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September 16, 2020 - Brief Issue 94

The Coronavirus Daily Brief is a daily news and analysis roundup edited by New America’s International Security Program and Arizona State University.

The Coronavirus Daily Brief will be on hiatus the week of September 21st, as New America and ASU host their sixth annual Future Security Forum. The forum will include multiple panels on the security impact of coronavirus with speakers including Sir Lawrence Freedman on Strategy in the Era of Coronavirus. A full schedule can be found here and you can register online here.

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Top Headlines

WSJ: While U.S. Hospitals Controlled the Spread of COVID-19 within their Walls, They Failed to Fully Halt It (Health & Science)

CDC Report on COVID-19 Deaths in Children Finds Hispanic, Black, and American Indian Children Disproportionately Affected; Overall Mortality Among Children is Low Compared to Adults (Health & Science)

Columbia: Lockdown Lowered Coronavirus Spread in New York City by 70%; Universal Masking Could Reduce Transmission up to 32%; Multiple Interventions More Effective than Any Single Solution (Health & Science)

Eli Lilly’s Arthritis Drug, When Given with Antiviral Remdesivir, Helps Coronavirus Patients Recover One Day Faster on Average (Health & Science)

NIH Reviewing Single Case of Serious Side Effect in AstraZeneca Vaccine Trial (Health & Science)

U.S. Image Plummets Worldwide Amid Harsh Criticism of COVID-19 Response (Around the World)

U.K. Testing Crisis Could Last Weeks, Says Health Secretary (Around the World)

Indonesia Adds 50,000 Cases in First Half of September As Jakarta Shuts Down (Around the World)

Israel Hastens School Closures Prior to Friday’s Lockdown (Around the World)

South African Undertakers Strike (Around the World)

HHS Spokesperson Michael Caputo Accuses Health Officials of Undermining the President and Warns of a Left-Wing Insurrection (U.S. Government & Politics)

Scientific American Endorses Joe Biden for President in First-Ever Political Endorsement (U.S. Government & Politics)

Income Was Up, Poverty Down in 2019… Before the Pandemic (U.S. Economy)

In the Pandemic Economy, Some Find Work as Money Mules While Criminal Schemes Surge (U.S. Society)

Health & Science

There have been 6,606,674 coronavirus cases in the United States, and 195,961 people have died (Johns Hopkins). Around 2,495,127 people have recovered, and the United States has conducted 89,987,798 tests. Worldwide, there have been 29,607,590 confirmed cases of coronavirus, with 935,871 deaths. At least 20,100,605 people have recovered from the virus.

WSJ: While U.S. Hospitals Controlled the Spread of COVID-19 within their Walls, They Failed to Fully Halt It 

Over the course of nine weeks from late spring to early summer, more than 7,400 people caught COVID-19 inside a hospital, the Wall Street Journal reports in an exclusive, using previously unpublished data reported by half the hospitals in the U.S. to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Between May 14 and July 14, these hospitals cared for an average of 25,900 COVID-19 patients per day, and on average, 120 hospitalized patients a day became newly infected with the coronavirus. Hundreds of hospitals also reported shortages of protective gear, according to CDC data collected between mid-April and mid-July. 

Overall, however, the risk of infection within hospitals is likely small, infectious disease experts told the Journal. “People should not panic,” says Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health. “Hospitals are still relatively safe places. It, to me, says we’ve got to be doing more to control Covid in the hospital.”

Some hospitals have controlled the virus very successfully. At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a recent study found only two cases of coronavirus acquired at the hospital among over 9,000 patients (JAMA). And hospitals seem to have improved over time: the seven-day average for new cases in hospitals fell from 120-150 in late May and early June to about 100 per day in July. Among hospitalized coronavirus patients, about 1.2 percent acquired an infection there as of mid-July, down from 2 percent in mid-May. The data have limitations: reporting from hospitals was incomplete, voluntary, and did not include all U.S. hospitals, among other things. 

After July 14, the data stopped because the government stopped collecting this information in mid-July when the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) abruptly took over COVID-19 data collection from the CDC, as we have covered in previous briefs. However, although the data collection stopped, the spread of COVID-19 within hospitals is likely to have continued, showing that it is important to resume federal monitoring of new exposures in hospitals, Jha told the Journal, saying “We need to know this.” 

CDC Report on COVID-19 Deaths in Children Finds Hispanic, Black, and American Indian Children Disproportionately Affected; Overall Mortality Among Children is Low Compared to Adults

COVID-19 disproportionately strikes Hispanic, Black, and American Indian children, who make up more than 75 percent of coronavirus deaths among children, although these groups represent only 41 percent of the U.S. population, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Axios, Bloomberg, CDC, STAT, WaPo). These numbers echo racial disparities among adults: Black people are dying from coronavirus at 2.4 times the rate of white people (Covid Tracking Project). 

In general, children with coronavirus have few or no symptoms, and recover more quickly than adults, but in rare cases, children suffer severe disease and, tragically, death. From February to July, the CDC reports there were more than 391,000 confirmed cases and 121 deaths among people under age 21 in the United States. They account for less than one percent of all deaths from the coronavirus in the U.S., but the report warns that the incidence of cases among children can change as schools reopen and children come into contact with more people. “On one hand, the small total number of deaths is reassuring. You’re talking about hundreds of thousands of children infected, and only 121 killed,” Frank Esper, a pediatric infectious-disease specialist at Cleveland Clinic Children’s, told the Post. “At the same time, proportions at which minority groups are dying are hard to ignore.”

The CDC report concluded that health departments, medical providers, and communities need to “mobilize to remove systemic barriers that contribute to health disparities” and pointed to underlying social disparities. Minority groups are disproportionately represented among essential workers unable to work from home, leading to higher risk of infection and transmission among their household members, including children. Minority children are more likely to suffer from crowded living conditions, food and housing insecurity, and wealth and education gaps, and their families are more likely to find it difficult to access health care because of a lack of family resources such as insurance, child care, transportation or sick leave. The study also found that children with underlying medical conditions are also more likely to die from COVID-19: 75 percent of those who died had at least one underlying condition, most commonly asthma and obesity, which occur disproportionately in minority groups.

The disease appears to affect people under 21 more severely as they age: young adults age 18 to 20 accounted for nearly half the deaths. Of the 121 deaths, 15 resulted from multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), a rare but serious condition that can develop two to four weeks after a case of COVID-19, as we covered most recently in Monday’s brief.

Columbia: Lockdown Lowered Coronavirus Spread in New York City by 70%; Universal Masking Could Reduce Transmission up to 32%; Multiple Interventions More Effective than Any Single Solution

New York’s lockdown led to a 70 percent drop in coronavirus spread from March to June in New York City, scientists from Columbia University’s school of public health reported in a preprint manuscript (medRxiv). The researchers developed a model to simulate coronavirus spread using city data on cases, deaths, and mobility, and validated their estimates based on accuracy predicting cases and deaths eight weeks beyond the study period (Columbia, Fox). The study aligns with other work estimating that lockdowns lowered coronavirus transmission by 58 percent in Wuhan, China, 45 percent in Italy, and 77 percent in France.

The scientists found that using face masks reduced transmission by over six percent overall. However, for adults over age 65, who tend to use face masks two times more frequently than younger adults as observational reports have shown, the use of face masks reduced transmission by up to 20 percent. The authors say that universal masking could reduce transmission by up to 28 to 32 percent when lockdown measures are not in place, if people of all ages would mask as effectively as older adults.

“Improving effective use of face coverings, especially among younger people, would significantly mitigate the risk of a resurgence in COVID-19 infections during re-opening,” said senior author Jeffrey Shaman, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. “It’s crucial that we find ways to boost consistent and correct mask use in settings where social distancing is not possible.” The study emphasizes the need for “multiple interventions, including restricting occupancy to reduce contact rates, universal face covering, testing and contact tracing, and isolation and timing treatment of active infections,” says lead author Wan Yang, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School. “We need to implement all of those simultaneously in order to effectively mitigate the spread of COVID-19.”

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has been working with Wan and Shaman, along with researchers at New York University, to help estimate what hospital resources will be needed and how the virus will spread as the city opens up and tries to balance controlling the spread of the virus with schooling and business needs (Bloomberg). In an example that will likely become common as businesses open up, JPMorgan Chase accelerated the reopening of its Madison Avenue office after Labor Day; about a week later, a coronavirus infection meant some workers needed to return home. Reopening is good for the city, but it’s also good for the virus, Shaman told Bloomberg: “There’s a huge potential for growth, even in a place like New York City, because 75 percent to 85 percent of the population has yet to be infected.”

Eli Lilly’s Arthritis Drug, When Given with Antiviral Remdesivir, Helps Coronavirus Patients Recover One Day Faster on Average

Eli Lilly’s arthritis drug baricitinib, when combined with the antiviral remdesivir, helped to shorten the recovery time by about a day for COVID-19 patients compared to patients treated with remdesivir without baricitinib, according to a randomized, controlled Phase III study of more than 1,000 patients sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) (ABC, Reuters, WSJ). Eli Lilly says they will seek emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Baricitinib, also known under the brand name Olumiant, has anti-inflammatory properties that may help suppress the immune overreaction in coronavirus patients known as a cytokine storm. Eli Lilly is also testing baricitinib without remdesivir in hospitalized COVID-19 patients in several countries including the U.S.

If approved, baricitinib would join remdesivir and convalescent plasma as treatments with emergency use authorization for COVID-19 in the U.S. Baricitinib, as an oral drug, is much easier to administer than remdesivir and convalescent plasma, both of which must be delivered intravenously.

The FDA authorized Gilead’s remdesivir in May after a randomized, controlled study showed that it helped reduce the time to recovery by about four days for hospitalized COVID-19 patients, from a median of 15 days to 11 days, as we have covered in several briefs. Convalescent plasma is more controversial, with no randomized, controlled studies to demonstrate that it actually helps COVID-19 patients. 

Dexamethasone, an inexpensive steroid, is not authorized in the U.S. to treat COVID-19, even though it is the only drug to reduce death rates in COVID-19 patients in a randomized, controlled trial with thousands of participants, as we have noted in previous briefs (BioCentury, STAT, Nature). It lowered the rate of death in patients on ventilators by 35 percent and in patients on oxygen support by 20 percent compared to standard care alone, although it does not seem to help and may harm patients in earlier stages of the disease (NYT). Dexamethasone has been approved in the U.K. and NIH has recommendations on its use in severe cases of COVID-19 (BioCentury, NIH, STAT).

NIH Reviewing Single Case of Serious Side Effect in AstraZeneca Vaccine Trial

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is launching an investigation of the potential adverse reaction in a trial participant that resulted in AstraZeneca pausing its global Phase III vaccine trial, reports CNN. British and Brazilian regulators allowed the trial to resume in the U.K. and Brazil, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is weighing whether to follow suit (Nature). "The highest levels of NIH are very concerned," said Dr. Avindra Nath, a leader of viral research at the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke at NIH (CNN). "Everyone's hopes are on a vaccine, and if you have a major complication the whole thing could get derailed."

AstraZeneca has not yet confirmed whether the patient was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord that can cause pain, muscle weakness, and paralysis. The company did not release details of the case publicly, only in a private investor call whose content was reported in a STAT exclusive, as we covered in Tuesday’s brief. AstraZeneca “missed a serious opportunity to show that it’s conducting this research where everyone can see what’s going on, and (even worse) has raised more suspicions that they’re not forthcoming with details,” writes drug researcher Derek Lowe (In the Pipeline); an open letter in STAT calls for greater transparency from the company.

While many scientists emphasize that AstraZeneca’s actions—pausing the trial for the case to be evaluated by an independent agency and then speedily resuming—are standard conduct and not necessarily cause for alarm, scientists have also criticized the lack of information sharing. The transparency bar should be set much higher, Marie-Paule Kieny, a vaccine researcher at INSERM, the French national health-research institute in Paris, told Nature. "When ultimately a vaccine will be made available, public trust will be paramount to ensure public-health impact. And trust needs transparency" (Nature).

23andMe Genetic Study Finds More Evidence for Subtle Link between Blood Type and Coronavirus Susceptibility 

A new study from genetic testing company 23andMe shows that people with blood type O seem to test positive for the coronavirus less often than people of other blood types, while people with blood types A, B, and AB showed little difference in coronavirus infection rates, the study’s authors reported in a preprint manuscript (medRxiv, STAT). This finding aligns with an earlier study from 23andMe that found that people with blood type O were nine to 18 percent less likely to test positive for the coronavirus, as we noted in June (Bloomberg). A genetic study in the New England Journal of Medicine also found that people with type O were less likely to have severe symptoms, and in addition, found that that people with type A were more likely to have severe symptoms (NEJM). However, those findings have been complicated by a study from Columbia University that showed that type A is not associated with higher rates of infection or severe disease in over 1,500 hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The Columbia study also found that while people with type O have a slightly lower risk of infection, the effect is very small (medRxiv). At Massachusetts General Hospital, scientists found that among over 1,200 patients who tested positive for coronavirus, those with type O blood were slightly less likely to get COVID-19; however, blood type was not linked to risk of being placed on a ventilator or of death, in a study published in July (Annals of Hematology).

The links between blood type and coronavirus, while tantalizing, do not at this point seem to have practical implications for individual decisions about treatments or risk of infection. “No one should think they’re protected,” said Nicholas Tatonetti, a study author at Columbia University (NYT). The 23andMe finding on blood type “doesn’t have practical implications. There’s no treatment decisions that will be made from it — it’s just an interesting finding,” said Jennifer Lighter, a pediatrician and epidemiologist at NYU Langone who was not involved in the research (STAT).

Bonus Reads: “The Lasting Misery of Coronavirus Long-Haulers” (Nature); “How COVID-19 Can Damage the Brain” (Nature).

Around the World

U.S. Image Plummets Worldwide Amid Harsh Criticism of COVID-19 Response

Global sentiment toward the U.S. among thirteen of its allies has plummeted in the past year amid disapproval of its handling of the coronavirus, according to an annual Pew Research report released Tuesday. Only 41 percent of the U.K. expressed approval for the U.S., lower than any other approval survey conducted there by Pew. French favorable opinion toward the U.S. was at 31 percent, matching the approval rating given in France in March 2003 at the height of tension over the Iraq War. Germany’s approval rating for the U.S. was 26 percent, just one point higher than its March 2003 approval rating. The biggest drop was in Japan, where the U.S. approval rating fell to 41 percent from last year’s 68 percent. Only South Korea saw a majority of respondents report positive feelings toward the U.S., at 59 percent. 

While the U.S. approval rating has generally been low during the Trump presidency, respondents were particularly scathing over the U.S. coronavirus response. Not a single country had more than 20 percent say that the U.S. had handled COVID-19 well even as a majority in all 13 nations except the U.K. positively rate their own governments’ responses. A majority in all but three countries rated the U.S. pandemic response as “very bad” (Pew Research).

Bonus Read: “Coronavirus Legal Fight Between Insurers and Businesses Goes Global,” (WSJ).

Europe

U.K. Testing Crisis Could Last Weeks, Says Health Secretary

Britain’s testing shortage could last weeks, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock said Tuesday, as people flood hospital’s emergency departments for testing amid a nationwide spike in infections. Amid a breakdown in availability at testing sites in recent days, sick people have called emergency lines and gone to hospitals seeking out tests after failing to find them elsewhere in the public health system. Haddock told the House of Commons that the government would now have no choice but to prioritize symptomatic people and those in social care settings. “As demand has risen, so we are having to prioritize once again and I do not shirk from decisions about prioritization” (Guardian). Haddock was accused last week of contradicting months of public health messaging when he decried “inappropriate” testing of asymptomatic people. Previously, the government had encouraged anyone in doubt of their status to get a test. Labor’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said, ”It beggars belief that after weeks of encouraging people to have a test if feeling unwell, ministers are seeking to blame people for simply doing what they were advised. The U.K. last week hit 3,539 new cases on September 11, the highest daily rise since May (BBC).”

Bonus Read: “Even as Cases Rise, Europe Is Learning to Live With the Coronavirus,” (NYT).

Asia-Pacific

Indonesia Adds 50,000 Cases in First Half of September as Jakarta Shuts Down

Indonesia accumulated 50,234 cases of the coronavirus from September 1 through September 15 with daily new cases averaging 3,349 compared to 2,143 cases last month. The spike in cases has been driven largest by infections in Jakarta, which re-entered lockdown on Monday in an effort to buy time for a health care system that the city’s governor has warned is on the brink of collapse, as we noted in Monday’s brief. Cases are also rising elsewhere in Java, with Central Java province averaging 276 cases a day this month compared to last month’s daily average of 143. Outside of Java, Cases have also spiked in east central Sumatra’s Ria province, whose September case count thus far of 2,209 has more than doubled the province’s total number of incidences of the coronavirus. Indonesia currently has a total of around 55,000 active cases in all 34 provinces (Jakarta Globe).

Hong Kong To Reopen Most Entertainment After Two-Month Lockdown

Hong Kong plans to reopen most public entertainment venues on Friday except for beaches as the Chinese special autonomous region marks its first day since early July with no new infections. Bars, swimming pools, amusement parks, clubs and karaoke venues will reopen with restrictions after two months of closure, while restaurants’ closing time will be extended from 10pm to midnight. The ban on groups of more than four will remain in place, along with mandatory mask-wearing in public. “I hope this indicates that the third wave is under control and Hong Kong people can resume their normal, daily activities and schools, as well as commercial activities, can resume,” said the city’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam at a press conference on Tuesday. “But we should not let our guard down. We should adhere to various anti-epidemic measures and the government will react quickly if something happens.” The most recent lockdown measures went into effect in June amid a surge of community spread. Lifting of restrictions began last week when the public gathering limit was raised from two to four and most sports were allowed to resume. As of Monday, Hong Kong has registered a total of 4,971 cases and 101 deaths (HKFP).

Vietnam Resumes Limited International Flights For First Time Since March

Vietnam’s government on Tuesday began permitting limited flights to four countries, the first time international commercial air travel has been allowed in the country since March. A maximum of two round-trip flights to mainland China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are permitted. Flights to and from Cambodia and Laos are also set to resume on September 22. The near total ban on foreign nationals entering the country remains in effect, however, with only international students and family members of Vietnamese citizens added to the exemption list. All passengers must present proof of a negative test result within the previous 72 hours and will still be tested again on arrival. Arrivals will still be subject to mandatory 14-day isolation upon arrival, although they will be eligible for transfer from government quarantine facilities to their own accommodations after five days if they test negative twice after arriving in Vietnam. Vietnam, which went 99-days free of community infection from mid-April to late-July, has seen 1,063 coronavirus cases with 35 deaths. It has currently been free of community transmission for 13 days (VNExpress).

Middle East

Israel Hastens School Closures Prior to Friday’s Lockdown

Israel, which on Friday will be the first whole country to return to lockdown, will shutter schools a day earlier than planned as the public health situation worsens. Schools will now close on Thursday as hundreds of students and teachers become infected each day. The announcement, which came Tuesday evening, followed an afternoon plea from coronavirus czar Ronni Gamzu to shut schools immediately. The government has also clarified other lockdown restrictions, such as banning takeout food services (but allowing delivery) and allowing only nuclear family members of people killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War to visit cemeteries on the upcoming anniversary of the conflict. The situation in Israel remains serious as the nation experienced a record day of new infections on Monday at 4,913 cases, prompting one hospital in Nahariya to announce it would not accept new patients amid overflows in the COVID-19 ward. The daily new infection rate stood at 3,189 on Tuesday (Haaretz). 

Africa

South African Undertakers Strike

South African undertaker trade associations entered a third day of strikes on Wednesday as bereaved families struggle to find anywhere to leave the remains of their deceased loved ones. Participants in the strike included all 1,000 members of the National Funeral Practitioners Association of South Africa (Nafupa) as well as an assortment of smaller groups over grievances toward the government’s policies that they say make it hard for small, black-owned parlors to operate amid the pandemic. Lending a sympathetic ear to clients, funeral home director Hloni Swarts said, “It’s not a nice thing to sit with a body at home, even for more than two hours, but imagine sitting with a body for three days at home. Imagine that, what will happen to the body” (Reuters). Nafupa president Muzi Hlengwa explained they were protesting an allegedly corrupt system of allotting deaths to a handful of industry players. “You have a situation where a selected few companies are taking every job that comes through, particularly state funerals,” he said. Throughout the planned three-day strike, Nafupa in the meantime has urged families of the deceased to contact the police for body removal, adding that law enforcement has a legal mandate to do so. South Africa has had the most coronavirus cases of any country on the African continent, with 652,000 cases and 15,641 deaths (The South African).

U.S. Government & Politics

HHS Spokesperson Michael Caputo Accuses Health Officials of Undermining the President and Warns of a Left-Wing Insurrection

Michael Caputo, Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs at Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), accused Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials of “sedition” and told followers to prepare for an armed insurrection following the November election during a series of Facebook live videos and Twitter posts on Sunday and Monday. Caputo has previously spoken out against scientists and health officials managing coronavirus and claimed that left-wing groups are planning to incite violence. In one Facebook video he accused CDC scientists of plotting “how they’re going to attack Donald Trump next,” further claiming that “there are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president.” Caputo oversees communications across the Food and Drug Administration, the CDC, and the National Institutes of Health. In a statement released Monday, Caputo said that coronavirus weighs heavily on his family and that his “mental health has definitely failed.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called for HHS Secretary Alex Azar’s resignation on Tuesday, saying that he has been “almost entirely silent about the chaos and mismanagement in his own agency.” Caputo’s Facebook and Twitter accounts have since been shut down (NYT, Fox, WaPo). Caputo’s comments follow reporting by Politico that showed that aides to Caputo and other political appointees at HHS had sought and received review over CDC scientific products, which they used to express concerns regarding the political impact on Trump, leading Democrats in the House of Representatives to initiate an investigation.

Scientific American Endorses Joe Biden for President in First-Ever Political Endorsement

In the magazine’s first-ever political endorsement, Scientific American announced on Tuesday an endorsement for Joe Biden in his presidential bid, citing Trump’s attempts to downplay coronavirus and his skepticism of scientific researchers. Editors wrote that they were “compelled” to support Biden, saying, “At every stage, Trump has rejected the unmistakable lesson that controlling the disease, not downplaying it, is the path to economic reopening and recovery.” The magazine praised Biden’s environmental and health care policies, and his commitment to leveraging scientific research in his policy proposals (Politico). 

Pelosi Says House Should Stay in Session Until a Relief Package is Passed

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday that the House would remain in session until a coronavirus relief deal is reached. As we have previously reported, Democrats are pushing for a more comprehensive bill that includes extended unemployment aid, small business loans, and support for local and state governments, while Republicans want a targeted, less costly bill focused on unemployment benefits and liability protections. Pelosi clarified that members could return to their districts and campaign for the November elections, and would be given 24 hours to return to Washington, DC if a vote is needed. The House is scheduled to recess on October 2 until after the election. Many congressional members from both parties are worried that a deal will not be reached before the elections, further hurting the country and their reelection chances. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said that the House should not leave Washington without a deal, while Rep. Kim Schrier (D-Wash.) said he’s hopeful for “some sort of tailored down bill to get us to January 21 when we have a new president” (Politico, WaPo). 

U.S. Economy

Income Was Up, Poverty Down in 2019… Before the Pandemic

New data released by the Census Bureau on Tuesday shows that Americans’ income had increased while the poverty rate had fallen in 2019 before the pandemic hit the United States causing a recession in February 2020 (WSJ). The Wall Street Journal reports, “Median household income was $68,700 in 2019, up 6.8% from the prior year and the highest figure on record. The poverty rate was 10.5%, a drop of 1.3 percentage points from the year before. It was the fifth consecutive annual decline in poverty and put the poverty rate at its lowest level since 1959, the first year it was tracked.” David Deull, principal economist at IHS Markit, told the Journal, “It was a pretty banner year for households, and really across the income distribution, we got a lot of eye-popping figures in this release.” The gains had been broadly distributed, as the Journal notes, “Real median incomes of white, Black, Asian, and Hispanic households all increased from the prior year. Lower-income households did particularly well after missing out on income gains earlier in the expansion.”

H&M Reports Speedy Recovery From Coronavirus Economic Impact

On Tuesday, the fashion company H&M announced that it was experiencing a speedy recovery from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on its business, sending its shares up 12 percent. The Wall Street Journal reports, “The Swedish company said Tuesday that well-received collections, more full-price sales and its speedy response to Covid-19 had helped it return to profit in the three months to August 31 after a heavy loss in the previous quarter.” The company said it made $228 million in profit in the third quarter. While the return to profitability was notable, the number was still down from what the company made in the same period in 2019 but higher than had been expected (WSJ).

U.S. Society

In the Pandemic Economy, Some Find Work as Money Mules While Criminal Schemes Surge

As the pandemic has driven unemployment to new highs, criminal schemes involving money are proliferating as some people are finding work, wittingly or unwittingly, as money mules (NYT). The New York Times writes, “Since the pandemic’s onset in March, the number of criminal schemes relying on money mules has spiked, just when many people have lost their jobs and are vulnerable to exploitation.” Online human resources scams rose 295 percent this year and money laundering rose 609 percent according to data from the security firm ZeroFox. The Times notes, “Many people who perpetrate these frauds are based overseas, authorities said, so they need to move the money to their home country.” Therein lay an opportunity but one with risks for many people struggling in the new economy like Denise Newton, who lost her job at a fitness center as a result of the pandemic and then “posted her résumé online to look for a new job. She soon got a call from a company she had never heard of.” As part of her new job, “Ms. Newton began receiving boxes with Apple watches and laptops in them. Her job was to open the boxes, check the contents and then mail them off to foreign addresses.” The Times writes, “When she asked questions, her new employer stopped responding. In June, she reported [it] to the Better Business Bureau. It turned out that Ms. Newton had become what is known in security circles as a money mule, an accomplice who, either knowingly or unknowingly, helps international criminal rings move their ill-gotten gains.” Ms. Newton told the Times, “They really caught me at the perfect time … I was just one of those desperate people looking for a job.”

Analysis & Arguments

Laurie Garrett and John Moore explore the unknown variables and the cost in human lives of establishing “herd immunity” with an effective vaccine and without one (Fortune).

Martha Lincoln argues that a national view of exceptionalism may be an important variable in assessing pandemic preparedness, contrasting Vietnam, Senegal, Cuba, and Thailand with Brazil, the United States, and the U.K. (Nature). 

Aaron E. Carroll urges people to stop expecting a return to normal next year (NYT).

In a widely covered interview, Helen Branswell reports on Bill Gates’ views on the U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus crisis (STAT).

 Readers can send in tips, critiques, questions, and suggestions to coronavirusbrief@newamerica.org.

The Brief is edited by David Sterman and Narisara Murray and co-edited by Emily Schneider and Bennett Murray with Senior Editor Peter Bergen.

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