Those Electrifying Speculators

Electric-vehicle companies, often raising capital through dubious mergers, have a problem with the truth, and it’s a problem for all of us on this planet.


BY DAVID DAYEN
DECEMBER 22, 2021

SINGAPORE PRESS VIA AP IMAGES
Faraday Future displayed their FF91 EV at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Upon the news of the Build Back Better Act’s untimely death (well, it’s mostly dead), electric-vehicle stocks tanked. The bill had incentive payments of up to $12,500 for consumers purchasing an EV, and their loss could crush demand, especially for young companies banking on a robust market.

But the Biden administration’s revised fuel efficiency standard, setting a benchmark of 55 miles per gallon by the 2026 model year, does boost EV fortunes. The only way to get a fleet that green is to expand electrification, and that rising tide should give every company in the space new opportunities. Nationwide charging infrastructure, which was part of the bipartisan infrastructure law, also creates favorable conditions for EVs.

The green vehicle transition, in other words, is under way and inevitable, and large automakers are adapting to this reality. Planned fleets from Ford and Toyota include significant plug-in models. But electric cars will only become widely adopted when they get cheaper. With battery costs rising amid resource wars for the precious materials needed to produce them, that’s not likely to happen immediately. The best way to make EVs affordable over time is with more companies doing research and development, and the subsequent innovation and competition driving down prices.

That makes the crop of EV car and battery companies that have arrived on the scene really important. We know that electrification is the primary solution to mitigating the climate crisis. We are relying on this collection of entrepreneurs to lead the battle against greenhouse gas emissions.

That makes the fact that it’s hard to believe a word most of them say a real stumbling block.

We know that electrification is the primary solution to mitigating the climate crisis.

Nikola was briefly valued higher than Ford before the company was investigated over a host of false claims, including the allegation that its model car was pushed down a hill to make it look like it was steaming along an open road. The founder was later indicted, and Nikola paid $125 million to settle the probe. Lordstown Motors amended its annual report in June to state that it lacks the funds to start commercial production and may not survive the year. Selling its plant to Foxconn in November triggered a rally, but production has been pushed out another year, and it is also under federal investigation. Lucid stock tanked two weeks ago after the company admitted it had received a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission about a recent merger.

It’s gotten so bad that Fisker, another EV startup, had to publicly announce that it was not under investigation to satisfy markets.

The common thread with these and many other EV companies is that they went public through a SPAC merger. SPACs, which stands for “special purpose acquisition companies,” are essentially vehicles to circumvent the more arduous process of an initial public offering. Instead, companies merge with the SPAC, which is just a shell company holding investor capital. That erases the paperwork and regulatory requirements necessary in an IPO, along with some legal exposure. One analyst puts the number of EV companies merging with SPACs at 22 since last April.

In theory, SPACs are a godsend for electric-vehicle companies with tremendous up-front funding needs, and no product to sell before realizing their vision. But in practice, EV SPACs have been an environment for any charlatan with a Brooks Brothers suit and an idea to part investors from their money with no hope of a return. And that’s a problem, given the centrality of electrification in a climate mitigation strategy.

The trajectory is by now familiar. The SPAC format allows EV founders to make outsized statements about their companies, including projections on revenue and profit. These projections end up being almost always wrong, typically by a wide margin. Canoo, XL Fleet, and battery maker Romeo Power have all curtailed their projections in recent months, in addition to the aforementioned companies under federal investigation.

SPAC sponsors and their target company enjoy a safe harbor from private litigation by investors, and can therefore fearlessly promote their merger. Sponsors can make out with a payday even if the company fails, creating even more incentive to overhype. “SPACs are havens for highly speculative pre-revenue businesses,” noted Andrew Park, senior policy analyst with Americans for Financial Reform. “You can make these ambitious forward-looking projections, but not be subject to the same liability as under an IPO. You’re monetizing hopes and dreams.”

Park has testified before Congress that nine EV SPACs had combined annual revenue in 2020 of $139 million, but they collectively projected revenues of $26 billion by 2024.

The SPAC format allows EV founders to make outsized statements about their companies, including projections on revenue and profit.

Far too many of the electric-vehicle companies that are going public through SPACs have no business being in the public markets. Take Faraday Future, one of many Chinese companies pushing into the EV space. (That includes, incredibly, Evergrande, the collapsing Chinese real estate firm, which is a large shareholder in Faraday in addition to having its own EV unit.)

J Capital Research, a short seller, released information in October showing that Faraday’s founder has a history of securities fraud and has been banned for life in China from interacting with public companies. Five promised factory locations were later abandoned, lawsuits from suppliers over unpaid bills are piling up, and the reservations for future vehicles are fake. (This was the problem with Lordstown Motors’ reservations as well; Faraday stopped talking about its reservations soon after that was discovered.) It’s unclear what the company has even been spending money on.

Interestingly, the one major EV company to avoid a SPAC is the truck maker Rivian, whose traditional IPO was wildly successful. Even there, however, the company had to cut its overstated production target last week while announcing it lost $1.2 billion in the last quarter, sending the stock to a new low.

In a way, the EV hype machine is just a reflection of its grand master, Elon Musk. Even today, after robust sales, Tesla’s stock price is a function of overheated options trading, and the company’s lies about its Autopilot system habitually face regulatory scrutiny. Meanwhile, overstated claims about production continue—in October, Tesla’s board chair promised 20 million sales annually by 2030, despite selling only half a million this year. Musk may be Person of the Year, but he’s not the best figure to emulate, especially in an industry as vital as EVs.

Unfortunately, outside of Tesla, which survived on public money and energy trading credits for years, the other investor capital in the industry is being showered on companies with little or no track record. This has created a lot of fevered speculation about which EV company will come out on top, which caters to retail investor speculation that is likely to end in a lot of tears.

“There needs to be a distinction between mindless speculation which will exist for the rest of human history, versus investments where people are being exploited, due to asymmetric information,” said Park.

Fortunately, the SEC has finally keyed in on the dangers of SPACs. Chair Gary Gensler gave a speech earlier this month where he said that “the investing public may not be getting like protections between traditional IPOs and SPACs,” and that he would seek proposals to improve investor protection through making better disclosures, barring dubious marketing practices without evidence to back them up, and requiring liability obligations.

That will certainly help to prevent fraud. But what does it do for this critical market? Lost in this hysteria is the fact that government investment kept Tesla alive in the 2010s. There are plenty of ways to direct up-front investment at companies in the public interest. Alternatively, you can do this through financial markets as well, as long as you’re not incentivizing fraud. Some will even fail, and that’s acceptable loss to get to the desired end point.

We need electric vehicles to succeed. They’re too important to put into the hands of professional liars.



DAVID DAYE is the Prospect’s executive editor. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. His most recent book is ‘Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.’

More from David Dayen

Comet Leonard's discoverer explains how the unusual object was found

By Samantha Mathewson 

Astrophotographer Chris Schur captured this stunning photo of Comet Leonard on Dec. 4, 2021 from Payson, Arizona using a 10-inch Newtonian telescope and 60-minute camera exposure. (Image credit: Courtesy of Chris Schur)

Discovered nearly a year ago, Comet Leonard is on its final tour of Earth's neighborhood, lighting up the night sky for viewers this holiday season.

Comet Leonard — the brightest and most anticipated comet of the year — was discovered by Gregory Leonard, a senior research specialist at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, in January 2021. The comet was spotted, somewhat accidentally, using the Catalina Sky Survey's 1.5-meter (60-inch) telescope at the Mount Lemmon Infrared Observatory, located in the Santa Catalina Mountains in Arizona.

The comet, formally known as C/2021 A1, has since been making its way to the inner solar system, passing near Earth on Dec. 12, Venus on Dec. 17, and now en route towards the sun, expected to reach perihelion on Jan. 3. Here's our telescopes and binoculars guide to see Comet Leonard, and if you're hoping to photograph the comet check out best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography guides.

Related: Comet Leonard will light up the sky this month — here's how to see it

However, this showing is expected to be the comet's last — at least in our solar system (it won't be near Earth again for another 80,000 years). Space.com sat down with Leonard to talk about how the comet was first spotted and what skywatchers can expect to see in the night sky during the last leg of the comet's solar system tour. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Space.com How did you discover Comet C/2021 A1?

Gregory Leonard: I am an astronomer with the Catalina Sky Survey, a NASA-funded project based out of the University of Arizona, and we are directed to discover and track near-Earth asteroids — the kind of asteroids whose orbits can bring them close to the Earth and potentially impact the Earth. I discovered Comet C/2021 A1 Leonard — also known to the world as Comet Leonard — on the morning of Jan. 3, 2021. It was a serendipitous, or incidental, discovery in one of our standard survey fields, looking for near-Earth asteroids.

We do occasionally stumble into unknown comets, and that's exactly what Comet Leonard was. I saw the object not as a point or star-like object like most asteroids would appear to us, but this one had the telltale fuzzy coma that comets have — and the coma is that thin, tenuous atmosphere that forms around the nucleus of a comet when it gets close enough to the sun to excite and sublimate, or boil off, the ices that the comet is made of. In addition to seeing that thin coma, or that fuzziness around the comet, I also detected a little stubby tail, and that of course is another telltale sign that it's likely a comet.

Space.com: You mentioned that the comet's discovery was serendipitous or unexpected. Can you explain why?

Leonard: This comet was my 10th comet discovery, and since that time I've discovered three more, so there are actually 13 Comet Leonards out there. Now, I don't name these comets. They automatically assume the name of the discoverer, which in all these cases was me over the last six years. They are unexpected [because] we are looking for near-Earth asteroids and it's only on occasion that we stumble into what appears to be a comet, and then we report those to the Minor Planet Center at Harvard, Massachusetts, which is the clearinghouse for all asteroid and comet observations.

What was unexpected about this comet was its orbit. Unlike most other comets that are discovered throughout the year, this comet is on an orbit that brings it relatively close to the sun and the Earth — close enough for it to potentially be seen from the backyard by casual observers.

Space.com: What is the comet's origin and composition?

Leonard: It's origin is likely from a distant sphere of comets called the Oort Cloud, which is a vast reservoir of millions, or perhaps billions, of comets. The Oort Cloud is really far [from the sun]. It's at least 5,000 astronomical units — an astronomical unit is the sun-Earth distance — and may go out as far as 100,000 astronomical units. This comet likely came from the inner Oort Cloud, 3,700 astronomical units away and it's what we call a long-period comet. The comet has been inbound, on this leg, for the last 40,000 years. [However], if we trace that back, it's really been on an 80,000-year orbit. The last time it would've come [into] the inner solar system would have been 80,000 years ago.

What it's made of is still to be determined. There are most likely telescopes around the planet that have been looking at the spectra from the comet, and I think we'll see some papers and research come out in 2022 talking a little bit more about exactly what [the comet] is made of. I'm sure we'll see some of the usual comet suspects, and that would be water ice, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, some ammonia and maybe some other exotic compounds as well. What's interesting, too, is that when I discovered the comet, it was 450 million miles away — about the distance that Jupiter orbits the sun — and the fact that I spotted a tail is interesting [because] water ice will not sublimate at that distance, in that cold region of space. So it's some other compound that would likely have been boiling away and sublimating, perhaps a carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide. I think this comet will be observed after its perihelion — its close passage by the sun on Jan. 3 — as far out as it can be observed by telescopes, and we're going to get a better idea about what it's composed of.

Space.com: You said you discovered the comet on Jan. 3, and now its closest approach is slated for Jan. 3, 2022. Is that just a coincidence?

Leonard: It is. Jan. 3 of this year, 2021, was the actual discovery. So it was discovered exactly one year before perihelion — that is strictly coincidental, but I like coincidence.

Comet Leonard shines bright in this image from the European Space Agency's Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre using the Calar Alto Schmidt telescope in Spain. It was created by stacking 90 5-second exposure images of the comet taken on Dec. 7, 2021 on top of each other. (Image credit: ESA/NEOCC)

Space.com: Since its discovery, what have we learned from this comet, either about comets in general or about the early solar system?

Leonard: Once we understand better the exact composition of this comet, it will give us some clues and hopefully patch in some holes of knowledge about the conditions that existed at the time of the formation of our solar system. Comets are very, very pristine and they carry this information with them. These were basically unaltered, unaffected, primitive bodies leftover from the formation of all the planets. So this is why they are really exciting for astronomers and researchers to scrutinize to better understand where we came from. Comets, in addition to the near-Earth asteroids that my project looks for, impacted the Earth billions of years ago and likely brought some amount of water, contributing to our oceans and freshwater resources. So, when we look at comets, we're really looking at pieces of our own history; our own formation of our climate, and, in fact, maybe even some of the constituents of what we ourselves are made of.

Space.com: How did Comet Leonard make its way into the inner solar system?

Leonard: The comets that reside in the Oort Cloud are held in a gravitational balance between the feeble tug of the sun's gravity and the entire gravitational tug of our [Milky Way] galaxy. With the slightest bit of gravitational nudging, or disturbance in the galaxy, these comets can either sort of fall out of the Oort Cloud or they can begin their long journey inwards to our sun — and that's exactly what happened in the case of this comet. That's how many long-period comets get their beginning: They're gravitationally nudged or perturbed and the sun wins the battle. So they start cascading inwards toward the sun, taking thousands and thousands of years to do so.

In this case, we have to say hello and goodbye to Comet Leonard. This is its final passage [in our solar system]. It has an escape velocity, moving at 44 miles per second, or 70 kilometers per second, which is sufficient for it to be flung out from our solar system forever. Just like it takes rockets a certain minimal velocity to escape the gravity of Earth, the solar system also has an escape velocity. Comet Leonard has that velocity, so once it passes close to the sun on Jan. 3, it will, from that point forward, be moving away and will leave our solar system and travel millions of years perhaps to stumble into some other stellar system a long time from now.

Space.com: The comet's most recent planetary flyby was at Venus on Dec. 17. What impact do you think the comet had on the planet?

Leonard: That remains to be seen. One thing that we will be looking for is the potential for Venus to pass through the dust stream left by the comet. The comet is going to go past Venus's orbit and then Venus is going to pass through that area. It's possible then that Venus may experience a meteor shower from the dust particles left in the wake of Comet Leonard's passing. It's possible with the geometry of Earth that that could be visible with telescopes from Earth. [Also] the Japanese Space Agency, JAXA, has an orbiting spacecraft around Venus right now. It's called Akatsuki … and it's on a Venus climate mapping mission. However, there may be an opportunity for some of the sensors on Akatsuki to look for potential meteors entering the upper Venusian atmosphere. Oh, to be an observer on the night side of Venus, as Comet Leonard cruised by, it would have been breathtaking to see. It passed about 2.6 million miles [4.2 million kilometers] from Venus on Dec. 17 and Dec. 18, which sounds like a long way — and for us on Earth, it is — however, that's really just a cosmic whisker. So it just missed almost clobbering Venus by a couple of days. … [The comet's] Earth flyby was about 22 or 23 million miles [35 or 37 million kilometers], so it was 10 times closer to Venus in its flyby there.

Space.com: What can we expect as the comet heads now towards the sun?

Leonard: Well, I think the only thing that's consistent about comets is their utter unpredictability. A wise comet hunter and discoverer once said comets are like cats: both have tails and both do precisely what they want — and that is true.

It's likely that [Comet Leonard] is going to dim. And that's not so much because it's getting close to the sun, [but because] the Earth is now really receding. Both objects are receding from one another. So typically, when a comet approaches the sun, we tend to see a brightening. If the Earth wasn't moving away from [the comet], we would likely see just that. But we're likely to see it dim only because we're moving away. However, there's always a chance that as it nudges closer to the sun, that there could be some increased activity, maybe some outgassing or some jetting — some outburst that occurs that will brighten the comet's appearance from Earth.

Space.com: And what causes those outbursts?

Leonard: As a comet approaches the sun, you'll get the ices sort of violently sublimating and boiling away. If there's a pocket of material that's suddenly released, which releases pressure, that could be enough to kind of pull the comet apart — they are very fragile objects. Comets have a really low density. The density of water is one gram per cubic centimeter, and the density of a comet is a third of that … so these are very fragile objects and any forces at all, be they gravitational or related to the volatile release from these ices blowing away, is enough to expose more material, and have that material boil away. This could be one cause for a brightening — for an outburst of the comet.

Another recent effect … is a phenomenon known as forward scattering. The comet was very close in angle to the sun and the sunlight shining through, or essentially backlighting, all the dust in the tail has been known to enable comets to brighten considerably by one, two or even three magnitudes. So, it can temporarily brighten for 12 or 24 hours.

RELATED STORIES:

—Comet Leonard may have spawned meteor shower on Venus

—'Outbursts' from Comet Leonard spotted by NASA satellite (video)

Space.com: So we won't see the comet again because of its escape velocity. Where do you think it's going to go?

Leonard: I haven't seen any projections as to which direction it's flying off into our galaxy. It'll be fun to see what potential star system it could bump into many, many years from now. Suffice it to say that this is the final visit [to our solar system]. But there still is an opportunity for folks that really want to see it. What I would recommend is to get away from the bright lights of your town or city, be armed with a pair of binoculars — the larger, the better — or a small telescope, if you have one. It's really beyond naked-eye visibility at this point. … And, if you don't see it, just know that we've had a wonderful cosmic visitor for this winter season.

NEW YORK RATS

The COVID pandemic has had many unforeseen consequences. One of the most unforeseen was the explosion of the rat population in New York City. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.

F...ING BIG RATS

FDA Just Approved The World's First Injectable Medication to Prevent HIV




NICOLETTA LANESE, LIVE SCIENCE
21 DECEMBER 2021

The world's first injectable medication to reduce the risk of acquiring HIV has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency announced Monday (December 20).

The injectable drug – called Apretude or its generic name, "cabotegravir extended-release injectable suspension" – provides an alternative to daily pills for HIV prevention, such as Truvada and Descovy. These pills are up to 99 percent effective at preventing the sexual transmission of HIV, but must be taken every day to be that effective, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

By contrast, to start Apretude, people initially receive two shots, spaced one month apart, and then they receive an injection every two months thereafter, according to the FDA statement.

"This injection, given every two months, will be critical to addressing the HIV epidemic in the US, including helping high-risk individuals and certain groups where adherence to daily medication has been a major challenge or not a realistic option," Dr. Debra Birnkrant, director of the Division of Antivirals in the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in the statement.

The FDA hopes that the availability of a long-acting injectable drug for HIV prevention will increase the uptake of such medications in high-risk groups, the statement reads.

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), meaning medications taken to prevent HIV, are recommended for about 1.2 million people in the US, and in 2020, about 25 percent of those individuals received a prescription for PrEP pills. That's up from only 3 percent in 2015, but "there remains significant room for improvement," the statement says.

Two clinical trials suggest that Apretude reduces the risk of HIV infection more effectively than the daily pill Truvada. The trials met the gold standard for these types of studies, because they were randomized and double-blind, meaning those who received the actual medication were randomly chosen and neither the doctors nor the patients knew who was receiving the real medication over the placebo.

The first trial included nearly 4,600 cisgender men and transgender women who have sex with men, Live Science previously reported. Those who took Apretude had 69 percent lower risk of getting infected with HIV than the participants who took Truvada.

The second trial, which included about 3,200 cisgender women at risk of acquiring HIV, found that those who took Apretude had 90 percent lower risk of getting infected with HIV, compared with participants who took Truvada, according to the FDA statement.

The trial participants who took Apretude did experience more side effects than those who took Truvada, including headaches, fever, fatigue, back pain, myalgia, rash and reactions at the injection site, according to the statement.

As of December 20, Apretude has been approved for use in at-risk adults and adolescents weighing at least 77 pounds (35 kilograms), according to the FDA statement. Patients have the option to take an oral formulation of cabotegravir, called Vocabria, daily for four weeks prior to starting the injections, to see how well they tolerate the drug.

Patients should be tested for HIV and confirmed negative before starting Apretude and should be confirmed negative before each injection, to avoid the risk of developing drug-resistant HIV.

"Drug-resistant HIV-1 variants have been identified with use of Apretude for HIV-1 PrEP by individuals with undiagnosed HIV-1 infection," according to a statement from the drug's manufacturer, ViiV Healthcare.

"Individuals who become infected with HIV-1 while receiving Apretude for PrEP must transition to a complete HIV-1 treatment regimen."

Earlier this month, the CDC updated its guidance regarding how doctors should inform patients about PrEP, The Hill reported. The agency now recommends that health care providers inform all sexually active adults and adolescents about PrEP and offer the medications to all who ask for them, regardless of whether they report specific behaviors that would put them at high risk of HIV exposure. Apretude now joins the list of possible options that can be presented to these patients.

Apretude has a list price of US$3,700 per dose (or $22,200 per year, for six doses) and is expected to ship to wholesalers and specialty distributors in the US early next year, NBC News reported.

In July, the federal government mandated that most US insurance companies must cover Truvada and Descovy, as well as the lab tests and clinic visits needed to maintain the prescriptions, with no cost sharing; but as of yet, insurers are not required to cover all the costs of taking Apretude.

Who are the vaccine holdouts? America's real COVID divide might not be what you think

Anthony Dimaggio,

 Salon
December 22, 2021

Hannah Drake, spoken word artist and Black Lives Matter activist, receiving the 

Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in Louisville, Kentucky in January: a new study suggests Black Americans have not gotten the vaccine at a rate proportionate to their population

(AFP)

The dramatic rise of the omicron variant has renewed medical experts' warnings about the need for Americans to start taking the pandemic more seriously. Considering the generally low levels of vaccination in the U.S. relative to other wealthy countries, the CDC recommends that all Americans get vaccinated as the best means of protecting against severe illness from the variant, which has quickly overtaken delta as the dominant COVID strain in the U.S. Reporting from the first week and a half of December found that only 12 percent of new COVID-19 cases were from omicron; alarmingly, that had skyrocketed to 73 percent of new cases by the end of the third week of the month.

America is seriously divided on the vaccination question. And one doesn't have to go far to see headlines emphasizing the partisan nature of anti-vax sentiment. Stories placing partisanship at the center of the conflict are everywhere, with titles like: "Inside the Growing Alliance Between Anti-Vaccine Activists and Pro-Trump Republicans," "Republicans Seize on Federal Vaccine Mandates to Fire Up Their Base and Try to Court New Voters Worried About the Economy" and "The Biggest Divide on Vaccination Isn't Race or Income, But Party — and the Divide is Growing."

Despite the preoccupation with partisan conflict, available evidence suggests that the conflict over vaccination is not what we think it is. National polling in September found large divides on COVID vaccination on numerous demographic fronts, based on education, political party and age. Sixty percent of Republicans reported being vaccinated, compared to 86 percent of Democrats. Sixty-six percent of high school graduates said they were vaccinated, compared to 86 percent of those with graduate degrees. And 66 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds reported vaccination, compared to 86 percent of those 65 and older.

RELATED: "Don't, don't, don't": Trump lashes out after crowd boos him for getting COVID booster
00:2101:43






These are all large divides between groups — of 20 percentage points or more. But without a careful analysis of the raw data from national surveys, it's not possible to tell how much each factor accounts for the enduring national divide over vaccination. To provide a clearer answer, I undertook an original statistical "regression" analysis of mid-2021 surveys, one a Marist poll, another from Axios — both completed in June — which asked Americans about their vaccination status, while collecting information on other demographic and personal behavioral factors.

For the Axios poll, Americans' political behavior was gauged in relation to their reliance on various media venues, including social media like Facebook and Twitter, the elite agenda-setting press (The New York Times), cable viewership (CNN, MSNBC and Fox News), and broadcast television (ABC, CBS, NBC News), in addition to various demographics, including political party identification, gender, race, education level and income. For the Marist poll, additional demographic factors included religious affiliation (for evangelical Christians) and region of the country.

By statistically "controlling" (in social science terms) for all these factors simultaneously within a regression analysis, I am able to measure the percent likelihood that each variable is associated with being vaccinated or unvaccinated, other factors considered. For example, I can estimate the percent likelihood that age predicts being unvaccinated, moving from the oldest group of Americans — those 60 and older — to younger adults in the 18-29 age group. Or the likelihood that one is not vaccinated based on party identification, Democrat or Republican. Or the likelihood that rising education — from those with a high school degree or less to those with graduate degrees — accounts for vaccine refusal.

The results of this research may surprise those who have been told that the battle over vaccinations is primarily a question of partisanship or, alternatively, is about where someone gets their news. The Biden administration has targeted a "disinformation dozen" of vaccine skeptics operating on social media, and CNN has emphasized that Fox News viewers are more likely to oppose vaccination. In fact, neither those who rely on social media nor those who watch Fox News as their "main source of news" are more likely to be unvaccinated, after controlling for other factors included in my analysis. On the other hand, consumption of various "liberal" media outlets, including CNN and The New York Times, is also unrelated to vaccination status.

In terms of news consumption, only MSNBC and broadcast television act as positive predictors that someone is vaccinated. And even in these two cases, the correlation is not particularly strong: Watching MSNBC and broadcast news is associated, respectively, with a 14 percent and 15 percent increased likelihood of vaccination, after controlling for other factors.

For a fuller accounting of various demographic factors, we need to look to the June Marist poll. Importantly, despite claims that Black Americans are more likely to be vaccine holdouts, this group is not significantly more likely to be unvaccinated, after statistically accounting for other factors. This finding is reinforced by recent polling, such as the Pew Research Center's September poll that found minimal differences between the 70 percent of Black people, 72 percent of white people and 76 percent of Latinx people who report being vaccinated.

Similarly, income, gender and the region of the country where one lives are all not significant in predicting vaccination status. Despite high-profile reporting drawing attention to lower vaccination rates in the South, living below the Mason-Dixon line is simply not relevant in accounting for vaccine resistance. Southern states are disproportionately Republican in their politics, and partisanship appears to be the primary factor at work here. Reflecting this point, my analysis of the Marist poll finds that Republican party affiliation is associated with a 26 percent increased chance of being unvaccinated, controlling for other factors.

Despite academic and journalistic emphasis on vaccine resistance among white evangelicals, this group is only moderately more likely to be represented among vaccine holdouts. Being a white evangelical is associated with only a 10 percent increased probability of being unvaccinated in the Marist poll, compared to other Americans and after controlling for other demographic factors. Similarly, education is only moderately significant as a predictor of vaccination: The least educated Americans (those with a high school degree or less) are about 16 percent less likely to be vaccinated, compared to the most educated Americans (those with graduate degrees).

RELATED: False prophets: When preachers defy COVID — and then it kills them

But there is one factor that accounts, by far, for the largest variation in vaccination rates: age. Recent polling finds large differences between groups based on vaccination status and age, but the results are not what many people might expect. On the one hand, younger Americans are significantly less likely to be vaccinated than older Americans, with movement from the youngest Americans (18 to 29 years old) to the oldest (60+) associated with an astonishing 57 percent increased likelihood of being vaccinated. But this distinction is not because those in the youngest age cohort are disproportionately refusing vaccination, presumably because they feel they are healthy and are not concerned about contracting COVID-19.

My analysis clearly shows that adults under 30 are not significantly more likely, statistically speaking, to be unvaccinated compared to the rest of the public. The difference occurs at the other end, where it is older Americans — those 60 and older — who are far more likely to have sought out vaccination, compared to all other age groups. Taking a closer look at Pew's September polling, an overwhelming 86 percent of Americans 65 and older reported being vaccinated in mid-2021, only a few months after vaccines first became widely available, compared to 73 percent of those 50 to 64, 69 percent of those 30 to 49, and 66 percent of those 18 to 29.

To put this another way, the major story here is not that younger Americans are disproportionately holding out on vaccination, but rather that all age groups except people 60 and older have failed to get vaccinated at the high rates that were necessary (at least before omicron took hold) to achieve "herd immunity" against COVID-19.

It may be comforting or politically convenient to blame the failure to achieve mass vaccination on ideological factors such as partisanship, Fox News socialization or religion (specifically referring to white evangelicals). There's no doubt that Fox News has a history of flirting with anti-vaccine propaganda, while Republican state and local officials have militantly opposed vaccine and mask mandates and evangelical Christians have a long history of viewing evidence-based reasoning with suspicion, in favor of a faith-based worldview often associated with the rejection of science.

RELATED: With omicron variant arriving, Republicans are now bribing people to avoid vaccination

But none of those factors, it turns out, is the primary reason for vaccine opposition. White evangelicals represent 14.5 percent of the U.S. population in 2021, and with 40 percent of them being unvaccinated in late 2021, that amounts to just 5.8 percent of the adult population. Republicans were 26 percent of the adult population as of October 2021, and with 44 percent reportedly not vaccinated, this amounts to 11.4 percent of American adults. By contrast, the number of unvaccinated Americans younger than age 65 is much larger than either of these groups. Census data reveals that Americans under 65 were 79 percent of the adult population as of 2020, and based on Pew's data, the unvaccinated people within that group represented almost a quarter (24 percent) of adults.

It's clear that partisanship and religious faith fuel suspicion of vaccines, and both factors clearly play a role in vaccine refusal. But our nation's vaccination problem runs much deeper than that. The reality is that the U.S. has a widespread anti-vax problem, and lags well behind most wealthy countries in the percentage of adults who are fully vaccinated. If roughly one in four adult Americans under age 60 is unvaccinated, that comes to more than 60 million people, without even counting children younger than 18 who remain unvaccinated for various reasons.

RELATED: How deadly is the omicron variant? Here's what we know

Mass opposition to vaccination is rooted in larger cultural values, such as a tendency to embrace narcissistic ignorance and to discount the advice of medical experts. Tens of millions refuse to come to terms with the gravity of the threat, despite the U.S. closing in on a million people dead of COVID and the prospect that half of those who contract the virus may face "long COVID" symptoms that persist for six months or more — an especially alarming statistic, considering our lack of understanding of what the long-term consequences will be years from now.

The significance of age as the best predictor of vaccine refusal suggests that much of the population, disproportionately concentrated among those younger than 65, have discounted the dangers of COVID-19, viewing it as something that only threatens the elderly. This belief is grossly ignorant, considering that one-quarter of the 800,000 U.S. COVID deaths as of December, or 200,000 people, were people younger than 65. Despite the evident dangers faced by Americans of all ages, anti-vax sentiment persists in the face of the most devastating pandemic in a century — and the prospect that new variants will continue to reduce the efficacy of vaccines and guarantee prolonged viral spread well into the future.

Senior Palestinian lawmaker condemned for 'accepting Israel's racist Jewish nation-state law'

The United Arab List's Mansour Abbas reportedly said Israel was 'born as a Jewish state, and it will remain one', angering many Palestinians

The New Arab Staff
22 December, 2021

Mansour Abbas heads up the Palestinian United Arab List in Israel's Knesset [AFP/Getty]

A senior Palestinian lawmaker in the Israeli Knesset has been condemned for reportedly accepting Israel as being a Jewish state.

Mansour Abbas is head of the United Arab List, a Palestinian-Islamist political party in Israel that is a member of the governing coalition.

"The State of Israel was born as a Jewish state, and it will remain one," he reportedly said during a summit for the Israeli business news outlet Globes.

The reported comment was met with anger by many Palestinians, who pointed out the 700,000 Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed from their homes with Israel's 1948 formation.

"These irresponsible statements are consistent with the calls of extremists in Israel to displace the Palestinians and harm the status of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and history of the Palestinian people," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a message issued by his team on Tuesday.

How Israel's nation-state law perpetuates racial segregation

Analysis--Jessica Buxbaum

The release also said Mansour stands for no one but himself with his alleged remark, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Gaza rulers Hamas said Mansour's apparent comment was "a clear endorsement" of Israel's Jewish nation-state law, passed by the country's parliament under right-wing premier Benjamin Netanyahu.

The 2018 legislation affords the "right to exercise national self-determination" within Israel only to Jews and was widely considered a racist measure.

Ayman Odeh, head of the largely Palestinian Joint List in Israel's parliament, a rival grouping to which the United Arab List once belonged, also hit out at Mansour.

"If you divide the national unity of your people and recognise the most important stance of the Zionist movement, then who are you?!" Odeh wrote on Facebook.

"One of the conditions for the [exclusively] Jewish state's continuation is that ruling establishment succeeds in seeing us fail to act as a national group with national rights.

"That's why Netanyahu and Mansour have worked to tear apart the unity of our people."

Members of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the most senior authority within that organisation, said Mansour backed "racist" Israeli legislation.

UK Conservative MP says party pushing for law to ban BDS 'within a year or two'

'Within a year or two, we should have an absolute ban on BDS,' Conservative MP Robert Jenrick 

The New Arab Staff
17 December, 2021

MP Robert Jenrick said his party will ban BDS in the coming months [Getty]

A Conservative MP and former housing minister said Tuesday that his party is pushing for legislation to outlaw the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in the UK.

During an online conference event entitled “Why Do So Many People Hate Jews”, MP Robert Jenrick said: “In the following months we will be working to outlaw BDS”.

“I do think BDS is being beaten back here. There is no political party in the UK that would support BDS today”, he said.

“What we want to do is pass a piece of legislation here and I’m pretty confident it will be in the next legislative programme in the Spring of next year.”

MP Robert Jenrick's remarks this week about UK gov't plans to legislate against BDS made a few headlines - but this is the full clip. It's...bad.

"Within a year or two, we should...have an absolute ban on BDS here, which would be a great step forwards".https://t.co/99Q4uhBTyl pic.twitter.com/1y1Nezxhn0 — Ben White (@benabyad) December 16, 2021

“Obviously I want it to be as broad as possible so there’s next to no avenue for BDS to continue here. Within a year or two, we should have an absolute ban on BDS.”

..This measure must and will be resisted by all who care about the upholding of international law, democratic freedoms including the right to invest ethically and the fundamental principle of standing always with the oppressed and not the oppressor — Ben Jamal (@BenJamalpsc) December 17, 2021

Palestinian campaigners and rights groups have slammed Jenrick’s remarks as an anti-democratic suppression of free speech.

Meanwhile, Israel advocacy group Zionist Federation welcomed the move to ban the anti-apartheid campaign, which they claim is anti-Semitic.

A movement which increasingly demonises #Jews and which marginalises #Jewish students on campuses should have no place in mainstream society.

We look forward to the day when legislation will outlaw the @BDSmovement https://t.co/2glUmzNvb4 — Zionist Federation (@ZionistFed) December 15, 2021

The UK Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, pledged to ban local councils from boycotting products from countries including Israel in the run-up to the December 2019 general elections.

Free speech, Israel-Palestine and the battle to define anti-Semitism
Analysis
Ziad Al-Qattan

Labour leader Keir Starmer has said his party will not support BDS, calling the movement divisive and damaging to UK-Israel relations. However, party members passed a motion at the annual Brighton conference in September that labelled Israel an apartheid state and called for sanctions against the country.

UN reduces food rations for war-torn Yemen due to lack of donor funding

The World Food Programme said it will reduce food rations for millions of people in Yemen from January due to a lack of funding from donors.

The New Arab Staff & Agencies
22 December, 2021

The WFP feeds 13 million people a month in Yemen [source: Getty]

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday it will reduce food rations for 8 million people in Yemen from January due to a lack of funding from donors, warning the cuts will push more people into starvation.

Families on reduced handouts will receive barely half of the WFP's daily minimum ration. Other food assistance and child malnutrition programmes are at risk of further cuts if more funding does not come through, the WFP said in a statement.

UN agencies, including the WFP, earlier warned of programme cuts, after only $2.68 billion of $3.85 billion requested from donors for this year had been received as of the end of October.

"WFP food stocks in Yemen are running dangerously low," the WFP's regional director, Corinne Fleischer, said in a statement.

"Every time we reduce the amount of food, we know that more people who are already hungry and food insecure will join the ranks of the millions who are starving. But desperate times call for desperate measures."

Yemen war will have killed over 300,000 by year's end: UN

Five million people at immediate risk of slipping into famine will keep the full ration, the WFP said. The agency feeds 13 million people a month in Yemen.

Yemen, divided between the Iran-aligned Houthi group in the north and the internationally recognised government in the south, has been plunged into hunger by seven years of war, inflation and impediments to imports.

The war has killed tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, and left millions on the brink of famine.

The average cost of a minimum food basket this year rose 140 percent in southern Yemen, and 38 percent in Houthi areas, the WFP said.

In June the WFP resumed monthly food aid in some Houthi-run parts of Yemen after limiting deliveries to every other month from April 2020 because of donor funding cuts, partly over concerns about obstruction to aid delivery.

The World Bank on Tuesday said it had approved $170 million in grants for Yemen for urban infrastructure, climate resilience and rural food insecurity projects.

‘Amazon won’t let us leave’: Tornado creates modern Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

December 15, 2021 

PEOPLES WORLD

 BY C.J. ATKINS

A heavily damaged Amazon fulfillment center is seen Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021, in Edwardsville, Ill. A large section of the roof of the building was ripped off and walls collapsed when a tornado moved through the area Friday night. Six workers were killed. Reportedly, Amazon would not let them leave their workplace as the storm approached. | Jeff Roberson / AP



“Amazon won’t let us leave.” That was the last message 46-year-old Larry Virden sent his girlfriend on the evening of Dec. 10. A short time later, a tornado blasted through Edwardsville, Illinois, and shredded the Amazon fulfillment center warehouse where Virden worked. When the roof of the massive facility came crashing down, he and five co-workers were left dead. Cherie Jones, his partner of 13 years, is now in mourning and explaining to their four children why dad is never coming home.

According to Jones, Virden could have gotten back in time to shelter with his family—if only his employer hadn’t ordered workers to stay at the facility. Amazon claims supervisors moved to get as many workers as possible to designated safe spots in the warehouse, but Virden’s final text is a rallying cry against the willful anti-worker negligence of the retail behemoth.

‘Amazon won’t let us leave’: A screenshot shared with the media by Larry Virden’s girlfriend, Cherie Jones, shows the last text message he sent before a tornado killed him and five co-workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Edwardsville, Ill., on Dec. 10.

Amazon wasn’t the only corporation implicated in tornado-linked worker deaths that night, though. Eight more were killed at the Mayfield Consumer Products Company’s candle factory in Mayfield, Ky. There, too, workers wanted to flee an approaching twister, but bosses reportedly told them they’d be fired if they left the plant. The damage in Mayfield was even more devastating than that in Edwardsville; all that’s left of the candle factory is a pile of rubble.

The two sites—which are essentially crime scenes—invite comparisons to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. There, 146 garment workers—123 women and girls and 23 men, many of them Italian and Jewish immigrants—were killed when flames engulfed a high-rise clothing plant in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Many were burned alive, others suffocated from the smoke, while dozens more desperately jumped or fell from windows.

The Triangle company had chained the doors of the factory closed, a common practice among bosses at the time in order to keep workers from taking breaks or leaving before managers said they could.

Immediately after the tragedy, socialist leader Rose Schneiderman told the members of the Women’s Trade Union League: “I would be a traitor to those poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship…. Too much blood has been spilled…. It is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can do that is with a strong working-class movement.”

A wave of worker organizing and agitation for workplace safety was sparked by the blaze. Survivors of the fire became major advocates for unions as the only way workers might collectively protect themselves from corporate greed. Fire eyewitness Frances Perkins took up the investigation for the state and was instrumental in putting safety front and center; later she would be the United States’ first woman Secretary of Labor under FDR and said the Triangle fire was “the day the New Deal was born.”

From the ashes arose the country’s first laws mandating fire safety and improved building codes, regulations for working conditions, improved sanitary facilities, limiting of working hours for women and children, and official encouragement for collective bargaining. Everything from minimum wage laws to workers’ compensation to the creation of OSHA can be traced back to the long reform drive that followed the disaster. Triangle became a turning point in the struggle to save workers from being literally killed for the sake of profits.

The interior of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory following the deadly fire of 1911. An estimated 146 workers, mostly women and girls, were killed when they couldn’t escape the flames because bosses had chained the doors of the factory shut. | Public Domain / via U.S. Department of Labor

It was chains on doors that condemned people to death in the Triangle fire 110 years ago; orders from supervisors and threats of termination achieved the same outcome in Edwardsville and Mayfield this week. Now, just like then, corporations treat workers like they are disposable.

Amazon’s disaster in Illinois is not unique; it is the latest episode in a long-running tragedy. One worker who spoke to People’s World, recounting how Amazon kept its New York warehouses operating even during deadly flooding recently, said, “They legitimately don’t care if we die. Their profits don’t suffer.” People’s lives are being put on the line needlessly, but corporations and the billionaires who own and run them refuse to take responsibility.

The Amazon workers who are involved with the Amazon Labor Union are taking up the challenge of stopping things like this from happening again. For the employees in its fulfillment centers, Amazon dictates every aspect of their work life—pay, benefits, working conditions, safety measures, access to telephones. The workers have no power to negotiate any of these things, even though it’s their labor power which rakes in the billions for Jeff Bezos and the company’s other owners.

Amazon, the union says, consistently values its profits over the people who work there. The deaths of workers like Larry Virden in Edwardsville, who were ordered to stay at work even as a deadly storm approached, are proof of that.

Workers in Amazon—and at companies like Mayfield—need unions because a union is the only way that workers can collectively leverage their power to force change. Amazon and other corporations know this, which is why they spend so much effort trying to convince employees not to join up with the union and fire workers who try to organize. And bought-and-paid-for politicians in right-to-work states like Kentucky know it too, which is why they keep anti-union laws on the books. 

Some of the workers and supporters of the Amazon Labor Union at Amazon’s Staten Island fulfillment center in late October. | People’s World

Soon, there will be a re-vote for union certification at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala. Hopefully, workers’ voices will really be heard this time, despite the company’s intimidation and misinformation campaigns against the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU). A victory in Alabama could be the first chink in the armor of the corporate giant and spur on a Triangle-style organizing and reform wave. The workers in Bessemer and at Amazon facilities everywhere—from Staten Island, N.Y. to Bad Hersfeld, Germany—need our support and solidarity

As for how to characterize the actions of Amazon and Mayfield this week, we can give the final analysis to Frederick Engels, a pioneering advocate for liberating workers from greed and exploitation. Looking at how capitalists in Victorian England were using up workers’ lives in pursuit of profit, Engels wrote in 1845:

“When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of workers in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death…its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual. Disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offense is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.”

Too much blood has been spilled. It is once again up to the working people to save themselves. Organize.


CONTRIBUTOR
C.J. Atkins is the managing editor at People's World. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from York University in Toronto and has a research and teaching background in political economy and the politics and ideas of the American left. In addition to his work at People's World, C.J. currently serves as the Deputy Executive Director of ProudPolitics.

Union declares victory as Kellogg's strike ends with pay raise, moratorium on plant closures

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
December 22, 2021

Kellogg's plant workers remain on strike after rejecting the company's latest contract offer (AFP)

Kellogg's workers' months-long strike officially came to an end Tuesday after union members voted to approve a new five-year collective bargaining agreement that includes an immediate wage increase of $1.10 per hour, a moratorium on plant closures, and a pension boost.

Anthony Shelton, international president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM), called the new contract a "great workers' victory" and said that "solidarity was critical" to the achievement. Employees are expected to return to work on December 27.

"We're definitely stronger going back into that building than we were coming out."

"Our striking members at Kellogg's ready-to-eat cereal production facilities courageously stood their ground and sacrificed so much in order to achieve a fair contract," Shelton said in a statement Tuesday. "This agreement makes gains and does not include any concessions."

"Our entire union commends and thanks Kellogg's members," he continued. "From picket line to picket line, Kellogg's union members stood strong and undeterred in this fight, inspiring generations of workers across the globe, who were energized by their tremendous show of bravery as they stood up to fight and never once backed down."

Roughly 1,400 Kellogg's workers in four states—Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee—had been on strike since October 5, when cereal plant employees walked off the job in an effort to improve pay, benefits, and poor working conditions, a longstanding issue that deteriorated further amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Kellogg's workers have accused management of intentionally under-staffing the corporation's facilities—and forcing the remaining employees to endure brutally long shifts—to save money on pay and benefits, all while handing CEO Steve Cahillane nearly $12 million a year in compensation.

"The worst is when you work a 7-to-7 and they tell you to come back at 3 am on a short turnaround," Omaha BCTGM president Daniel Osborn, a Kellogg's mechanic, told Rolling Stone last month. "You work 20, 30 days in a row and you don't know where work and your life ends and begins."

"You sign on at a place like Kellogg’s, and you know they basically own your life," Osborn added. "You decide it is OK because you do it to support your family and give them a good life. But it has to be a relationship where you're valued, and the company doesn't look to squeeze out every last drop of profit at your expense."

Osborn told HuffPost on Tuesday that with the new collective bargaining agreement, "we were able to retain everything we had before that they were trying to take away, and we got some gains in there, too."

"We're definitely stronger going back into that building than we were coming out," he said.

A major dispute between workers and management has been the existence of a two-tiered compensation system that divides employees into "legacy" and "transitional" categories, with the latter receiving lesser pay and benefits.

Under the new contract, according to BCTGM, the two-tiered system would remain in place but it wouldn't be "permanent." The Washington Post reported that management "agreed to create an 'accelerated' path from one tier to the next," but some workers voiced concern that the new contract could further entrench the status quo.

"The agreement accomplishes something incredibly important: it breaks a cycle of concessionary bargaining."

"It's a trojan horse that's been given to us," one Kellogg's worker said at a rally in Battle Creek, Michigan last week, days before the vote on the contract was held.

C.M. Lewis, an editor of Strikewave and a union activist in Pennsylvania, argued in a series of tweets Tuesday that—all things considered—Kellogg's workers "got a better deal than if they hadn't struck."

"The agreement accomplishes something incredibly important: it breaks a cycle of concessionary bargaining that seemed irreversible even a few years ago. That's a big deal, and shouldn't be undersold," Lewis wrote. "Strikes work, but they don't work miracles. We need to be honest."

"Two-tier is still part of the contract. The road out of it is extremely limited," he added. "This isn't a defeat. It's not a slam-dunk victory. It's a victory that makes bigger victories possible. And we need to be okay with that ambiguity."

BCTGM, which did not release the vote totals for ratification, said the new contract includes a moratorium on plant closures through October 2026, "a clear path to regular full-time employment," "a significant increase in the pension multiplier," and "maintenance of cost-of-living raises."

"The BCTGM is grateful to AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler for mobilizing the AFL-CIO and its affiliates in support of our striking Kellogg’s members. Once again, President Shuler has provided highly effective leadership in support of the BCTGM and our members," Shelton said Tuesday. "The BCTGM is grateful, as well, for the outpouring of fraternal support we received from across the labor movement for our striking members at Kellogg's."

Part of a wave of recent labor actions across the U.S., the Kellogg's strike drew national attention as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), President Joe Biden, and other prominent figures spoke out in defense of the workers.

"Last year, Kellogg's made over $1.4 billion in profits. It paid its CEO, Steven Cahillane, nearly $12 million in total compensation, a significant increase over recent years," Sanders wrote in an op-ed last week. "One of the reasons that Kellogg's had such a profitable year during this pandemic was the extraordinary sacrifices made by their employees who, in significantly understaffed factories, were asked to work an insane number of hours."

After Kellogg's announced earlier this month that it would move to permanently replace striking workers, Biden said in a statement that "such action undermines the critical role collective bargaining plays in providing workers a voice and the opportunity to improve their lives while contributing fully to their employer's success."

Trevor Bidelman, a Kellogg's worker and president of the BCTGM local in Battle Creek, told HuffPost that management's threat to permanently replace the unionized workers who walked off the job likely influenced the vote in favor of the new contract.

"The replacement threat was really the biggest piece," he said.