Author: SeniorWomenWeb

US Surgeon General Vivek Dr. Murthy Issues Advisory During COVID-19 Vaccination Push Warning American Public About Threat of Health Misinformation

US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy is issuing the first Surgeon General’s Advisory of this Administration to warn the American public about the urgent threat of health misinformation. Health misinformation, including disinformation, have threatened the U.S. response to COVID-19 and continue to prevent Americans from getting vaccinated, prolonging the pandemic and putting lives at risk, and the advisory encourages technology and social media companies to take more responsibility to stop online spread of health misinformation.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans have been exposed to a wide range of misinformation about masks and social distancing, treatments, and vaccines. As of late May, 67% of unvaccinated adults had heard at least one COVID-19 vaccine myth and either believed it to be true or were not sure of its veracity. Health misinformation has already caused significant harm , dividing families and communities and undermining vaccination efforts. An analysis of millions of social media posts found that false news stories were 70 percent more likely to be shared than true stories. And a recent study showed that even brief exposure to misinformation made people less likely to want a COVID-19 vaccine.

“Health misinformation is an urgent threat to public health. It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, and undermine public health efforts, including our ongoing work to end the COVID-19 pandemic,” said U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. “As Surgeon General, my job is to help people stay safe and healthy, and without limiting the spread of health misinformation, American lives are at risk. From the tech and social media companies who must do more to address the spread on their platforms, to all of us identifying and avoiding sharing misinformation, tackling this challenge will require an all-of-society approach, but it is critical for the long-term health of our nation.”

Health misinformation is information that is false, inaccurate, or misleading according to the best available evidence. It is not a recent phenomenon, and persistent rumors about HIV/AIDS for decades have undermined efforts to reduce infection rates in the U.S. During the Ebola epidemic, misinformation spread rapidly on social media. A 2014 study – PDF found that Ebola-related tweets that contained misinformation were more likely to be politically charged and have content promoting discord.

This advisory lays out how the nation can confront health misinformation by helping individuals, families, and communities better identify and limit its spread, and issues a number of ways institutions in education, media, medicine, research, and government stakeholders can approach this issue. It also underscores the urgent need for technology and social media companies to address the way misinformation and disinformation spread on their platforms, threatening people’s health.

Surgeon General’s Advisories are public statements that call the American people’s attention to a public health issue and provide recommendations for how it should be addressed. Advisories are reserved for significant public health challenges that need the American people’s immediate attention.

Read the full Surgeon General’s Advisory here: surgeongeneral.gov/healthmisinformation

For more information about the Office of the Surgeon General, please visit: www.surgeongeneral.gov.

July 17, 2021
Jo Freeman Reviews MADAM SPEAKER, Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons Of Power: “An iron fist in a Gucci glove”

By Susan Page

Published by New York: Twelve, Grand Central Publishing; 2021

viii + 438 pages plus photographic inserts

by Jo Freeman

“An iron fist in a Gucci glove” is how author Susan Page frequently describes Nancy Pelosi, though she didn’t coin the phrase.

Beginning with Little Nancy and her forbears, the book concludes with the Jan. 6 riot, covering Pelosi’s more than 81 years. One of Page’s researchers interviewed people in the Italian village that Pelosi’s grandparents emigrated from.

Nancy D’Alesandro was born to politics. Her father was such a natural pol that he easily became Mayor of Baltimore as well as a Member of Congress. But she wasn’t born to actually run for office, let alone win. Like her mother, she was expected to serve men and their ambitions. Initially, she followed the path of a good Catholic girl: attend a Catholic girls school, marry a nice, young man from a good family, have five children in six years.

Only after moving to Paul Pelosi’s home town in 1969 did her own ambitions bloom, and that was because of her fortunate marriage. San Francisco politics are very different than Baltimore politics but they do have in common that old adage “It’s not what you know but who you know.” Her husband’s family was well connected and his brother sat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. If they had stayed in New York City, where Paul was pursuing a career in finance, Nancy’s skills would have taken her in a different direction.

Their large house became a frequent spot for Democratic fundraising parties. Pelosi’s talent for raising money soon opened doors. She moved up in the party ranks, becoming state Democratic Party chair in 1981 and chair of the host committee for the Democratic National Convention in 1984.

July 16, 2021
Kaiser Health News: Paying Billions for Controversial Alzheimer’s Drug? How About Funding This Instead?

By Judith Graham, Kaiser Health News, July 6, 2021

If you could invest $56 billion each year in improving health care for older adults, how would you spend it? On a hugely expensive medication with questionable efficacy — or something else?

This isn’t an abstract question. Aduhelm, a new Alzheimer’s drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration last month, could be prescribed to 1 million to 2 million patients a year, even if conservative criteria were used, according to Biogen and Eisai, the companies behind the drug.

The total annual price tag would come to $56 billion if the average list price, $56,000, is applied to the lower end of the companies’ estimate.

That’s a huge sum by any measure — more than the annual budget for the National Institutes of Health (almost $43 billion this year). Yet there’s considerable uncertainty about Aduhelm’s clinical benefits, fueling controversy over its approval. The FDA has acknowledged it’s not clear whether the medication will actually slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease or by how much.

“This drug raises all kinds of questions about how we think about health and our priorities,” said Dr. Kenneth Covinsky, a geriatrician and professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco.

Since most Alzheimer’s patients are older and on Medicare, the medication would become a significant financial burden on the federal government and beneficiaries. Several experts warn that outlays for aducanumab, marketed as Aduhelm, could drive up premiums for Medicare Part B and Medicare supplemental policies and raise out-of-pocket expenses.

A likely additional cost: lost opportunities to invest in other improvements in care for older adults. If Medicare and Medicaid must absorb drug spending of this magnitude, other priorities are less likely to receive attention.

I asked a dozen experts — geriatricians, economists, health policy specialists — how they would spend an extra $56 billion a year. Their answers highlight significant gaps in care for older adults. Here’s some of what they suggested.

Make Medicare more affordable. High out-of-pocket expenses are a growing burden on older adults and discourage many from seeking care, and Dr. David Himmelstein, a distinguished professor of urban public health at Hunter College in New York City, said extra funding could be directed at reducing those costs. “I’d cut Medicare copayments and deductibles. I think that would go a long way toward improving access to care and health outcomes,” he said.

On average, older adults on Medicare spent $5,801 out-of-pocket for health care in 2017 — 36% of the average annual Social Security benefit of $16,104, according to a report last year from AARP. By 2030, out-of-pocket health expenses could consume 50% of average Social Security benefits, KFF predicted in 2018.

Pay for vision, hearing and dental care. Millions of older adults can’t afford hearing, vision and dental care — services that traditional Medicare doesn’t cover. As a result, their quality of life is often negatively affected and they’re at increased risk for cognitive decline, social isolation, falls, infections and depression.

“I’d use the money to help pay for these additional benefits, which have proved very popular with Medicare Advantage members,” said Mark Pauly, a professor of health care management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. (Private Medicare Advantage plans, which cover about 24 million people, usually offer some kind of hearing, vision and dental benefits.)

Over 10 years (2020 to 2029), the cost of adding comprehensive hearing, vision and dental benefits to Medicare would be $358 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Support family caregivers. Nearly 42 million people provide assistance — help with shopping, cooking, paying bills and physical care — to older adults trying to age in place at home. Yet these unpaid caregivers receive little practical support.

Dr. Sharon Inouye, a geriatrician and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, suggests investing in paid services in the home to lessen the burden on unpaid caregivers, especially those tending to people with dementia. She would fund more respite care programs that give family caregivers short-term breaks, as well as adult day centers where older adults can socialize and engage in activities. Also, she recommends devoting substantial resources to expanding caregiver training and support and paying caregivers stipends to lessen the financial impact of caregiving. For the most part, Medicare doesn’t cover those services.

“Providing these supports could make a huge difference in people’s lives,” Inouye said.

Strengthen long-term care. Shortages of direct care workers — aides who care for older adults at home and in assisted living facilities, nursing homes, residential facilities and other settings — are a growing problem, made more acute by the coronavirus pandemic. PHI, a research organization that studies the direct care workforce, has estimated that millions of direct care jobs will need to be filled as baby boomers age.

“We could greatly improve the long-term care workforce by paying these workers better and training them better,” said Dr. Joanne Lynn, a geriatrician and policy analyst at Altarum, a research and consulting organization.

July 15, 2021
Rose Madeline Mula Writes: How Come … ?

No wonder I’m an insomniac. How can I get to sleep when I keep trying to solve life’s little puzzles — like …

How come the label on my sleeping pills warns, “May cause drowsiness”? Isn’t that the point? Conversely, why is my anti-vertigo medication marked, “May cause dizziness”?

Franz Eugen Köhler, Medicinal plants (Frankincense), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

How come when people say, “To make a long story short…” they never do? And invariably when they utter the phrase, “Needless to say…” they say it anyway.

How come guests never use guest hand towels, even when they’re prominently displayed by the bathroom sink? Have you ever noticed that after a dinner party or an afternoon of Scrabble, even though several people have visited the lavatory from time to time, not one of the guest towels has been disturbed. They’re still in place, pristinely folded and unrumpled. I’m giving my friends the benefit of the doubt and assuming that they do wash their hands; but apparently they dry them on the face or bath towels on the racks, on the seat of their pants, or possibly a piece of toilet tissue. Do they think I put the guest towels out for some more important visitors I’m expecting later?

And why do we decorate our bathrooms with seashells? Is the water flowing from our faucets somehow connected to the ocean? I myself live only twenty miles from the Atlantic, so maybe the shells in my bathroom aren’t so incongruous; but I’m willing to bet that if you go into almost any bathroom in a home in, say, Kansas City, you’ll also find a conch shell or two which you can hold to your ear and listen for the sound of the surf, even though the only waves for hundreds of miles are of amber-colored grain.

Another conundrum that keeps me awake is what happens to the mattresses people return if they’re not satisfied with them after a 30-day free trial? Some of them cost several thousand dollars. Am I to believe they are destroyed and not simply recycled? If you ask me, Mama, Papa, and Baby Bear were pretty astute when they observed, “Someone’s been sleeping in my bed.” Did someone snooze (or worse!) in mine before me? Hand me that Lysol spray, please.

If absence makes the heart grow fonder, how can out of sight be out of mind?

And if God will provide, how come He helps only those who help themselves?

More important, why does my computer crash only when I’m behind deadline on an important project and not when I’m playing solitaire — especially since I spend much more time playing games than working.

And can wine connoisseurs really detect undertones of leather, tea, oak, and dozens of other essences and aromas? When they describe a certain vintage as having “a good nose” or “legs,” are they putting me on? And when they toss out adjectives like “assertive,” “attractive,” “graceful,” and “elegant,” are they really describing the wine or the waitress pouring it?

If haste makes waste, how come he who hesitates is lost? And why should we keep our noses to the grindstone if all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy?

Why does the promising stock I buy always plummet the very next day? And why is that drastically-reduced designer dress I purchased last week (Final Sale! No Returns!) reduced much further the week after the so-called final sale?

How come dedicated vegetarians often wear leather coats, shoes and other accessories? Is it okay to kill animals to make us look good, but not to nourish us? Maybe they rationalize that since the creature has already been butchered, it’s pointless to let its hide go to waste. On the other hand, meat eaters could argue that since a cow has been slaughtered to provide rich Corinthian leather for our furniture and apparel, it would be sinful to toss out those perfectly good T-bones and filet mignons.

July 14, 2021
UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ: ‘I always felt like a pioneer’

By Anne Brice, Berkeley News| JULY 9, 2021

See all Fiat Vox episodes.

Professor Emerita Carol Clover (left) and Chancellor Carol Christ first met at UC Berkeley in 1970. (UC Berkeley photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)

Read a transcript of Fiat Vox episode #80: “Chancellor Carol Christ: ‘I always felt like a pioneer’.”

Intro: This is Fiat Vox, a Berkeley News podcast. I’m Anne Brice. While Fiat Vox is on summer break, we have been revisiting some of our favorite episodes. Today’s episode, originally released in April 2019, is a conversation between UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ and Professor Emerita Carol Clover. OK, here’s the episode.

Narration: I recently sat down with UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ and her longtime friend and colleague Carol Clover, a professor emerita in the Departments of Scandinavian Studies and Film Studies. They first met at UC Berkeley in 1970.

In this conversation, they discuss what it was like for women in the academy 50 years ago and how it’s changed, what makes a strong leader — and offer advice to the next generation of Berkeley women.

Anne Brice: Chancellor Christ, why did you want to have a conversation with professor Clover?

Carol Christ in 1994. Christ served as UC Berkeley’s executive vice chancellor and provost from 1994 until 2000. When Christ joined the faculty at UC Berkeley in 1970 as an assistant professor in the English department, she was the fourth woman to join the department, which had 84 faculty members at the time. (UC Berkeley photo by Jane Scherr)

Carol Christ: Carol and I have known each other for almost as long as I’ve been at Berkeley. So it’s almost 50 years that we’ve known each other. We have careers where there are many parallels, but also some different paths that we took.

I first came to campus as an assistant professor in 1970 in the English department. So I guess I met Carol shortly after I came to campus. With the exception of the time I spent as president of Smith College from 2002 to 2013, I’ve been here for my whole career.

Carol Clover: I first came to campus as an undergraduate in 1960. I got my B.A., M.A. and then my Ph.D. here. Then, my first job was at Harvard. So I went there in 1971 and came back as soon as possible in 1977. Then I had to go back and finish up a year at Harvard, but then I came back to Berkeley for good in 1979.

Anne Brice: When you both first got to Berkeley, what was it like for women on campus?

Carol Clover: I came as an undergraduate. And there were other women undergraduate students. What was hard was actually having two children by the time I was a junior and also being a single mother at the age of 25. So I did all of my work with children. That was really hard.

Carol Clover sits in a library at a graduate seminar at UC Berkeley in 1967. She earned her B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. (Photo courtesy of Carol Clover)

But, again, there were certainly other women students. What there weren’t, what I never had, was a female professor. There were no women above that I ever saw, above the level of students.

Carol Christ: When I joined the faculty, only 3% of the faculty were women. When I joined the English department, there were 84 faculty in the English department — it was much bigger then than it is now — and there were four women. I was the fourth woman. And I remember whenever I went to an office, people didn’t believe I was a faculty member.

Carol Clover: Or, when I went to Harvard, people always thought that I was a secretary in my office. They would just walk in and say, “Would you please type this for me and have it for tomorrow?”

Anne Brice: What would you say?

Carol Clover: Oh, I don’t remember. It would be a nice conversation. They were usually apologetic. It was just the way things were.

At the Faculty Club at Harvard, the dining room was for men only. And the women, wives and so forth, had to eat in the hallway, where there were tables lined up along the wall. Even female faculty did not eat in the main dining room. But I remember going in one day for lunch with a woman professor friend visiting from Texas. It just crossed our minds that we would ask to sit in the main dining room. So at the front desk we asked, “Is there any chance we could sit in the main dining room?” And the little woman in charge of seating said, “Certainly.” And she very strongly walked in and put us right at the best table in the room.

I believe we integrated the Faculty Club then — without intention and without any fanfare. We were stared at, but nobody gave us any grief about it. So it happened.

July 12, 2021
Lynn Hershman Leeson: Who Has Celebrated Her 80th Birthday and a New Exhibition, TWISTED, at The New Museum in New York City
Lynn Hershman Leeson “Seduction of a Cyborg” (1994) (still). Video, sound, color; 5:52 min. Courtesy the artist; Altman Siegel, San Francisco; and Bridget Donahue, New York

The New Museum

For over fifty years, Lynn Hershman Leeson has created an innovative and prescient body of work that mines the intersections of technology and the self. Known for her groundbreaking contributions to media art, Hershman Leeson has consistently worked with the latest technologies, from Artificial Intelligence to DNA programming, often anticipating the impact of technological developments on society. As the artist posited in 1998, “Imagine a world in which there is a blurring between the soul and the chip, a world in which artificially implanted DNA is genetically bred to create an enlightened and self-replicating intelligent machine, which perhaps uses a human body as a vehicle for mobility.”
- Lynn Hershman Leeson, Breathing Machine, 1965; Plexiglas on wood, sound, sensors, wax, cast face, wig, make-up, 32 × 42 × 42 cm; courtesy the Artist and Bridget Donahue, NYC – © Lynn Hershman Leeson. Photo: Dejan Saric
The exhibition will bring together a selection of Hershman Leeson’s work in drawing, sculpture, video, and photography, along with interactive and net-based works, focusing on themes of transmutation, identity construction, and the evolution of the cyborg. Filling the New Museum’s Second Floor galleries, this presentation will include some of the artist’s most important projects, including wax-cast Breathing Machine sculptures (1965–68) and selections from hundreds of early drawings from the 1960s, many of which have never been exhibited before. Works from the Roberta Breitmore series (1973–78), perhaps her best-known project, in which she transformed her identity into a fictional persona, will be shown alongside her video Seduction of a Cyborg (1994) and selections from the series Water Women (1976–present), Phantom Limb (1985–88), and Cyborg (1996–2006), among others.

The exhibition will also include Hershman Leeson’s most recent large-scale project, Infinity Engine (2014–present), a multimedia installation based on a genetics laboratory that explores the effects of genetic engineering on society. Together, the works in the exhibition will trace the ever-intertwined relationship between the technological and the corporeal, illuminating the political and social consequences of scientific advances on our most intimate selves and biological lives.

The exhibition is curated by Margot Norton, Allen and Lola Goldring Curator, and is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with contributions by Karen Archey and Martine Syms, and an interview with Lynn Hershman Leeson conducted by Margot Norton.

Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941, Cleveland, OH) lives and works in San Francisco and New York. Her recent retrospective exhibition, “Civic Radar,” traveled from ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany (2014) to Deichtorhallen Hamburg / Sammlung Falckenberg, Germany (2015); Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany (2016); and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2017). Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo Comunidad de Madrid (2019); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2018); Haus der elektronischen Künste, Basel (2018); Modern Art Oxford, UK (2015); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2013), and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2007).

Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the de Young Museum, San Francisco (2020); The Shed, New York (2019); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2019); Institute of Contemporary Art Boston (2018); Whitney Museum of American Art (2017); and Whitechapel Gallery, London (2016); as well as international exhibitions, including the Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art (2018), and the forthcoming 2020 Gwangju Biennial in Korea.

Her films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, and the Berlin International Film Festival, among others. Hershman Leeson has received numerous awards, including a VIA Art Fund Award (2019), a Siggraph Lifetime Achievement Award (2018), the College Art Association’s Distinguished Feminist Award (2018), the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award from the 60th San Francisco International Film Festival (2017), a United States Artists Fellowship (2016), an Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2014), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2009) and the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica (1999).

Lynn Hershman Leeson in Conversation with Margot Norton

Lynn Hershman Leeson, CyberRoberta, 1996. Custom-made doll, clothing, glasses, webcam, surveillance camera, mirror, original programming, and telerobotic head-rotating system, Aprox. 17 ¾ x 17 ¾ x 7 ⅞ in (45 × 45 × 20 cm). Courtesy the artist; Anglim Gilbert Gallery, San Francisco; and Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York

A recording of this conversation is available here. And visit the Museum Store.
July 11, 2021
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: US Economic Activity Contracted Sharply During 2020 As Covid-19 Spread and Government Introduced Policies Aimed At Curbing the Virus

2021, No. 14

Posted 2021-07-01

Part 1

by Matthew Famiglietti and Fernando Leibovici

US economic activity contracted sharply during 2020 as COVID-19 spread and government introduced policies aimed at curbing the virus.

Understanding the impact of the pandemic on economic activity as well as the effectiveness and economic impact of health and containment policies has been a major challenge faced by policymakers. The fundamental issue is that economic activity, COVID-19’s spread, and health and containment policies are interconnected — they simultaneously influence each other.

In a recent working paper, we develop a methodology to investigate the causal linkages among COVID-19’s spread, health and containment policies, and economic activity.1 In this two-part essay, we present a nontechnical summary of our approach and main findings. In particular, Part I explains our methods and summarizes how COVID-19 has affected economic activity and government policies. Part II describes the effects of government policies on COVID-19’s spread and economic activity.

Our estimation strategy identifies the roles of COVID-19’s spread and government policies on economic activity by comparing the value of exports across US states. Exports are our measure of economic activity because their demand is largely determined abroad and not directly impacted by US COVID-19 infection rates, government policies, or economic activity. In particular, we compare narrowly defined export transactions across states that differ in the intensity of, timing of, and response to the pandemic.

To illustrate, consider exports of bicycles from Texas and New York to France. Texas had less-stringent containment policies than New York. Now suppose that both states had a similar rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations and faced the same demand from France for bikes. Our approach would attribute any differences in the exports of bicycles to differences in containment policies. More broadly, our method identifies the relative impact of COVID-19’s spread and government policies by generalizing the example to all goods exported by the United States, from all US states.

We use data from March 2020 to November 2020 to capture the pandemic prior to the arrival of vaccines. To measure economic activity, we use exports data from the US Census Bureau. To measure government policy responses to COVID-19, we use the containment and health index from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT).2 Finally, our primary measure of COVID-19’s spread across states is the number of hospitalizations per million people, which we obtain from the COVID Tracking Project compiled by the Atlantic based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services. We use these data along with a statistical model to identify the causal linkages among COVID-19’s spread, health containment policies, and economic activity.

Figure 1 plots COVID-19’s spread (hospitalizations), health containment policies, and economic activity (exports) over time in response to an outbreak of COVID-19. To illustrate, we consider a doubling in COVID-19 hospitalizations. Panel A of Figure 1 illustrates this temporary increase, which rapidly declines over time.

Panel B of Figure 1 shows that this dramatic increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations mildly tightens health containment policies. In particular, the health and containment index only increases by 1 point. For context, note that the index is on a scale of 0-100 and its average value across states during the pandemic was 49, remaining between 33 and 65 in most states over this period. This very modest policy response to the pandemic captures how U.S. states typically responded to the pandemic in the United States: The average state did not tighten health containment policies significantly in response to COVID-19 outbreaks.

Panel C of Figure 1 shows that COVID-19 outbreaks immediately reduce economic activity. Approximately three months after a doubling of hospitalizations, we estimate that exports decline by approximately 1.5 percent relative to the previous year. Additionally, this effect of COVID-19’s spread is persistent, lasting around a year. This is a significant decline of economic activity, particularly in sectors that have been less affected by the pandemic than more contact-intensive sectors such as services.

In summary, the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on economic activity but generated only mild changes in health containment policies. In Part 2 of this series, we summarize our findings on the impact of health containment and economic policies on economic activity and COVID-19’s spread.

Notes

1 Famiglietti, Matthew and Leibovici, Fernando. “The Impact of Health and Economic Policies on the Spread of COVID-19 and Economic Activity.” Working Paper 2021-005, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2021; https://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/more/2021-005.

2 See https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/covid-19-government-response-tracker.

© 2021, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis or the Federal Reserve System.

The Economic and Epidemiological Impact of COVID-19 and Government Policies:

Part 2

by Matthew Famiglietti and Fernando Leibovici

Disentangling the effects of COVID-19’s spread and containment policies on economic activity is difficult because the disease and containment policies interact with each other. For example, greater spread of COVID-19 is likely to elicit stricter containment efforts designed to curb the disease but that also affect the level of economic activity.

In Part 1 of this series we described the impact of COVID-19’s spread on economic activity and government policies.1 In contrast, in this essay we show how government policies impact the spread of COVID-19 and economic activity. In particular, we examine policies aimed at controlling the spread of the virus and economic support policies implemented to mitigate the economic cost of the pandemic.

July 8, 2021
Congressional Legislative Update, Bills Introduced: June 28 – July 2, 2021: Increase Federal Funding for Tribal Child Welfare Program; Task Force on Maternal Mental Health; Accomodating Breastfeeding in the Workplace
July 6, 2021

Bills Introduced: June 28 – July 2, 2021

Civil Rights

H.R. 4286 — Rep. Bradley Schneider (D-IL)/Judiciary (6/30/21) — A bill to extend the protections of the Fair Housing Act to persons suffering discrimination on the basis of sex or sexual orientation, and for other purposes.

Family Support

H.R. 4348 — Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA)/Ways and Means (7/2/21) — A bill to remove administrative barriers to participation of Indian tribes in federal child welfare programs, and increase federal funding for tribal child welfare programs, and for other purposes.

Health

H.R. 4217 — Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragan (D-CA)/Energy and Commerce (6/29/21) —A bill to provide for the establishment of a Task Force on Maternal Mental Health, and for other purposes.

H.R. 4297 — Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA)/Education and Labor (7/1/21) — A bill to provide for certain accommodations for breastfeeding in the workplace, and for other purposes.

Reproductive Health

H. Res. 516 — Rep. David Scott (D-GA)/Energy and Commerce (6/30/21) — A resolution supporting the designation of July 2021 as Uterine Fibroids Awareness Month.

Sports

H. Con. Res. 39 — Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA)/Education and Labor (6/29/21) — A concurrent resolution expressing the sense of Congress that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 applies to the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA), and the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) should work to prevent discrimination on the basis of sex in its programs and activities.

Tax Policy

H.R. 4354 — Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH)/Ways and Means (7/2/21) — A bill to improve the employer-provided child care tax credit.

Veterans

H.R. 4218 — Rep. Julia Brownley (D-CA)/Veterans’ Affairs (6/29/21) — A bill to increase the frequency that the Advisory Committee on Women Veterans shall submit a report to the secretary of Veterans Affairs, and for other purposes.

Violence Against Women

H.R. 4229 — Rep. Ann Kuster (D-NH)/Judiciary (6/29/21) — A bill to reauthorize grants for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, and for other purposes.

This Week: July 5-9, 2021

Floor Action:

The House and Senate are in recess until July 12.

Access the Weekly Legislative Update online

Reps. Bass, Bacon Introduce Tribal Family Fairness Act
July 2, 2021

Press Release

WASHINGTON – Today, Reps. Karen Bass (D-CA), Don Bacon (R-NE) and Sharice Davids (D-KS) introduced the Tribal Family Fairness Act of 2021, which aims to address disproportional representation of American Indian and Alaska Native children in foster care by investing in tribal child welfare systems and providing culturally appropriate services to preserve tribal families.

“The children in our child welfare system are our responsibility,” said Rep. Bass. “Due to this pandemic, it is now more critical than ever that Tribes have access to the reliable federal funding that states enjoy to protect and preserve families. I urge my colleagues to support this important piece of legislation.”

“Every child deserves a safe, loving home, and our American Indian and Alaska Native children are disproportionately deprived of that experience,” said Rep. Bacon. “This legislation will address current issues with tribal child welfare systems and make sure that these children are provided with the resources and support they need.”

“The Tribal Family Fairness Act gives Tribes the authority and capacity to determine what’s best for American Indian and Alaska Native children. By providing tribal court systems the resources and infrastructure needed to administer culturally appropriate services for families, this bill will improve child welfare outcomes in tribal communities,” said Rep. Davids. “I thank Representative Bass and Representative Bacon for leading this bipartisan effort to reduce barriers for Tribes to exercise their sovereign authority and center tribal children and families in welfare programs.”

The bill would remove longstanding barriers to federal funding to support children and families for small tribes who often have the greatest need. At the same time, the bill would ensure that larger tribes do not experience a decrease in federal funding if more tribes participate in the program.

Read the text of the bill here.

The Tribal Family Fairness Act will:

Remove barriers to funding for tribes with small child populations and establishes a $10,000 minimum grant for tribes.

Increase tribal funding so currently funded tribes will not see a reduction in their title IV-B Part 2 of the Social Security Act allocations when more tribes received allocations from the tribal funding source.

Authorize tribes to use funding for modifications of parental rights including tribal customary adoption.

Reduce administrative burden on small tribes by streamlining application and reporting requirements where the total grant is less than $50,000.

Authorize tribes to use in-kind contributions to meet the Section IV-B of the Social Security Act tribal match requirements.

Authorize tribes to use federally negotiated indirect cost rate agreements in lieu of title IV-B administrative costs caps.
July 6, 2021
Pew Research: REPORT JUNE 30, 2021, Behind Biden’s 2020 Victory An examination Of The 2020 Electorate, Based on Validated Voters
A voter drops off a ballot at a drop box in Maricopa County, Arizona; photo courtesy of Maricopa County Elections Department; Cronkite News: https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/

By Ruth Igielnik, Scott Keeter and Hannah Hartig

How we did this

The 2020 presidential election was historic in many ways. Amid a global pandemic, with unprecedented changes in how Americans voted, voter turnout rose 7 percentage points over 2016, resulting in a total of 66% of U.S. adult citizens casting a ballot in the 2020 election. Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump 306-232 in the Electoral College and had a 4-point margin in the popular vote. While Biden’s popular vote differential was an improvement over Hillary Clinton’s 2016 2-point advantage, it was not as resounding as congressional Democrats’ 9-point advantage over Republicans in votes cast in the 2018 elections for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Validated voters, defined

Members of Pew Research Center’s nationally representative American Trends Panel were matched to public voting records from three national commercial voter files in an attempt to find a record for voting in the 2020 election. Validated voters are citizens who told us in a post-election survey that they voted in the 2020 general election and have a record for voting in a commercial voter file. Nonvoters are citizens who were not found to have a record of voting in any of the voter files or told us they did not vote.

A new analysis of validated 2020 voters from Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel examines change and continuity in the electorate, both of which contributed to Biden’s victory. It looks at how new voters and voters who turned out in one or both previous elections voted in the 2020 presidential election and offers a detailed portrait of the demographic composition and vote choices of the 2020 electorate. It also provides a comparison with findings from our previous studies of the 2016 and 2018 electorates.

A number of factors determined the composition of the 2020 electorate and explain how it delivered Biden a victory. Among those who voted for Clinton and Trump in 2016, similar shares of each – about nine-in-ten – also turned out in 2020, and the vast majority remained loyal to the same party in the 2020 presidential contest. These voters formed substantial bases of support for both Biden and Trump. Overall, there were shifts in presidential candidate support among some key groups between 2016 and 2020, notably suburban voters and independents. On balance, these shifts helped Biden a little more than Trump.

Overall, one-in-four 2020 voters (25%) had not voted in 2016. About a quarter of these (6% of all 2020 voters) showed up two years later – in 2018 – to cast ballots in the highest-turnout midterm election in decades. Those who voted in 2018 but not in 2016 backed Biden over Trump in the 2020 election by about two-to-one (62% to 36%).

Both Trump and Biden were able to bring new voters into the political process in 2020. The 19% of 2020 voters who did not vote in 2016 or 2018 split roughly evenly between the two candidates (49% Biden vs. 47% Trump). However, as with voters overall, there was a substantial age divide within this group. Among those under age 30 who voted in 2020 but not in either of the two previous elections, Biden led 59% to 33%, while Trump won among new or irregular voters ages 30 and older by 55% to 42%. Younger voters also made up an outsize share of these voters: Those under age 30 made up 38% of new or irregular 2020 voters, though they represented just 15% of all 2020 voters.

One somewhat unusual aspect of the 2016 election was the relatively high share of voters (nearly 6%) who voted for one of the third-party candidates (mostly the Libertarian and Green Party nominees), a fact many observers attributed to the relative unpopularity of both major party candidates. By comparison, just 2% of voters chose a third-party candidate in 2020. Overall, third-party 2016 voters who turned out in 2020 voted 53%-36% for Biden over Trump, with 10% opting for a third-party candidate. Among the 5% of Republicans who voted third-party in 2016 and voted in 2020, a majority (70%) supported Trump in 2020, but 18% backed Biden. Among the 5% of Democrats who voted third-party in 2016 and voted in 2020, just 8% supported Trump in 2020 while 85% voted for Biden.

Here are some of the other key findings from the analysis:
- Biden made gains with suburban voters. In 2020, Biden improved upon Clinton’s vote share with suburban voters: 45% supported Clinton in 2016 vs. 54% for Biden in 2020. This shift was also seen among White voters: Trump narrowly won White suburban voters by 4 points in 2020 (51%-47%); he carried this group by 16 points in 2016 (54%-38%). At the same time, Trump grew his vote share among rural voters. In 2016, Trump won 59% of rural voters, a number that rose to 65% in 2020.
- Trump made gains among Hispanic voters. Even as Biden held on to a majority of Hispanic voters in 2020, Trump made gains among this group overall. There was a wide educational divide among Hispanic voters: Trump did substantially better with those without a college degree than college-educated Hispanic voters (41% vs. 30%).
- Apart from the small shift among Hispanic voters, Joe Biden’s electoral coalition looked much like Hillary Clinton’s, with Black, Hispanic and Asian voters and those of other races casting about four-in-ten of his votes. Black voters remained overwhelmingly loyal to the Democratic Party, voting 92%-8% for Biden.
- Biden made gains with men, while Trump improved among women, narrowing the gender gap. The gender gap in the 2020 election was narrower than it had been in 2016, both because of gains that Biden made among men and because of gains Trump made among women. In 2020, men were almost evenly divided between Trump and Biden, unlike in 2016 when Trump won men by 11 points. Trump won a slightly larger share of women’s votes in 2020 than in 2016 (44% vs. 39%), while Biden’s share among women was nearly identical to Clinton’s (55% vs. 54%).
- Biden improved over Clinton among White non-college voters. White voters without a college degree were critical to Trump’s victory in 2016, when he won the group by 64% to 28%. In 2018, Democrats were able to gain some ground with these voters, earning 36% of the White, non-college vote to Republicans’ 61%. In 2020, Biden roughly maintained Democrats’ 2018 share among the group, improving upon Clinton’s 2016 performance by receiving the votes of 33%. But Trump’s share of the vote among this group – who represented 42% of the total electorate this year – was nearly identical to his vote share in 2016 (65%).
- Biden grew his support with some religious groups while Trump held his ground. Both Trump and Biden held onto or gained with large groups within their respective religious coalitions. Trump’s strong support among White evangelical Protestants ticked up (77% in 2016, 84% in 2020) while Biden got more support among atheists and agnostics than did Clinton in 2016.
- After decades of constituting the majority of voters, Baby Boomers and members of the Silent Generation made up less than half of the electorate in 2020 (44%), falling below the 52% they constituted in both 2016 and 2018. Gen Z and Millennial voters favored Biden over Trump by margins of about 20 points, while Gen Xers and Boomers were more evenly split in their preferences. Gen Z voters, those ages 23 and younger, constituted 8% of the electorate, while Millennials and Gen Xers made up 47% of 2020 voters.1
- A record number of voters reported casting ballots by mail in 2020 – including many voters who said it was their first time doing so. Nearly half of 2020 voters (46%) said they had voted by mail or absentee, and among that group, about four-in-ten said it was their first time casting a ballot this way. Hispanic and White voters were more likely than Black voters to have cast absentee or mail ballots, while Black voters were more likely than White or Hispanic voters to have voted early in person. Urban and suburban voters were also more likely than rural voters to have voted absentee or by mail ballot.
July 4, 2021
Don’t Miss Pan American Unity, A Mural by Diego Rivera at S.F. Moma in San Francisco, On View For Free Until 2023 When It Returns to CCSF

Pan American Unity; A Mural by Diego Rivera

June 28, 2021 – Summer 2023 Exhibition, Roberts Family Gallery, Floor 1 

S.F. Moma in San Francisc0

The public can access Pan American Unity for free in the Roberts Family Gallery on Floor 1.

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Diego Rivera, The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on This Continent, also known as Pan American Unity, 1940; courtesy City College of San Francisco; © Banco de México Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico City / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Image: Cultural Heritage Imaging

Ten years after his first stay, Diego Rivera (1886-1957) returned to San Francisco in June 1940 to headline the main fine arts exhibition of the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island. Working on a scaffold in an airplane hangar before a live audience, Rivera painted The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on This Continent, commonly known as Pan American Unity, his last mural in the US. The fresco depicts in colorful detail a past, present, and future that the artist believed were shared across North America, calling for cultural solidarity and exchange during a time of global conflict. Completed with support from local artists and assistants, with scenes of the Bay Area as a backdrop, the mural celebrates the creative spirit through portraits of artists, artisans, architects, and inventors who use art and technology as tools to shape society.

After the fair, Pan American Unity — measuring twenty-two by seventy-four feet and weighing over sixty thousand pounds — was moved to the campus of City College of San Francisco (CCSF). This was possible because Rivera painted this fresco not on a wall, but on ten steel-framed cement panels. More than half a century later, an international team of experts has spent years planning another move. In partnership with CCSF, SFMOMA presents Rivera’s Pan American Unity in the museum’s free-to-the-public Roberts Family Gallery on Floor 1. On view until 2023, the mural will then return to CCSF to be installed in a new performing arts center.

Pan American Unity Audio Guide

Learn about the mural’s rich symbolism from artists, scholars, and more in this audio guide, available in both English and Spanish.

Listen

Editor’s Note: Don’t overlook the museum’s Shop: https://museumstore.sfmoma.org/

July 1, 2021