Top Three
Inflation: Was up 8.6% this year through May, the fastest rate of price increases since 1981.
Shelter costs, which comprise about one-third of the CPI, rose at the fastest 12-month pace in 31 years.
NYT: "An index measuring the price of food at home climbed 11.9% over the past year, the largest annual increase since 1979, as five of the government’s six major categories for grocery store food rose by more than 10%."
"Gasoline prices are about a cent shy of the never-before-seen national average level of $5 a gallon, and it's unclear how Americans — and the economy — will react... Gasoline prices could reach a national average of $6.20 a gallon by August, JPMorgan Chase estimated."
Mark Zandi: "There is no good in this, save that it wasn’t even uglier. The typical family must spend about $450 per month more to buy the same goods and services they did a year ago. They make about $70k a year."
The rise in inflation meant workers lost more ground in May, with real wages declining 0.6% from April and 3% on a 12-month basis.
Predicting the Fall and Boosters: Great piece by Katelyn Jetelina:
"One way to get ahead of the virus is to anticipate the dominant variant this winter, just like we do with the flu each year."
"For flu, scientists meet annually to evaluate new circulating strains and determine if an updated vaccine formula is needed. Each year, the WHO makes recommendations in February for the upcoming Northern Hemisphere influenza season. Then it takes about 5-6 months for the vaccine to be available. This isn’t a perfect process, but on average we have 60% vaccine effectiveness each year."
"It’s suggested that we adapt this process for COVID-19. And I agree. But I can’t highlight enough how incredibly challenging this is right now. For several reasons:"
"SARS-CoV-2 is changing 4 times faster than the flu due to high transmission. New variants can emerge and dominate after the vaccine process has begun. This happened famously before the 2009 and 2014 flu season. It could certainly happen with COVID19. This time last year Alpha was dominant. By winter, we went through two new variants of concern."
"We have no idea how this virus will mutate. We haven’t had enough time to see ladder-like patterns, like we see with flu."
"For flu, there is just one main vaccine platform (egg-based). With COVID-19 we have a few. Timelines, processes, manufacturers’ experience, and facility capacity vary for each."
"Because of the predictive power and manufacturing experience with flu vaccine, no new clinical data is required by the FDA each year. With COVID19, though, the FDA requires vaccine-specific safety profiles and effectiveness data."
"Bigger questions (beyond the FDA) include:"
"Payment. Congress has not passed COVID19 funding, so we don’t have money to pay for everyone’s new boosters in the U.S. Not everyone would get in line given vaccine hesitancy, but the discrepancy and the implications are important."
"Vaccination rate. All of this science is great. But only 48% of people in the U.S. have their original booster. Only 23% of eligible people have their second booster. Why aren’t we leveraging social science as much as bench science to increase effectiveness of vaccine rollouts?"
Pandemic Babies Are Behind: Super long piece via USA Today.
"Emerging evidence reveals an uptick in developmental delays and challenging behaviors in children belonging to the so-called “COVID generation.” Born during or shortly before the pandemic, many of these children are talking, walking and interacting later and less frequently. They're also more prone to certain behaviors, like outbursts, physical aggression and separation anxiety."
"It's unclear how much the COVID-19 pandemic and related economic fallout are to blame. But experts note many young children in recent years have had uneven access to health and child care and relatively little exposure to the outside world."
"It could be years before researchers can adequately measure whether the pandemic had any material, long-term effect on early childhood development. In many cases, the lagging social skills are recoverable."
"Data nationally show a dip in referrals for early intervention services at the beginning of the pandemic, as well as in visits to primary care physicians. And in many cases, the children who needed the services most are least likely to receive them. The disparities are likely to become worse as demand rebounds, experts say."
"A recently released report examining the child care sector this past school year found that roughly half (48%) remained understaffed. A separate report, by a trio of progressive think tanks, found the child care workforce has dropped by more than 10% from its pre-pandemic levels. By comparison, the average decline among all sectors was 2%."
"Tutoring demand has grown across the board, but at Sylvan and other centers, the biggest surge has been among children in the prekindergarten-2 levels."
Federal
Administration Drops Covid Testing Requirement for International Travelers: Via CNBC. "The Biden administration will drop the Covid-19 testing requirement for inbound air travelers from abroad on Sunday, ending one of the longest-running travel restrictions of the pandemic."
White House: OMB announced the inaugural class of the U.S. Digital Corps will join the Biden administration this month, working on technology-intensive projects in immigration, healthcare, cybersecurity and other sectors. Forty fellows will spend two years working on government projects across 13 federal agencies. More via Axios.
Treasury: Releases updated Compliance and Reporting Guidance and Recovery Plan Performance Report Template for the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) program.
Covid-19 Research
Boosters for Kids: Good catch by Meg Tirrell: “In FDA briefing documents for pediatric Covid-19 vaccine, Moderna says it’s already begun testing boosts in all age groups, and says tested boosts for kids under 6 will either be original or omicron-containing bivalent.”
New UK Wave: Christina Pagel with a long thread:
Mysteries Linger About Covid’s Origins: WHO report.
NYT: "In its first report, a team of international scientists assembled by the World Health Organization to advise on the origins of the coronavirus said on Thursday that bats likely carried an ancestor of the coronavirus that may have then spilled over into a mammal sold at a wildlife market. But the team said that more Chinese data was needed to study how the virus spread to people, including the possibility that a lab leak played a role."
"The group was expected to indicate more openness to a lab leak than a previous team that the W.H.O. sent to China in early 2021. That earlier team’s joint report with China said that a lab leak, while possible, was “extremely unlikely.” The W.H.O.’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called that assessment premature."
“We haven’t received any reports that really indicate that there is a lab leak that we feel is strong to follow up on,” said Marietjie Venter, the team’s chairwoman and a professor of medical virology at the University of Pretoria in South Africa."
Covid Shots for Young Kids Are Almost Available: Here’s what you need to know, via the Washington Post.
Unvaccinated Heart-Failure Patients at 3 Times the Risk for COVID-19 Death: Study / Press Release.
Health Workers Not Countering COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Well: Healthcare workers are a trusted source of COVID-19 vaccine information, but many aren't using that advantage on social media to encourage vaccination, a research team based at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health reported this week in the Journal of Community Health. Study / Press Release.
State
Colorado: 9 charts that explain Denver’s declining enrollment challenge.
DC: Mayor Muriel Bowser and DC Health announced expanded efforts to encourage families to vaccinate their children ahead of the upcoming 2022-2023 school year.
Illinois: Chalkbeat: "Chicago Public Schools struggled to provide enough busing for students requesting transportation, a problem that hit districts across the state and country. Almost two months into the school year, CPS had 4,000 students with outstanding transportation requests; more than half were students with disabilities. In October, about 3% of students without steady transportation did not go to school at the time as a result, according to the district."
Indiana: Rate of Indiana high school students headed to college drops to 53%.
Kentucky: Jefferson County Public Schools virtual school saw heavy demand this school year. Will it be continued next year?
Maryland: Gov. Hogan announces long-term COVID-19 preparedness strategy.
Resources
Academic Achievement and Pandemic Recovery in Ohio: Via Vladimir Kogan at Ohio State:
“This report examines student performance on the Ohio fall 2021 third grade English language arts (ELA) assessment, covering the second cohort of third graders tested since the beginning of the pandemic.”
“Average achievement on this exam continued to be significantly lower in fall 2021 compared to fall 2019 (the pre-pandemic baseline), representing a gap equal to between 1 and 1.5 months of learning.”
“Scores of African American students remained 0.15 standard deviations lower in fall 2021 compared to this group’s pre-pandemic baseline, nearly double the size of the shortfall observed among white students and corresponding to more than 2 months of learning.”
A Pragmatic Playbook for Impact: Direct, Widespread, and Systemic: New guide by Bellwether Education Partners and New Profit.
COVID Linked to Dramatic Increase in Children’s Risk of Mental Health Problems: Via EdWeek.
"Researchers led by Mir Ali, a health economist at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, analyzed health claims data from more than 3.3 million children 17 and younger in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., who had received a COVID-19 test."
"None of the children or adolescents had been diagnosed with a mental health disorder or had needed mental health services in the year before they were tested for the coronavirus. But more than 7 percent of those who tested positive for COVID-19 had a new mental health diagnosis, on average within 30 days. By contrast, only 3.4 percent of children whose tests were negative had new mental health issues. Those who did experience problems experienced them an average of four months later."
"After adjusting for other factors like genetics, researchers found contracting COVID-19 nearly tripled children’s risk of mental health problems. More than a third of the affected children subsequently were diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder; 2 in 5 had an anxiety disorder, and another 1 in 5 had a trauma or stress disorder."
"Moreover, the older the child, the more having COVID-19 increased their mental health risks. Compared to children under 5 who tested positive for the virus, infected children ages 6-11 had a fivefold higher risk and adolescents ages 12-17 had a sevenfold increase in risk of new and recurring mental health diagnoses."
Restaurant Customers Cheer: Whenever a baby facing them raises his arms.
Comcast NBCUniversal was kind enough to invite me to an advance screening of Jurassic World: Dominion last evening. It had a few fun moments, but also followed a somewhat familiar storyline from the previous films. That said, it was still great to see all the dinos back. Make sure to take an 8 year old with you to identify all the species. It was nice that Stegosaurus finally gets some airtime.
Have a great weekend.