“Estimates about the amount of back rent owed across the country range from $8.4 billion to $52.6 billion, meaning that the $45 billion allocated should cover the vast majority of need, especially considering that renters have indirectly received other forms of aid from the federal government.
The vast majority of renters have figured out how to make rent payments. According to the National Multi-Family Housing Council’s rent payment tracker, “80.0 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by May 6.” The previous month’s data shows that by the end of the month, 95 percent of renters had made a full or partial rent payment.”
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“While 23.7 percent of renters have missed at least one payment over the past year, only 8.6 percent of renters have missed more than two payments.
But that doesn’t mean that over 90 percent of renters are doing fine. In order to make those payments, many renters have had to deplete their savings, max out their credit cards, or take on loans from family, friends, or payday lenders.
And it’s not clear when rental assistance will reach those people.”
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“Turner, a renter living in North Carolina, told Vox that his application for relief was initially accepted by a program in Wake County, but he was eventually denied aid after he paid rent.
“We sold all of our belongings in our apartment to pay the rent,” Turner told Vox. Now, he says, he’s caught in an impossible place. If he doesn’t pay his rent, he’s at risk of receiving an eviction notice — a black mark on any renter’s history that can make it harder to get housing in the future — but without showing proof that he’s behind on his rent, he’s unable to get help to stay solvent.”
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“Turner’s story might seem to indicate that these programs are running low on funds, but all reports indicate that very little has actually made it into the pockets of at-risk renters. The Treasury Department is collecting data on how much states have allocated and to whom, but it has yet to be released. Tenant advocates I spoke with in California and Washington, DC, told me they didn’t personally know anyone who had actually received aid.
Georgia’s Department of Community Affairs told me that it has distributed more than $4 million in rental assistance funding to landlords and tenants; the state has received over $552 million for that purpose. Delaware’s State Housing Authority told me that it has distributed $40,000 in rental assistance — 0.02 percent of its allocated funds. The Idaho Housing and Finance Association told me it has distributed $6.1 million of the $175 million it received from the December congressional rent relief allocation. Colorado’s dashboard shows $2.8 million has been approved from the $247 million it has received. Arizona’s dashboard shows $4.38 million has been disbursed out of the $289 million it has received.
More has reached tenants — those state numbers don’t include the spending done by programs at the county and city level — but it indicates the pace of these programs may not be fast enough to meet the urgent, coming crisis.”
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“Time, knowledge, and bureaucracy: These are the challenges facing rent relief programs racing to dole out funds.
States and localities have never before had to set up rent relief programs to distribute federal aid. To do so, programs needed to hire staff, set up websites, comply with any additional regulations or goals set by their state legislatures, and conduct outreach. Even with best efforts, most experts Vox spoke with were skeptical that it would have been possible for programs to move fast enough to get all the aid out the door before the end of June.”
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““One of the things that this pandemic has made very clear is that there’s a lot that we don’t know about our housing market,” Vincent Reina, director of the Housing Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania, told me. “The vast majority of cities don’t have full registries of every owner in their city. … It shows we often don’t know who owns properties and what’s going on with these properties or which tenants are experiencing financial hardship.”
If states had been collecting detailed information about where struggling tenants are and how much back rent was accumulating, it’s likely this process would have moved faster.”
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“there are some success stories. A representative from the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, for instance, told me that by May 10 the state had paid out $18.2 million and 9,000 applications had been approved. When I checked back nine days later, the representative told me they had approved more than 1,300 additional applications and sent a total of $25.9 million in payments. The state’s total allocation is $200 million, so they still have a way to go, but they credit their progress to the fact that they “offered a unified application that was optimized for mobile” as well as measuring how long it was taking to process applications and making it “as easy as possible for applicants and landlords or utility companies” to submit required documentation.”
“The Biden administration has announced that it will work with the World Trade Organization (WTO) to negotiate a deal to suspend intellectual property rights associated with the Covid-19 vaccines — a surprise move for the administration, which had initially resisted taking such a step.”
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“There is unanimous agreement on one thing: There is a lot of work to be done to speed up vaccine manufacturing and vaccinate the world. As the WTO’s General Council meets this week, patents have risen to the top of the agenda. India and South Africa have asked the WTO to waive intellectual property (IP) rules relating to the vaccines so that more organizations can make them.
The case for waivers is simple: Waiving IP rights might enable more companies to get into the vaccine-manufacturing business, easing supply shortages and helping with the monumental task of vaccinating the whole world. The case against them: Taking IP rights from vaccine makers punishes them for work that society should eagerly reward and disincentivizes similar future investment. Opponents have also argued this step would do very little to address the vaccine supply problem, which has largely been the result of factors such as raw material shortages and the incredible complexity and tight requirements of the vaccine-manufacturing process.”
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“debates over intellectual property can also distract the world from the policy measures that could really end the pandemic: building our vaccine-manufacturing capacity, committing to purchase the doses the rest of the world needs, and working directly with manufacturers to remove every obstacle in their path.”
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“Experts I spoke with emphasized that, generally speaking, the world’s entire supply of critical raw materials is already going into vaccines, and there are no factories “sitting idle” waiting for permission to start making them. What’s more, changing a factory’s processes to produce a new kind of vaccine is a difficult, error-prone process — which went wrong, for example, when a plant converted to make Johnson & Johnson vaccines spoiled millions of doses.
Moderna is an instructive example here. The pharmaceutical company made a splashy announcement in the fall that it would not enforce its Covid-19 vaccine patents. Despite that move, there is still no generic Moderna vaccine, and none of the experts I talked to believed one was on the horizon. (It turned out well for Moderna — get the PR bump from the announcement without suffering the financial drawbacks.)”
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“Although the Biden administration’s announcement is a win for the pro-waiver side, the US isn’t the only country that needs to be persuaded for the WTO to agree on a patent waiver. For their part, the EU, the UK, Japan, and Switzerland have expressed opposition. But the US is influential in these debates, and the Biden administration’s about-face may well be decisive.”
“In all the coronavirus coverage, one issue that rarely makes the headlines is the correlation between body weight and the severity of COVID-19’s effects. And one angle that virtually never makes the headlines is how the government funds the unhealthy foods that increase obesity rates, thereby increasing our susceptibility to such diseases.
Last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a study showing that nearly 80 percent of those hospitalized with COVID-19 were overweight or obese. After age, body weight is the second greatest predictor of COVID-related hospitalization and death. Almost three quarters of all Americans ages 20 and up are overweight, and close to half of that group is considered obese.”
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“Not only is the U. S. government not making any efforts to reduce the obesity epidemic, it is actively subsidizing food that contributes to the problem. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that people fill half their plate with fruits and vegetables, yet the vast majority of its food subsidies—$170 billion from 1995 to 2010—go toward the major ingredients of junk food, such as corn, wheat, rice, soy, and milk.”
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“We have the power to make real changes in the way we eat and move. The government could help that process by taking its thumb off the scale and ceasing to subsidize these foods.”
“One of the first things on the agenda this year for Kentucky Republicans was figuring out how to kneecap Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. They dropped legislation in January that placed new limits on the governor’s emergency executive powers, quickly passed the bill, overrode his veto and then fought him in court.
In the months that have followed, lawmakers across the country — from Maine to California, Oregon to Florida — have proposed and, in many cases, passed similar measures to curtail the sweeping powers bestowed on their state executives.”
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“Most governors insisted throughout the crisis that they were being guided by evolving science and trying to navigate uncertain terrain as best they could. But patience appears to have worn out for many legislators consigned to the backseat.”
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“In some states, it has been a continuation of philosophical differences that have played out over the course of the still-ongoing pandemic. That dynamic has been particularly evident in places sporting Democratic governors contending with GOP-controlled statehouses like Kentucky, Kansas and Michigan, where conservative outrage over Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s pandemic mandates put her in physical danger last year.
But for other governors, it has been members of their own party who have been the ones trying to wrestle back control and deliver emphatic rebukes of their state’s leadership, as was the case in New York and Ohio last month.”
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“Generally speaking, however, the GOP has tilted far more toward limiting what governors are allowed to do by law than Democrats to date.”
“Two recent studies found that online animosity and offline hate incidents against Asian Americans heightened after Trump linked China and COVID-19 in his tweets; another study found that Trump’s framing of the pandemic as China’s fault increased anti-Asian sentiments and xenophobia in survey experiments; and there’s evidence, too, that rank-and-file Republicans have become much more hostile toward China during the pandemic — views that experts warn pose a threat to all Asian Americans.”
“Young children do transmit the virus, and variants like the more-transmissible B.1.1.7 lineage increase how likely kids are to spread COVID-19. It’s also important to note that those low rates of children transmitting COVID-19 are very dependent on behavioral modifications — in particular, wearing masks indoors. A brand-new study out on Thursday found that risk-reduction strategies like teachers wearing masks, kids wearing masks, checking symptoms daily and canceling extracurricular activities like sports made the difference between in-person schooling that spread COVID-19 from kids through their families and in-person schooling that didn’t significantly increase the spread of COVID-19.”
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“kids going unmasked outdoors — unless they’re in a large, closely packed group — is probably fine. But masking indoors remains an important way to keep COVID-19 from spreading among unvaccinated people of all ages.”
“the economic rebound has been so fast that many businesses, particularly in the hard-hit hospitality sector — which includes restaurants, bars and hotels — have been caught flat-footed and unable to fill all their job openings. Some unemployed people have also been reluctant to look for work because they fear catching the virus.
Others have entered new occupations rather than return to their old jobs. And many women, especially working mothers, have had to leave the workforce to care for children.
Most of the hiring so far represents a bounce-back after tens of millions of positions were lost when the pandemic flattened the economy 14 months ago. The economy remains more than 8 million jobs short of its pre-pandemic level.
The Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion rescue package, approved in early March, has helped maintain Americans’ incomes and purchasing power, much more so than in previous recessions. The economy expanded at a vigorous 6.4% annual rate in the first three months of the year. That pace could accelerate to as high as 13% in the April-June quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
One government report last week showed that wages and benefits rose at a solid pace in the first quarter, suggesting that some companies are having to pay more to attract and keep employees. In fact, the number of open jobs is now significantly above pre-pandemic levels, though the size of the labor force — the number of Americans either working or looking for work — is still smaller by about 4 million people.
In addition, the recovery remains sharply uneven: Most college-educated and white collar employees have been able to work from home over the past year. Many have not only built up savings but have also expanded their wealth as a result of rising home values and a record-setting stock market.
By contrast, job cuts have fallen heavily on low-wage workers, racial minorities and people without college educations. In addition, many women, especially working mothers, have had to leave the workforce to care for children.”
“As the coronavirus pandemic rages in India, claiming thousands of lives, many Indians are turning to social media to demand that the government handle the public health crisis better. And now, the government is silencing these critics in its latest threat to the future of free speech on the internet in the world’s second-most populous country.
In recent weeks, the Indian government has requested that companies like Twitter take down content that it says contains misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic. But critics say that India’s political leadership under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is using the premise of misinformation to overreach and suppress criticism of the administration’s handling of the pandemic.”
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“under the Modi administration of the past several years, the country has expanded its internet regulation laws, giving it more power to censor and surveil its citizens online. The government has several levers to pressure US-based tech companies into compliance: It could arrest Facebook and Twitter staff in India if their employers don’t follow orders. Even further, India could yank Twitter or Facebook off the local internet in India entirely, as it recently did with TikTok and several major Chinese apps in June. And the government resorted to effectively shutting down the internet in Kashmir in February 2020 when it wanted to quiet political dissent in the region.”
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“Facebook confirmed that it temporarily blocked posts with a #ResignModi hashtag in India, but it later said it was a mistake because of content associated with the hashtag that violated its policies. Facebook has since restored access to the hashtag.
Facebook declined to comment on how many or what takedown requests it has received from the Indian government in recent weeks. A source familiar with the company said Facebook only took down a small portion of the total requests it received.”
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“Recode reviewed the more than 50 tweets that Twitter blocked or deleted at the request of the Indian government in recent weeks. While some could be considered misleading — including one viral image showing devastation in India supposedly related to the pandemic which Indian fact-checker AltNews reported to be outdated — it wasn’t clear what was misleading about several other posts, which appeared to be straightforward news and political commentary.”
““I look at it this way: The first time, we have an excuse. There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge,” Birx told CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta. “All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.”
In sum, Birx suggested that thousands of American deaths were all but unavoidable as a result of the initial surge of the coronavirus in February and March of last year. But she said better adherence to public health guidelines — including mask-wearing and social distancing — could’ve saved the lives of many of the 450,000 people (and counting) in the US who have died since then.”
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“While Birx’s suggestion that as many as 100,000 deaths were too difficult to prevent is arguable — a better-prepared federal government could have limited spread and saved lives by building out a testing infrastructure much more quickly than the one overseen by Trump”
“We know the vaccines authorized in the US are extremely effective and safe — but not perfect — at preventing Covid-19 illness. Newer data suggests they are also very good (though also not perfect) at keeping people from getting infected, thus likely drastically reducing the chances they could spread it to others.
Even with the small risks of these “breakthrough infections,” there are much more pressing reasons to keep masking in public — especially indoors in places like gyms, stores, and airports — and, according to the new CDC guidance, in most outdoor gatherings as well. Masking remains one of the least intrusive interventions we can take to keep putting the brakes on Covid-19 spread.
From variant wild cards to protecting unvaccinated kids, the reasons we should keep masking in crowded public spaces at least into the summer are strong. We talked to experts to better understand them and to get a glimpse of when we might finally be able to leave our masks at home.”
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“The majority of people in the US are still susceptible to infection from Covid-19. “There are folks around us who will not or cannot get the vaccine, and we have to keep thinking, as a community, of ways to protect them, too,””
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“a subset of people — roughly 3 percent in the US — have compromised immune systems that might do a poor job of mounting a robust response to the vaccine, leaving them vulnerable to infection even after getting shots.
There are also some people who aren’t able to wear masks to protect themselves in public. This includes some adults and children with disabilities or rare health conditions, as well as babies and toddlers”
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“Although the vaccines authorized for use in the US appear to be very effective against the variants that are circulating, it is possible future strains will be better at evading vaccine protection (as the B.1.351 variant, first detected in South Africa, is against the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine). Vaccine companies are working to keep pace with variants, testing their vaccines against them and formulating potential boosters. But, says Guthrie, “it may be a bit of a game of whack-a-mole as new variants come up.””
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““These variants — especially ones that have mutations that make them more transmissible — can pop up and then spread quite quickly,” Guthrie says. “If you combine that with a variant that could evade the current vaccines, you’re not going to get a lot of advance warning.” Which means a widespread outbreak, including some people who had already gotten their shots, could get going before we were able to contain it.
Masking can not only prevent a new variant from spreading but could also help prevent new variants from emerging, as the more people the virus infects, the greater the opportunity it has to mutate.”
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“Even if we can’t drop our masks indoors for a little while longer, outdoors is a different story. The rates of public outdoor transmission of Covid-19 are incredibly low, and most known cases of outdoor infection spread have occurred from long conversations, yelling, or exercising together.”