created a rush by some Americans to get a third dose -- even though the additional jabs haven't yet been approved by federal regulators, said Dr. Camille Kotton, an infectious disease specialist with Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

"I will say that I'm shocked at the number of people that have gone out and just helped themselves to booster doses," Kotton said. "It's a little bit greedy to do something that's not really recommended yet, just because they've read the newspaper and thought that was a good idea for themselves."

Last month, Biden told the nation that booster shots would be available the week of Sept. 20 for the earliest recipients of the COVID-19 vaccines, although he added that the plan was pending approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

RELATEDJ&J says COVID-19 vaccine booster after 6 months adds 'robust' protection

The FDA will hold an advisory board meeting on Sept. 17 to review data from Pfizer regarding booster shots for its vaccine, the agency announced this week.WHO, EU don't back boosters

Both the World Health Organization and the European Union have counseled against booster shots, urging that nations instead focus on getting shots into the arms of the unvaccinated.

That's the approach Adalja and some other health experts are promoting.

RELATED COVID-19 vaccines boost antibodies, even in immunocompromised people

"The longer this virus is unchecked anywhere in the world, the more likely we are to see variants. Until we control this pandemic in all corners of the globe, we're still going to have variants," Adalja said. "The way we control this pandemic is by getting first doses, second doses into people's arms all around the world, even in the United States."

Kotton and Adalja both noted that at this point, the scientific evidence doesn't seem to support the need for booster shots in fully vaccinated people.

"Really what we're seeing is higher rates of breakthrough disease, which is still generally mild symptoms," said Kotton, who serves on the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, the board that will review booster shots prior to their approval.

"People aren't going to the hospital the vast majority of the time. They just have a little bit of a viral syndrome," Kotton said.

Check out the full HealthDay Now interview:

ACIP recently approved a third dose of vaccine for people with compromised immune systems, but Kotton noted that the dose isn't a booster. Rather, people who are immune-compromised will receive a three-dose vaccine series rather than a two-dose series.

"This is not actually a booster dose," Kotton said. "This is a third dose that is considered part of their primary vaccine series."

In that case, medical evidence showed that people with immune system deficiencies -- solid organ recipients, bone marrow transplant patients, folks fighting cancer -- needed a three-dose series to achieve sufficient protection against COVID-19, Kotton said.

But for the general population, the evidence continues to show that the vaccines protect people against severe illness and hospitalization, Kotton and Adalja said.

"Primarily we've been trying to prevent this virus from causing severe disease, hospitalization and death," Adalja said. "By that standard, the vaccines -- even when you see antibody levels wane or you see breakthrough infections occurring -- they're still performing off the charts, because that's what they were designed to do."

Let scientists make the call

"Vaccines are not bug zappers. They're not force fields. They're not meant to stop every breakthrough infection," Adalja continued. "Because the breakthrough infections are generally mild, I don't know that we want to be in the business of chasing them with booster shots when this is not a virus that's ever going to go away."

Adalja said he's "very eager" to see the ACIP debate the data and discuss when healthy people might need a booster.

"This is something we want to be proactive about. We want to have a plan in case it's necessary," Adalja said. "But I think giving a date certain that [is] six months or eight months or Sept. 20, that doesn't really strike me as something that's evidence-based. I think that's why you see many infectious disease doctors question the clinical need for these boosters.

"These types of decisions shouldn't be announced by the White House," Adalja noted. "They should be announced by the ACIP and the CDC. If we reverse this process, we kind of go back to the old days of the pandemic where you had politicians making decisions about what treatments were effective or were not effective."

In the meantime, Kotton cautions people not to seek out a booster until it's been formally approved.

She noted that doctors or pharmacists could wind up in trouble for providing a booster, since it's "a significant violation of federal policy," Kotton said.

In addition, people might be on the hook for the cost of their booster dose, since it hasn't been approved.

"I would really not recommend that people do that of their own accord until such time as we have good scientific evidence to support that," Kotton said.More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on COVID-19 vaccines.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

FOR PROFIT HEALTHCARE
Study: 2.7M people in U.S. lost health insurance in spring, summer 2020

#MEDICAREFORALL  #SINGLEPAYERNOW


About 2.7 million Americans lost their health insurance due to unemployment at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic last summer, a new study has found. Photo by TBIT/Pixabaylink

Sept. 3 (UPI) -- Some 2.7 million people in the United States lost health insurance in spring and summer 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, an analysis published Friday by JAMA Health Forum found.

The percentage of adults age 18 to 64 nationally who had health insurance declined by steadily each week between April 1 and July 1, the data showed.
\

Most of those who became uninsured last year had been relying on employer-sponsored health plans and lost their jobs, the researchers said.

Over the 12-week period that the study focused on, the ranks of those with employer-sponsored insurance declined by about 0.2% per week, according to the researchers.

RELATED Survey: COVID-19, income loss put many in medical debt

"The health insurance safety net is complicated. While it works well for many, it doesn't protect everyone," study co-author Kate Bundorf told UPI in an email.

"Policy should be designed to address those gaps," said Bundorf, a professor of health policy and management at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

Nearly 33 million people in the United States under age 65 -- the time at which Medicare coverage kicks in -- lack health insurance, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

RELATED Out-of-work Americans can now receive aid to pay for ACA health coverage

Although this figure has generally declined since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, up to half of adults diagnosed with COVID-19 nationally reported medical debt becasue they lost their jobs and their health insurance, a survey released in July by the Commonwealth Fund found.

For this study, Bundorf and her colleagues analyzed health insurance trends data for more than 1.2 million adults age 18 to 64 in the United States in 2020.

Between April 1 and July 1, the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 across the country, the percentage of adults in the study with health insurance dropped by 1.4%, the data showed.

RELATED Study: 30,000 deaths in U.S. during pandemic linked to unemployment

These declines continued throughout the rest of the year, but at a slower rate, the researchers said.

When applied to the entire national population, the percentage of study participants who became uninsured last year translates to 2.7 million people losing their healthcare coverage in that 12-week period, mostly due to loss of employer-sponsored plans.

"There are alternatives to employer-sponsored coverage and, since the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, those options have expanded," Bundorf said.

"If people lose coverage through a job, they should check to see what is available in their state and from their former employer," she said.