Don Pesci: A hypochondriac uncle and credulous Nutmeggers
VERNON, Conn.
Every family should have at least one hypochondriac. Ours was an uncle who washed his hands multiple times before and after meals. He was fastidious about his silverware, examining it minutely for water stains and polishing it at table with his napkin, much to the annoyance of my mother, even thought the silverware was as spotless as a saint.
One Christmas, the dining room table crowded with family and friends, my mother, attempting to extract a roast from the oven, brushed her hand on the pan, yelped, and dropped the roast to the floor. It spun around like a top and came to a rest touching the radiator, which was not spotless. She shot me daggers and said in a pained whisper full of menace, “DON’T TELL ANYONE ABOUT THIS!”
I immediately fell in with her subterfuge. The roast was cleaned of a dust rat, purified, and bought to the table with no one the wiser. I remember wondering at the time how long the prohibition was to last, for I was yearning immediately to tell my brother and sister about the mishap, but only after the multitude had been fed. These things were meant to be shared with others. What a burden! I watched the uncle devour the meat and wondered whether he would drop dead at table or in the bathroom, after cleaning his hands for the fourth time.
The uncle died relatively young, despite the fact that most members of the family lived into deep codgerdom.
My grandfather on my mother’s side died at ninety-something, full of years, grappa and Toscano cigars, which he smoked Ammezzato.
A few years before he passed on, he had sucker-punched a younger man in the pub he used to frequent because the ill-mannered stranger had insulted a Polish friend of his while the two were playing at cards. The local police brought the unconscious stranger to the border of the town and advised him, when he woke from his nap, that should he return to town – ever – he would be arrested .
When the hypochondriac uncle passed away, my mother whispered decorously to me, “Guess the germs finally got him,” adding, “DON’T TELL ANYONE I SAID THAT!”
The uncle was an expert fisherman, and for years I wondered how he could bear to hook worms on his line, until my father told me he only used dry flies, beautiful, fetching, hand-crafted flies. Even so, he had to unhook the fish and drop it into his often-washed wicker basket, which he wore on his waist, like a gunslinger.
This fastidious uncle would have survived in good order the grosser inconveniences of Coronavirus – no hugging, no handshakes, washing hands frequently after touching polluted surfaces, especially plastic, where the deadly virus remains in attack mode for nearly a day, conversing at a safe distance, avoiding crowds, wearing facemasks, telecommuning with a doctor every time the hairs on the back of his neck prick up in fright, usually after listening to some doomsday-physician on 24/7 Coronavirus coverage networks – because he regarded his immediate environment as a familiar septic system of fatal germs.
To wake each morning was to be alert, focused on the micro-microcosm, to be always on one’s guard, rubbing the plate off the silverware.
To a certain extent, Coronavirus has made cowards of us all – also, hypochondriacs of us all. Normalcy, and the economy, too, have fled the pandemic, screeching and screaming. It will not return, the experts tell us, until the dragon has been slain. And, like a cat, the dragon has nine lives. The choices that lie before many of us now appear to be poverty or death. And, as Yogi Berra might have said, “The future ain’t what it used to be.”
Will we survive? Of course we will. But sociability will have received a blow to the solar plexus, and all of us will be unduly cautious, if not afflicted with hypochondria. In our distress, important distinctions will be lost.
Connecticut has just purchased an entire warehouse of what are called personal protective equipment (PPEs) to protect medical workers from Coronavirus, from Chinese Communists who were principally responsible for transporting Coronavirus from Wuhan to Western Europe. No medical gear has yet been found to protect medical workers from politicians.
If China were Big Pharma some ranter on the left by now would have accused Chinese banking magnates of producing a plague so that they might sell medical gowns and facemasks to credulous Nutmeggers in Connecticut. Shrewd Yankees in Connecticut were called Nutmeggers because they used to put wooden nutmegs in with their produce to gain extra coin from their purchasers. Clever Yankees!
Time is a stream, and no one steps in the same stream twice. Things change. We used to be able to depend on our politicians to steer us in the direction of beneficial change. We are just now emerging – one prays -- from the very first intentionally caused national recession in U.S. history.
When the Coronavirus plague has subsided, the question to which we should demand an honest and unambiguous – i.e. non-political -- answer is this: Have our politicians, assisted by medical “experts” and data-manipulators, been selling us a load of wooden nutmegs?
Don Pesci is Vernon-based columnist.
Automatic hand sanitizer
Opening up
“Connor Pond, Early Spring” (oil on canvas), by Yvonne Lamothe, via Galatea Fine Art online gallery. Connor Pond is in Ossipee, N.H. Ms. Lamothe lives in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
See:
https://www.galateafineart.com/
and Ms. Lamothe’s site:
Llewellyn King: Group seeks cross-industry, multinational innovation in the COVID-19 battle
A medical laboratory run by the Graduate Institute of Cancer Biology of China Medical University (Taiwan)
— Photo by P5693852
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
A study envisioning how societies might address the complexities of the COVID-19 pandemic, undertaken by more than 70 leaders in innovation from around the world, is out.
It is the largest, nongovernmental study on the virus, and it paints a picture of a world recalibrated by it — with a heavy dependence on data in making people safer.
The study titled “Never Normal: A Call to Action to Address the New Realities Posed by COVID-19” is a clear-eyed look at the global future from the social pressure of prolonged separation — especially for young people — to stress in the food chain. The authorship is largely scientific and has been drawn from those who are charged with innovation in their work.
These authors, who plan to refine their suggestions and continue their work indefinitely, are banded together as the Cross-Industry Study Group. The group, whose members come from 12 countries (from the United States to Chile to Spain), owes its existence to one man: Omar Hatamleh, a scientist with NASA in Houston.
Hatamleh has been a chief innovation officer at the space agency. For the last four years, he has organized a conference on cross-industry innovation.
These conferences were very different than most industry conferences: They did not discuss money or policy. Instead, they concentrated on innovation in everything, from the future of buildings to how science is contributing to the creation of new video games, and how innovation is applied at the tech giants such as Google and Facebook.
They celebrated, as does Hatamleh, exaptation — using an invention for one thing for an unrelated thing, like a medicine for cancer being used for Parkinson’s disease.
Hatamleh, the prime mover of the “Never Normal” study, and his deputy in the group, Dimitris Bountolos, a Chilean innovation consultant and former airline executive, drew on the creative talent from these conferences to gather the cross-industry group members and execute the study.
The group met remotely — and will continue to meet — in an intense three-week period during which they developed thousands of suggestions and explored as many ideas.
Gradually, they reduced these to two pertinent sections: one that delineates the challenges and the other that identifies the scientific way forward, with an emphasis on data and transparency.
“Never Normal” predicts a W-shaped future where there are waves of COVID-19, reflecting governments’ policies and social reaction. It also says the structures for resolution need to be created by governments and shared between them, so that freedom of movement can be restored, and governments do not poach technology and supplies from each other.
The study says the best hope is that a proven vaccine comes in 12 to 24 months. It sees a great diminution in recreation — theaters and sports — as we know it. It predicts a digital future with intense social surveillance. It offers no panaceas, no silver bullets.
The study is emphatic about sanitation and looks at everything from new air-filtration technology for buildings to monitoring sewage to assess patterns of infection. The sewage does not need to have active virus particles to tell its tale, to show patterns, and to identify trends in infection.
The study sees a future where tracking is vital, using things like smart watches and sensors that are becoming ubiquitous with 5G telephone systems.
In one place, the study suggests that coughing can be identified by sensors and can direct authorities to potentially infected people who have not yet sought treatments. The study calls this “catching the cough.”
The study points to “air sterilization” as another innovative weapon in the COVID-19 fight.
The study states, “There are new nanotechnology-based on laser-induced graphene water filters that eliminate viruses and bacteria in water. This new concept engineered for air filtration could be used in air filters in heating, ventilation and air conditioning or integrated into face masks for a self-sterilizing effect.”
This technology, it says, has the potential to be combined with state-of-the-art air filtration such as HEPA filters.
Part of the significance of “Never Normal” is that it looks at the scientific contribution to stabilizing the world through a lens other than a purely medical one.
Its message: We need all the science we can get.
On Twitter: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. He is based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
Anguish in Worcester
Worcester’s long-gone Brinley Hall, built in 1836-37, and where the speech referenced below was given. The first National Women’s Rights Convention was held there on Oct. 26 -27, 1850. 1,000 people from 11 states attended.
Abby Kelley Foster
“Man is wronged, not in London, New York, or Boston alone. Look around you here in Worcester, and see him sitting amidst the dust of his counting room, or behind the counter, his whole soul engaged in dollars and cents, until the Multiplication Table becomes his creed, his Pater noster, and his Decalogue. Society says, keep your daughters, like dolls, in the parlor; they must not do anything to aid in supporting the family. But a certain appearance in society must be maintained. You must keep up the style of the household. You are in fault if your wife do not uphold the condition to which she was bred in her father's house. I put this before men. If we could look under and within the broadcloth and the velvet, we should find as many breaking hearts, and as many sighs and groans, and as much of mental anguish, as we find in the parlor, as we find in the nursery of any house in Worcester. But woman is vain and frivolous, and man is ignorant; and therefore, he is what he is. Had his daughters, had his wife, been educated to feel their responsibilities, they would have taken their rights, and he would have been a happy and contented man, and would not have been reduced to the mere machine for calculating and getting money he now is.’’
From speech by women’s rights advocate and abolitionist Abby Kelley Foster at the first National Women’s Rights Convention.
This was Mrs Foster’s surprisingly grand home in Worcester. It’s still a private residence.
The lure of Vermont roads
On the road in the Green Mountains. We sure hope that by next fall the open road will be much more available than now.
— Photo by Alana Cushman, a Killington, Vt., photographer. Hit this link.
A view of the North Ridge area of Killington Peak. Killington is mostly known for Killington Mountain Resort & Ski Area, the largest skl area in the East.
The downtown of tiny Killington, whose official full-time population was 811 in the last U.S. Census, in 2010. Of course, skiiers as well as autumn leaf peepers and other tourists can make for much higher transient populations on some days.
Getting to it in Gloucester
This painting, by Emile A. Gruppe (1896-1978), is owned by VNA Care and is now at the Cape Ann Museum, in Gloucester. It shows a young nurse standing at the top of the stairway that joins Friend and Main Streets in Gloucester.
Lip reading through transparent masks
Staffer at the Brigham wears the hospital’s new transparent mask
— Photo by Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, has made transparent face masks for workers to wear when caring for patients who are deaf, hard of hearing, or otherwise rely on lip reading.
Don't worry yet about 'murder hornets' in N.E., at least not yet
Asian giant hornet
— Photo from Washington State Department of Agriculture
From ecoRi News (ecori.org)
News of the arrival in North America of a non-native insect with the terrifying colloquial name of “murder hornet” has alarmed residents nationwide. But a University of Rhode Island entomologist said there is little reason for Rhode Islanders {and thus by implication New Englanders in general} to worry about them.
Two murder hornets, which are more appropriately called Asian giant hornets, were discovered in Washington State in December shortly after a nest was discovered in nearby British Columbia. Native to Japan, where they are responsible for about 50 human deaths annually, the 2-inch-long insects with orange heads and black eyes are best known for their foraging behavior of ripping the heads off honeybees and feeding the rest of the bees’ bodies to their young.
“Their reputation as murder hornets comes from the fact that they can kill a lot of honeybees in a very short period of time,” URI entomologist Lisa Tewksbury said. “The major concern about their arrival in North America is for the damage they could cause to commercial honeybees used for pollinating agricultural fields. They are capable of quickly destroying beehives.”
Tewksbury said the hornet’s sting isn’t any more toxic than that of the bees and hornets commonly found in New England, but because of their large size, Asian giant hornets can deliver a larger dose of toxin with each sting. They are a danger to humans only when stung multiple times, according to Tewksbury.
“But they’re not known to aggressively attack humans,” she said. “It only happens occasionally and randomly.”
Rhode Island is home to two hornets similar in size to the Asian giant hornet: the cicada killer wasps, which dig their nests in sandy or light soil in areas such as athletic fields and playgrounds, and the European hornet, a non-native species that has become naturalized in New England after its arrival here in the 1800s. Like the Asian giant hornet, they are among the largest wasp-like insects in the world.
Tewksbury said that it’s extremely unlikely that the Asian giant hornets in the Pacific Northwest are in Rhode Island or likely will be soon. The concern is that no one knows how the hornets made it to Washington.
“We don’t know the pathway it took to get to Washington, and since we don’t know, it’s difficult to know how to prevent further introductions into North America,” she said.
Although she noted that Rhode Islanders need not be concerned about murder hornets, she advises residents to keep their eyes out for any unusual insect they’ve never seen before, since non-native insects do occasionally arrive in the region.
If you spot an unusual insect, Tewksbury said, take a picture of it and report it to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management’s invasive species sighting form.
Keep 'em out of the woods, if possible; spend local; heroic New England Council
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
It was good to hear that Rhode Island’s state Renewable Energy Fund has announced that solar-energy companies can apply for part of $1 million set aside to encourage the firms to install their projects on contaminated former industrial space instead of in forests (we need those trees to help fight global warming) and other undeveloped space. It’s a small but commendable start.
As I’ve often written, as much as is economically practical, solar companies ought to put their panels at such places as parking lots, rooftops, landfills, sand-and-gravel pits, etc. God knows that as COVID-19 accelerates the destruction of big box retailers and shopping malls surrounded by windswept parking lots there will be more and more space available for solar-energy farms! And the more of them, the less we must depend on fossil fuel from outside New England.
New England Council’s Fine Work
For near-daily updates on New England’s response to the pandemic look at the New England Council’s Web site – newenglandcouncil.com. It’s superb.
Keep Local Stores in Business
I drove by the Walmart in Providence last Tuesday afternoon. It looked as if you’d need at least 40 minutes waiting in line to get into that depressing establishment. I wish that more people would try to keep their money in our area by patronizing locally owned stores instead of the Arkansas-based behemoth, some of whose stores, by the way, have been COVID-19 hotspots, such as one in Worcester.
I suspect that pandemic-caused unemployment is freeing up time for many more people to shop during what had been their workdays at places like Walmart that offer cheap goods. (I’m an Ocean State Job Lot fan myself. Much friendlier and calmer than Walmart, though, of course less stuff.)
Old Sturbridge Village soldiers on (online) in the pandemic
View of the Center Village section of Old Sturbridge Village.
From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com):
“Old Sturbridge Village, in Sturbridge, Mass., was highlighted in the Worcester Business Journal for its transition to online programming in the wake of sudden closures. To continue interaction with visitors, Old Sturbridge Village has expanded its online offerings and educational materials. The museum now offers online lessons on playing 19th-Century board games, preparing a garden, and more. Read the article here.’’
Nice, but looking at something on a screen rather than in real life gets mighty tedious fast.
Old Sturbridge Village, New England’s largest living museum, tries to recreate life in rural New England as it was from the 1790s through 1830s. The 200-acre institution includes 59 antique buildings, three water-powered mills and a working farm. Costumed interpreters speaking in modern English help visitors understand 19th-Century life.
Playing a lawyer in the pre-Civil War law office at Old Sturbridge Village.
Photo by Alphanum3r1c
Negin Owliaei: Right-wingers, some rich folks quite all right with sacrificing the vulnerable
COVID-19 nurse.
From OtherWords.org
Every morning for the last two months, I’ve checked the news in my home state of Florida with growing concern.
First came the photos of unemployed people lining up to file for benefits in person, denied access to an overburdened system. Then came the news that only a tiny percentage of unemployment claims were paid out by late April.
Now, barber shops and nail salons are reopening, even as the state saw its deadliest week yet. Altogether, the news paints a horrifying picture of a government cruelly uninterested in protecting human life.
The overwhelming majority of Americans continue to support social distancing and stay-at-home orders. But right-wing forces across the country are demanding an end to life-saving lockdowns, cheered on by a White House well aware of how devastating the loss of life could be.
The government estimates a death count as high as 3,000 people a day. Despite those horrifying numbers, some states are encouraging employers to report workers who are afraid that returning to their jobs could amount to a death sentence, kicking them off unemployment.
As other countries have shown with far more grace, the alternative isn’t shutting down forever — it’s investing in testing and social safety nets.
Senegal, which has 50 ventilators for its population of 16 million, is building more through 3D printing, all while it trials a $1 testing kit. The world took note of South Korea’s quick and vigorous testing system. Countries across Europe have relied on existing social safety nets to prevent the mass layoffs we’ve seen here in the U.S.
Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo provided necessary perspective: “We know how to bring the economy back to life,” he said. “What we do not know is how to bring people back to life.”
By contrast, the Trump administration’s callousness has become more evident than ever.
Experts have been sidelined in favor of fumbling volunteers from private-equity and venture-capital firms, who botched the procurement of medical supplies. And when Trump finally invoked the Defense Production Act, it was to force meatpacking workers — who are mostly Latinx and Black — to work through unsafe conditions at the very plants that have emerged as outbreak hotspots.
Indeed, those demographics may help explain the government’s willingness to risk lives.
It seems like no coincidence that the far-right pushback became stronger as evidence mounted showing the virus disproportionately killing already marginalized people of color, especially black Americans. And it was hard to miss the Nazi slogan prominently displayed at a “re-open” protest in Illinois, or the Confederate flags featured as far north as Wisconsin.
Government disregard for vulnerable lives is hardly new. Who can forget the New Orleans residents stranded on their rooftops after Hurricane Katrina? Or the disabled New Yorkers left stranded for days after Hurricane Sandy?
Every level of the U.S. government has shown, time and again, that the default setting is to leave the vulnerable behind. But Americans themselves are challenging that approach.
Workers at General Electric protested to switch production to ventilators, a move that could save jobs and lives. Teachers have promised more strikes if schools open against medical advice.
Nurses, in addition to treating the sick, have faced “re-open” protesters head on. And they’ve stood outside the White House, reading the names of their colleagues killed by government inaction and demanding more protections.
Add these actions to the wave of strikes and sickouts from essential workers across the country, and a clear picture emerges: The wealthy may be fine with sacrificing the vulnerable. But workers understand the sanctity of human life, and will fight for it.
Negin Owliaei is a researcher and co-editor of Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Sometimes that’s enough
Marcie Jan Bronstein, “Being Here” (watercolor on paper), by Marcie Jan Bronstein, a Belfast, Maine, painter.
Artscope says that "Bronstein's paintings evoke mindfulness and patience, qualities in short supply during this pandemic but ones we desperately need. Bronstein's intimate and emotional artwork can help us find or create these qualities in ourselves.’’
See: marciejbronstein.com.
Downtown Belfast from Post Office Square. Belfast, on the Mid Maine Coast, is, among other things an old fishing and boat-building center. It has a rich. collection of historic buildings and draws many tourists and artists.
— Photo by Centpacrr
Belfast shipyards in 1905.
Neeta P. Fogg/Paul E. Harrington: What the job implosion means for New England
Poster from the New Deal, during The Great Depression.
From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)
Friday, May 8, saw the release of the most disastrous monthly jobs report in American history. In its monthly Employment Situation released last Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported:
Payroll employment levels declined by 20.5 million between mid-March when the COVID-19 lockdowns began in earnest and mid-April—a decline that is more than two orders of magnitude greater than any previous monthly job loss in the U.S.
The number of officially unemployed persons rose to a staggering 23.1 million in the mid-April measure, a three-fold increase from 7.1 million unemployed persons in mid-March.
The number of Americans participating in the labor market fell by 6.4 million over the month, and the number of persons out of the labor force who said they wanted a job, but had quit looking, doubled over the month.
About 5 million more workers were forced to work part-time schedules involuntary by mid-April; a doubling of individuals working part-time involuntarily.
Average weekly earnings for private-sector workers rose from $977 to $1,026, attributable to a greater share of higher-wage workers among those who remain employed, as increasing numbers of low-wage and part-time workers have become unemployed, bearing the brunt of this downturn.
The proportion of individuals in the labor force who face some kind of labor market trouble, such as unemployment, involuntary part-time employment or marginal attachment to the labor force, rose from 8.7% in mid-March to 22.8% by mid-April.
In this piece, we try to examine three issues for higher-education institutions and students in New England. First, what is the magnitude of job losses in New England compared with the rest of the nation. Second, how have the shutdowns affected college graduates compared with those with fewer years of schooling, and what might this mean in the recovery. Third, what has been the impact of these losses on teens and young adults and what might that mean for decisions to continue in school.
New England job losses
The monthly business establishment survey conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics produces a measure of the total employment on business establishment payrolls in the week that includes the 12th of the month. Thus, the reported monthly employment measures are a snapshot of the number of jobs in the American economy at mid-month. The 20.5 million jobs lost between mid-March and mid-April, therefore, does not include the losses that occurred after the reference week of the business establishment survey; in the last two weeks of April and the beginning of May.
The lockdown began in mid-March and initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims over the next four weeks, through mid-April, totaled 21.8 million, suggesting a near 1:1 ratio of lost payroll jobs (20.5 million) and new UI claims filed (21.8 million). This is not surprising as individuals eligible for UI benefits must be laid off from a payroll job, and the payroll employment counts are benchmarked each year to state unemployment tax filings that count each tax payment on a social security account as a job. So, there is an inverse proportionate connection between trends in UI claims and payroll employment. During the three-week period between mid-April and the week ending May 2, an additional 11.4 million new UI claims were filed, suggesting that over that period, the country lost an additional 11.4 million jobs, bringing total job losses nationwide to about 33 million (seasonally adjusted) by the beginning of May.
In New England, the number of initial UI claims over the first seven weeks of the lockdown totaled 1.567 million (not seasonally adjusted). Total payroll employment in New England at the beginning of the lockdown was 7.52 million. The surge in initial UI claims and the inverse proportionate connection between UI claims and employment imply that payroll employment levels in the region declined by about 21% since the lockdown began; not far from the implied national employment decline of 20% of the pre-lockdown level of employment.
Most states in New England have similar implied levels of job losses measured with new UI claims as a share of pre-lockdown employment that are within a few percentage points of 20%. The exception is Rhode Island where more than 154,000 new UI claims were filed in the seven-week lockdown period, implying a 31% employment decline in the Ocean State.
These massive implied job losses mean dramatic declines in household incomes resulting in sharp reductions in the level of private consumption and investment. The demand for postsecondary education services is also expected to decline with these income losses. At the national level, the gross domestic product, a measure reflective of national income, in the second quarter of 2020 is expected to decline by a stunning and unprecedented annualized rate of more than one-third, according to research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Surveys of college-bound seniors about enrollment choices for the fall universally reflect worries about family income, according to polls of students conducted by the Art and Science Group, LLC, in March and April 2020.
College graduate employment
Every major industry in the U.S. posted substantial employment losses between mid-March and mid-April. However, job losses were especially concentrated in industries that employed workers with lower levels of educational attainment. Industries with large shares of professional technical and managerial occupations (“college labor market occupations”) had proportionally smaller employment declines.
Nationally, industries with large shares of employment in college labor market occupations, collectively lost about 3.7 million jobs between mid-March and mid-April, representing 6% of their pre-lockdown employment level. Industries that employ much higher shares of production, clerical and service workers saw their employment levels fall by about 16.4 million or 21% of their pre-lockdown employment level. These lower-skill and lower-wage industries accounted for about 80% of the overall employment decline in the U.S. between mid-March and Mid-April. Indeed, the leisure and hospitality industry saw employment decline by about 7.7 million, representing a 47% loss in one month. Eating and drinking establishments, hotels and amusement businesses sustained 40% of the nation’s total employment loss last month.
The disparate impacts of the lockdown across industries has meant that the employment declines among college graduates, although very large, have been much less severe than among people with fewer years of schooling. Employment among adult high school dropouts and graduates fell by 21% and 18%, respectively; a pace of loss that was 2.5 to 3 times greater than the 7% employment decline experienced by college graduates.
The structure of April unemployment rates by educational attainment is reflective of the relative insulation that college graduates have had to the economic effects of the lockdown. The unemployment rate of adult college graduates of 8.4% was equal to just half that of all adult labor force participants in the U.S. This inequality in unemployment rates is likely to persist for some time as the work activities of college graduates seem to allow more geographic and temporal flexibility, primarily through telecommunications systems, than do the work requirements of those employed outside of the college labor market.
Shrinking options for teens and young adults
The labor market for teens (16-19) and young adults (20-24) has collapsed in the past month. While employment levels fell by 13% for adults aged 25 or older, employment among younger people declined at more than double this pace. Employment among teens fell by nearly 1.6 million or 31% over the month, while employment among young adults declined by 3.4 million; a one-quarter reduction.
The employment rate of teens (share of teens with a job) plunged from 30% in mid-March to 21% in mid-April. The employment rates among young adults didn’t fare much better; declining from 64% to 48% between mid-March and mid-April.
Very large employment declines are typical of most labor market downturns, but the magnitude of these losses means that the option of work as a substitute for school has become much less viable for young people.
This also means that the foregone wages from working instead of going to school have fallen dramatically, implying that students will be giving up very little if they decide to go to school. The opportunity cost of college enrollment has been reduced to video chats in mom’s basement instead of employment and earnings.
Recovery in the teen and young adult labor market is likely to occur not months but years into the future. Unprecedented numbers of idle adult workers are anxious to get back to work, while young people remain at the bottom of the hiring queue. Therefore, until the large numbers of unemployed and underemployed adults, who are ahead in the hiring line-up, can get back to work, the employment outlook for teens and young adults remains especially poor.
We realize that this is a truly grim picture of the job market in New England and the nation. Those who believe that the economy should remain closed for an indefinite period—until we find a vaccine or even to the extreme of waiting until we eradicate the novel coronavirus—must understand the grim consequences of the choice to remain closed and the utter havoc it is unleashing on millions of households in New England and the U.S., as well as the irreparable harm that will be done to many of the businesses and institutions that employ them. We do not envy those who are charged with making difficult decisions about reopening, but the discussion above reveals some of extraordinary labor market costs associated with the shutdown strategy. College leadership around the region has begun to recognize this as indicated by a willingness in the last few weeks to undertake efforts to open more fully in the fall.
Decisions about reopening cannot be made solely on the widely varying measures of coronavirus spread. Many real, but unenumerated personal and social costs as well as explicit and implicit economic costs must be considered in the balance. Of particular importance is the unequal distribution of these economic and social costs that is, thus far, heavily weighted toward lower-income, poorly educated and racial and ethnic minority individuals and households.
Originally, when Dr. Anthony Fauci called for a 14-day shutdown in mid-March, the race against COVID-19 looked like a sprint with the reopening of the economy occurring all at once. The expectation was a V-shaped recovery from the coronavirus: a sharp decline and an equally sharp rebound. However, it has become increasingly clear that the race against the coronavirus is more akin to a marathon, and the economic activity at this point looks more like a modified letter L; with a sharp decline followed by a slow recovery.
We expect reopening of the economy to occur gradually and in fits and starts. As we learn more about the coronavirus, business and governments will adopt more refined policy responses to any additional coronavirus threats that occur during the reopening process. We expect reopening across most states to be designed to prioritize strict mitigation strategies to protect the elderly and at-risk populations and maintain many of the social-distancing efforts in play today. Businesses and government will develop and implement many creative measures to protect workers and consumers as they strive to establish a new normal of life-sustaining social and economic activity.
Neeta Fogg is research professor at the Center for Labor Markets and Policy at Drexel University. Paul Harrington is director of the center.
Wartime farming on Boston Common
Plowing up Boston Common before planting vegetables in a World War II “Victory Garden’’ during wartime rationing. I’ve been thinking of Victory Gardens lately as COVID-19-caused supply-chain problems lead many people to consider planting new gardens to supplement their food supplies.
— Robert Whitcomb
Brigham to screen Dorchester residents for food insecurity
In the Uphams Corner section of Dorchester.
From The New England Council’s (newenglandcouncil.com) latest update on the response of the region’s organizations to COVID-19.
“Brigham and Women’s Offering Hunger Screening with COVID-19 Testing. Brigham Health—which includes Brigham and Women’s Hospital, will begin testing residents of Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood for COVID-19 and will also screen residents for food insecurity, as the pandemic is exacerbating existing food insecurity in the area. Brigham Health will also offer boxes of fresh food, protective equipment, and educational materials for residents. Boston.com reports.’’
Read before renting on the Vineyard
Gingerbread summer cottages in Oak Bluffs, on Martha’s Vineyard.
“A danger exists of confusing the Vineyard with my children’s childhood, which time has swallowed, or with Paradise, from which we have been debarred by well-known angels. Let’s not forget the rainy days, the dull days, the cranky-making crowding, and the moldy smell summer furniture gives off when breezes don’t blow through the screen door that one keeps meaning to fix, though it’s the landlord’s responsibility.’’
From “Going Barefoot,’’ by John Updike (1932-2009), an essay in Peter Simon’s On the Vineyard II (1989)
David Warsh: The FBI's 'October surprise' and Trump’s election
SOMEVILLE, Mass.
As a citizen, I feel fairly confident about leaving judgment of Donald Trump’s presidency to American people in the November election. As a journalist, I’m professionally acutely interested in the ongoing battle over the FBI, because it seems central to American’s faith in in its government institutions.
The story received another jolt last week when Atty. Gen. William Barr said the Justice Department would move to close the government’s case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Then on May 8, the president expressed dissatisfaction with the conduct of current FBI director, Christopher Wray, in a telephone interview with Fox News, as reported by The Washington Post.
Economic Principals readers have probably read enough about what critics think Attorney General Barr did wrong. If not, here’s a well-informed take is from the well-regarded online Lawfare site.
I wanted to know more about what its critics think the FBI did wrong. So after I read the commentary on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal – more on that some other day – I turned to Barr’s interview with CBS correspondent Catherine Herridge, in which I thought that he gave a pretty good, if incomplete, account of his decision. It was, he said, based on a review of the events of December 2016 and January 2017, undertaken at his request by Jeffrey Jensen, U.S. attorney for eastern Missouri.
Those events, between the election and Trump’s inauguration, transpired long before Barr became attorney general. Looking back on it, Barr argued that the dominant opinion at the time had been mistaken. He asserted that, since Flynn was a designated adviser to the president-elect at the time, his call to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016 had been “perfectly appropriate and legitimate…. He was saying to the Russians, you know, ‘Don’t escalate.”’
The Obama administration earlier had imposed sanctions in retribution for Russian meddling in the U.S. election. When Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently took Flynn’s advice, the Russia controversy entered a new dimension. The rest of Barr’s reasoning for moving to vacate the charges of lying had to do with the timing of the FBI interviews that produced them.
It took pages of interview transcript to lay out Barr’s reasoning in the intricate matter. Even then, his argument was less than a convincing job. When Herridge pointedly asked, “Did senior FBI officials conspire to throw out the national security adviser?,” Barr answered, “That’s a question that really has to wait an analysis of all the different episodes that occurred through the summer of 2016 and the first several months of President Trump’s administration.” Presumably that would be the review that Barr asked John Durham, U.S. attorney for Connecticut, to undertake. Durham’s assignment is understood to include an examination of the circumstances and events that led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
As previously noted, The Washington Post has reported that a third outside review, by John Huber, U.S. attorney for Utah, this one of the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation, has been completed, and awaits action by Barr.
One other first-person account by a participant in these events remains to appear, this one by a dispassionate newspaper reporter. Devlin Barrett was working for The Wall Street Journal when he obtained an interview, with assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe it turned out, in which the existence of the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation was confirmed for the first time. McCabe was subsequently fired for having made the disclosure. Barrett moved a few months later to The Washington Post and has remained an energetic contributor to the story ever since.
Barrett’s October Surprise: How the FBI Tried to Save Itself and Crashed an Election. (Public Affairs) is scheduled to appear in October. Its description on Amazon says this:
The 2016 Election, which altered American political history, was not decided by the Russians or in Ukraine or by Steve Bannon. The event that broke Hillary’s blue wall in the Midwest and swung Florida and North Carolina was an October Surprise, and it was wholly a product of the leadership of the FBI. This is the inside story by the reporter closest to its center….
October Surprise is a pulsating narrative of an agency seized with righteous certainty that waded into the most important political moment in the life of the nation, and has no idea how to back out with dignity. So it doggedly stands its ground, compounding its error. In a momentous display of self-preservation, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and key Justice Department officials decide to protect their own reputations rather than save the democratic process. Once they make that determination, the race is lost for Clinton, who is helpless in front of their accusation even though she has not intended to commit, let alone actually committed, any crime.
A dark true-life thriller with historic consequences set at the most crucial moment in the electoral calendar, October Surprise is a warning, a morality tale and a political and personal tragedy.
Barrett believes, to judge from the flap copy, that the FBI cost Clinton the race. And, as a proximate cause, Comey’s letter notifying Congress that he had briefly reopened the investigation of her email probably did.
EP has argued from the beginning that various field offices of the FBI, as well as headquarters units, were torn, no less than the American electorate, by deep partisan divisions. Outsiders exploited these schisms with varying degrees of success.
Leadership sought to keep lids on warring factions, with profoundly mixed results. The November election will decide possession of the White House for the next four years, but neither Barr nor Durham nor Barrett will settle the battle over the FBI. Much remains to be learned.
David Warsh, an economic historian and veteran columnist, is proprietor of Somerville-based economicprincipals.com, where this column first ran.
Watch for ticks
“Garden Curiosities,’’ by Joan Baldwin, in the group show (seen online) “Our Universal Language,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston.
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Taylor Witkin/Scott Nuzum: Designing seafood systems for the post-pandemic world
Photo by Gordito1869
From SeaAhead
BOSTON
While the COVID-19 pandemic directly threatens the lives of millions of patients and frontline health-care workers, it also jeopardizes the livelihoods of seafood-system workers across North America. The pandemic exposes the vulnerabilities of supply chains that criss-cross oceans, stretching across thousands of miles and demonstrates a need, and capacity, for regional food security.
Savvy seafood harvesters are often prepared for major market disruptions -- harmful algal blooms that shut down production, hurricanes that force boats back to safe harbor, ice that takes out equipment. But this pandemic is a different kind of crisis. It attacks demand as well as supply. Harvesters that rely on sales to restaurants, where 90 percent of shellfish and 75 percent of all seafood in America are consumed, are left wondering how to stay afloat if pandemic-induced shutdowns continue. The entire industry has been forced to pivot to direct-to-consumer sales models, a daunting task given that restaurants aggregate customers and bear much of the marketing burden.
While these are indeed dark times, there are rays of hope for better days. Ultimately, this crisis may lead to a reorientation and recommitment to local food systems, providing a much needed boost to local communities and restoring some resiliency in domestic food- supply chains. In addition, this crisis also may provide an opportunity to reflect upon how we might redesign our commercial fishing fleets to take advantage of a range of innovations -- including remote sensors, advanced propulsion and alternative fuel systems.
This reorientation, recommitment and reimagining will, in large part, be aided by the bluetech sector. Working as partners, local producers and tech companies have the potential to revitalize the seafood sector and create the seafood system of the future.
With international trade stalled, the pandemic is forcing producers, suppliers, and consumers to rethink America’s seafood system, where 90 percent of seafood comes from foreign sources. Much has been written recently of the collapse of domestic seafood-supply chains (NY Times, LA Times, National Fisherman, Seafood Source). Seafood processors are saddled with more fish than they can process. Fishers can’t engage in their livelihood. All the while, consumers facer empty supermarket shelves and compete for coveted grocery delivery windows on mobile apps. Moreover, with reports of Covid-19 outbreaks spreading through many of the country’s food-processing facilities, people are increasingly concerned about the chain of custody of their food and whether it is safe to eat.
Consequently, consumers have sought work-arounds to these supply chain failures by looking closer to home for seafood, relying on local farmers markets and community-supported fisheries to deliver fresh, high-quality finfish and shellfish from short, trustworthy supply chains. Whereas the “know your fisherman” ethic was a lifestyle choice in the pre-COVID-19 world, it is now gaining momentum and becoming mainstream.
And with good reason. The United States is blessed with an abundance of seafood up and down its lengthy coast. Most U.S. fish stocks are well managed, meaning that fish can be harvested sustainably. And, increasingly, we have the tools to provide traceable and transparent supply chains. Combined, these factors point to an opportunity to transform seafood-supply chains to not only increase resiliency and sustainability in the system, but also to improve economic returns for fishers and their local communities.
The Local Catch Network demonstrates the power of an engaged virtual community, and that technology does not need to be complex to be effective. Local Catch is a community-of-practice made of fishermen, suppliers, chefs, researchers and organizers committed to providing local, healthful, low-impact seafood via community- supported fisheries. Local Catch’s Seafood Finder map provides the location and contact info for nearly 120 businesses that distribute to over 500 locations in the U.S. and Canada, making it easy for consumers to find local seafood providers and distribution points. Though businesses within the network are struggling, as consumers make a concerted effort to support their fishermen and farmer neighbors, some seafood providers are well positioned to weather the crisis, and are even doing more business than usual.
While Local Catch Network was conceived in the pre-COVID-19 world, the virus has only served to reinforce its underlying thesis -- that the seafood-supply-chain network was ripe for disruption. This and countless other groups, such as SeaAhead members Oyster Common, Oyster Tracker and LegitFish hope that their efforts bring greater value to fishers and the coastal communities in which they live, in the process demonstrating the transformative possibilities of the bluetech space.
If you want to learn more, check out the Social FISHtancing podcast
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Taylor Witkin is the Bluetech Desk Manager at the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) and works with SeaAhead to manage and grow the Bluetech Innovation Hub, in Boston. Before joining CIC, he was the Network Coordinator for the Local Catch Network and organized the 2019 Local Seafood Summit. He also conducted research for the University of Maine on adaptations by stakeholders and supply chains in the lobster industry. His seafood-systems research has been published in the journal Fisheries Research.
Scott Nuzum is a strategy consultant and futurist at VNF Solutions LLC and a lawyer with Van Ness Feldman LLP. He helps organizations assess and understand the implications of technological, environmental and geopolitical change and works with clients to craft strategies to become more resilient in the face of this disruption. In addition, he advises innovative companies and start-ups operating in the environmental-, energy- and social- impact spaces on a range of issues, including providing input and feedback on engagement strategies with potential investors and regulators. Before joining VNF, he was a policy adviser at the White House Council on Environmental Quality and a lawyer at the U.S. Department of the Interior.