European MarketsAnalysis: Erdogan delights Turkish depositors with lira let-up in possible election gambit
By Ebru Tuncay and Nevzat Devranoglu
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan addresses the media after a cabinet meeting in Ankara, Turkey, December 20, 2021.
ISTANBUL, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Tayyip Erdogan's plan to defend lira deposits has given Turkish savers some respite as well as possibly laying the ground for an early election by the President, but it risks piling up debt and stoking already rife inflation.
Erdogan, Turkey's leader of nearly two decades, has been pushing ahead with a "new economic model" he says will boost jobs, growth, exports and deliver cheap credit but has been hit in the ratings by a damaging drop in the lira.
Central to Erdogan's promise on Monday was an effective tax-free guarantee, backed by the Treasury, that Turks would be made good on the difference between what they earn on their deposits through interest rates and any adverse exchange rate move, encouraging savers to sell dollars and buy lira.
For some, his latest policy move, with short-term gains and potential longer-term pain, is a signal that Erdogan may intend to hold an election within months, well ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections which are scheduled for mid-2023.
"I expect a snap election. What has been done in the economy so far is an election strategy," said Ozer Sencar, president of Turkish polling group MetroPoll.
Analysts have interpreted recent moves as a last-ditch attempt by the president and his AK Party to shore up their socially conservative, working and lower middle class voter base, and to return to his past record of economic growth.
But Erdogan's government could be left on the hook to cover future losses based on the exchange rate, analysts and bankers said after the lira's rapid rally on Tuesday, which they said could yet fizzle out and reverse.
The latest pledge amounts to a turnaround for the 67-year-old, who has staked his new economic programme on slashing rates and rejecting the concept of interest. But Turkey's public finances are strong compared to other emerging market countries, leaving it room to provide support. read more
Erdogan made his announcement just hours after the lira breached 18 to the dollar for the first time ever on Monday, with a series of steps he said would reverse a tidal wave of depositors shifting lira deposits into dollars.
Official data shows term lira deposits held by ordinary Turks were about 1.2 trillion lira ($92.5 billion) on Dec. 10.
Were the new measures to cover it all and if the exchange rate rises 20% faster than Turkey's central bank deposit rate, this would amount to a 240 billion lira hit to Ankara's budget, Hursit Gunes, an economist at Marmara University, estimated.
While questions such as how and when the Treasury will pay and how to account for the tax relief remain, for depositors the new policy delivered much needed protection from erosion.
Bankers told Reuters they had therefore converted up to $1.5 billion in savings on Monday night alone, driving the lira's biggest rally on record in volatile trading. [USN LINK]
"If you expect the exchange rate to double, which happened (in the last two months), then the return on lira deposits is 100% for you," Refet Gurkaynak, head of Bilkent University's economics department in Ankara, said.
"But it can have dangerous consequences," he added.
Turkish banks already pay 16-18% rates on deposits and are unlikely to offer much more given the policy interest rate is 14% after an aggressive and unorthodox monetary easing cycle.
Under pressure from Erdogan, Turkey's central bank has cut rates by 500 basis points since September, setting off the worst lira crisis in two decades on fears of an inflationary spiral.
'NO FREE LUNCH'
Annual inflation breached 21% last month and is expected to soar beyond 30% next year due largely to the currency crash, which stokes import prices. Food and other basic goods are higher still, rattling already stretched households.
Any further currency depreciation could theoretically mean limitless new debt being issued by the Treasury. The government could then turn to the central bank to monetize this, creating another inflationary wave, bankers and analysts said.
"There is no free lunch for the lira. The cost of the support measures will come through to corporates ultimately in the form of higher borrowing costs or higher taxes," Dubai-based Hasnain Malik, head of equity research at Tellimer, said.
"There is no escape from re-establishing a credible interest rate policy environment," he added.
While a government source with knowledge of the matter acknowledged the budget burden and inflation could rise, they said "these can be managed", adding: "All of the decisions announced include protections against risks".
Cemil Ertem, a presidential adviser and member of the government's Economic Policies Committee, told Reuters the deposit guarantee was a "historic change" that removes individuals' need for dollars to protect against inflation.
But a senior banker said the new policy will only work well if the economy maintains a current account surplus, and the government still needs to explain some details despite a rough outline from the Treasury on Tuesday. read more
Turkey's budget deficit is projected to be about 3.5% of GDP for this year, up from 1.5% earlier in the year. read more
"How and when is the Treasury going to pay the difference. Is it going to pay once every three months or once every six months?" said the banker, requesting anonymity.
($1 = 12.9741 liras)
INDIA IPPON DESU
Tuesday, December 28, 2021
Sunday, December 26, 2021
Saturday, December 25, 2021
Sunday, December 19, 2021
Wednesday, December 15, 2021
Impact of Vaccination study
Highlights
In the absence of a vaccination program, there would have been approximately 1.1 million additional COVID-19 deaths and more than 10.3 million additional COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. by November 2021.
Without the U.S. vaccination program, COVID-19 deaths would have been approximately 3.2 times higher and COVID-19 hospitalizations approximately 4.9 times higher than the actual toll during 2021.
If no one had been vaccinated, daily deaths from COVID-19 could have jumped to as high as 21,000 per day — nearly 5.2 times the level of the record peak of more than 4,000 deaths per day recorded in January 2021.
Background
Nearly 800,000 Americans have died so far during the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic, with more than half those deaths occurring during 2021.1 One year into the U.S. vaccination effort, much attention has focused on the stubborn persistence of the pandemic, which has been fueled by new, more- transmissible variants and the millions of Americans who have not gotten their shots. However, the positive impact of the rapid development and deployment of highly effective vaccines — the reduction in deaths and hospitalizations — has been less obvious.
In July, we reported that the U.S. vaccination program had averted 279,000 deaths and 1.25 million hospitalizations, primarily by blunting a surge in the Alpha variant during spring 2021.2 Since that report, nearly all of the U.S. has experienced a wave of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant. More than 1,000 Americans are dying each day.
In this report, we update our estimates, through the end of November 2021, of COVID-related deaths and hospitalizations avoided because of the U.S. vaccination program. Briefly, the agent-based computer model analyzes features of the coronavirus, its transmission, and its effects to compare the observed pandemic trajectory (infections, hospitalizations, and deaths) to a counterfactual scenario in which no vaccination program exists. The model incorporates the transmission dynamics of previous variants other than Omicron, which is only now beginning to appear in the U.S. The model accounts for waning immunity and changes in population behavior over time as schools and businesses have reopened and travel has increased. We have refined the model to reflect emerging scientific evidence. See “How We Conducted This Study” at the end of this brief for further details on our methods.
Findings
Through November 2021, we estimate that the COVID-19 vaccination program in the United States prevented 1,087,191 additional deaths and 10,319,961 additional hospitalizations (Table 1). There would have been an estimated 35,903,646 additional infections.
The majority of these averted deaths and hospitalizations would have occurred during the late summer and early autumn, as the highly contagious Delta variant began to surge in southern states and spread to other parts of the U.S. As Exhibit 1 illustrates, the daily peak would have exceeded 21,000 deaths per day (6.3 per 100,000 population), far eclipsing the actual peak of 4,000 per day (1.6 per 100,000 population) reached during January 2021.
Exhibit 2 shows a similar pattern for hospitalizations. A peak of more than 55 hospitalizations per 100,000 population far exceeds the rate of hospitalization attributable to influenza during a severe flu season (typically fewer than 10 per 100,000).
Discussion
The U.S. vaccination program campaign has profoundly altered the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic, preventing nearly 1.1 million deaths. Even with only about 60 percent of Americans vaccinated to date, the nation has dodged a massive wave of COVID-19 deaths that would have started as the Delta variant took hold in August 2021. Because of Delta’s rapid and nationwide spread, deaths due to COVID-19 would have far exceeded all previous peaks.
Our estimates suggest that in 2021 alone, the vaccination program prevented a potentially catastrophic flood of patients requiring hospitalization. It is difficult to imagine how hospitals would have coped had they been faced with 10 million people sick enough to require admission. The U.S. has 919,000 licensed hospital beds and typically accommodates about 36 million hospitalizations each year.3 Even the 2.6 million COVID-related hospitalizations that occurred during 2021 placed an enormous strain on hospitals, with many staff lost not only to the virus but also to exhaustion and burnout. Faced with such unprecedented demand, U.S. hospitals operating under crisis standards of care would likely have had no choice but to turn away tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of individuals.
In addition to reducing hospitalization and death, vaccination prevented many millions of COVID infections, reducing the prospect that millions of Americans could develop long COVID and its debilitating symptoms.
These estimates of vaccination impact may seem startlingly high. But they are consistent with the extraordinary effectiveness of vaccines. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show how dramatically COVID-19 vaccination reduces the risk of hospitalization and death. By the end of October 2021, rates of hospitalization among unvaccinated adults (47.3 per 100,000) were nearly 12 times the rate of fully vaccinated adults (3.9 per 100,000).4
How Would Differing Assumptions Affect These Results?
Changing selected assumptions in our analysis could reduce or increase the estimates we report here. For example, our model assumes that the reopening of businesses and schools, along with the increase in social gatherings that occurred during summer 2021, continued despite the Delta wave. If people had restricted social activities and travel, or businesses or schools had closed in response to the Delta surge, many deaths and hospitalizations could have been averted even in the absence of vaccination. However, it seems unlikely that the entire nation would have returned to the restrictions imposed during the first year of the pandemic.
Conversely, the number of deaths estimated by the model may be too low if hospital capacity were exceeded (as it surely would have been). Moreover, the model estimates only death attributable to COVID-19. Preventable deaths due to other causes would have increased too, as occurred early in the pandemic in cities like New York City and Los Angeles.5
The Continuing Urgency of Vaccination Efforts
Our findings highlight the ongoing tragedy of preventable death and hospitalization occurring among unvaccinated Americans. Daily vaccination rates have ticked up recently but only recently to 60 percent of the U.S. population — a lower rate than that achieved by dozens of other countries. As immunity wanes and breakthrough infections continue to emerge, it is clear we must vaccinate (and give booster shots) to many more people — building on the tremendous, though mostly invisible, successes the U.S. vaccination program has accomplished thus far.
As the Omicron variant begins to spread and the Delta variant surge continues, our results point to the tremendous power of vaccination to reduce disease and death from COVID-19. Sadly, they also highlight the ongoing tragic consequences of failing to vaccinate every eligible American.
How We Conducted This Study
To evaluate the impact of the vaccination program in the United States, the researchers expanded their age-stratified, agent-based model of COVID-19 to include waning of naturally acquired or vaccine- elicited immunity, as well as booster vaccination.6,7 For the timelines of this study, the characteristics of three variants were included in the model, each with cumulative prevalence of at least 3 percent in the U.S., including B.1.526 (Iota), B.1.1.7 (Alpha), and B.1.617.2 (Delta) in addition to the original Wuhan-I SARS-CoV-2 strain.
The model parameters included the population demographics of the U.S., an empirically determined contact network accounting for pandemic mobility patterns, and age-specific risks of severe health outcomes due to COVID-19. The model incorporated data on daily vaccine doses administered in the U.S.8 The minimum age eligibility for vaccination was 16 years before May 13, 2021, after which children 12 to 15 became eligible for vaccination. Vaccination of children ages 5 to 11 with Pfizer-BioNTech started on November 2, 2021.
Vaccine efficacies against infection and symptomatic and severe disease for different vaccine types — for each variant and by time since vaccination — were drawn from published estimates. The model was calibrated to reported national incidence data between October 1, 2020, and November 30, 2021, and validated with infection, hospitalization, and death trends during the same period.
The researchers evaluated the impact of vaccine rollout by simulating the pandemic trajectory under the counterfactual scenario of no vaccination program. The simulated outcomes of total infections, hospitalizations, and deaths were compared to the fitted model, reflecting the actual pandemic in the U.S. and vaccinations that occurred between December 12, 2020, and November 30, 2021.
In the absence of a vaccination program, there would have been approximately 1.1 million additional COVID-19 deaths and more than 10.3 million additional COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. by November 2021.
Without the U.S. vaccination program, COVID-19 deaths would have been approximately 3.2 times higher and COVID-19 hospitalizations approximately 4.9 times higher than the actual toll during 2021.
If no one had been vaccinated, daily deaths from COVID-19 could have jumped to as high as 21,000 per day — nearly 5.2 times the level of the record peak of more than 4,000 deaths per day recorded in January 2021.
Background
Nearly 800,000 Americans have died so far during the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic, with more than half those deaths occurring during 2021.1 One year into the U.S. vaccination effort, much attention has focused on the stubborn persistence of the pandemic, which has been fueled by new, more- transmissible variants and the millions of Americans who have not gotten their shots. However, the positive impact of the rapid development and deployment of highly effective vaccines — the reduction in deaths and hospitalizations — has been less obvious.
In July, we reported that the U.S. vaccination program had averted 279,000 deaths and 1.25 million hospitalizations, primarily by blunting a surge in the Alpha variant during spring 2021.2 Since that report, nearly all of the U.S. has experienced a wave of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths caused by the highly transmissible Delta variant. More than 1,000 Americans are dying each day.
In this report, we update our estimates, through the end of November 2021, of COVID-related deaths and hospitalizations avoided because of the U.S. vaccination program. Briefly, the agent-based computer model analyzes features of the coronavirus, its transmission, and its effects to compare the observed pandemic trajectory (infections, hospitalizations, and deaths) to a counterfactual scenario in which no vaccination program exists. The model incorporates the transmission dynamics of previous variants other than Omicron, which is only now beginning to appear in the U.S. The model accounts for waning immunity and changes in population behavior over time as schools and businesses have reopened and travel has increased. We have refined the model to reflect emerging scientific evidence. See “How We Conducted This Study” at the end of this brief for further details on our methods.
Findings
Through November 2021, we estimate that the COVID-19 vaccination program in the United States prevented 1,087,191 additional deaths and 10,319,961 additional hospitalizations (Table 1). There would have been an estimated 35,903,646 additional infections.
The majority of these averted deaths and hospitalizations would have occurred during the late summer and early autumn, as the highly contagious Delta variant began to surge in southern states and spread to other parts of the U.S. As Exhibit 1 illustrates, the daily peak would have exceeded 21,000 deaths per day (6.3 per 100,000 population), far eclipsing the actual peak of 4,000 per day (1.6 per 100,000 population) reached during January 2021.
Exhibit 2 shows a similar pattern for hospitalizations. A peak of more than 55 hospitalizations per 100,000 population far exceeds the rate of hospitalization attributable to influenza during a severe flu season (typically fewer than 10 per 100,000).
Discussion
The U.S. vaccination program campaign has profoundly altered the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic, preventing nearly 1.1 million deaths. Even with only about 60 percent of Americans vaccinated to date, the nation has dodged a massive wave of COVID-19 deaths that would have started as the Delta variant took hold in August 2021. Because of Delta’s rapid and nationwide spread, deaths due to COVID-19 would have far exceeded all previous peaks.
Our estimates suggest that in 2021 alone, the vaccination program prevented a potentially catastrophic flood of patients requiring hospitalization. It is difficult to imagine how hospitals would have coped had they been faced with 10 million people sick enough to require admission. The U.S. has 919,000 licensed hospital beds and typically accommodates about 36 million hospitalizations each year.3 Even the 2.6 million COVID-related hospitalizations that occurred during 2021 placed an enormous strain on hospitals, with many staff lost not only to the virus but also to exhaustion and burnout. Faced with such unprecedented demand, U.S. hospitals operating under crisis standards of care would likely have had no choice but to turn away tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of individuals.
In addition to reducing hospitalization and death, vaccination prevented many millions of COVID infections, reducing the prospect that millions of Americans could develop long COVID and its debilitating symptoms.
These estimates of vaccination impact may seem startlingly high. But they are consistent with the extraordinary effectiveness of vaccines. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show how dramatically COVID-19 vaccination reduces the risk of hospitalization and death. By the end of October 2021, rates of hospitalization among unvaccinated adults (47.3 per 100,000) were nearly 12 times the rate of fully vaccinated adults (3.9 per 100,000).4
How Would Differing Assumptions Affect These Results?
Changing selected assumptions in our analysis could reduce or increase the estimates we report here. For example, our model assumes that the reopening of businesses and schools, along with the increase in social gatherings that occurred during summer 2021, continued despite the Delta wave. If people had restricted social activities and travel, or businesses or schools had closed in response to the Delta surge, many deaths and hospitalizations could have been averted even in the absence of vaccination. However, it seems unlikely that the entire nation would have returned to the restrictions imposed during the first year of the pandemic.
Conversely, the number of deaths estimated by the model may be too low if hospital capacity were exceeded (as it surely would have been). Moreover, the model estimates only death attributable to COVID-19. Preventable deaths due to other causes would have increased too, as occurred early in the pandemic in cities like New York City and Los Angeles.5
The Continuing Urgency of Vaccination Efforts
Our findings highlight the ongoing tragedy of preventable death and hospitalization occurring among unvaccinated Americans. Daily vaccination rates have ticked up recently but only recently to 60 percent of the U.S. population — a lower rate than that achieved by dozens of other countries. As immunity wanes and breakthrough infections continue to emerge, it is clear we must vaccinate (and give booster shots) to many more people — building on the tremendous, though mostly invisible, successes the U.S. vaccination program has accomplished thus far.
As the Omicron variant begins to spread and the Delta variant surge continues, our results point to the tremendous power of vaccination to reduce disease and death from COVID-19. Sadly, they also highlight the ongoing tragic consequences of failing to vaccinate every eligible American.
How We Conducted This Study
To evaluate the impact of the vaccination program in the United States, the researchers expanded their age-stratified, agent-based model of COVID-19 to include waning of naturally acquired or vaccine- elicited immunity, as well as booster vaccination.6,7 For the timelines of this study, the characteristics of three variants were included in the model, each with cumulative prevalence of at least 3 percent in the U.S., including B.1.526 (Iota), B.1.1.7 (Alpha), and B.1.617.2 (Delta) in addition to the original Wuhan-I SARS-CoV-2 strain.
The model parameters included the population demographics of the U.S., an empirically determined contact network accounting for pandemic mobility patterns, and age-specific risks of severe health outcomes due to COVID-19. The model incorporated data on daily vaccine doses administered in the U.S.8 The minimum age eligibility for vaccination was 16 years before May 13, 2021, after which children 12 to 15 became eligible for vaccination. Vaccination of children ages 5 to 11 with Pfizer-BioNTech started on November 2, 2021.
Vaccine efficacies against infection and symptomatic and severe disease for different vaccine types — for each variant and by time since vaccination — were drawn from published estimates. The model was calibrated to reported national incidence data between October 1, 2020, and November 30, 2021, and validated with infection, hospitalization, and death trends during the same period.
The researchers evaluated the impact of vaccine rollout by simulating the pandemic trajectory under the counterfactual scenario of no vaccination program. The simulated outcomes of total infections, hospitalizations, and deaths were compared to the fitted model, reflecting the actual pandemic in the U.S. and vaccinations that occurred between December 12, 2020, and November 30, 2021.
Thursday, December 09, 2021
US has inadvertently helped China in Ethiopia
China provides winning weaponry to Ethiopian national forces while US de facto sides with the fading Tigray rebels
by Stephen Bryen December 6, 2021December 9, 2021
Just as Ethiopian government forces appear to have turned the tide in the country’s so-called civil war, the Biden administration is pushing for US citizens in Ethiopia to leave and is providing relocation assistance to those who can’t afford to buy a plane ticket.
Meanwhile, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has visited Addis Ababa and has made it clear that China backs Ethiopia’s government fully. This, in contrast to the United States which has imposed sanctions on Ethiopia, but not on the rebellious Tigray.
As Bloomberg reports: The US last month suspended duty-free access to its exports “because of gross human rights violations,” which remain undocumented for the most part.
The US has shown no interest in atrocities by Tigray forces, nor the theft of UN-sponsored relief supplies taken by the retreating Tigray army.
China is also supplying weapons to the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF), including armed, medium-altitude, long-endurance Wing Loong drones.
Sensing the significant vacuum left in Ethiopia, Iran is also supplying its Muhajer-6 armed drones, the same weapons used by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah in Syria.
The UAE had previously supplied drones and some Israeli weapons to Ethiopia, including Chinese-made Wing Loong’s.
China is clearly exploiting the opening created by the UAE and jumping in, along with Iran, to push out the UAE (seen incorrectly as a US proxy) and other Western suppliers and backers.
Ethiopia’s war has recently turned in favor of the government, which looked nearly defeated a few weeks ago when the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) was about 209 kilometers from the capital Addis Ababa.
But in a short time, Ethiopia has rallied its army, received important political and weaponry support from China and Iran, and apparently changed the course of the war.
Meanwhile, thousands of Ethiopians in the United States, some protesting in front of the White House, are angry that the US has sided with the TPLF forces against the country’s legitimate government.
The US administration claims it has supported peace negotiations between the two sides in the conflict, working through African intermediaries.
But brokering a peace deal in the middle of an undecided conflict is unlikely to gain traction, not least because Addis Ababa sees talks as a way to force it to give up territory, even legitimacy, in exchange for ending the war.
The US says it is neutral in the actual dispute, but American behavior, including Biden’s imposition of sanctions first on Ethiopia on September 17 and then on Eritrea on November 12 for assisting Ethiopia has made it clear whose side the US is on.
In actual fact, the Biden administration opened the door to China and Iran by convincing Addis Ababa that there was no future with the US or its allies and partners.
The US has been speaking out of both sides of its mouth, a fact noted by Today News Africa journalist and commentator Simon Ateba.
Ateba points out that Samantha Power, administrator of USAID, has been condemning Ethiopia in tweets while others, especially the US envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman, have been trying to talk to both sides – although unsuccessfully.
America’s incapacity to leverage the conflict and its disingenuousness in supporting the Tigray rebels who started the war has clearly put Ethiopia’s future much more clearly in China’s hands, marking a major diplomatic defeat for Biden and Blinken.
While it is still not clear that the ENDF will continue its march north toward Tigray and actually defeat the TPLF, the US won’t be the one to help settle the conflict.
If Ethiopia wins or at least fully contains Tigray, it will emerge as the major power in the Horn of Africa.
Before the Tigray war, Ethiopia had notched one of the world’s fastest GDP growth rates, with significant investment in infrastructure and education. Ethiopia’s economy has been shifting from agriculture to services and industry.
If Ethiopia can escape Egypt’s downstream ire over its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project, it will become Africa’s largest hydroelectric power source. Since 2000, China has invested $12 billion in Ethiopian projects.
As of 2016, there were 305,800 Ethiopians in the United States, a number that may have grown closer to 450,000 by 2021. While emigrating to many US cities including Seattle, Atlanta and Minneapolis, the number in the Washington DC area grew from 10,000 in 1980 to 30,000 in 2010.
The numbers continue to rise in the US capital as does the economic and political clout of the small but industrious and active community.
Whether this will impact future US policy is unclear, but what is apparent is that the Biden administration has paid little to no attention to the overseas Ethiopian community just as it has lost almost all influence in one-time ally Ethiopia.
by Stephen Bryen December 6, 2021December 9, 2021
Just as Ethiopian government forces appear to have turned the tide in the country’s so-called civil war, the Biden administration is pushing for US citizens in Ethiopia to leave and is providing relocation assistance to those who can’t afford to buy a plane ticket.
Meanwhile, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has visited Addis Ababa and has made it clear that China backs Ethiopia’s government fully. This, in contrast to the United States which has imposed sanctions on Ethiopia, but not on the rebellious Tigray.
As Bloomberg reports: The US last month suspended duty-free access to its exports “because of gross human rights violations,” which remain undocumented for the most part.
The US has shown no interest in atrocities by Tigray forces, nor the theft of UN-sponsored relief supplies taken by the retreating Tigray army.
China is also supplying weapons to the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF), including armed, medium-altitude, long-endurance Wing Loong drones.
Sensing the significant vacuum left in Ethiopia, Iran is also supplying its Muhajer-6 armed drones, the same weapons used by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah in Syria.
The UAE had previously supplied drones and some Israeli weapons to Ethiopia, including Chinese-made Wing Loong’s.
China is clearly exploiting the opening created by the UAE and jumping in, along with Iran, to push out the UAE (seen incorrectly as a US proxy) and other Western suppliers and backers.
Ethiopia’s war has recently turned in favor of the government, which looked nearly defeated a few weeks ago when the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) was about 209 kilometers from the capital Addis Ababa.
But in a short time, Ethiopia has rallied its army, received important political and weaponry support from China and Iran, and apparently changed the course of the war.
Meanwhile, thousands of Ethiopians in the United States, some protesting in front of the White House, are angry that the US has sided with the TPLF forces against the country’s legitimate government.
The US administration claims it has supported peace negotiations between the two sides in the conflict, working through African intermediaries.
But brokering a peace deal in the middle of an undecided conflict is unlikely to gain traction, not least because Addis Ababa sees talks as a way to force it to give up territory, even legitimacy, in exchange for ending the war.
The US says it is neutral in the actual dispute, but American behavior, including Biden’s imposition of sanctions first on Ethiopia on September 17 and then on Eritrea on November 12 for assisting Ethiopia has made it clear whose side the US is on.
In actual fact, the Biden administration opened the door to China and Iran by convincing Addis Ababa that there was no future with the US or its allies and partners.
The US has been speaking out of both sides of its mouth, a fact noted by Today News Africa journalist and commentator Simon Ateba.
Ateba points out that Samantha Power, administrator of USAID, has been condemning Ethiopia in tweets while others, especially the US envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman, have been trying to talk to both sides – although unsuccessfully.
America’s incapacity to leverage the conflict and its disingenuousness in supporting the Tigray rebels who started the war has clearly put Ethiopia’s future much more clearly in China’s hands, marking a major diplomatic defeat for Biden and Blinken.
While it is still not clear that the ENDF will continue its march north toward Tigray and actually defeat the TPLF, the US won’t be the one to help settle the conflict.
If Ethiopia wins or at least fully contains Tigray, it will emerge as the major power in the Horn of Africa.
Before the Tigray war, Ethiopia had notched one of the world’s fastest GDP growth rates, with significant investment in infrastructure and education. Ethiopia’s economy has been shifting from agriculture to services and industry.
If Ethiopia can escape Egypt’s downstream ire over its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project, it will become Africa’s largest hydroelectric power source. Since 2000, China has invested $12 billion in Ethiopian projects.
As of 2016, there were 305,800 Ethiopians in the United States, a number that may have grown closer to 450,000 by 2021. While emigrating to many US cities including Seattle, Atlanta and Minneapolis, the number in the Washington DC area grew from 10,000 in 1980 to 30,000 in 2010.
The numbers continue to rise in the US capital as does the economic and political clout of the small but industrious and active community.
Whether this will impact future US policy is unclear, but what is apparent is that the Biden administration has paid little to no attention to the overseas Ethiopian community just as it has lost almost all influence in one-time ally Ethiopia.
Interesting article
What are the best analyses of small, innovative, productive groups?
by Tyler Cowen June 25, 2018 at 12:32 am in
Shane emails me:
Hello!
What have you found to be the best books on small, innovative, productive groups?
These could be in-depth looks at specific groups – such as The Idea Factory, about Bell Labs – or they could be larger studies of institutions, guilds, etc.
I suggest reading about musical groups and sports teams and revolutions in the visual arts, as I have mentioned before, taking care you are familiar with and indeed care passionately about the underlying area in question. Navy Seals are another possible option for a topic area. In sociology there is network theory, but…I don’t know. In any case, the key is to pick an area you care about, and read in clusters, rather than hoping to find “the very best book.” The very theory of small groups predicts this is how you should read about small groups!
But if you must start somewhere, Randall Collins’s The Sociology of Philosophies is probably the most intensive and detailed place to start, too much for some in fact and arguably the book strains too hard at its target.
I have a few observations on what I call “small group theory”:
1. If you are seeking to understand a person you meet, or might be hiring, ask what was the dominant small group that shaped the thinking and ideas of that person, typically (but not always) at a young age. Step #1 is often “what kind of regional thinker is he/she?” and step #2 is this.
2. If you are seeking to foment change, take care to bring together people who have a relatively good chance of forming a small group together. Perhaps small groups of this kind are the fundamental units of social change, noting that often the small groups will be found within larger organizations. The returns to “person A meeting person B” arguably are underrated, and perhaps more philanthropy should be aimed toward this end.
3. Small groups (potentially) have the speed and power to learn from members and to iterate quickly and improve their ideas and base all of those processes upon trust. These groups also have low overhead and low communications overhead. Small groups also insulate their members sufficiently from a possibly stifling mainstream consensus, while the multiplicity of group members simultaneously boosts the chances of drawing in potential ideas and corrections from the broader social milieu.
4. The bizarre and the offensive have a chance to flourish in small groups. In a sense, the logic behind an “in joke” resembles the logic behind social change through small groups. The “in joke” creates something new, and the small group can create something additionally new and in a broader and socially more significant context, but based on the same logic as what is standing behind the in joke.
5. How large is a small group anyway? (How many people can “get” an inside joke?) Has the internet made “small groups” larger? Or possibly smaller? (If there are more common memes shared by a few thousand people, perhaps the small group needs to be organized around something truly exclusive and thus somewhat narrower than in times past?)
6. Can a spousal or spouse-like couple be such a small group? A family (Bach, Euler)?
7. What are the negative social externalities of such small groups, compared to alternative ways of generating and evaluating ideas? And how often in life should you attempt to switch your small groups?
8. What else should we be asking about small groups and the small groups theory of social change?
9. What does your small group have to say about this?
I thank an anonymous correspondent — who adheres to the small group theory — for contributions to this post.
by Tyler Cowen June 25, 2018 at 12:32 am in
Shane emails me:
Hello!
What have you found to be the best books on small, innovative, productive groups?
These could be in-depth looks at specific groups – such as The Idea Factory, about Bell Labs – or they could be larger studies of institutions, guilds, etc.
I suggest reading about musical groups and sports teams and revolutions in the visual arts, as I have mentioned before, taking care you are familiar with and indeed care passionately about the underlying area in question. Navy Seals are another possible option for a topic area. In sociology there is network theory, but…I don’t know. In any case, the key is to pick an area you care about, and read in clusters, rather than hoping to find “the very best book.” The very theory of small groups predicts this is how you should read about small groups!
But if you must start somewhere, Randall Collins’s The Sociology of Philosophies is probably the most intensive and detailed place to start, too much for some in fact and arguably the book strains too hard at its target.
I have a few observations on what I call “small group theory”:
1. If you are seeking to understand a person you meet, or might be hiring, ask what was the dominant small group that shaped the thinking and ideas of that person, typically (but not always) at a young age. Step #1 is often “what kind of regional thinker is he/she?” and step #2 is this.
2. If you are seeking to foment change, take care to bring together people who have a relatively good chance of forming a small group together. Perhaps small groups of this kind are the fundamental units of social change, noting that often the small groups will be found within larger organizations. The returns to “person A meeting person B” arguably are underrated, and perhaps more philanthropy should be aimed toward this end.
3. Small groups (potentially) have the speed and power to learn from members and to iterate quickly and improve their ideas and base all of those processes upon trust. These groups also have low overhead and low communications overhead. Small groups also insulate their members sufficiently from a possibly stifling mainstream consensus, while the multiplicity of group members simultaneously boosts the chances of drawing in potential ideas and corrections from the broader social milieu.
4. The bizarre and the offensive have a chance to flourish in small groups. In a sense, the logic behind an “in joke” resembles the logic behind social change through small groups. The “in joke” creates something new, and the small group can create something additionally new and in a broader and socially more significant context, but based on the same logic as what is standing behind the in joke.
5. How large is a small group anyway? (How many people can “get” an inside joke?) Has the internet made “small groups” larger? Or possibly smaller? (If there are more common memes shared by a few thousand people, perhaps the small group needs to be organized around something truly exclusive and thus somewhat narrower than in times past?)
6. Can a spousal or spouse-like couple be such a small group? A family (Bach, Euler)?
7. What are the negative social externalities of such small groups, compared to alternative ways of generating and evaluating ideas? And how often in life should you attempt to switch your small groups?
8. What else should we be asking about small groups and the small groups theory of social change?
9. What does your small group have to say about this?
I thank an anonymous correspondent — who adheres to the small group theory — for contributions to this post.
Wednesday, December 01, 2021
Wow Momo funding raise
Wow! Momo is now Rs 1,225 crore company - Here's how it turned things around Launched in August 2008, the QSR chain currently is present across over 350 outlets of Wow Momo and 50 outlets of Wow China.
New Delhi Published on: September 23, 2021 12:53 IST
The company is planning to set up over 150 stores and 50 cloud kitchens in the next one year.
Wow Momo Valuation: Wow Momo Food has raised over USD 15 million (around Rs 110.49 crore) in series C funding round led by Tree Line Investment Management. The funding round has made Wow Momo Foods the most valued home-grown QSR brand, with a valuation of over Rs 1,225 crore, said Tiger Global backed firm in a statement.
Wow Momo Foods operates QSR chains - Wow Momo and Wow China.
"This is a formidable leap from its last valuation of 860 crore in September 2019, when it raised money from Tiger Global, considering the brand’s persistent efforts of pivoting, bouncing back profitably and outstanding efforts during the pandemic," the statement said.
The funding round also saw participation from IAN Fund (Indian Angel Network) and existing investor Lighthouse Funds, it added.
"The fresh funds will enable the brand to amplify efforts on its newly launched FMCG business, add more energies to the expansion of its QSR & Cloud Kitchen brands and also fuel its growth in launch of its new verticals to be announced soon," the company said.
Journey from 2008 to 2021
Launched in August 2008, the QSR chain currently is present across over 350 outlets of Wow Momo and 50 outlets of Wow China.
“In the next year, the company is planning to set up over 150 stores and 50 cloud kitchens as well as grow 2x plus on monthly run rate by next August,” it said.
“When we started with Wow! Momo and later Wow! China, we were confident about the potential that the market holds. We had a clear roadmap on first strengthening our restaurant business, followed by a foray into FMCG space,” Wow Momo Foods CEO and cofounder Sagar Daryani said.
New Delhi Published on: September 23, 2021 12:53 IST
The company is planning to set up over 150 stores and 50 cloud kitchens in the next one year.
Wow Momo Valuation: Wow Momo Food has raised over USD 15 million (around Rs 110.49 crore) in series C funding round led by Tree Line Investment Management. The funding round has made Wow Momo Foods the most valued home-grown QSR brand, with a valuation of over Rs 1,225 crore, said Tiger Global backed firm in a statement.
Wow Momo Foods operates QSR chains - Wow Momo and Wow China.
"This is a formidable leap from its last valuation of 860 crore in September 2019, when it raised money from Tiger Global, considering the brand’s persistent efforts of pivoting, bouncing back profitably and outstanding efforts during the pandemic," the statement said.
The funding round also saw participation from IAN Fund (Indian Angel Network) and existing investor Lighthouse Funds, it added.
"The fresh funds will enable the brand to amplify efforts on its newly launched FMCG business, add more energies to the expansion of its QSR & Cloud Kitchen brands and also fuel its growth in launch of its new verticals to be announced soon," the company said.
Journey from 2008 to 2021
Launched in August 2008, the QSR chain currently is present across over 350 outlets of Wow Momo and 50 outlets of Wow China.
“In the next year, the company is planning to set up over 150 stores and 50 cloud kitchens as well as grow 2x plus on monthly run rate by next August,” it said.
“When we started with Wow! Momo and later Wow! China, we were confident about the potential that the market holds. We had a clear roadmap on first strengthening our restaurant business, followed by a foray into FMCG space,” Wow Momo Foods CEO and cofounder Sagar Daryani said.
Saturday, November 20, 2021
Chicago Bulls Resurgent win against Nuggets
Observations: Bulls take over Nuggets arena in thrilling win
/ by Rob Schaefer
Bulls
USA Today
DENVER — Zach LaVine’s focus entering Friday’s road matchup with the Denver Nuggets, which capped a five-game West Coast swing for the Chicago Bulls, was simple.
“We just wanted to end the road trip the right way,” LaVine said.
Mission accomplished. Behind some raucous fan involvement, and a fourth-quarter closeout speared by their stars, the Bulls bested the Nuggets 114-108, moving their record to 11-5 on the young season (3-2 on the trip).
Here are 10 observations:
1. When Nikola Jokić was ruled out just before tipoff with a wrist injury, it didn’t appear the Bulls would play at as much of a size disadvantage as they do on most nights; Denver started Monte Morris, Austin Rivers, Will Barton, Aaron Gordon and Jeff Green.
But Gordon bullied the Bulls in the first quarter nonetheless, tallying 10 points, four rebounds, two assists and a block in 10 minutes (en route to 28 points, nine rebounds and four assists on the night). The Nuggets went to him multiple times in the post for buckets over Javonte Green and LaVine — and when the Bulls brought two defenders to him on another possession, he hit a cutting Green for a layup.
2. Denver jumped out to a 22-12 lead midway through the first on the strength of Gordon’s aggressiveness and some really tough shotmaking, shooting 9-for-13 in the game’s first seven-and-a-half minutes. But, despite the hosts shooting 61 percent, the Bulls drew level 30-30 by the end of the frame, led by 10 points from LaVine.
3. At the end of a wonky first half the Bulls won 53-52, Derrick Jones Jr. was the team’s second-leading scorer behind LaVine. Looking comfortable again as the stopgap backup center, he tallied 10 points and seven rebounds (three offensive), burying a couple putbacks and flying out on the fastbreak for a loud dunk. Plus, after picking up five fouls apiece against the Lakers and Trail Blazers, he committed zero in his first 15 minutes. Crucial.
Jones Jr. added three dunks in the third quarter, but committed four fouls between the third and early fourth, finishing with 16 points and eight boards. Billy Donovan said both before and after the game that Jones Jr.’s defensive activity at the center spot has been a positive revelation in the stretch since Nikola Vučević tested positive for COVID-19. His dynamism as a roll threat is noteworthy too.
“If Vooch is on this trip, Derrick probably never gets that opportunity,” Donovan said of Jones Jr.’s offensive involvement as a roller. “And now that’s something he has some familiarity with.”
4. Nearly the entire Bulls supporting cast brought it in this one. Tony Bradley notched eight points, five rebounds and two assists two nights after looking lost in Portland. Ayo Dosunmu contributed 10 points, a whopping eight rebounds and two 3-pointers off the pine. Green and Alex Caruso’s box score lines don’t fully reflect it, but their disruptiveness, particularly at the defensive end, swung momentum at multiple points.
“The team is so locked in right now. I think we're really good with our roles,” LaVine said. “Everybody's really connected on the team right now, so I think we know the mission at hand and we're going out there and executing.”
5. The Bulls sprinted out to an 8-0 run to start the third quarter, and maintained a six-to-12 point advantage throughout the period, leading 88-78 entering the fourth. DeMar DeRozan came alive to score 10 in the frame after shooting 3-for-10 in the first half, while LaVine (12 points) and Jones Jr. (six) combined for 18 points and five thrilling jams.
6. Ball Arena came alive as well in that quarter, erupting into multiple ear-shattering “Let’s go Bulls!” chants. The first was catalyzed by a lockdown defensive possession by Caruso on Will Barton (he had another stunning sequence guarding Monte Morris earlier in the game), with more coming during Gordon free throws and a routine timeout stoppage.
It was downright jarring for a road arena, but a reminder of this team’s reach when firing on all cylinders.
“I haven't heard that before, so that was really cool for me,” LaVine said postgame. “I think the Bulls have obviously one of the best fanbases in sports, so when we come back around and we get the support from them I think it's incredible, especially on the road like that in a place like this.”
Added Jones Jr.: “Very fun. It’s different when the away crowd is chanting “Let’s go Bulls.’ I just never had that in my career. I’ve never gone to a city and that city’s chanting for my team.”
And Nuggets coach Michael Malone put the cherry on top: “I wasn’t sure if we were at the United Center or Ball Arena.”
7. This Denver team doesn’t quit, though. Aided by a flurry of Bulls turnovers, the hosts opened the fourth quarter on a 6-0 run, and at the 6:15 mark, trailed 94-90.
That’s when Green and LaVine took over. On one possession, Green corralled two offensive rebounds, resulting in a LaVine 3-pointer. Two possessions later, after LaVine followed a Facundo Campazzo 3 with another jumper to make it 99-93, Green jumped a passing lane for a steal, leading to a LaVine floater on the other end to make it 101-93 with 3:47 remaining. Green closed the last seven minutes of the game as the team’s de facto center.
“I love playing with Woo,” Jones Jr. said of Green, using his nickname. “I thought I had a ball of energy in me, but he different.”
8. Still, the Nuggets continued to counter, trading buckets with the Bulls until the bitter end — even cutting their deficit to 110-108 with less than 20 seconds to play.
But LaVine brought counters to every haymaker they levied. The Bulls’ All-Star guard scored 12 of his 36 points in the fourth, shooting 5-for-7 from the floor and 2-for-2 from 3-point range. He made every array of jumper imaginable in a supreme display of shotmaking, from the firmly-set catch-and-shoot to contested, off-balance leaner.
“It’s remarkable to watch him,” Donovan said of LaVine. “He’s I think one of the best tough shotmakers in the league, and he’s comfortable doing it.”
9. DeRozan, too, was crucial down the stretch, scoring eight points on eight free-throw makes in the fourth — two on the possession following the Will Barton 3 that made it a two-point game late. The Bulls shot 24-for-24 from the foul line for the night, essential to winning as hard-fought a matchup as this.
And their prolific perimeter scoring duo combined for 20 of the team’s 26 points in the final frame. In the process, they became the fastest pair of teammates to each accrue 10 25-plus-point games since Jerry West and Elgin Baylor in 1962-63, per ESPN Stats and Information.
Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan both have 10+ 25-point games this season, in only the Bulls' 16th game.
They are the fastest duo to hit 10, 25-point games each since Elgin Baylor and Jerry West in 1962-63 (11th game).
(h/t @EliasSports) pic.twitter.com/xg9I28irne
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) November 20, 2021
10. Coby White, evidently, is still finding his rhythm after recently returning from the torn labrum he sustained during the offseason. This is the most involved the third-year guard has been in his three games back — he got up seven shot attempts and three 3-pointers in 11 minutes — but his impact was negative; White missed six of his seven shot attempts (including two open layups) and all of his 3s, committing two turnovers in the first two minutes of the fourth quarter on a charge and wild pass operating in pick-and-roll.
Donovan tempered expectations on White coming back after five months away — and with limited live-action ramp-up — for a reason. He’s shot 1-for-11 from the floor since returning, and remains behind Dosunmu in the rotation for the time being.
And so the Bulls are both 11-5 and off the schneid after a tough loss in Portland.
“We're a resilient team. We're out here to come out here and complete the task, go out here and try to win each and every game,” LaVine said. “And if there's a bump in the road we respond the right way.”
/ by Rob Schaefer
Bulls
USA Today
DENVER — Zach LaVine’s focus entering Friday’s road matchup with the Denver Nuggets, which capped a five-game West Coast swing for the Chicago Bulls, was simple.
“We just wanted to end the road trip the right way,” LaVine said.
Mission accomplished. Behind some raucous fan involvement, and a fourth-quarter closeout speared by their stars, the Bulls bested the Nuggets 114-108, moving their record to 11-5 on the young season (3-2 on the trip).
Here are 10 observations:
1. When Nikola Jokić was ruled out just before tipoff with a wrist injury, it didn’t appear the Bulls would play at as much of a size disadvantage as they do on most nights; Denver started Monte Morris, Austin Rivers, Will Barton, Aaron Gordon and Jeff Green.
But Gordon bullied the Bulls in the first quarter nonetheless, tallying 10 points, four rebounds, two assists and a block in 10 minutes (en route to 28 points, nine rebounds and four assists on the night). The Nuggets went to him multiple times in the post for buckets over Javonte Green and LaVine — and when the Bulls brought two defenders to him on another possession, he hit a cutting Green for a layup.
2. Denver jumped out to a 22-12 lead midway through the first on the strength of Gordon’s aggressiveness and some really tough shotmaking, shooting 9-for-13 in the game’s first seven-and-a-half minutes. But, despite the hosts shooting 61 percent, the Bulls drew level 30-30 by the end of the frame, led by 10 points from LaVine.
3. At the end of a wonky first half the Bulls won 53-52, Derrick Jones Jr. was the team’s second-leading scorer behind LaVine. Looking comfortable again as the stopgap backup center, he tallied 10 points and seven rebounds (three offensive), burying a couple putbacks and flying out on the fastbreak for a loud dunk. Plus, after picking up five fouls apiece against the Lakers and Trail Blazers, he committed zero in his first 15 minutes. Crucial.
Jones Jr. added three dunks in the third quarter, but committed four fouls between the third and early fourth, finishing with 16 points and eight boards. Billy Donovan said both before and after the game that Jones Jr.’s defensive activity at the center spot has been a positive revelation in the stretch since Nikola Vučević tested positive for COVID-19. His dynamism as a roll threat is noteworthy too.
“If Vooch is on this trip, Derrick probably never gets that opportunity,” Donovan said of Jones Jr.’s offensive involvement as a roller. “And now that’s something he has some familiarity with.”
4. Nearly the entire Bulls supporting cast brought it in this one. Tony Bradley notched eight points, five rebounds and two assists two nights after looking lost in Portland. Ayo Dosunmu contributed 10 points, a whopping eight rebounds and two 3-pointers off the pine. Green and Alex Caruso’s box score lines don’t fully reflect it, but their disruptiveness, particularly at the defensive end, swung momentum at multiple points.
“The team is so locked in right now. I think we're really good with our roles,” LaVine said. “Everybody's really connected on the team right now, so I think we know the mission at hand and we're going out there and executing.”
5. The Bulls sprinted out to an 8-0 run to start the third quarter, and maintained a six-to-12 point advantage throughout the period, leading 88-78 entering the fourth. DeMar DeRozan came alive to score 10 in the frame after shooting 3-for-10 in the first half, while LaVine (12 points) and Jones Jr. (six) combined for 18 points and five thrilling jams.
6. Ball Arena came alive as well in that quarter, erupting into multiple ear-shattering “Let’s go Bulls!” chants. The first was catalyzed by a lockdown defensive possession by Caruso on Will Barton (he had another stunning sequence guarding Monte Morris earlier in the game), with more coming during Gordon free throws and a routine timeout stoppage.
It was downright jarring for a road arena, but a reminder of this team’s reach when firing on all cylinders.
“I haven't heard that before, so that was really cool for me,” LaVine said postgame. “I think the Bulls have obviously one of the best fanbases in sports, so when we come back around and we get the support from them I think it's incredible, especially on the road like that in a place like this.”
Added Jones Jr.: “Very fun. It’s different when the away crowd is chanting “Let’s go Bulls.’ I just never had that in my career. I’ve never gone to a city and that city’s chanting for my team.”
And Nuggets coach Michael Malone put the cherry on top: “I wasn’t sure if we were at the United Center or Ball Arena.”
7. This Denver team doesn’t quit, though. Aided by a flurry of Bulls turnovers, the hosts opened the fourth quarter on a 6-0 run, and at the 6:15 mark, trailed 94-90.
That’s when Green and LaVine took over. On one possession, Green corralled two offensive rebounds, resulting in a LaVine 3-pointer. Two possessions later, after LaVine followed a Facundo Campazzo 3 with another jumper to make it 99-93, Green jumped a passing lane for a steal, leading to a LaVine floater on the other end to make it 101-93 with 3:47 remaining. Green closed the last seven minutes of the game as the team’s de facto center.
“I love playing with Woo,” Jones Jr. said of Green, using his nickname. “I thought I had a ball of energy in me, but he different.”
8. Still, the Nuggets continued to counter, trading buckets with the Bulls until the bitter end — even cutting their deficit to 110-108 with less than 20 seconds to play.
But LaVine brought counters to every haymaker they levied. The Bulls’ All-Star guard scored 12 of his 36 points in the fourth, shooting 5-for-7 from the floor and 2-for-2 from 3-point range. He made every array of jumper imaginable in a supreme display of shotmaking, from the firmly-set catch-and-shoot to contested, off-balance leaner.
“It’s remarkable to watch him,” Donovan said of LaVine. “He’s I think one of the best tough shotmakers in the league, and he’s comfortable doing it.”
9. DeRozan, too, was crucial down the stretch, scoring eight points on eight free-throw makes in the fourth — two on the possession following the Will Barton 3 that made it a two-point game late. The Bulls shot 24-for-24 from the foul line for the night, essential to winning as hard-fought a matchup as this.
And their prolific perimeter scoring duo combined for 20 of the team’s 26 points in the final frame. In the process, they became the fastest pair of teammates to each accrue 10 25-plus-point games since Jerry West and Elgin Baylor in 1962-63, per ESPN Stats and Information.
Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan both have 10+ 25-point games this season, in only the Bulls' 16th game.
They are the fastest duo to hit 10, 25-point games each since Elgin Baylor and Jerry West in 1962-63 (11th game).
(h/t @EliasSports) pic.twitter.com/xg9I28irne
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) November 20, 2021
10. Coby White, evidently, is still finding his rhythm after recently returning from the torn labrum he sustained during the offseason. This is the most involved the third-year guard has been in his three games back — he got up seven shot attempts and three 3-pointers in 11 minutes — but his impact was negative; White missed six of his seven shot attempts (including two open layups) and all of his 3s, committing two turnovers in the first two minutes of the fourth quarter on a charge and wild pass operating in pick-and-roll.
Donovan tempered expectations on White coming back after five months away — and with limited live-action ramp-up — for a reason. He’s shot 1-for-11 from the floor since returning, and remains behind Dosunmu in the rotation for the time being.
And so the Bulls are both 11-5 and off the schneid after a tough loss in Portland.
“We're a resilient team. We're out here to come out here and complete the task, go out here and try to win each and every game,” LaVine said. “And if there's a bump in the road we respond the right way.”
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
Fed financial stability report - Yves Smith
Regular readers would hopefully have internalized the Fed’s framework:
Elevated valuation pressures are signaled by asset prices that are high relative to economic fundamentals or historical norms and are often driven by an increased willingness of investors to take on risk. As such, elevated valuation pressures imply a greater possibility of outsized drops in asset prices.
Excessive borrowing by businesses and households leaves them vulnerable to distress if their incomes decline or the assets they own fall in value..
Excessive leverage within the financial sector increases the risk that financial institutions will not have the ability to absorb even modest losses…
Funding risks expose the financial system to the possibility that investors will “run” by withdrawing their funds…
I suspect experts like Steve Keen and Richard Vague would be more than a tad frustrated by this. Normally, in academic work and even financial reports, the ordering of items signals which is to be taken as most important. It’s distressing to see the central bank depict itself as concerned with asset price levels, and even worse, broadly stated.
Investors are supposed to be grown-ups and know that they are taking risk, as in the possibility of loss. Financial economics posits the existence of a risk-return tradeoff, that investors take more risk in the hope of getting better results.
So what a central bank ought to be concerned about is leverage of assets, and not asset prices per se. Recall that we had an enormous dot-com bubble, but in public stocks, and the regulators have strict limits on margin loans. When it imploded, there was no damage to the financial system (amusingly, there was to players that had managed to leverage themselves to the mania by taking Internet stocks in lieu of cash….like McKinsey, which had to write off $200 million. It also had to shrink its headcount by nearly 50% in two years in North America due to having greatly increased staffing to service dot-com panicked clients and serve clients who had eyeballs rather than cash).
But instead, the Fed sees itself as the guardian of asset prices generally, irrespective of the degree of blowback to financial institutions, because confidence fairy. The continuation of the Greenspan-Bernanke-Yellen put is what created these greatly attenuated valuations, but you never hear a hit of agency in how the Fed characterizes its “Gee, asset prices are pretty high” observation.
Most experts who have taken a hard look at crises have found that high levels of private sector borrowings, particularly by households, is what sets the stage for a financial crisis.
Another financial crisis risk factor, oddly absent from the Fed’s list, is high levels of international capital flows. An 800 year study of financial crises by Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart found that high levels of international capital movements were strongly correlated with rising and increasingly severe financial crises. When their study came out, it received all sorts of approving noises. But no one was willing to act on its obvious implications and start imposing capital controls, or at least increase frictions through transactions taxes. Can’t wind the clock back on the supposed progress of ever more globalization and financialization.
Now let’s turn to the list of current worries. According to the Financial Times and Bloomberg, it’s China. Their headlines, respectively: Fed warns ailing China real estate sector poses risks to US economy and China Property Stress Spurs Fed Warning as Bond Losses Widen .
While these headlines are narrowly correct, they give the impression that the Fed singled out China as representing a distinctively seroius yellow peril to America’s economic health. In fact, China is listed third. Here they are, in order:
A potential worsening of the public health situation may result in a reduction in business and household confidence, negatively affecting future economic activity and financial vulnerabilities…
A sharp rise in interest rates could slow the pace of economic recovery and lead to sharp declines in asset valuations and stresses at financial institutions, businesses, and households…
Stresses in China’s real estate sector could strain the Chinese financial system, with possible spillovers to the United States….
Adverse developments in other emerging market economies spurred by a sudden and sharp tightening in financial conditions could also spill over to the United States…
In Europe, a slower-than-expected recovery could trigger financial stresses and pose risks to the United States because of strong transmission channels
Moreover, if you read the section on China, you get the feeling that the Fed doesn’t really have a theory as to how blowback from China might occur, just that China is so big, if it went really pear-shaped, it couldn’t not affect the US:
In China, business and local government debt remain large; the financial sector’s leverage is high, especially at small and medium-sized banks; and real estate valuations are stretched. In this environment, the ongoing regulatory focus on leveraged institutions has the potential to stress some highly indebted corporations, especially in the real estate sector, as exemplified by the recent concerns around China Evergrande Group. Stresses could, in turn, propagate to the Chinese financial system through spillovers to financial firms, a sudden correction of real estate prices, or a reduction in investor risk appetite. Given the size of China’s economy and financial system as well as its extensive trade linkages with the rest of the world, financial stresses in China could strain global financial markets through a deterioration of risk sentiment, pose risks to global economic growth, and affect the United States.
Translation: the Fed does not see any direct transmission mechanism from China’s financial systems to ours. However, a domestic financial crisis could produce a sharp drop in trade. Suppliers in China are already getting slow payments on receivables, and many borrow to cover that. That contraction could blow back to other economies and their banks, and potentially propagate to the US, or more likely, directly whack confidence. Recall that there have been a couple of episodes of sharp downdrafts in Chinese financial markets, which typically lasted only two weeks, and markets abroad dropped in sympathy.
In fairness, one could argue that Bloomberg was using the Fed report as a hook for an update on souring conditions in China. From its article:
The cash crunch is worsening by the day. The yield on a Bloomberg index of Chinese junk dollar bonds — dominated by property firms — has surged toward 24%. Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd., which said last week it missed payments on wealth products, was downgraded further into junk by Fitch Ratings on Tuesday.
The selloff has spread to higher-grade issuers such as Country Garden Holdings Co., while even a company controlled by China’s government has seen its bonds slump. Spreads on the nation’s investment-grade bonds over Treasuries widened the most since April on Tuesday.
So Bloomberg only discussed the China section. The Financial Times led with China and devoted six out of fourteen paragraphs to it. Three were on meme stocks even though the Fed did not cite them as a “near-term risk” but instead had a special section them. The article inaccurately said the Fed’s domestic warnings were only a sharp interest rise and its impact on risky assets and housing. No mention whatsoever of the lead item, Covid risk.
By contrast, the Wall Street Journal put Covid front and center: Fed Says U.S. Public Health Among Biggest Near-Term Risks to Financial System The Journal did not mention China but stressed that Fed officials were concerned about elevated asset prices.
What is striking is that the Fed report mentioned supply chain problems all of once (to its credit, the Journal did pick up on that). From the Stability Report:
A possible deterioration in the public health situation could slow the recent economic recovery, particularly if widespread business closures returned and supply chains were further disrupted.
Note that the central bank sees supply chain problems as not a danger at their current level, nor a sufficient risk to create damage to the economy absent a resurgence of Covid.
Yet there is no indication the log jam in West Coast ports is getting any better. Lambert cited a Business Insider piece yesterday in which an intrepid reporter took a boat ride to see what was happening, and things were not better than on the earlier boat ride that described how little action there was.
We are getting reports that the crunch may be about to turn acute. As we report in Links, rural hospitals in flyover are not able to get crutches or walkers due to aluminum shortages. It’s easy to dismiss that more as a function of problems with trucks and trains, but one reader says a CEO in the industry says that the problem is not only widespread but also acute, and will go critical within two months. Even though aluminum is also recycled domestically, that equipment is fussy and prone to breakdown, and parts for them are in very very short supply. We are also hearing warnings about copper due to high quit rates in recycling plants and mines that rely on seasoned personnel where it is hard to bring on new staff. Operators are attributing it to vax resistance; the men work in close conditions in poor ventilation and know or believe they have already gotten Covid and resent being asked to take a shot now. The claim is they are getting out now while the job market is strong.
Mind you, these reports are anecdata, and aside from the story on shortages at one hospital, not independently corroborated. But this is the sort of story that could easily fall through the cracks. The financial press is very hollowed out, focused on big markets and big industries. Domestic processors are likely way below their radar. And insiders would not want to sound alarms if all that would do is cause buying panic.
So please be on the lookout for supporting or contrary data points. Either of these shortages would be a very big deal if they come to pass.
Elevated valuation pressures are signaled by asset prices that are high relative to economic fundamentals or historical norms and are often driven by an increased willingness of investors to take on risk. As such, elevated valuation pressures imply a greater possibility of outsized drops in asset prices.
Excessive borrowing by businesses and households leaves them vulnerable to distress if their incomes decline or the assets they own fall in value..
Excessive leverage within the financial sector increases the risk that financial institutions will not have the ability to absorb even modest losses…
Funding risks expose the financial system to the possibility that investors will “run” by withdrawing their funds…
I suspect experts like Steve Keen and Richard Vague would be more than a tad frustrated by this. Normally, in academic work and even financial reports, the ordering of items signals which is to be taken as most important. It’s distressing to see the central bank depict itself as concerned with asset price levels, and even worse, broadly stated.
Investors are supposed to be grown-ups and know that they are taking risk, as in the possibility of loss. Financial economics posits the existence of a risk-return tradeoff, that investors take more risk in the hope of getting better results.
So what a central bank ought to be concerned about is leverage of assets, and not asset prices per se. Recall that we had an enormous dot-com bubble, but in public stocks, and the regulators have strict limits on margin loans. When it imploded, there was no damage to the financial system (amusingly, there was to players that had managed to leverage themselves to the mania by taking Internet stocks in lieu of cash….like McKinsey, which had to write off $200 million. It also had to shrink its headcount by nearly 50% in two years in North America due to having greatly increased staffing to service dot-com panicked clients and serve clients who had eyeballs rather than cash).
But instead, the Fed sees itself as the guardian of asset prices generally, irrespective of the degree of blowback to financial institutions, because confidence fairy. The continuation of the Greenspan-Bernanke-Yellen put is what created these greatly attenuated valuations, but you never hear a hit of agency in how the Fed characterizes its “Gee, asset prices are pretty high” observation.
Most experts who have taken a hard look at crises have found that high levels of private sector borrowings, particularly by households, is what sets the stage for a financial crisis.
Another financial crisis risk factor, oddly absent from the Fed’s list, is high levels of international capital flows. An 800 year study of financial crises by Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart found that high levels of international capital movements were strongly correlated with rising and increasingly severe financial crises. When their study came out, it received all sorts of approving noises. But no one was willing to act on its obvious implications and start imposing capital controls, or at least increase frictions through transactions taxes. Can’t wind the clock back on the supposed progress of ever more globalization and financialization.
Now let’s turn to the list of current worries. According to the Financial Times and Bloomberg, it’s China. Their headlines, respectively: Fed warns ailing China real estate sector poses risks to US economy and China Property Stress Spurs Fed Warning as Bond Losses Widen .
While these headlines are narrowly correct, they give the impression that the Fed singled out China as representing a distinctively seroius yellow peril to America’s economic health. In fact, China is listed third. Here they are, in order:
A potential worsening of the public health situation may result in a reduction in business and household confidence, negatively affecting future economic activity and financial vulnerabilities…
A sharp rise in interest rates could slow the pace of economic recovery and lead to sharp declines in asset valuations and stresses at financial institutions, businesses, and households…
Stresses in China’s real estate sector could strain the Chinese financial system, with possible spillovers to the United States….
Adverse developments in other emerging market economies spurred by a sudden and sharp tightening in financial conditions could also spill over to the United States…
In Europe, a slower-than-expected recovery could trigger financial stresses and pose risks to the United States because of strong transmission channels
Moreover, if you read the section on China, you get the feeling that the Fed doesn’t really have a theory as to how blowback from China might occur, just that China is so big, if it went really pear-shaped, it couldn’t not affect the US:
In China, business and local government debt remain large; the financial sector’s leverage is high, especially at small and medium-sized banks; and real estate valuations are stretched. In this environment, the ongoing regulatory focus on leveraged institutions has the potential to stress some highly indebted corporations, especially in the real estate sector, as exemplified by the recent concerns around China Evergrande Group. Stresses could, in turn, propagate to the Chinese financial system through spillovers to financial firms, a sudden correction of real estate prices, or a reduction in investor risk appetite. Given the size of China’s economy and financial system as well as its extensive trade linkages with the rest of the world, financial stresses in China could strain global financial markets through a deterioration of risk sentiment, pose risks to global economic growth, and affect the United States.
Translation: the Fed does not see any direct transmission mechanism from China’s financial systems to ours. However, a domestic financial crisis could produce a sharp drop in trade. Suppliers in China are already getting slow payments on receivables, and many borrow to cover that. That contraction could blow back to other economies and their banks, and potentially propagate to the US, or more likely, directly whack confidence. Recall that there have been a couple of episodes of sharp downdrafts in Chinese financial markets, which typically lasted only two weeks, and markets abroad dropped in sympathy.
In fairness, one could argue that Bloomberg was using the Fed report as a hook for an update on souring conditions in China. From its article:
The cash crunch is worsening by the day. The yield on a Bloomberg index of Chinese junk dollar bonds — dominated by property firms — has surged toward 24%. Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd., which said last week it missed payments on wealth products, was downgraded further into junk by Fitch Ratings on Tuesday.
The selloff has spread to higher-grade issuers such as Country Garden Holdings Co., while even a company controlled by China’s government has seen its bonds slump. Spreads on the nation’s investment-grade bonds over Treasuries widened the most since April on Tuesday.
So Bloomberg only discussed the China section. The Financial Times led with China and devoted six out of fourteen paragraphs to it. Three were on meme stocks even though the Fed did not cite them as a “near-term risk” but instead had a special section them. The article inaccurately said the Fed’s domestic warnings were only a sharp interest rise and its impact on risky assets and housing. No mention whatsoever of the lead item, Covid risk.
By contrast, the Wall Street Journal put Covid front and center: Fed Says U.S. Public Health Among Biggest Near-Term Risks to Financial System The Journal did not mention China but stressed that Fed officials were concerned about elevated asset prices.
What is striking is that the Fed report mentioned supply chain problems all of once (to its credit, the Journal did pick up on that). From the Stability Report:
A possible deterioration in the public health situation could slow the recent economic recovery, particularly if widespread business closures returned and supply chains were further disrupted.
Note that the central bank sees supply chain problems as not a danger at their current level, nor a sufficient risk to create damage to the economy absent a resurgence of Covid.
Yet there is no indication the log jam in West Coast ports is getting any better. Lambert cited a Business Insider piece yesterday in which an intrepid reporter took a boat ride to see what was happening, and things were not better than on the earlier boat ride that described how little action there was.
We are getting reports that the crunch may be about to turn acute. As we report in Links, rural hospitals in flyover are not able to get crutches or walkers due to aluminum shortages. It’s easy to dismiss that more as a function of problems with trucks and trains, but one reader says a CEO in the industry says that the problem is not only widespread but also acute, and will go critical within two months. Even though aluminum is also recycled domestically, that equipment is fussy and prone to breakdown, and parts for them are in very very short supply. We are also hearing warnings about copper due to high quit rates in recycling plants and mines that rely on seasoned personnel where it is hard to bring on new staff. Operators are attributing it to vax resistance; the men work in close conditions in poor ventilation and know or believe they have already gotten Covid and resent being asked to take a shot now. The claim is they are getting out now while the job market is strong.
Mind you, these reports are anecdata, and aside from the story on shortages at one hospital, not independently corroborated. But this is the sort of story that could easily fall through the cracks. The financial press is very hollowed out, focused on big markets and big industries. Domestic processors are likely way below their radar. And insiders would not want to sound alarms if all that would do is cause buying panic.
So please be on the lookout for supporting or contrary data points. Either of these shortages would be a very big deal if they come to pass.
Sunday, November 07, 2021
Sunday, October 31, 2021
Lamb : Icelandic movie
Tomris Laffly on RogerEbert.com
In the Icelandic pastoral thriller “Lamb,” director Valdimar Jóhannsson’s grippingly assured directorial debut that ruminates on parenthood, family and nature, Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) are noticeably unhappy. Living on a remote, mountainous landscape that looks to be frozen in time, the rural farmers barely exchange words or crack a smile. Stern faced and muscularly poised, the hardworking couple just go about their day, plowing their land, harvesting their crop and tending to their livestock of lambs, ewes and horses with the same serious yet joyless dedication. You can sniff a sense of loss in the atmosphere that penetrates this otherwise tranquil scenery of quietly sharp colors, icy skies, and intimidating soundscapes. There is Christmas music on the radio, but none of the customary holiday cheer in the air. And somewhere out there in the wild, an insidious brute is making its rounds around the couple’s barn.
It’s on the heels of this silent misery that the duo’s happiness finally arrives in the most what-the-f**k-is-this form imaginable, the WTF-ness of which a late-entering character also reacts to in one of the film’s various moments of subtle deadpan comedy. A shocking sight for the viewer to receive and accept, it’s a reveal that also presents an immense writing challenge for any critic attempting to do justice to the film’s pacing through its secrets. While the adorably unnerving creature that blesses the household of Maria and Ingvar is very much the premise of “Lamb,” co-writers Jóhannsson and Sjón (also a poet and an author) conceal her identity and expose her visage in such a studiously slow fashion that one thinks twice before describing her and possibly ruining the experience for the readers. In that regard, it’s best to go completely cold into “Lamb,” which increasingly becomes a mongrel of a folkloric psychodrama and chamber horror, with preoccupations and a mood that fall somewhere between Robert Eggers’ “The Witch” and Ari Aster’s “Midsommar” even when the film can’t sustain its raw appeal all the way through unlike these aforesaid titles. That said, continue reading on only if you aren’t all too concerned about spoilers.
Those who are still with me: meet Ada, a half lamb-half human sweetie-pie believably created with the help of some CGI puppetry as well as real animals and young actors. Maria and Ingvar welcome her into their modest home so warmly and casually that you wonder whether they are able to see what the rest of us do. They feed her, bathe her, and tuck her in like everything is extremely normal with this cuddly creature, supposedly a gift that nature has bestowed upon them. What throws their newfound contentment off is the arrival of Ingvar’s brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson), a sibling evidently close with Ingvar, and perhaps closer than he needs to be with his sister-in-law.
The rivalrous dynamic Jóhannsson establishes within the household is both fiendishly fun to follow, and one that wears thin fast with not much to expand on. The same could be said about the film’s overarching concerns about parenthood, grief and mankind’s greedy domination of nature to protect their immediate and selfish interests by any means necessary. (Those who are extremely sensitive towards animal suffering and casualty should especially beware the company of these people who want to have their lamb and eat it too.) It’s not so much that co-writers Jóhannsson and Sjón lack deep ideas around these themes. But “Lamb” puts them all on an obscure backburner for far too long, prioritizing its skillful aesthetics and tone over a meaningful exploration of the anxieties at its heart.
Still, a fierce sense of originality you won’t be able to shake and look away from nearly makes up for the film’s relative lack of depth. Seen through the spooky, foggy lens of cinematographer Eli Erenson that recalls the enigmatic style of Béla Tarr (it can’t be a coincidence that Tarr is an executive producer here), the visual world of “Lamb” is immersive and soulful, qualities matched by Rapace’s expressive presence at every turn. While it’s not a thoroughly satisfying stew of style and substance—plus, it could’ve used some sharper scares—“Lamb” nonetheless leaves a unique enough aftertaste for one to crave more of the same distinctive weirdness from Jóhannsson in the future.
In the Icelandic pastoral thriller “Lamb,” director Valdimar Jóhannsson’s grippingly assured directorial debut that ruminates on parenthood, family and nature, Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) are noticeably unhappy. Living on a remote, mountainous landscape that looks to be frozen in time, the rural farmers barely exchange words or crack a smile. Stern faced and muscularly poised, the hardworking couple just go about their day, plowing their land, harvesting their crop and tending to their livestock of lambs, ewes and horses with the same serious yet joyless dedication. You can sniff a sense of loss in the atmosphere that penetrates this otherwise tranquil scenery of quietly sharp colors, icy skies, and intimidating soundscapes. There is Christmas music on the radio, but none of the customary holiday cheer in the air. And somewhere out there in the wild, an insidious brute is making its rounds around the couple’s barn.
It’s on the heels of this silent misery that the duo’s happiness finally arrives in the most what-the-f**k-is-this form imaginable, the WTF-ness of which a late-entering character also reacts to in one of the film’s various moments of subtle deadpan comedy. A shocking sight for the viewer to receive and accept, it’s a reveal that also presents an immense writing challenge for any critic attempting to do justice to the film’s pacing through its secrets. While the adorably unnerving creature that blesses the household of Maria and Ingvar is very much the premise of “Lamb,” co-writers Jóhannsson and Sjón (also a poet and an author) conceal her identity and expose her visage in such a studiously slow fashion that one thinks twice before describing her and possibly ruining the experience for the readers. In that regard, it’s best to go completely cold into “Lamb,” which increasingly becomes a mongrel of a folkloric psychodrama and chamber horror, with preoccupations and a mood that fall somewhere between Robert Eggers’ “The Witch” and Ari Aster’s “Midsommar” even when the film can’t sustain its raw appeal all the way through unlike these aforesaid titles. That said, continue reading on only if you aren’t all too concerned about spoilers.
Those who are still with me: meet Ada, a half lamb-half human sweetie-pie believably created with the help of some CGI puppetry as well as real animals and young actors. Maria and Ingvar welcome her into their modest home so warmly and casually that you wonder whether they are able to see what the rest of us do. They feed her, bathe her, and tuck her in like everything is extremely normal with this cuddly creature, supposedly a gift that nature has bestowed upon them. What throws their newfound contentment off is the arrival of Ingvar’s brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson), a sibling evidently close with Ingvar, and perhaps closer than he needs to be with his sister-in-law.
The rivalrous dynamic Jóhannsson establishes within the household is both fiendishly fun to follow, and one that wears thin fast with not much to expand on. The same could be said about the film’s overarching concerns about parenthood, grief and mankind’s greedy domination of nature to protect their immediate and selfish interests by any means necessary. (Those who are extremely sensitive towards animal suffering and casualty should especially beware the company of these people who want to have their lamb and eat it too.) It’s not so much that co-writers Jóhannsson and Sjón lack deep ideas around these themes. But “Lamb” puts them all on an obscure backburner for far too long, prioritizing its skillful aesthetics and tone over a meaningful exploration of the anxieties at its heart.
Still, a fierce sense of originality you won’t be able to shake and look away from nearly makes up for the film’s relative lack of depth. Seen through the spooky, foggy lens of cinematographer Eli Erenson that recalls the enigmatic style of Béla Tarr (it can’t be a coincidence that Tarr is an executive producer here), the visual world of “Lamb” is immersive and soulful, qualities matched by Rapace’s expressive presence at every turn. While it’s not a thoroughly satisfying stew of style and substance—plus, it could’ve used some sharper scares—“Lamb” nonetheless leaves a unique enough aftertaste for one to crave more of the same distinctive weirdness from Jóhannsson in the future.
Sunday, October 24, 2021
RBI MPC Minutes
Resolution passed on the meeting
keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 4.0 per cent.
The reverse repo rate under the LAF remains unchanged at 3.35 per cent and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate at 4.25 per cent.
The MPC also decided to continue with the accommodative stance as long as necessary to revive and sustain growth on a durable basis and continue to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the economy, while ensuring that inflation remains within the target going forward. These decisions are in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4 per cent within a band of +/- 2 per cent, while supporting growth.
Global Economy
Since the MPC’s meeting during August 4-6, 2021, the momentum of the global recovery has ebbed across geographies with the rapid spread of the delta variant of COVID-19, including in some countries with relatively high vaccination rates. After sliding to a seven-month low in August, the global purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose marginally in September. World merchandise trade volumes remained resilient in Q2:2021, but more recently there has been a loss of momentum with the persistence of supply and logistics bottlenecks.
Commodity prices remain elevated, and consequently, inflationary pressures have accentuated in most advanced economies (AEs) and emerging market economies (EMEs), prompting monetary tightening by a few central banks in the former group and several in the latter. Change in monetary policy stances, in conjunction with a likely tapering of bond purchases in major advanced economies later this year, is beginning to strain the international financial markets with a sharp rise in bond yields in major AEs and EMEs after remaining range-bound in August. The US dollar has strengthened sharply, while the EME currencies have weakened since early-September with capital outflows in recent weeks.
Domestic Economy
On the domestic front, real gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by 20.1 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y) during Q1:2021-22 on a large favourable base; however, its momentum was dragged down by the second wave of the pandemic. The level of real GDP in Q1:2021-22 was 9.2 per cent below its pre-pandemic level two years ago. On the demand side, almost all the constituents of GDP posted robust y-o-y growth. On the supply side, real gross value added (GVA) increased by 18.8 per cent y-o-y during Q1:2021-22.
The rebound in economic activity gained traction in August-September, facilitated by the ebbing of infections, easing of restrictions and a sharp pick-up in the pace of vaccination. The south-west monsoon, after a lull in August, picked up in September, narrowing the deficit in the cumulative seasonal rainfall to 0.7 per cent below the long period average and kharif sowing exceeded the previous year’s level. Record kharif foodgrains production of 150.5 million tonnes as per the first advance estimates augurs well for the overall agricultural sector. By end-September, reservoir levels at 80 per cent of the full reservoir level were above the decadal average, which is expected to boost rabi production prospects.
After a prolonged slowdown, industrial production posted a high y-o-y growth for the fifth consecutive month in July. The manufacturing PMI at 53.7 in September remained in positive territory. Services activity gained ground with support from the pent-up demand for contact-intensive activities. The services PMI continued in expansion zone in September at 55.2, although some sub-components moderated. High-frequency indicators for August-September – railway freight traffic; cement production; electricity demand; port cargo; e-way bills; GST and toll collections – suggest progress in the normalisation of economic activity relative to pre-pandemic levels; however, indicators such as domestic air traffic, two-wheeler sales and steel consumption continue to lag. Non-oil export growth remained strong on buoyant external demand.
Headline CPI inflation at 5.3 per cent in August softened for the second consecutive month, declining by one percentage point from the recent peak in May-June 2021. This was primarily driven by an easing in food inflation. Fuel inflation edged up to a new high in August. Core inflation, i.e. inflation excluding food and fuel, remained elevated and sticky at 5.8 per cent in July-August 2021.
System liquidity remained in large surplus in August-September, with daily absorptions rising from an average of ₹7.7 lakh crore in July-August to ₹9.0 lakh crore during September and ₹9.5 lakh crore during October (up to October 6) through the fixed rate reverse repo, the 14-day variable rate reverse repo (VRRR) and fine-tuning operations under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF). Auctions of ₹1.2 lakh crore under the secondary market government securities acquisition programme (G-SAP 2.0) during Q2:2021-22 provided liquidity across the term structure. As on October 1, 2021, reserve money (adjusted for the first-round impact of the change in the cash reserve ratio) expanded by 8.3 per cent (y-o-y); money supply (M3) and bank credit grew by 9.3 per cent and 6.7 per cent, respectively, as on September 24, 2021. India’s foreign exchange reserves increased by US$ 60.5 billion in 2021-22 (up to October 1) to US$ 637.5 billion, partly reflecting the allocation of special drawing rights (SDRs), and were close to 14 months of projected imports for 2021-22.
Outlook
Going forward, the inflation trajectory is set to edge down during Q3:2021-22, drawing comfort from the recent catch-up in kharif sowing and likely record production. Along with adequate buffer stock of foodgrains, these factors should help to keep cereal prices range bound. Vegetable prices, a major source of inflation volatility, have remained contained in the year so far and are likely to remain soft, assuming no disruption due to unseasonal rains. Supply side interventions by the Government in the case of pulses and edible oils are helping to bridge the demand supply gap; the situation is expected to improve with kharif harvest arrivals. The resurgence of edible oils prices in the recent period, however, is a cause of concern. On the other hand, pressures persist from crude oil prices which remain volatile over uncertainties on the global supply and demand conditions. Domestic pump prices remain at very high levels. Rising metals and energy prices, acute shortage of key industrial components and high logistics costs are adding to input cost pressures. Weak demand conditions, however, are tempering the pass-through to output prices. The CPI headline momentum is moderating with the easing of food prices which, combined with favourable base effects, could bring about a substantial softening in inflation in the near-term. Taking into consideration all these factors, CPI inflation is projected at 5.3 per cent for 2021-22; 5.1 per cent in Q2, 4.5 per cent in Q3; 5.8 per cent in Q4 of 2021-22, with risks broadly balanced. CPI inflation for Q1:2022-23 is projected at 5.2 per cent (Chart 1).
Domestic economic activity is gaining traction with the ebbing of the second wave. Going forward, rural demand is likely to maintain its buoyancy, given the above normal kharif sowing while rabi prospects are bright. The substantial acceleration in the pace of vaccination, the sustained lowering of new infections and the coming festival season should support a rebound in the pent-up demand for contact intensive services, strengthen the demand for non-contact intensive services, and bolster urban demand. Monetary and financial conditions remain easy and supportive of growth. Capacity utilisation is improving, while the business outlook and consumer confidence are reviving. The broad-based reforms by the government focusing on infrastructure development, asset monetisation, taxation, telecom sector and banking sector should boost investor confidence, enhance capacity expansion and facilitate crowding in of private investment. The production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme augurs well for domestic manufacturing and exports. Global semiconductor shortages, elevated commodity prices and input costs, and potential global financial market volatility are key downside risks to domestic growth prospects, along with uncertainty around the future COVID-19 trajectory. Taking all these factors into consideration, projection for real GDP growth is retained at 9.5 per cent in 2021-22 consisting of 7.9 per cent in Q2; 6.8 per cent in Q3; and 6.1 per cent in Q4 of 2021-22. Real GDP growth for Q1:2022-23 is projected at 17.2 per cent
keep the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) unchanged at 4.0 per cent.
The reverse repo rate under the LAF remains unchanged at 3.35 per cent and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate at 4.25 per cent.
The MPC also decided to continue with the accommodative stance as long as necessary to revive and sustain growth on a durable basis and continue to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the economy, while ensuring that inflation remains within the target going forward. These decisions are in consonance with the objective of achieving the medium-term target for consumer price index (CPI) inflation of 4 per cent within a band of +/- 2 per cent, while supporting growth.
Global Economy
Since the MPC’s meeting during August 4-6, 2021, the momentum of the global recovery has ebbed across geographies with the rapid spread of the delta variant of COVID-19, including in some countries with relatively high vaccination rates. After sliding to a seven-month low in August, the global purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose marginally in September. World merchandise trade volumes remained resilient in Q2:2021, but more recently there has been a loss of momentum with the persistence of supply and logistics bottlenecks.
Commodity prices remain elevated, and consequently, inflationary pressures have accentuated in most advanced economies (AEs) and emerging market economies (EMEs), prompting monetary tightening by a few central banks in the former group and several in the latter. Change in monetary policy stances, in conjunction with a likely tapering of bond purchases in major advanced economies later this year, is beginning to strain the international financial markets with a sharp rise in bond yields in major AEs and EMEs after remaining range-bound in August. The US dollar has strengthened sharply, while the EME currencies have weakened since early-September with capital outflows in recent weeks.
Domestic Economy
On the domestic front, real gross domestic product (GDP) expanded by 20.1 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y) during Q1:2021-22 on a large favourable base; however, its momentum was dragged down by the second wave of the pandemic. The level of real GDP in Q1:2021-22 was 9.2 per cent below its pre-pandemic level two years ago. On the demand side, almost all the constituents of GDP posted robust y-o-y growth. On the supply side, real gross value added (GVA) increased by 18.8 per cent y-o-y during Q1:2021-22.
The rebound in economic activity gained traction in August-September, facilitated by the ebbing of infections, easing of restrictions and a sharp pick-up in the pace of vaccination. The south-west monsoon, after a lull in August, picked up in September, narrowing the deficit in the cumulative seasonal rainfall to 0.7 per cent below the long period average and kharif sowing exceeded the previous year’s level. Record kharif foodgrains production of 150.5 million tonnes as per the first advance estimates augurs well for the overall agricultural sector. By end-September, reservoir levels at 80 per cent of the full reservoir level were above the decadal average, which is expected to boost rabi production prospects.
After a prolonged slowdown, industrial production posted a high y-o-y growth for the fifth consecutive month in July. The manufacturing PMI at 53.7 in September remained in positive territory. Services activity gained ground with support from the pent-up demand for contact-intensive activities. The services PMI continued in expansion zone in September at 55.2, although some sub-components moderated. High-frequency indicators for August-September – railway freight traffic; cement production; electricity demand; port cargo; e-way bills; GST and toll collections – suggest progress in the normalisation of economic activity relative to pre-pandemic levels; however, indicators such as domestic air traffic, two-wheeler sales and steel consumption continue to lag. Non-oil export growth remained strong on buoyant external demand.
Headline CPI inflation at 5.3 per cent in August softened for the second consecutive month, declining by one percentage point from the recent peak in May-June 2021. This was primarily driven by an easing in food inflation. Fuel inflation edged up to a new high in August. Core inflation, i.e. inflation excluding food and fuel, remained elevated and sticky at 5.8 per cent in July-August 2021.
System liquidity remained in large surplus in August-September, with daily absorptions rising from an average of ₹7.7 lakh crore in July-August to ₹9.0 lakh crore during September and ₹9.5 lakh crore during October (up to October 6) through the fixed rate reverse repo, the 14-day variable rate reverse repo (VRRR) and fine-tuning operations under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF). Auctions of ₹1.2 lakh crore under the secondary market government securities acquisition programme (G-SAP 2.0) during Q2:2021-22 provided liquidity across the term structure. As on October 1, 2021, reserve money (adjusted for the first-round impact of the change in the cash reserve ratio) expanded by 8.3 per cent (y-o-y); money supply (M3) and bank credit grew by 9.3 per cent and 6.7 per cent, respectively, as on September 24, 2021. India’s foreign exchange reserves increased by US$ 60.5 billion in 2021-22 (up to October 1) to US$ 637.5 billion, partly reflecting the allocation of special drawing rights (SDRs), and were close to 14 months of projected imports for 2021-22.
Outlook
Going forward, the inflation trajectory is set to edge down during Q3:2021-22, drawing comfort from the recent catch-up in kharif sowing and likely record production. Along with adequate buffer stock of foodgrains, these factors should help to keep cereal prices range bound. Vegetable prices, a major source of inflation volatility, have remained contained in the year so far and are likely to remain soft, assuming no disruption due to unseasonal rains. Supply side interventions by the Government in the case of pulses and edible oils are helping to bridge the demand supply gap; the situation is expected to improve with kharif harvest arrivals. The resurgence of edible oils prices in the recent period, however, is a cause of concern. On the other hand, pressures persist from crude oil prices which remain volatile over uncertainties on the global supply and demand conditions. Domestic pump prices remain at very high levels. Rising metals and energy prices, acute shortage of key industrial components and high logistics costs are adding to input cost pressures. Weak demand conditions, however, are tempering the pass-through to output prices. The CPI headline momentum is moderating with the easing of food prices which, combined with favourable base effects, could bring about a substantial softening in inflation in the near-term. Taking into consideration all these factors, CPI inflation is projected at 5.3 per cent for 2021-22; 5.1 per cent in Q2, 4.5 per cent in Q3; 5.8 per cent in Q4 of 2021-22, with risks broadly balanced. CPI inflation for Q1:2022-23 is projected at 5.2 per cent (Chart 1).
Domestic economic activity is gaining traction with the ebbing of the second wave. Going forward, rural demand is likely to maintain its buoyancy, given the above normal kharif sowing while rabi prospects are bright. The substantial acceleration in the pace of vaccination, the sustained lowering of new infections and the coming festival season should support a rebound in the pent-up demand for contact intensive services, strengthen the demand for non-contact intensive services, and bolster urban demand. Monetary and financial conditions remain easy and supportive of growth. Capacity utilisation is improving, while the business outlook and consumer confidence are reviving. The broad-based reforms by the government focusing on infrastructure development, asset monetisation, taxation, telecom sector and banking sector should boost investor confidence, enhance capacity expansion and facilitate crowding in of private investment. The production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme augurs well for domestic manufacturing and exports. Global semiconductor shortages, elevated commodity prices and input costs, and potential global financial market volatility are key downside risks to domestic growth prospects, along with uncertainty around the future COVID-19 trajectory. Taking all these factors into consideration, projection for real GDP growth is retained at 9.5 per cent in 2021-22 consisting of 7.9 per cent in Q2; 6.8 per cent in Q3; and 6.1 per cent in Q4 of 2021-22. Real GDP growth for Q1:2022-23 is projected at 17.2 per cent
Saturday, October 23, 2021
Chestnut Man : Danish Series
The Chestnut Man review – Nordic Noir at its gripping best sticks and stones
September 29, 2021
Jonathon Wilson
Summary
The Chestnut Man has an engaging plot, beautiful landscapes, and complex characters — it’s Nordic Noir through and through, and a can’t-miss binge-watch proposition.
Summary
The Chestnut Man has an engaging plot, beautiful landscapes, and complex characters — it’s Nordic Noir through and through, and a can’t-miss binge-watch proposition.
This review of The Chestnut Man is spoiler-free.
The bleak beauty and macabre appeal of Nordic Noir is nothing new for long-time crime drama fans, so the arrival of another new thriller is always something of a big deal among the right crowd. The Chestnut Man, a six-episode Danish offering adapted from the novel by Søren Sveistrup by the author himself alongside Dorte W. Høgh, seems finely calibrated for just that crowd. It’s a grim affair, a story of missing arms and dead bodies and ominous children’s figurines, but it’s rich with character, beauty, and depth; an entry into the subgenre that is as well-paced and engaging as any other you can think of.
It’s also somewhat brighter, though only on an aesthetic level. Fall in Denmark makes for a less chilly color palate than usual, giving the show a visual style of its own. The splashes of blood, though, of which there are plenty, are no less pronounced. The bodies that adorn the pretty landscape are no less horrifying. And the wounded characters who shuffle their way through the pacey serial killer plot make for excellent guides.
Those characters, or at least the actors who play them, will be familiar to anyone who consumed previous Danish Netflix productions like The Rain and Equinox. Naia Thulin (Danica Curcic) is a frazzled homicide cop and single mother who is teamed up with an enigmatic new partner, Mark Hess (Mikkel Boe Følgaard), who has been reluctantly reassigned from Interpol, to investigate the murder of a woman whose body was discovered in a children’s playground with a missing hand and a chestnut man – children’s figurines built from chestnuts and matchsticks or twigs to resemble people – nearby. It becomes quickly apparent that his case may have a connection to one from a year prior when the daughter of parliamentary minister Rosa Hartung (Iben Dorner) was brutally murdered. That case has ostensibly been solved, but you know how these things go.
Sveistrup is no stranger to television, being credited with The Killing – as well as co-credited for the script of The Snowman, which is probably best not to think too much about – and directors Kasper Barfoed and Mikkel Serup are old hands. The confidence of experience is felt in both the writing and the direction. You know you’re in good hands from a taut opening scene in the first episode and you remain so all the way through. At just six episodes, The Chestnut Man is an irresistible binge-watch proposition.
Jonathon Wilson
Summary
The Chestnut Man has an engaging plot, beautiful landscapes, and complex characters — it’s Nordic Noir through and through, and a can’t-miss binge-watch proposition.
Summary
The Chestnut Man has an engaging plot, beautiful landscapes, and complex characters — it’s Nordic Noir through and through, and a can’t-miss binge-watch proposition.
This review of The Chestnut Man is spoiler-free.
The bleak beauty and macabre appeal of Nordic Noir is nothing new for long-time crime drama fans, so the arrival of another new thriller is always something of a big deal among the right crowd. The Chestnut Man, a six-episode Danish offering adapted from the novel by Søren Sveistrup by the author himself alongside Dorte W. Høgh, seems finely calibrated for just that crowd. It’s a grim affair, a story of missing arms and dead bodies and ominous children’s figurines, but it’s rich with character, beauty, and depth; an entry into the subgenre that is as well-paced and engaging as any other you can think of.
It’s also somewhat brighter, though only on an aesthetic level. Fall in Denmark makes for a less chilly color palate than usual, giving the show a visual style of its own. The splashes of blood, though, of which there are plenty, are no less pronounced. The bodies that adorn the pretty landscape are no less horrifying. And the wounded characters who shuffle their way through the pacey serial killer plot make for excellent guides.
Those characters, or at least the actors who play them, will be familiar to anyone who consumed previous Danish Netflix productions like The Rain and Equinox. Naia Thulin (Danica Curcic) is a frazzled homicide cop and single mother who is teamed up with an enigmatic new partner, Mark Hess (Mikkel Boe Følgaard), who has been reluctantly reassigned from Interpol, to investigate the murder of a woman whose body was discovered in a children’s playground with a missing hand and a chestnut man – children’s figurines built from chestnuts and matchsticks or twigs to resemble people – nearby. It becomes quickly apparent that his case may have a connection to one from a year prior when the daughter of parliamentary minister Rosa Hartung (Iben Dorner) was brutally murdered. That case has ostensibly been solved, but you know how these things go.
Sveistrup is no stranger to television, being credited with The Killing – as well as co-credited for the script of The Snowman, which is probably best not to think too much about – and directors Kasper Barfoed and Mikkel Serup are old hands. The confidence of experience is felt in both the writing and the direction. You know you’re in good hands from a taut opening scene in the first episode and you remain so all the way through. At just six episodes, The Chestnut Man is an irresistible binge-watch proposition.
Sunday, October 17, 2021
Alice in Borderland : Japanese series
Let the games begin — Review: Alice in Borderland takes us down a deliciously bonkers rabbit hole Alice in Wonderland and Ready Player One meet Lord of the Flies and Cube.
Jennifer Ouellette - Dec 20, 2020 7:51 pm UTC
In the carefree, pre-pandemic Before Times, escape rooms were all the rage as fun group activities, where people had to solve a puzzle or mystery, or complete a series of tasks, in order to escape. Alice in Borderland, a hugely entertaining new Netflix series from Japan, takes that concept to a whole new level, transforming Tokyo into an alternate dimension called "Borderland." Those trapped therein must compete in deadly games to survive, and escape is by no means guaranteed. This is an emotionally intense, addictive series you'll definitely want to binge.
(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)
As previously reported, the series is based on the Japanese manga by Haro Aso. It has elements of Alice in Wonderland and Ready Player One, with a dash of Lord of the Flies and the 1997 sci-fi horror film, Cube, thrown in for good measure, but it's very much an original vision. The TV adaptation is directed by Shinsuke Sato, best known for 2001's The Princess Blade and last year's Kingdom, and co-written by Haro Aso and Yasuko Kuramitsu. The manga tells the story of Ryōhei Arisu (Arisu can be translated as "Alice"), a bored high schooler who longs for a more exciting life. Arisu's wish is granted during a fireworks celebration: he and his two best friends find themselves in a post-apocalyptic parallel world known as Borderland.
The Netflix adaptation follows the same basic premise, with a few minor tweaks—most notably, the central characters are young adults rather than high schoolers. Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) is "a listless, jobless and video-game-obsessed young man." Karube (Keita Machida) is a bartender who has just been fired for sleeping with the boss's girlfriend, and Chota (Yûki Morinaga) is a bored, mild-mannered office worker. After a mysterious power outage, they suddenly find themselves in an eerie, emptied-out version of Tokyo.
As night falls, neon signs direct them to what turns out to be a gaming "arena." Once they enter the arena, they are issued smartphones that deliver instructions for the game at hand—in this case, a locked-room puzzle in which they must repeatedly guess the correct door to pass from room to room in a building. Guess wrong, and the room will engulf them in flames. They must win the game (i.e., survive) in order to exit, and they do so, thanks to Arisu's quick thinking. But they are still trapped in this strange world, along with many others, and must keep playing games to survive. They do find other allies along the way, most notably a young woman named Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya), a mountain climber with excellent survival skills.
Games are held every night after sundown. Each game comes with a particular playing card. Win the game, and the player is issued a "visa"—a pass wherein they don't have to compete for a certain number of days, corresponding to the number of the card. The four suits are specific categories of games.
Spades are games that require physical strength (Usagi and Karube excel at them), diamonds are games of wit and intelligence (Asiru's specialty), clubs are games where teamwork is required (Chota's forte), and hearts—well, hearts are the cruelest games of all, since they are psychological games that involve emotional manipulation and betrayal. You can win a game of hearts, but that victory will come at a tremendous cost, and it might just break you entirely.
The locked-room game, for instance, corresponds to the 3 of Clubs, so when they win, Asiru and his pals have three days' respite before they have to compete in another deadly game. The penalty for not playing is being zapped into oblivion by a deadly laser beam shooting down from the sky, so let's just say the unwilling participants are highly motivated to comply. There are also "dealers" charged with infiltrating the games for the express purpose of sabotaging them, in exchange for visas.
Much of the pleasure and dramatic tension of Alice in Borderland arises from the sheer sadistic ingenuity of the games. For instance, a twisted game of tag (5 of Spades) gives all the players 20 minutes to find a safe base somewhere within an abandoned apartment building, while avoiding the person designated "It"—whose job is to gun down any player he or she encounters. After 20 minutes, the entire building is rigged to explode. As for Hide and Seek (7 of Hearts), all the players don a special electronic collar; one person is the "wolf," the others are "sheep." Lock eyes with the wolf and you trade designations. The person who is the wolf after 15 minutes wins the game; the sheep's heads explode. (Yes, the body count for this series is substantial.)
Advertisement Another strength: the many different colorful characters, each with their own compelling back stories—the better to break the viewers' hearts should one of them eventually lose a game. There is a version of the Mad Hatter, known simply as the Hatter (Nobuaki Kaneko), who sets up a collective of survivors dubbed "the Beach," with the aim of cooperating to play enough games to collect all the cards in the deck. (There is an unconfirmed rumor that this is the only way to escape Borderland.) A mysterious figure known as Chishiya (Nijirô Murakami), aka "Cheshire," forms an alliance with Kuina (Aya Asahina), a former clerk in a clothing store with martial arts training, who in turn has a bikini-clad showdown with a katana-wielding tattooed psycho known as the Last Boss (Shuntaro Yanagi). And so forth.
The pacing is relentless, chock-full of unexpected twists and WTF scenes, plus a few well-placed moments of downtime to give viewers a chance to catch their breath now and then. The stakes rise fast, and thanks to the expert plotting, the stakes keep rising all the way through to the finale, which—in time-honored Netflix fashion—wraps up a bunch of narrative threads while setting up a possible second season. The remaining players "level up" to the next stage, but we still have no idea of the identity of the master(s) behind the games.
There's no official word yet on the show's renewal. S1 roughly covered events in the first 31 chapters of the manga; a second season could easily encompass the remaining 33 chapters. Here's hoping Alice in Borderland escapes the streaming giant's brutal, pandemic-driven budget axe, and we get the chance to lose ourselves down this deliciously bonkers rabbit hole once again.
Alice in Borderland is now streaming on Netflix. In Japanese with English subtitles.
In the carefree, pre-pandemic Before Times, escape rooms were all the rage as fun group activities, where people had to solve a puzzle or mystery, or complete a series of tasks, in order to escape. Alice in Borderland, a hugely entertaining new Netflix series from Japan, takes that concept to a whole new level, transforming Tokyo into an alternate dimension called "Borderland." Those trapped therein must compete in deadly games to survive, and escape is by no means guaranteed. This is an emotionally intense, addictive series you'll definitely want to binge.
(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)
As previously reported, the series is based on the Japanese manga by Haro Aso. It has elements of Alice in Wonderland and Ready Player One, with a dash of Lord of the Flies and the 1997 sci-fi horror film, Cube, thrown in for good measure, but it's very much an original vision. The TV adaptation is directed by Shinsuke Sato, best known for 2001's The Princess Blade and last year's Kingdom, and co-written by Haro Aso and Yasuko Kuramitsu. The manga tells the story of Ryōhei Arisu (Arisu can be translated as "Alice"), a bored high schooler who longs for a more exciting life. Arisu's wish is granted during a fireworks celebration: he and his two best friends find themselves in a post-apocalyptic parallel world known as Borderland.
The Netflix adaptation follows the same basic premise, with a few minor tweaks—most notably, the central characters are young adults rather than high schoolers. Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) is "a listless, jobless and video-game-obsessed young man." Karube (Keita Machida) is a bartender who has just been fired for sleeping with the boss's girlfriend, and Chota (Yûki Morinaga) is a bored, mild-mannered office worker. After a mysterious power outage, they suddenly find themselves in an eerie, emptied-out version of Tokyo.
As night falls, neon signs direct them to what turns out to be a gaming "arena." Once they enter the arena, they are issued smartphones that deliver instructions for the game at hand—in this case, a locked-room puzzle in which they must repeatedly guess the correct door to pass from room to room in a building. Guess wrong, and the room will engulf them in flames. They must win the game (i.e., survive) in order to exit, and they do so, thanks to Arisu's quick thinking. But they are still trapped in this strange world, along with many others, and must keep playing games to survive. They do find other allies along the way, most notably a young woman named Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya), a mountain climber with excellent survival skills.
Games are held every night after sundown. Each game comes with a particular playing card. Win the game, and the player is issued a "visa"—a pass wherein they don't have to compete for a certain number of days, corresponding to the number of the card. The four suits are specific categories of games.
Spades are games that require physical strength (Usagi and Karube excel at them), diamonds are games of wit and intelligence (Asiru's specialty), clubs are games where teamwork is required (Chota's forte), and hearts—well, hearts are the cruelest games of all, since they are psychological games that involve emotional manipulation and betrayal. You can win a game of hearts, but that victory will come at a tremendous cost, and it might just break you entirely.
The locked-room game, for instance, corresponds to the 3 of Clubs, so when they win, Asiru and his pals have three days' respite before they have to compete in another deadly game. The penalty for not playing is being zapped into oblivion by a deadly laser beam shooting down from the sky, so let's just say the unwilling participants are highly motivated to comply. There are also "dealers" charged with infiltrating the games for the express purpose of sabotaging them, in exchange for visas.
Much of the pleasure and dramatic tension of Alice in Borderland arises from the sheer sadistic ingenuity of the games. For instance, a twisted game of tag (5 of Spades) gives all the players 20 minutes to find a safe base somewhere within an abandoned apartment building, while avoiding the person designated "It"—whose job is to gun down any player he or she encounters. After 20 minutes, the entire building is rigged to explode. As for Hide and Seek (7 of Hearts), all the players don a special electronic collar; one person is the "wolf," the others are "sheep." Lock eyes with the wolf and you trade designations. The person who is the wolf after 15 minutes wins the game; the sheep's heads explode. (Yes, the body count for this series is substantial.)
Advertisement Another strength: the many different colorful characters, each with their own compelling back stories—the better to break the viewers' hearts should one of them eventually lose a game. There is a version of the Mad Hatter, known simply as the Hatter (Nobuaki Kaneko), who sets up a collective of survivors dubbed "the Beach," with the aim of cooperating to play enough games to collect all the cards in the deck. (There is an unconfirmed rumor that this is the only way to escape Borderland.) A mysterious figure known as Chishiya (Nijirô Murakami), aka "Cheshire," forms an alliance with Kuina (Aya Asahina), a former clerk in a clothing store with martial arts training, who in turn has a bikini-clad showdown with a katana-wielding tattooed psycho known as the Last Boss (Shuntaro Yanagi). And so forth.
The pacing is relentless, chock-full of unexpected twists and WTF scenes, plus a few well-placed moments of downtime to give viewers a chance to catch their breath now and then. The stakes rise fast, and thanks to the expert plotting, the stakes keep rising all the way through to the finale, which—in time-honored Netflix fashion—wraps up a bunch of narrative threads while setting up a possible second season. The remaining players "level up" to the next stage, but we still have no idea of the identity of the master(s) behind the games.
There's no official word yet on the show's renewal. S1 roughly covered events in the first 31 chapters of the manga; a second season could easily encompass the remaining 33 chapters. Here's hoping Alice in Borderland escapes the streaming giant's brutal, pandemic-driven budget axe, and we get the chance to lose ourselves down this deliciously bonkers rabbit hole once again.
Alice in Borderland is now streaming on Netflix. In Japanese with English subtitles.
Sunday, October 10, 2021
What a Fight !!!!
Tyson Fury Vs Deontay Wilder III (Trilogy comes to a conclusion)
Woke up early to watch this fight which was available on Voot Select
Tyson still showed technical superiority . He is remarkable agile for his size and somehow always seems to take the strongest punch from Deontay who has beaten everyone else
The fouth round has to be one for the ages when Tyson got knocked down twice which might have been in retrospect to his benefit as it enabled him the time to recover whereas Deontay simply withstood a ton of damage without going down. My opinion is that Deontay should have taken the knee in multiple instances as it would have helped to recover from his fatigue and probably a better chance of winning a knockout as he was never going to win on points.
This was a back and forth thriller which I enjoyed and could have gone either way. now this trilogy comes to a close it would be interesting to see where Deontay goes from here
Woke up early to watch this fight which was available on Voot Select
Tyson still showed technical superiority . He is remarkable agile for his size and somehow always seems to take the strongest punch from Deontay who has beaten everyone else
The fouth round has to be one for the ages when Tyson got knocked down twice which might have been in retrospect to his benefit as it enabled him the time to recover whereas Deontay simply withstood a ton of damage without going down. My opinion is that Deontay should have taken the knee in multiple instances as it would have helped to recover from his fatigue and probably a better chance of winning a knockout as he was never going to win on points.
This was a back and forth thriller which I enjoyed and could have gone either way. now this trilogy comes to a close it would be interesting to see where Deontay goes from here
Tuesday, October 05, 2021
Midnight Mass : Mike Flanagan does it gain
By Jennifer Bisset on CNET
Midnight Mass review: Very different than The Haunting of Hill House
Mike Flanagan's latest Netflix series is existential horror at its most searing and complex. Just don't expect another entrancing ghost story.
If you're looking for another beautiful, melancholy horror like Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor, you might find creator Mike Flanagan's latest series a little disappointing.
Granted, Midnight Mass is separate from The Haunting anthology. Ghosts, in the traditional sense, aren't loitering around houses here. Still, it has plenty of echoes of The Haunting tales, exploring guilt, grief and suffering via the medium of horror.
Get the CNET Culture newsletter Explore movies, games, superheroes and more with CNET Culture. Delivered Tuesdays and Fridays. Yet, Midnight Mass also has a clear agenda. In searing fashion, it wants to dissect faith, from its ancient traditions to the darker aspects that terrify. Midnight Mass is a series that pools in conversation after deep conversation, debating just about every facet of devoting oneself to a higher power. It's a risky preoccupation. While handled intelligently, it might feel overdone for some.
And yet, Midnight Mass pulls you along. Its simmering pot of small-town tensions and clashing beliefs lights the fuse to an explosive resolution. Its mystery is satisfyingly unpredictable. More to the point, it delivers the monsters to keep us up at night, supernatural and otherwise.
Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) takes our focus for the most part. A man who, in the opening scene, commits the act that will haunt him for the rest of his life. He returns to his hometown on the isolated and decaying Crockett Island where, looking at the world through a scientific lens, he's now a far cry from the devout altar boy who once served in the local church.
He isn't the only recent returnee. Erin Greene (Kate Siegel), a childhood friend and potential love interest, also had a stint on the mainland. Now divorced and pregnant, she's more than willing to have her faith rekindled.
The island is crawling with residents stalked by their own personal demons. It's easy then for mysterious new priest Father Paul (a staggeringly good Hamish Linklater) to entrance everyone with his miraculous... well, miracles. His rhythmically-pleasing speeches are hypnotic. The townspeople eat whatever is served in the palm of his hand.
When they come, the moments of horror are exceptional. Whether you like your scares more tension-laden or action-packed, it doesn't matter. Midnight Mass delivers both. A wide brim hat has never been so chilling, defining another folklore creature into which Flanagan has injected fresh life.
Everything visual is finely tuned. Flanagan's signature camera tilts, long continuous shots, figures looming in darkened doorways and bloody manifestations are ready to unsettle. This time, unlike his lighter involvement with The Haunting of Bly Manor, Flanagan stamps just about every department of production, including co-writing and directing all the episodes.
The story of Crockett Island also brings a personal connection. Raised Catholic, Flanagan served as an altar boy on Governors Island in New York. That depth is felt. The detail to which he connects supernatural ideas with the Bible is on another level. Riley's arguments with Father Paul are extensive, passionate and reasoned on both sides.
Across seven hour-long episodes, terror escalates until the moment of no return arrives. Your heart sinks as you realize the people you've gradually begun to care for are all but doomed.
But it's here, when chaos descends, that any subtlety established in the first half cuts out. Don't expect another moving Newton Brothers' score either. Where The Haunting anthology enveloped you in cresting waves of piano, here it's eerie hymns that, while fitting, don't have the same core-filling effect.
A large cast shares screen time, leaving some relationships, including the main pairing, feeling a shade underdeveloped. Kate Seigel, Carla Gugino (in a tiny part at the beginning), Henry Thomas, Rahul Kohli and more familiar faces from The Haunting anthology have new roles (with less noticeable accents). Samantha Sloyan is a stand-out new addition as the priest's demanding assistant.
It might not be a focused family drama or a story about repressed love, but Midnight Mass is more than an indictment of religious extremism. It resonates because Flanagan ties everything to a meditation on life and death. The fears people struggle with, their differing interpretations of life's purpose, what they think happens when we die. They're discussed in the most dream-like and poetic moments, tucking us in for an existential night.
Maybe it won't emotionally devastate you in the same way as The Haunting shows, but Midnight Mass is exquisite. Its slow-burning mystery meticulously ensures we descend into the depths of hell. It feels like the series Flanagan has been waiting to make. The auteur, working at the best of his game, jolting us awake in more ways than one.
On a personal note I found Hamish Linklater to be the best thing about this very short anthology and all of his monologues were delivered with intent and clarity which is quite rare for a preaching performance......
Midnight Mass review: Very different than The Haunting of Hill House
Mike Flanagan's latest Netflix series is existential horror at its most searing and complex. Just don't expect another entrancing ghost story.
If you're looking for another beautiful, melancholy horror like Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor, you might find creator Mike Flanagan's latest series a little disappointing.
Granted, Midnight Mass is separate from The Haunting anthology. Ghosts, in the traditional sense, aren't loitering around houses here. Still, it has plenty of echoes of The Haunting tales, exploring guilt, grief and suffering via the medium of horror.
Get the CNET Culture newsletter Explore movies, games, superheroes and more with CNET Culture. Delivered Tuesdays and Fridays. Yet, Midnight Mass also has a clear agenda. In searing fashion, it wants to dissect faith, from its ancient traditions to the darker aspects that terrify. Midnight Mass is a series that pools in conversation after deep conversation, debating just about every facet of devoting oneself to a higher power. It's a risky preoccupation. While handled intelligently, it might feel overdone for some.
And yet, Midnight Mass pulls you along. Its simmering pot of small-town tensions and clashing beliefs lights the fuse to an explosive resolution. Its mystery is satisfyingly unpredictable. More to the point, it delivers the monsters to keep us up at night, supernatural and otherwise.
Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) takes our focus for the most part. A man who, in the opening scene, commits the act that will haunt him for the rest of his life. He returns to his hometown on the isolated and decaying Crockett Island where, looking at the world through a scientific lens, he's now a far cry from the devout altar boy who once served in the local church.
He isn't the only recent returnee. Erin Greene (Kate Siegel), a childhood friend and potential love interest, also had a stint on the mainland. Now divorced and pregnant, she's more than willing to have her faith rekindled.
The island is crawling with residents stalked by their own personal demons. It's easy then for mysterious new priest Father Paul (a staggeringly good Hamish Linklater) to entrance everyone with his miraculous... well, miracles. His rhythmically-pleasing speeches are hypnotic. The townspeople eat whatever is served in the palm of his hand.
When they come, the moments of horror are exceptional. Whether you like your scares more tension-laden or action-packed, it doesn't matter. Midnight Mass delivers both. A wide brim hat has never been so chilling, defining another folklore creature into which Flanagan has injected fresh life.
Everything visual is finely tuned. Flanagan's signature camera tilts, long continuous shots, figures looming in darkened doorways and bloody manifestations are ready to unsettle. This time, unlike his lighter involvement with The Haunting of Bly Manor, Flanagan stamps just about every department of production, including co-writing and directing all the episodes.
The story of Crockett Island also brings a personal connection. Raised Catholic, Flanagan served as an altar boy on Governors Island in New York. That depth is felt. The detail to which he connects supernatural ideas with the Bible is on another level. Riley's arguments with Father Paul are extensive, passionate and reasoned on both sides.
Across seven hour-long episodes, terror escalates until the moment of no return arrives. Your heart sinks as you realize the people you've gradually begun to care for are all but doomed.
But it's here, when chaos descends, that any subtlety established in the first half cuts out. Don't expect another moving Newton Brothers' score either. Where The Haunting anthology enveloped you in cresting waves of piano, here it's eerie hymns that, while fitting, don't have the same core-filling effect.
A large cast shares screen time, leaving some relationships, including the main pairing, feeling a shade underdeveloped. Kate Seigel, Carla Gugino (in a tiny part at the beginning), Henry Thomas, Rahul Kohli and more familiar faces from The Haunting anthology have new roles (with less noticeable accents). Samantha Sloyan is a stand-out new addition as the priest's demanding assistant.
It might not be a focused family drama or a story about repressed love, but Midnight Mass is more than an indictment of religious extremism. It resonates because Flanagan ties everything to a meditation on life and death. The fears people struggle with, their differing interpretations of life's purpose, what they think happens when we die. They're discussed in the most dream-like and poetic moments, tucking us in for an existential night.
Maybe it won't emotionally devastate you in the same way as The Haunting shows, but Midnight Mass is exquisite. Its slow-burning mystery meticulously ensures we descend into the depths of hell. It feels like the series Flanagan has been waiting to make. The auteur, working at the best of his game, jolting us awake in more ways than one.
On a personal note I found Hamish Linklater to be the best thing about this very short anthology and all of his monologues were delivered with intent and clarity which is quite rare for a preaching performance......
Saturday, October 02, 2021
Why are Indians getting shorter ?
Around the world, people are getting taller – so why are Indian heights on the decline? New data shows that Indian men are shorter now than they were a decade ago. So are large numbers of women.
Umang Poddar
Sep 30, 2021 · 06:30 am
A new paper published on September 17 says that while the average height of people across the world is increasing, the average height of Indians is actually falling.
The paper examines the trends in the heights of Indian men and women between the age groups of 15-25 and 26-50 based on the National Family and Health Surveys – and concludes that India’s indicators are actually getting worse.
This is a worrying situation. Height is one of the most basic indicators of nutrition as well as public health and is directly linked to a country’s standard of living. It also reflects social and economic factors such as income and caste. Thus a fall in average heights indicates India is regressing on public health as well as economic goals.
“We believe, in the context of an overall increase in average heights worldwide the decline in average height of adults in India is alarming and demands an urgent enquiry,” write the authors of the paper.
Losing stature
The study, titled “Trends of adult height in India from 1998 to 2015: Evidence from the National Family and Health Survey”, by Krishna Kumar Choudhary, Sayan Das, and Prachinkumar Ghodajkar from the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University compared data from three NFHS rounds – NFHS-II (1998–’99), III (2005–’06), IV (2015–’16) – to look at changes in height over the years.
NFHS is carried out by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and is one of the foremost Indian sources to study public health and evaluate existing policies. The survey is representative of households across India at both the state and the national level. The latest NFHS-V survey (2019-’20) was conducted across 6 lakh households.
The researchers found out that between NFHS-III (2005-’06) and NFHS-IV (2015-’16), Indians in the 15-50 age bracket – with the exception of women between the ages 26-50 – have experienced a decline in their average height.
Women between 15-25 saw a decline in their mean height by 0.12 cm, while women between 26-50 showed an improvement by 0.13 cm. During the same period, men between 15-25 saw a decline of 1.10 cm in their mean height and those between 26-50 years had a decline of 0.86 cm.
Distribution of mean height of men according to the age. Source: Trends of adult height in India from 1998 to 2015: Evidence from the National Family and Health Survey. The paper brings out a troubling mismatch between economic growth and public health. Between NFHS-II and NFHS-III, women between the ages of 15-25 saw their average height increase by 0.84 cm. However, the average age of this group saw a decline between NFHS-III and NFHS-IV. This is notable since in NFHS-IV, this group corresponds to a generation born right after India’s liberalisation, characterised by high economic growth.
Notably, disadvantaged groups have been especially impacted by this trend. For women in the ages 15-25, between NFHS-III and NFHS-IV, the average height of tribal women saw a decline of 0.42 cm while women from the poorest wealth fell by 0.63 cm. This is significantly worse than the average decline for the entire age group (0.12 cm).
Distribution of mean height of women according to the age. Source: Trends of adult height in India from 1998 to 2015: Evidence from the National Family and Health Survey. In the age group of 26-50, women from the poorest wealth category saw a significant decline in their average height – 0.57 cm – while women from the middle, richer and richest wealth categories saw their average heights improve. Women from urban areas saw their average heights improve by 0.20 cm while rural women only saw an increase of 0.06 cm.
Men between the age groups of 26-50 from urban areas saw the sharpest decline in average height, with the highest fall being 2.04 cm in Karnataka.
Why it matters
While height is influenced by genetics, non-genetic factors such as nutrition and environment play a significant role as well. Variables such as household characteristics (such as number of siblings and class) and caste have a bearing on an individual’s nutrition and growth. Height is also highly correlated with wealth. People from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes communities are, on average, shorter than those belonging to Other Backward Class and Upper Castes.
Thus, a person’s height is a marker of physical well-being and standard of living. Studying height could therefore lead to a better understanding of the impact of health policies.
Height, in turn, is also linked to productivity. According to World Bank estimates, a 1% loss in adult height due to childhood stunting can lead to a 1.4% loss in economic productivity. According to a study by industry body Assocham and consultancy firm EY, India loses around 4% of its gross domestic product every year due to its citizens being malnourished.
Malnutrition is one of the gravest problems India faces currently. Credit: Reinhard Krause/Reuters Studying average height will also help us know the results of our nutritional policies better. For instance, a study cited in the paper says that mid-day meals have lowered the rates of stunting in children.
Given the importance of height in measuring public health, the results of the study are worrying. This is especially so when the average height of humans worldwide is increasing.
India’s public health situation
India has had a history of faring poorly on health metrics. Currently, it is 94 out of 107 countries, as per the 2020 Global Hunger Index. It has one-third of the world’s stunted children. It also has the most number of children who are underweight according to their height.
To make matters even more troubling, public health indicators seem to be getting worse. As per NHFS-V (2019-’20), which has released its phase-1 data from 22 states and Union Territories, child nutrition levels have further worsened since NHFS-IV (the dataset used by this paper). This could also mean an increase in child stunting, which would be the first time this has happened in twenty years. In the past four years, seven out of ten major states saw an increase in the number of underweight children.
In addition, the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 has impacted public health severely. A survey conducted by Jean Drèze and Anmol Somanchi showed that 53%-77% respondents were eating less during the pandemic than the period before. Further, data from the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy shows a sharp decline in the consumption of nutrient and protein rich food, across all income groups, during the pandemic.
Sep 30, 2021 · 06:30 am
A new paper published on September 17 says that while the average height of people across the world is increasing, the average height of Indians is actually falling.
The paper examines the trends in the heights of Indian men and women between the age groups of 15-25 and 26-50 based on the National Family and Health Surveys – and concludes that India’s indicators are actually getting worse.
This is a worrying situation. Height is one of the most basic indicators of nutrition as well as public health and is directly linked to a country’s standard of living. It also reflects social and economic factors such as income and caste. Thus a fall in average heights indicates India is regressing on public health as well as economic goals.
“We believe, in the context of an overall increase in average heights worldwide the decline in average height of adults in India is alarming and demands an urgent enquiry,” write the authors of the paper.
Losing stature
The study, titled “Trends of adult height in India from 1998 to 2015: Evidence from the National Family and Health Survey”, by Krishna Kumar Choudhary, Sayan Das, and Prachinkumar Ghodajkar from the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University compared data from three NFHS rounds – NFHS-II (1998–’99), III (2005–’06), IV (2015–’16) – to look at changes in height over the years.
NFHS is carried out by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and is one of the foremost Indian sources to study public health and evaluate existing policies. The survey is representative of households across India at both the state and the national level. The latest NFHS-V survey (2019-’20) was conducted across 6 lakh households.
The researchers found out that between NFHS-III (2005-’06) and NFHS-IV (2015-’16), Indians in the 15-50 age bracket – with the exception of women between the ages 26-50 – have experienced a decline in their average height.
Women between 15-25 saw a decline in their mean height by 0.12 cm, while women between 26-50 showed an improvement by 0.13 cm. During the same period, men between 15-25 saw a decline of 1.10 cm in their mean height and those between 26-50 years had a decline of 0.86 cm.
Distribution of mean height of men according to the age. Source: Trends of adult height in India from 1998 to 2015: Evidence from the National Family and Health Survey. The paper brings out a troubling mismatch between economic growth and public health. Between NFHS-II and NFHS-III, women between the ages of 15-25 saw their average height increase by 0.84 cm. However, the average age of this group saw a decline between NFHS-III and NFHS-IV. This is notable since in NFHS-IV, this group corresponds to a generation born right after India’s liberalisation, characterised by high economic growth.
Notably, disadvantaged groups have been especially impacted by this trend. For women in the ages 15-25, between NFHS-III and NFHS-IV, the average height of tribal women saw a decline of 0.42 cm while women from the poorest wealth fell by 0.63 cm. This is significantly worse than the average decline for the entire age group (0.12 cm).
Distribution of mean height of women according to the age. Source: Trends of adult height in India from 1998 to 2015: Evidence from the National Family and Health Survey. In the age group of 26-50, women from the poorest wealth category saw a significant decline in their average height – 0.57 cm – while women from the middle, richer and richest wealth categories saw their average heights improve. Women from urban areas saw their average heights improve by 0.20 cm while rural women only saw an increase of 0.06 cm.
Men between the age groups of 26-50 from urban areas saw the sharpest decline in average height, with the highest fall being 2.04 cm in Karnataka.
Why it matters
While height is influenced by genetics, non-genetic factors such as nutrition and environment play a significant role as well. Variables such as household characteristics (such as number of siblings and class) and caste have a bearing on an individual’s nutrition and growth. Height is also highly correlated with wealth. People from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes communities are, on average, shorter than those belonging to Other Backward Class and Upper Castes.
Thus, a person’s height is a marker of physical well-being and standard of living. Studying height could therefore lead to a better understanding of the impact of health policies.
Height, in turn, is also linked to productivity. According to World Bank estimates, a 1% loss in adult height due to childhood stunting can lead to a 1.4% loss in economic productivity. According to a study by industry body Assocham and consultancy firm EY, India loses around 4% of its gross domestic product every year due to its citizens being malnourished.
Malnutrition is one of the gravest problems India faces currently. Credit: Reinhard Krause/Reuters Studying average height will also help us know the results of our nutritional policies better. For instance, a study cited in the paper says that mid-day meals have lowered the rates of stunting in children.
Given the importance of height in measuring public health, the results of the study are worrying. This is especially so when the average height of humans worldwide is increasing.
India’s public health situation
India has had a history of faring poorly on health metrics. Currently, it is 94 out of 107 countries, as per the 2020 Global Hunger Index. It has one-third of the world’s stunted children. It also has the most number of children who are underweight according to their height.
To make matters even more troubling, public health indicators seem to be getting worse. As per NHFS-V (2019-’20), which has released its phase-1 data from 22 states and Union Territories, child nutrition levels have further worsened since NHFS-IV (the dataset used by this paper). This could also mean an increase in child stunting, which would be the first time this has happened in twenty years. In the past four years, seven out of ten major states saw an increase in the number of underweight children.
In addition, the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 has impacted public health severely. A survey conducted by Jean Drèze and Anmol Somanchi showed that 53%-77% respondents were eating less during the pandemic than the period before. Further, data from the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy shows a sharp decline in the consumption of nutrient and protein rich food, across all income groups, during the pandemic.
Why Covid killed the 4 day work week
A four-day work week is better for workers, business and society. Yet, COVID-19 has made it more elusive than ever. The companies that can buck this trend may just come out ahead as countries emerge from the pandemic.
The push for a four-day work week has been gaining momentum in the western world. A think tank released a study in June 2021 of Icelandic experiences of a shorter work week. It showed that workers were happier and more productive with a four-day work week, and costs did not increase for their companies.
A shorter work week seems to be better for everyone, but it is being stalled by COVID-19. Remote workers have been working more, not less, during the pandemic.
Why Working Less is Better for You, Your Organization, and Your Community
When Reykjavik’s municipal government and a trade union confederation reduced work hours from 40 to 35-36 for more than 2,500 staff, a study found that their workers “enjoyed greater well-being, improved work-life balance and a better cooperative spirit in the workplace — all while maintaining existing standards of performance and productivity.”
The Japanese government has suggested that shorter working hours also have a positive impact on society. People can spend more time with their family and friends, which builds stronger, more cohesive communities.
Yoshihide Suga recommended in late June 2021 that Japanese companies give their workers the option of a four-day work week to help Japanese people achieve a better work-life balance. The government is hoping that this will make it easier for companies to retain better workers. They also assume that people will spend more money during their time off, which will stimulate the stagnant economy, and spend more time with their families, which will help revive a declining birth rate and ease the high health care costs of an aging population.
Evidence of Remote Workers Working Harder During the Pandemic
The reality these days is that people are working more – sometimes a lot more – than they were before the pandemic.
The Guardian reported that a study by Wildgoose found that 44% of U.K. employees (assuming most are professional remote workers) were expected to work more. The Guardian added that another study found that people were logged into their company’s VPN network for longer stretches of time, increasing from eight or nine hours to 11 hours in the U.S., U.K., and Canada.
Another study by the Pew Research Centre showed that of the people who can work from home, more than twice as many are working more hours after the onset of the pandemic than those who say they are working fewer hours.
In an analysis of the first and last email communications sent in a day by more than 3 million people in 21,000 firms in cities with government-mandated lockdowns, the National Bureau of Economic Research found the workday had extended by 48.5 minutes on average. There was also an increase of 8.3% in the number of emails sent after business hours.
Working Harder, But Not More Productively
The pandemic has made people seemingly more efficient, as they can spend more time actually working, rather than commuting. But this means days are packed with meetings with clients, stakeholders, and colleagues from around the world. Work days are not only longer, but more intense. And, because communications technologies do not turn off, people find themselves working at all hours.
What’s more, remote workers are trying to manage this more demanding work day while also managing a busier home life. Those with small children are having to not only manage their own days, but their children’s home schooling as well. The lines between home and work are blurred.
In Spite of the Trend, Some Companies are Pushing for a Shorter Work Week
Some companies are still looking to capitalize on the opportunity to recruit better employees, improve employee health, and contribute to a better society.
Kickstarter is piloting a four-day workweek starting in 2022. The company’s CEO, Aziz Hasan, said in an article that: “This decision stems from [their] belief that everyone who works for Kickstarter should have the ability to help propel the company forward while also pursuing their own creative projects, spending time with loved ones, and engaging with communities and causes that are important to them.” He even links to a website that is petitioning for a four-day workweek.
Hasan acknowledges that he is not sure how the business will run with people working fewer hours, but he is willing to experiment. We should all watch closely to see if Kickstarter will succeed where most companies have failed.
The push for a four-day work week has been gaining momentum in the western world. A think tank released a study in June 2021 of Icelandic experiences of a shorter work week. It showed that workers were happier and more productive with a four-day work week, and costs did not increase for their companies.
A shorter work week seems to be better for everyone, but it is being stalled by COVID-19. Remote workers have been working more, not less, during the pandemic.
Why Working Less is Better for You, Your Organization, and Your Community
When Reykjavik’s municipal government and a trade union confederation reduced work hours from 40 to 35-36 for more than 2,500 staff, a study found that their workers “enjoyed greater well-being, improved work-life balance and a better cooperative spirit in the workplace — all while maintaining existing standards of performance and productivity.”
The Japanese government has suggested that shorter working hours also have a positive impact on society. People can spend more time with their family and friends, which builds stronger, more cohesive communities.
Yoshihide Suga recommended in late June 2021 that Japanese companies give their workers the option of a four-day work week to help Japanese people achieve a better work-life balance. The government is hoping that this will make it easier for companies to retain better workers. They also assume that people will spend more money during their time off, which will stimulate the stagnant economy, and spend more time with their families, which will help revive a declining birth rate and ease the high health care costs of an aging population.
Evidence of Remote Workers Working Harder During the Pandemic
The reality these days is that people are working more – sometimes a lot more – than they were before the pandemic.
The Guardian reported that a study by Wildgoose found that 44% of U.K. employees (assuming most are professional remote workers) were expected to work more. The Guardian added that another study found that people were logged into their company’s VPN network for longer stretches of time, increasing from eight or nine hours to 11 hours in the U.S., U.K., and Canada.
Another study by the Pew Research Centre showed that of the people who can work from home, more than twice as many are working more hours after the onset of the pandemic than those who say they are working fewer hours.
In an analysis of the first and last email communications sent in a day by more than 3 million people in 21,000 firms in cities with government-mandated lockdowns, the National Bureau of Economic Research found the workday had extended by 48.5 minutes on average. There was also an increase of 8.3% in the number of emails sent after business hours.
Working Harder, But Not More Productively
The pandemic has made people seemingly more efficient, as they can spend more time actually working, rather than commuting. But this means days are packed with meetings with clients, stakeholders, and colleagues from around the world. Work days are not only longer, but more intense. And, because communications technologies do not turn off, people find themselves working at all hours.
What’s more, remote workers are trying to manage this more demanding work day while also managing a busier home life. Those with small children are having to not only manage their own days, but their children’s home schooling as well. The lines between home and work are blurred.
In Spite of the Trend, Some Companies are Pushing for a Shorter Work Week
Some companies are still looking to capitalize on the opportunity to recruit better employees, improve employee health, and contribute to a better society.
Kickstarter is piloting a four-day workweek starting in 2022. The company’s CEO, Aziz Hasan, said in an article that: “This decision stems from [their] belief that everyone who works for Kickstarter should have the ability to help propel the company forward while also pursuing their own creative projects, spending time with loved ones, and engaging with communities and causes that are important to them.” He even links to a website that is petitioning for a four-day workweek.
Hasan acknowledges that he is not sure how the business will run with people working fewer hours, but he is willing to experiment. We should all watch closely to see if Kickstarter will succeed where most companies have failed.
Saturday, September 25, 2021
Vaccinating people who have had Covid 19: Why doesn't natural immunity count in the US ?
The US CDC estimates that SARS-CoV-2 has infected more than 100 million Americans, and evidence is mounting that natural immunity is at least as protective as vaccination. Yet public health leadership says everyone needs the vaccine. Jennifer Block investigates
When the vaccine rollout began in mid-December 2020, more than one quarter of Americans—91 million—had been infected with SARS-CoV-2, according to a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate.1 As of this May, that proportion had risen to more than a third of the population, including 44% of adults aged 18-59 (table 1)
The substantial number of infections, coupled with the increasing scientific evidence that natural immunity was durable, led some medical observers to ask why natural immunity didn’t seem to be factored into decisions about prioritising vaccination.234
“The CDC could say [to people who had recovered], very well grounded in excellent data, that you should wait 8 months,” Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at University of California San Francisco, told Medpage Today in January. She suggested authorities ask people to “please wait your turn.”4
Others, such as Icahn School of Medicine virologist and researcher Florian Krammer, argued for one dose in those who had recovered. “This would also spare individuals from unnecessary pain when getting the second dose and it would free up additional vaccine doses,” he told the New York Times.5
“Many of us were saying let’s use [the vaccine] to save lives, not to vaccinate people already immune,” says Marty Makary, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University.
Still, the CDC instructed everyone, regardless of previous infection, to get fully vaccinated as soon as they were eligible: natural immunity “varies from person to person” and “experts do not yet know how long someone is protected,” the agency stated on its website in January.6 By June, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 57% of those previously infected got vaccinated.7
As more US employers, local governments, and educational institutions issue vaccine mandates that make no exception for those who have had covid-19,8 questions remain about the science and ethics of treating this group of people as equally vulnerable to the virus—or as equally threatening to those vulnerable to covid-19—and to what extent politics has played a role.
The evidence
“Starting from back in November, we’ve had a lot of really important studies that showed us that memory B cells and memory T cells were forming in response to natural infection,” says Gandhi. Studies are also showing, she says, that these memory cells will respond by producing antibodies to the variants at hand.91011
Gandhi included a list of some 20 references on natural immunity to covid in a long Twitter thread supporting the durability of both vaccine and infection induced immunity.12 “I stopped adding papers to it in December because it was getting so long,” she tells The BMJ.
But the studies kept coming. A National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded study from La Jolla Institute for Immunology found “durable immune responses” in 95% of the 200 participants up to eight months after infection.13 One of the largest studies to date, published in Science in February 2021, found that although antibodies declined over 8 months, memory B cells increased over time, and the half life of memory CD8+ and CD4+ T cells suggests a steady presence.9
Real world data have also been supportive.14 Several studies (in Qatar,15 England,16 Israel,17 and the US18) have found infection rates at equally low levels among people who are fully vaccinated and those who have previously had covid-19. Cleveland Clinic surveyed its more than 50 000 employees to compare four groups based on history of SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination status.18 Not one of over 1300 unvaccinated employees who had been previously infected tested positive during the five months of the study. Researchers concluded that that cohort “are unlikely to benefit from covid-19 vaccination.” In Israel, researchers accessed a database of the entire population to compare the efficacy of vaccination with previous infection and found nearly identical numbers. “Our results question the need to vaccinate previously infected individuals,” they concluded.17
As covid cases surged in Israel this summer, the Ministry of Health reported the numbers by immunity status. Between 5 July and 3 August, just 1% of weekly new cases were in people who had previously had covid-19. Given that 6% of the population are previously infected and unvaccinated, “these numbers look very low,” says Dvir Aran, a biomedical data scientist at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, who has been analysing Israeli data on vaccine effectiveness and provided weekly ministry reports to The BMJ. While Aran is cautious about drawing definitive conclusions, he acknowledged “the data suggest that the recovered have better protection than people who were vaccinated.”
But as the delta variant and rising case counts have the US on edge, renewed vaccination incentives and mandates apply regardless of infection history.8 To attend Harvard University or a Foo Fighters concert or enter indoor venues in San Francisco and New York City, you need proof of vaccination. The ire being directed at people who are unvaccinated is also indiscriminate—and emanating from America’s highest office. In a recent speech to federal intelligence employees who, along with all federal workers, will be required to get vaccinated or submit to regular testing, President Biden left no room for those questioning the public health necessity or personal benefit of vaccinating people who have had covid-19: “We have a pandemic because of the unvaccinated ... So, get vaccinated. If you haven’t, you’re not nearly as smart as I said you were.”
Staying firm
Other countries do give past infection some immunological currency. Israel recommends that people who have had covid-19 wait three months before getting one mRNA vaccine dose and offers a “green pass” (vaccine passport) to those with a positive serological result regardless of vaccination.19 In the European Union, people are eligible for an EU digital covid certificate after a single dose of an mRNA vaccine if they have had a positive test result within the past six months, allowing travel between 27 EU member states.20 In the UK, people with a positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test result can obtain the NHS covid pass up until 180 days after infection.21
Although it’s too soon to say whether these systems are working smoothly or mitigating spread, the US has no category for people who have been infected. The CDC still recommends a full vaccination dose for all, which is now being mirrored in mandates. A spokesperson told The BMJ that “the immune response from vaccination is more predictable” and that based on current evidence, antibody responses after infection “vary widely by individual,” though studies are ongoing to “learn how much protection antibodies from infection may provide and how long that protection lasts.”
In June, Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which regulates vaccines, went a step further and stated: “We do know that the immunity after vaccination is better than the immunity after natural infection.” In an email, an FDA spokesperson said Marks’s comment was based on a laboratory study of the binding breadth of Moderna vaccine induced antibodies.22 The research did not measure any clinical outcomes. Marks added, referring to antibodies, that “generally the immunity after natural infection tends to wane after about 90 days.”23
“It appears from the literature that natural infection provides immunity, but that immunity is seemingly not as strong and may not be as long lasting as that provided by the vaccine,” Alfred Sommer, dean emeritus of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health tells The BMJ.
But not everyone agrees with this interpretation. “The data we have right now suggests that there probably isn’t a whole lot of difference” in terms of immunity to the spike protein, says Matthew Memoli, director of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases Clinical Studies at the NIH, who spoke to The BMJ in a personal capacity.
Memoli highlights real world data such as the Cleveland Clinic study18 and points out that while “vaccines are focused on only that tiny portion of immunity that can be induced” by the spike, someone who has had covid-19 was exposed to the whole virus, “which would likely offer a broader based immunity” that would be more protective against variants. The laboratory study offered by the FDA22 “only has to do with very specific antibodies to a very specific region of the virus [the spike],” says Memoli. “Claiming this as data supporting that vaccines are better than natural immunity is shortsighted and demonstrates a lack of understanding of the complexity of immunity to respiratory viruses.”
Antibodies
Much of the debate pivots on the importance of sustained antibody protection. In April, Anthony Fauci told US radio host Maria Hinajosa that people who have had covid-19 (including Hinajosa) still need to be “boosted” by vaccination because “your antibodies will go sky high.”
“That’s still what we’re hearing from Dr Fauci—he’s a strong believer that higher antibody titres are going to be more protective against the variants,” says Jeffrey Klausner, a clinical professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California and former CDC medical officer, who has spoken out in favour of treating prior infection as equivalent to vaccination, with “the same societal status.”3 Klausner conducted a systematic review of 10 studies on reinfection and concluded that the “protective effect” of a previous infection “is high and similar to the protective effect of vaccination.”
In vaccine trials, antibodies are higher in participants who were seropositive at baseline than in those who were seronegative.24 However, Memoli questions the importance: “We don’t know that that means it’s better protection.”
Former CDC director Tom Frieden, a proponent of universal vaccination, echoes that uncertainty: “We don’t know that antibody level is what determines protection.”
Gandhi and others have been urging reporters away from antibodies as the defining metric of immunity. “It is accurate that your antibodies will go down” after natural infection, she says—that’s how the immune system works. If antibodies didn’t clear from our bloodstream after we recover from a respiratory infection, “our blood would be thick as molasses.”
“The real memory in our immune system resides in the [T and B] cells, not in the antibodies themselves,” says Patrick Whelan, a paediatric rheumatologist at University of California, Los Angeles. He points out that his sickest covid-19 patients in intensive care, including children with multisystem inflammatory syndrome, have “had loads of antibodies ... So the question is, why didn’t they protect them?”
Antonio Bertoletti, a professor of infectious disease at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, has conducted research that indicates T cells may be more important than antibodies. Comparing the T cell response in people with symptomatic versus asymptomatic covid-19, Bertoletti’s team found them to be identical, suggesting that the severity of infection does not predict strength of resulting immunity and that people with asymptomatic infections “mount a highly functional virus specific cellular immune response.”25
Already complicated rollout
While some argue that the pandemic strategy should not be “one size fits all,” and that natural immunity should count, other public health experts say universal vaccination is a more quantifiable, predictable, reliable, and feasible way to protect the population.
Frieden told The BMJ that the question of leveraging natural immunity is a “reasonable discussion,” one he had raised informally with the CDC at start of rollout. “I thought from a rational standpoint, with limited vaccine available, why don’t you have the option” for people with previous infection to defer until there was more supply, he says. “I think that would have been a rational policy. It would have also made rollout, which was already too complicated, even more complicated.”
Most infections were never diagnosed, Frieden points out, and many people may have assumed they had been infected when they hadn’t. Add to that false positive results, he says. Had the CDC given different directives and vaccine schedules based on prior infection, it “wouldn’t have done much good and might have done some harm.”
Klausner, who is also a medical director of a US testing and vaccine distribution company, says he initiated conversations about offering a fingerprick antibody screen for people with suspected exposure before vaccination, so that doses could be used more judiciously. But “everyone concluded it was just too complicated.”
“It’s a lot easier to put a shot in their arm,” says Sommer. “To do a PCR test or to do an antibody test and then to process it and then to get the information to them and then to let them think about it—it’s a lot easier to just give them the damn vaccine.” In public health, “the primary objective is to protect as many people as you can,” he says. “It’s called collective insurance, and I think it’s irresponsible from a public health perspective to let people pick and choose what they want to do.”
But Klausner, Gandhi, and others raise the question of fairness for the millions of Americans who already have records of positive covid test results—the basis for “recovered” status in Europe—and equity for those at risk who are waiting to get their first dose (an argument being raised anew as US officials announce boosters while the virus spreads in countries lacking vaccine supply). For people who did not have a confirmed positive result but suspected previous infection, reliable antibody tests have been accessible “at least since April,” according to Klausner, though in May, the FDA announced that “antibody tests should not be used to evaluate a person’s level of immunity or protection from covid-19 at any time.”26
Unlike Europe, the US doesn’t have a national certificate or vaccination requirement, so defenders of natural immunity have simply advocated for more targeted recommendations and screening availability—and that mandates allow for exemptions. Logistics aside, a recognition of existing immunity would have fundamentally changed the target vaccination calculations and would also affect the calculations on boosters. “As we continued to put effort into vaccination and set targets, it became apparent to me that people were forgetting that herd immunity is formed by both natural immunity and vaccine immunity,” says Klausner.
Gandhi thinks logistics is only part of the story. “There’s a very clear message out there that ‘OK, well natural infection does cause immunity but it’s still better to get vaccinated,’ and that message is not based on data,” says Gandhi. “There’s something political going on around that.”
Politics of natural immunity
Early in the pandemic, the question of natural immunity was on the mind of Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania and senior fellow at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, who later became a covid adviser to President Biden. He emailed Fauci before dawn on 4 March 2020. Within a few hours, Fauci wrote back: “you would assume that their [sic] would be substantial immunity post infection.”27
That was before natural immunity started to be promoted by Republic politicians. In May 2020, Kentucky senator and physician Rand Paul asserted that since he already had the virus, he didn’t need to wear a mask. He has been the most vocal since, arguing that his immunity exempted him from vaccination. Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson and Kentucky representative Thomas Massie have also spoken out. And then there was President Trump, who tweeted last October that his recovery from covid-19 rendered him “immune” (which Twitter labelled “misleading and potentially harmful information”).
Another polarising factor may have been the Great Barrington declaration of October 2020, which argued for a less restrictive pandemic strategy that would help build herd immunity through natural infections in people at minimal risk.28 The John Snow memorandum, written in response (with signatories including Rochelle Walensky, who went on to head the CDC), stated “there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection.”29 That statement has a footnote to a study of people who had recovered from covid-19, showing that blood antibody levels wane over time.
More recently, the CDC made headlines with an observational study aiming to characterise the protection a vaccine might give to people with past infections. Comparing 246 Kentuckians who had subsequent reinfections with 492 controls who had not, the CDC concluded that those who were unvaccinated had more than twice the odds of reinfection.30 The study notes the limitation that the vaccinated are “possibly less likely to get tested. Therefore, the association of reinfection and lack of vaccination might be overestimated.” In announcing the study, Walensky stated: “If you have had covid-19 before, please still get vaccinated.”31
“If you listen to the language of our public health officials, they talk about the vaccinated and the unvaccinated,” Makary tells The BMJ. “If we want to be scientific, we should talk about the immune and the non-immune.” There’s a significant portion of the population, Makary says, who are saying, “‘Hey, wait, I’ve had [covid].’ And they’ve been blown off and dismissed.”
Different risk-benefit analysis?
For Frieden, vaccinating people who have already had covid-19 is, ultimately, the most responsible policy right now. “There’s no doubt that natural infection does provide significant immunity for many people, but we’re operating in an environment of imperfect information, and in that environment the precautionary principle applies—better safe than sorry.”
“In public health you are always dealing with some level of unknown,” says Sommer. “But the bottom line is you want to save lives, and you have to do what the present evidence, as weak as it is, suggests is the strongest defence with the least amount of harm.”
But others are less certain.
“If natural immunity is strongly protective, as the evidence to date suggests it is, then vaccinating people who have had covid-19 would seem to offer nothing or very little to benefit, logically leaving only harms—both the harms we already know about as well as those still unknown,” says Christine Stabell Benn, vaccinologist and professor in global health at the University of Southern Denmark. The CDC has acknowledged the small but serious risks of heart inflammation and blood clots after vaccination, especially in younger people. The real risk in vaccinating people who have had covid-19 “is of doing more harm than good,” she says.
A large study in the UK32 and another that surveyed people internationally33 found that people with a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection experienced greater rates of side effects after vaccination. Among 2000 people who completed an online survey after vaccination, those with a history of covid-19 were 56% more likely to experience a severe side effect that required hospital care.33
Patrick Whelan, of UCLA, says the “sky high” antibodies after vaccination in people who were previously infected may have contributed to these systemic side effects. “Most people who were previously ill with covid-19 have antibodies against the spike protein. If they are subsequently vaccinated, those antibodies and the products of the vaccine can form what are called immune complexes,” he explains, which may get deposited in places like the joints, meninges, and even kidneys, creating symptoms.
Other studies suggest that a two dose regimen may be counterproductive.34 One found that in people with past infections, the first dose boosted T cells and antibodies but that the second dose seemed to indicate an “exhaustion,” and in some cases even a deletion, of T cells.34 “I’m not here to say that it’s harmful,” says Bertoletti, who coauthored the study, “but at the moment all the data are telling us that it doesn’t make any sense to give a second vaccination dose in the very short term to someone who was already infected. Their immune response is already very high.”
Despite the extensive global spread of the virus, the previously infected population “hasn’t been studied well as a group,” says Whelan. Memoli says he is also unaware of any studies examining the specific risks of vaccination for that group. Still, the US public health messaging has been firm and consistent: everyone should get a full vaccine dose.
“When the vaccine was rolled out the goal should have been to focus on people at risk, and that should still be the focus,” says Memoli. Such risk stratification may have complicated logistics, but it would also require more nuanced messaging. “A lot of public health people have this notion that if the public is told that there’s even the slightest bit of uncertainty about a vaccine, then they won’t get it,” he says. For Memoli, this reflects a bygone paternalism. “I always think it’s much better to be very clear and honest about what we do and don’t know, what the risks and benefits are, and allow people to make decisions for themselves.”
When the vaccine rollout began in mid-December 2020, more than one quarter of Americans—91 million—had been infected with SARS-CoV-2, according to a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate.1 As of this May, that proportion had risen to more than a third of the population, including 44% of adults aged 18-59 (table 1)
The substantial number of infections, coupled with the increasing scientific evidence that natural immunity was durable, led some medical observers to ask why natural immunity didn’t seem to be factored into decisions about prioritising vaccination.234
“The CDC could say [to people who had recovered], very well grounded in excellent data, that you should wait 8 months,” Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at University of California San Francisco, told Medpage Today in January. She suggested authorities ask people to “please wait your turn.”4
Others, such as Icahn School of Medicine virologist and researcher Florian Krammer, argued for one dose in those who had recovered. “This would also spare individuals from unnecessary pain when getting the second dose and it would free up additional vaccine doses,” he told the New York Times.5
“Many of us were saying let’s use [the vaccine] to save lives, not to vaccinate people already immune,” says Marty Makary, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University.
Still, the CDC instructed everyone, regardless of previous infection, to get fully vaccinated as soon as they were eligible: natural immunity “varies from person to person” and “experts do not yet know how long someone is protected,” the agency stated on its website in January.6 By June, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 57% of those previously infected got vaccinated.7
As more US employers, local governments, and educational institutions issue vaccine mandates that make no exception for those who have had covid-19,8 questions remain about the science and ethics of treating this group of people as equally vulnerable to the virus—or as equally threatening to those vulnerable to covid-19—and to what extent politics has played a role.
The evidence
“Starting from back in November, we’ve had a lot of really important studies that showed us that memory B cells and memory T cells were forming in response to natural infection,” says Gandhi. Studies are also showing, she says, that these memory cells will respond by producing antibodies to the variants at hand.91011
Gandhi included a list of some 20 references on natural immunity to covid in a long Twitter thread supporting the durability of both vaccine and infection induced immunity.12 “I stopped adding papers to it in December because it was getting so long,” she tells The BMJ.
But the studies kept coming. A National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded study from La Jolla Institute for Immunology found “durable immune responses” in 95% of the 200 participants up to eight months after infection.13 One of the largest studies to date, published in Science in February 2021, found that although antibodies declined over 8 months, memory B cells increased over time, and the half life of memory CD8+ and CD4+ T cells suggests a steady presence.9
Real world data have also been supportive.14 Several studies (in Qatar,15 England,16 Israel,17 and the US18) have found infection rates at equally low levels among people who are fully vaccinated and those who have previously had covid-19. Cleveland Clinic surveyed its more than 50 000 employees to compare four groups based on history of SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination status.18 Not one of over 1300 unvaccinated employees who had been previously infected tested positive during the five months of the study. Researchers concluded that that cohort “are unlikely to benefit from covid-19 vaccination.” In Israel, researchers accessed a database of the entire population to compare the efficacy of vaccination with previous infection and found nearly identical numbers. “Our results question the need to vaccinate previously infected individuals,” they concluded.17
As covid cases surged in Israel this summer, the Ministry of Health reported the numbers by immunity status. Between 5 July and 3 August, just 1% of weekly new cases were in people who had previously had covid-19. Given that 6% of the population are previously infected and unvaccinated, “these numbers look very low,” says Dvir Aran, a biomedical data scientist at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, who has been analysing Israeli data on vaccine effectiveness and provided weekly ministry reports to The BMJ. While Aran is cautious about drawing definitive conclusions, he acknowledged “the data suggest that the recovered have better protection than people who were vaccinated.”
But as the delta variant and rising case counts have the US on edge, renewed vaccination incentives and mandates apply regardless of infection history.8 To attend Harvard University or a Foo Fighters concert or enter indoor venues in San Francisco and New York City, you need proof of vaccination. The ire being directed at people who are unvaccinated is also indiscriminate—and emanating from America’s highest office. In a recent speech to federal intelligence employees who, along with all federal workers, will be required to get vaccinated or submit to regular testing, President Biden left no room for those questioning the public health necessity or personal benefit of vaccinating people who have had covid-19: “We have a pandemic because of the unvaccinated ... So, get vaccinated. If you haven’t, you’re not nearly as smart as I said you were.”
Staying firm
Other countries do give past infection some immunological currency. Israel recommends that people who have had covid-19 wait three months before getting one mRNA vaccine dose and offers a “green pass” (vaccine passport) to those with a positive serological result regardless of vaccination.19 In the European Union, people are eligible for an EU digital covid certificate after a single dose of an mRNA vaccine if they have had a positive test result within the past six months, allowing travel between 27 EU member states.20 In the UK, people with a positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test result can obtain the NHS covid pass up until 180 days after infection.21
Although it’s too soon to say whether these systems are working smoothly or mitigating spread, the US has no category for people who have been infected. The CDC still recommends a full vaccination dose for all, which is now being mirrored in mandates. A spokesperson told The BMJ that “the immune response from vaccination is more predictable” and that based on current evidence, antibody responses after infection “vary widely by individual,” though studies are ongoing to “learn how much protection antibodies from infection may provide and how long that protection lasts.”
In June, Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which regulates vaccines, went a step further and stated: “We do know that the immunity after vaccination is better than the immunity after natural infection.” In an email, an FDA spokesperson said Marks’s comment was based on a laboratory study of the binding breadth of Moderna vaccine induced antibodies.22 The research did not measure any clinical outcomes. Marks added, referring to antibodies, that “generally the immunity after natural infection tends to wane after about 90 days.”23
“It appears from the literature that natural infection provides immunity, but that immunity is seemingly not as strong and may not be as long lasting as that provided by the vaccine,” Alfred Sommer, dean emeritus of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health tells The BMJ.
But not everyone agrees with this interpretation. “The data we have right now suggests that there probably isn’t a whole lot of difference” in terms of immunity to the spike protein, says Matthew Memoli, director of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases Clinical Studies at the NIH, who spoke to The BMJ in a personal capacity.
Memoli highlights real world data such as the Cleveland Clinic study18 and points out that while “vaccines are focused on only that tiny portion of immunity that can be induced” by the spike, someone who has had covid-19 was exposed to the whole virus, “which would likely offer a broader based immunity” that would be more protective against variants. The laboratory study offered by the FDA22 “only has to do with very specific antibodies to a very specific region of the virus [the spike],” says Memoli. “Claiming this as data supporting that vaccines are better than natural immunity is shortsighted and demonstrates a lack of understanding of the complexity of immunity to respiratory viruses.”
Antibodies
Much of the debate pivots on the importance of sustained antibody protection. In April, Anthony Fauci told US radio host Maria Hinajosa that people who have had covid-19 (including Hinajosa) still need to be “boosted” by vaccination because “your antibodies will go sky high.”
“That’s still what we’re hearing from Dr Fauci—he’s a strong believer that higher antibody titres are going to be more protective against the variants,” says Jeffrey Klausner, a clinical professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California and former CDC medical officer, who has spoken out in favour of treating prior infection as equivalent to vaccination, with “the same societal status.”3 Klausner conducted a systematic review of 10 studies on reinfection and concluded that the “protective effect” of a previous infection “is high and similar to the protective effect of vaccination.”
In vaccine trials, antibodies are higher in participants who were seropositive at baseline than in those who were seronegative.24 However, Memoli questions the importance: “We don’t know that that means it’s better protection.”
Former CDC director Tom Frieden, a proponent of universal vaccination, echoes that uncertainty: “We don’t know that antibody level is what determines protection.”
Gandhi and others have been urging reporters away from antibodies as the defining metric of immunity. “It is accurate that your antibodies will go down” after natural infection, she says—that’s how the immune system works. If antibodies didn’t clear from our bloodstream after we recover from a respiratory infection, “our blood would be thick as molasses.”
“The real memory in our immune system resides in the [T and B] cells, not in the antibodies themselves,” says Patrick Whelan, a paediatric rheumatologist at University of California, Los Angeles. He points out that his sickest covid-19 patients in intensive care, including children with multisystem inflammatory syndrome, have “had loads of antibodies ... So the question is, why didn’t they protect them?”
Antonio Bertoletti, a professor of infectious disease at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, has conducted research that indicates T cells may be more important than antibodies. Comparing the T cell response in people with symptomatic versus asymptomatic covid-19, Bertoletti’s team found them to be identical, suggesting that the severity of infection does not predict strength of resulting immunity and that people with asymptomatic infections “mount a highly functional virus specific cellular immune response.”25
Already complicated rollout
While some argue that the pandemic strategy should not be “one size fits all,” and that natural immunity should count, other public health experts say universal vaccination is a more quantifiable, predictable, reliable, and feasible way to protect the population.
Frieden told The BMJ that the question of leveraging natural immunity is a “reasonable discussion,” one he had raised informally with the CDC at start of rollout. “I thought from a rational standpoint, with limited vaccine available, why don’t you have the option” for people with previous infection to defer until there was more supply, he says. “I think that would have been a rational policy. It would have also made rollout, which was already too complicated, even more complicated.”
Most infections were never diagnosed, Frieden points out, and many people may have assumed they had been infected when they hadn’t. Add to that false positive results, he says. Had the CDC given different directives and vaccine schedules based on prior infection, it “wouldn’t have done much good and might have done some harm.”
Klausner, who is also a medical director of a US testing and vaccine distribution company, says he initiated conversations about offering a fingerprick antibody screen for people with suspected exposure before vaccination, so that doses could be used more judiciously. But “everyone concluded it was just too complicated.”
“It’s a lot easier to put a shot in their arm,” says Sommer. “To do a PCR test or to do an antibody test and then to process it and then to get the information to them and then to let them think about it—it’s a lot easier to just give them the damn vaccine.” In public health, “the primary objective is to protect as many people as you can,” he says. “It’s called collective insurance, and I think it’s irresponsible from a public health perspective to let people pick and choose what they want to do.”
But Klausner, Gandhi, and others raise the question of fairness for the millions of Americans who already have records of positive covid test results—the basis for “recovered” status in Europe—and equity for those at risk who are waiting to get their first dose (an argument being raised anew as US officials announce boosters while the virus spreads in countries lacking vaccine supply). For people who did not have a confirmed positive result but suspected previous infection, reliable antibody tests have been accessible “at least since April,” according to Klausner, though in May, the FDA announced that “antibody tests should not be used to evaluate a person’s level of immunity or protection from covid-19 at any time.”26
Unlike Europe, the US doesn’t have a national certificate or vaccination requirement, so defenders of natural immunity have simply advocated for more targeted recommendations and screening availability—and that mandates allow for exemptions. Logistics aside, a recognition of existing immunity would have fundamentally changed the target vaccination calculations and would also affect the calculations on boosters. “As we continued to put effort into vaccination and set targets, it became apparent to me that people were forgetting that herd immunity is formed by both natural immunity and vaccine immunity,” says Klausner.
Gandhi thinks logistics is only part of the story. “There’s a very clear message out there that ‘OK, well natural infection does cause immunity but it’s still better to get vaccinated,’ and that message is not based on data,” says Gandhi. “There’s something political going on around that.”
Politics of natural immunity
Early in the pandemic, the question of natural immunity was on the mind of Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania and senior fellow at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, who later became a covid adviser to President Biden. He emailed Fauci before dawn on 4 March 2020. Within a few hours, Fauci wrote back: “you would assume that their [sic] would be substantial immunity post infection.”27
That was before natural immunity started to be promoted by Republic politicians. In May 2020, Kentucky senator and physician Rand Paul asserted that since he already had the virus, he didn’t need to wear a mask. He has been the most vocal since, arguing that his immunity exempted him from vaccination. Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson and Kentucky representative Thomas Massie have also spoken out. And then there was President Trump, who tweeted last October that his recovery from covid-19 rendered him “immune” (which Twitter labelled “misleading and potentially harmful information”).
Another polarising factor may have been the Great Barrington declaration of October 2020, which argued for a less restrictive pandemic strategy that would help build herd immunity through natural infections in people at minimal risk.28 The John Snow memorandum, written in response (with signatories including Rochelle Walensky, who went on to head the CDC), stated “there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection.”29 That statement has a footnote to a study of people who had recovered from covid-19, showing that blood antibody levels wane over time.
More recently, the CDC made headlines with an observational study aiming to characterise the protection a vaccine might give to people with past infections. Comparing 246 Kentuckians who had subsequent reinfections with 492 controls who had not, the CDC concluded that those who were unvaccinated had more than twice the odds of reinfection.30 The study notes the limitation that the vaccinated are “possibly less likely to get tested. Therefore, the association of reinfection and lack of vaccination might be overestimated.” In announcing the study, Walensky stated: “If you have had covid-19 before, please still get vaccinated.”31
“If you listen to the language of our public health officials, they talk about the vaccinated and the unvaccinated,” Makary tells The BMJ. “If we want to be scientific, we should talk about the immune and the non-immune.” There’s a significant portion of the population, Makary says, who are saying, “‘Hey, wait, I’ve had [covid].’ And they’ve been blown off and dismissed.”
Different risk-benefit analysis?
For Frieden, vaccinating people who have already had covid-19 is, ultimately, the most responsible policy right now. “There’s no doubt that natural infection does provide significant immunity for many people, but we’re operating in an environment of imperfect information, and in that environment the precautionary principle applies—better safe than sorry.”
“In public health you are always dealing with some level of unknown,” says Sommer. “But the bottom line is you want to save lives, and you have to do what the present evidence, as weak as it is, suggests is the strongest defence with the least amount of harm.”
But others are less certain.
“If natural immunity is strongly protective, as the evidence to date suggests it is, then vaccinating people who have had covid-19 would seem to offer nothing or very little to benefit, logically leaving only harms—both the harms we already know about as well as those still unknown,” says Christine Stabell Benn, vaccinologist and professor in global health at the University of Southern Denmark. The CDC has acknowledged the small but serious risks of heart inflammation and blood clots after vaccination, especially in younger people. The real risk in vaccinating people who have had covid-19 “is of doing more harm than good,” she says.
A large study in the UK32 and another that surveyed people internationally33 found that people with a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection experienced greater rates of side effects after vaccination. Among 2000 people who completed an online survey after vaccination, those with a history of covid-19 were 56% more likely to experience a severe side effect that required hospital care.33
Patrick Whelan, of UCLA, says the “sky high” antibodies after vaccination in people who were previously infected may have contributed to these systemic side effects. “Most people who were previously ill with covid-19 have antibodies against the spike protein. If they are subsequently vaccinated, those antibodies and the products of the vaccine can form what are called immune complexes,” he explains, which may get deposited in places like the joints, meninges, and even kidneys, creating symptoms.
Other studies suggest that a two dose regimen may be counterproductive.34 One found that in people with past infections, the first dose boosted T cells and antibodies but that the second dose seemed to indicate an “exhaustion,” and in some cases even a deletion, of T cells.34 “I’m not here to say that it’s harmful,” says Bertoletti, who coauthored the study, “but at the moment all the data are telling us that it doesn’t make any sense to give a second vaccination dose in the very short term to someone who was already infected. Their immune response is already very high.”
Despite the extensive global spread of the virus, the previously infected population “hasn’t been studied well as a group,” says Whelan. Memoli says he is also unaware of any studies examining the specific risks of vaccination for that group. Still, the US public health messaging has been firm and consistent: everyone should get a full vaccine dose.
“When the vaccine was rolled out the goal should have been to focus on people at risk, and that should still be the focus,” says Memoli. Such risk stratification may have complicated logistics, but it would also require more nuanced messaging. “A lot of public health people have this notion that if the public is told that there’s even the slightest bit of uncertainty about a vaccine, then they won’t get it,” he says. For Memoli, this reflects a bygone paternalism. “I always think it’s much better to be very clear and honest about what we do and don’t know, what the risks and benefits are, and allow people to make decisions for themselves.”
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