Wall Street Journal (July 19)
“As China’s factory-gate prices soared this year, investors worried the country would become a new source of inflation for the rest of the world. Instead, the world’s second-largest economy has helped alleviate some price pressures caused by the pandemic.” Many Chinese factories have been “absorbing higher costs for raw materials like copper and iron ore themselves.” It appears this will continue “at least for a while.”
Tags: Absorbing, Alleviate, Copper, Factories, https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-china-is-helping-to-damp-global-inflation-11626616802?cx_testId=200&cx_testVariant=cx_10&cx_artPos=5#cxrecs_s China, Inflation, Investors, Pandemic, Price pressures, Prices, Raw materials, Worried
LA Times (July 16)
“The financial crisis created by the pandemic prompted executives at hundreds of America’s largest publicly traded companies to voluntarily lower their own base salaries. They made a point of announcing these cuts in news releases and earning calls with analysts.” In many cases, this was a gimmick. In one egregious case, Christopher Nassetta, Hilton’s Chief Executive “opted to forgo his entire base salary for the rest of the year,” amid furloughs and job cuts, but his “compensation package more than doubled to $55.9 million in 2020, compared with $21.4 million in 2019.”
Tags: Analysts, Earning calls, Executives, Financial Crisis, Gimmick, Hilton, Nassetta, News releases, Pandemic, Publicly traded, Salaries
Boston Globe (July 14)
“The Boston-Cambridge economy may never be the same after the COVID-19 pandemic.” Throughout the region, a “long-term acceptance of remote work and changes in commuting and travel habits” are expected to continue. As employees spend less time in the office, “demand for office space could drop by up to 20 percent, and commuter rail usage could fall between 15 and 50 percent from pre-pandemic levels.”
Tags: Acceptance, Boston, Cambridge, Commuter, Commuting, COVID-19, Economy, Employees, Office, Pandemic, Remote work, Travel habits
USA Today (July 8)
“Even before the pandemic, which largely confined most Americans to their homes for months, communities that lacked reliable high-speed internet began falling behind those that were well-connected. The pandemic exacerbated the nation’s ‘digital divide’ – and those who suffered most were in low-income areas.”
Tags: Communities, Confined, Digital divide, Exacerbated, High-speed internet, Homes, Low income, Pandemic, Reliable, Well-connected
Chicago Tribune (July 7)
Illinois has successfully vaccinated 70% of its citizen. The “Department of Public Health on Monday reported zero deaths from COVID-19 for the first time since march 2020—a sign of how far the state has come since the pandemic took hold.” Though concerns over variants and the unvaccinated remain, this represents tremendous “change from the spring of 2020 and this past winter when the state was frequently reporting more than 100 deaths a day,” peaking at 238 on December 2.
Tags: 2020, 70, Change, COVID-19, Illinois, Pandemic, Unvaccinated, Vaccinated, Variants, Zero deaths
Philadelphia Inquirer (July 6)
“Interviews with doctors and nurses in the Philadelphia region revealed a sense of relief over a waning pandemic leavened by fears that the virus could surge again. They use different terms to describe what almost a year and a half of being on the front lines of treating COVID-19 has done. Moral injury. Trauma. Burnout. PTSD.” Even now, these “drained health care workers must still maintain a busy schedule as hospitals face a glut of patients who had put off health care out of fears of contracting the virus.”
Tags: Burnout, Busy, COVID-19, Doctors, Drained, Fears, Front lines, Health care workers, Interviews, Nurses, Pandemic, Philadelphia, PTSD, Relief, Surge, Trauma
Reuters (July 6)
The spectator ban on the opening ceremony is yet “another downgrade” for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, leaving its “pomp and public spectacle overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic. Once promoted as an extravaganza to showcase Japan to the world, the Games appear in danger of taking place largely out of public view in a country closed to foreign tourists due to the pandemic.”
Tags: Ban, Closed, Coronavirus, Downgrade, Extravaganza, Foreign, Japan, Olympics, Opening ceremony, Overshadowed, Pandemic, Showcase, Spectacle, Spectator, Tokyo 2020
San Francisco Chronicle (June 16)
“California shrugged off 15 months of pandemic restrictions Tuesday and emerged into an appropriately sunny day to take a celebratory—if cautious—collective leap toward a post-COVID normal.” This historic day marks the first time “life could return to some semblance of what it used to be, a future bolstered by vaccines that will likely forestall another deadly surge.”
Tags: California, Cautious, Celebratory, Deadly surge, Forestall, Future, Normal, Pandemic, Post-Covid, Restrictions, Shrugged, Vaccines
LA Times (June 14)
“The chances of getting COVID-19 will not be zero anytime soon—even for vaccinated people. So, for all of us to comfortably return to in-person work, send our kids to school and abandon our masks, we will have to rely on multiple lines of trust…. Unfortunately, Americans’ willingness to trust one another was already in decline before the pandemic began.”
Tags: COVID-19, Decline, In-person, Kids, Masks, Pandemic, Return, School, Trust, Vaccinated, Willingness, Work
Fortune (June 13)
“Before the pandemic, Japan’s workforce faced longstanding problems, like chronic overwork, low productivity, and too few women. Letting employees work from home may have helped ease all three, in addition to preventing the spread of COVID. But Japan’s failure to more fully adapt means it will likely miss out on the carry-on benefits of remote work that some corporations elsewhere are warming to.”
Tags: Adapt, Benefits, Covid, Employees, Failure, Home, Japan, Longstanding, Overwork, Pandemic, Productivity, Remote work, Women, Work, Workforce
