2021 is bringing the heat
There will be time to discuss GameStop, AMC and the perfectly legal shenanigans of Wall Street.
There will also be time to discuss the Senate filibuster, budget reconciliation and a Washington establishment more interested in gamesmanship than governing.
But the hour is late and we have to get this newsletter out.
2021 is bringing the heat and The Dossier is on the case.
P.S. - You’ll notice we have a book recommendation this week, along with a way to support The Dossier and independent bookstores.
Pandemic
Covid-19 hospitalizations drop, but January has been the deadliest month of the pandemic. Here's what to expect next
“120,000 more Americans could die from Covid-19 over the next two months, according to the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. So health experts are urging all Americans to double down on wearing masks and keeping their distance from others. And while vaccine makers and officials scramble to get more Americans vaccinated, they're racing against the spread of highly contagious strains of coronavirus that are now in the US.” - Christina Maxouris and Holly Yan, CNN
National drug shortage crisis hits Covid vaccine rollout
“The problem is the result of Big Pharma offshoring about 80% of the production of generic drugs and ingredients, principally to India and China, in search of lower costs. It's a supply chain issue that now has national security implications… Over the last two months it has hampered Pfizer's ability to scale up vaccine production.” - Bob Woods, CNBC
J&J one-dose Covid vaccine is 66% effective, a weapon but not a knockout punch
“Overall, the vaccine was 66% effective at preventing moderate to severe disease 28 days after vaccination. But efficacy differed depending on geography. The shot was 72% effective among clinical trial volunteers in the U.S, but 66% among those in Latin America, and just 57% among those in South Africa. Though markedly below the levels seen with the first two authorized Covid-19 vaccines, those rates are above the thresholds originally set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a vaccine to be considered useful.” - Matthew Herper, STAT
Economy
Jobless claims rise less than expected at 847,000 first-time applicants
“Ten months into the pandemic, the weekly figure — which is a proxy for layoffs — continues to hover just below 1 million. That's five times higher than its pre-pandemic average, though far lower than the March peak of 7 million.” - Lucy Bayly, NBC News
Coronavirus has inflamed global inequality
“History will likely remember the pandemic as the ‘first time since records began that inequality rose in virtually every country on earth at the same time.’ That's the verdict from Oxfam's inequality report covering the year 2020 — a terrible year that hit the poorest, hardest across the planet… The world's poorest were already in a race against time, facing down an existential risk in the form of global climate change. The coronavirus pandemic could set global poverty reduction back as much as a full decade, according to the World Bank.” - Felix Salmon and Stef W. Kight, Axios
The Counterintuitive Workings of the Minimum Wage
“The Biden administration and House and Senate Democrats want to raise the national minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour… The benefits of a $15 minimum would greatly outweigh the costs… the $15 minimum would reduce the country’s wage inequality, redistributing income from corporate executives and shareholders down to janitors, cashiers, fry cooks, and care workers and moving families into the middle class. Indeed, the failure to lift the minimum wage from its current level accounts for roughly half of the inequality between women at the bottom and women in the middle of the wage distribution.” - Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic
Business
Walgreens Poaches Starbucks Executive Rosalind Brewer for CEO
“Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. named Starbucks Corp. operating chief Rosalind Brewer as its next chief executive, setting her up to be the only Black woman leading a Fortune 500 company today… Walgreens, the largest U.S. drugstore chain, has been struggling to turn itself around, an effort complicated by the coronavirus pandemic… She is a graduate of Spelman College, where she chairs the board of trustees.” - Dana Mattioli and Cara Lombardo, Wall Street Journal
GM To Make Only Electric Vehicles By 2035, Be Carbon Neutral By 2040
“General Motors is joining a move by global automakers to shift away from fossil fuel-powered vehicles, with plans to sell only zero-emission cars and trucks by 2035 and be fully carbon neutral by 2040. The auto giant, which has an even more aggressive timetable than rivals Ford and Volkswagen, makes the shift as the Biden Administration prioritizes dramatic cuts in U.S. carbon emssions–especially from transportation.” - Sam Abuelsamid, Forbes
Cicely Tyson, 1924-2021
Cicely Tyson, an Actress Who Shattered Stereotypes, Dies at 96
“For many Americans, Ms. Tyson was an idol of the Black Is Beautiful movement, regal in an African turban and caftan, her face gracing the covers of Ebony, Essence and Jet magazines. She was a vegetarian, a teetotaler, a runner, a meditator and, from 1981 to 1989, the wife of the jazz trumpeter and composer Miles Davis. Since the ’60s she had inspired Black American women to embrace their own standards of beauty — including helping to popularize the Afro.” - Robert D. McFadden, New York Times
Cicely Tyson Kept It Together So We Didn’t Fall Apart
“Tyson was a peculiar kind of famous. I was never told of her importance. I just knew. Everybody knew. This woman was somebody. She looked sainted, venerated — at 29, 36, 49 and 60. Even in anguish. It’s possible that happens once you’ve played a 110-year-old formerly enslaved woman in ‘The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman’ and after you’ve played Kunta Kinte’s mother. Or maybe those roles happen because you radiate venerability… An honorary Oscar, three Emmys, a pile of Emmy nominations and a Tony all came her way. Just as fittingly for a woman who willed herself to matter, so did eight N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards.” - Wesley Morris, New York Times
In ‘Just as I Am,’ actress Cicely Tyson reflects on 96 years of a life well lived
“‘Just as I Am’ is a 400-page chronicle of a history as American as apple pie, as Black as the dead of night, as rich, surely, as Tyson’s favorite meals, oxtails and okra, cooked up by her late ex-husband Miles Davis. While undoubtedly personal — or ‘plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside,’ as Tyson writes in the book’s introduction via her skilled collaborator Michelle Burford — it’s a universal accounting of just how far we’ve come in Tyson’s near-century of life, and how far we still must go.” - Tre’vell Anderson, Washington Post