First some history to provide context... People gave up on flu pandemic protocols a century ago when they tired of them — and paid a price As the pandemic enters its second year, many people want to know when life will go back to how it was before COVID https://www.salon.com/2021/03/27/pe...they-tired-of-them--and-paid-a-price_partner/ And then a dose of reality... Experts demand discipline as COVID-19 eases: ‘We don’t want to have to start over’ https://www.sandiegouniontribune.co...d-19-eases-we-dont-want-to-have-to-start-over
As mentioned previously the U.S. is in a race until June between vaccinations and new COVID variants. If the U.S. can simply keep the necessary restrictions in place until early summer to prevent an increase in COVID cases and hospitalizations then the U.S. will have won our battle with COVID as vaccinations increase. Unfortunately many governors are greatly reducing restrictions on the activities which most drive the spread such as indoor dining, large gatherings, nightclubs and other high-risk activities in venues. Now for the hard truth... the U.S. COVID cases have been rising for the past two weeks despite increasing vaccinations. The combinations of spring break travel, decreasing restrictions, COVID variants and people not following the best public health practices have led to a resurgence of the disease across the U.S. -- with states such as Florida which effectively have no restrictions being the leaders in both cases and variants -- as well as driving spread across the country due to travel. Due to our failures to follow the best policies, the U.S. is on the verge of being overwhelmed in the same manner of Europe over the next few weeks. The only advantage the U.S. has over Europe is the much higher number of vaccines administered -- but this advantage will not be able to "win the race" in the U.S. unless we stop the rise in cases which is becoming a surge. Stopping this rise can only be done by mandating of proper public health policies between now and summer. Biden’s CDC Director: If You’re Not Scared Shitless About COVID-19, You Should Be Dr. Rochelle Walensky warned Monday of “impending doom.” https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/03/rochelle-walensky-covid-19-warning
The U.S. is in a race between increasing vaccinations and increasing COVID cases... US faces pivotal moment in COVID-19 fight https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/546082-us-faces-pivotal-moment-in-covid-19-fight The U.S. is facing a pivotal moment in the fight against COVID-19, as a new rise in cases poses a threat even as vaccinations make progress. Cases are up about 12 percent nationally compared to the previous week, averaging around 62,000 cases per day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The figures come as CDC Director Rochelle Walensky issued a dire warning this week of “impending doom” in the nation’s coronavirus battle. Still, the country is in a markedly different place from previous COVID-19 surges, due in large part to the hope on the horizon from vaccine availability. The vaccination campaign is moving at a solid pace, often exceeding 3 million shots per day. The vaccines hold promise for the summer returning to something close to normal, but experts are urging the public to remain vigilant with precautions for a little while longer until more of the population is vaccinated. “We have lots of good news and reason for hope, but we also have some trends that are concerning and giving us a little bit of pause,” said Helen Boucher, chief of infectious diseases at Tufts Medical Center in Massachusetts. In short, the U.S. is in a precarious situation. There is a hope of making great strides toward normalcy in the next couple of months, but in the short-term there is still significant risk for the millions of Americans who remain unvaccinated, particularly given reopenings and the rise of more contagious variants of the virus. “If you’d asked me a month ago, I was really optimistic about where we are headed,” said Preeti Malani, an infectious disease expert at the University of Michigan. But right now, she said, “Michigan’s numbers look terrible.” Michigan has the highest per capita rate of new cases in the country, and has seen hospitalizations spike from around 900 statewide at the beginning of March to almost 2,000 by the end of the month, according to data from the Covid Act Now tracking site. Many northeastern states are also seeing a spike in cases, and hospitalizations are starting to tick up in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. While deaths have fallen from their peaks, there are still more than 900 people dying from the virus in the U.S. every day. The surges are coming as more governors, even in Democratic-led states, are easing coronavirus restrictions, despite the Biden administration recommending otherwise. Michigan, New York City and New Jersey increased indoor dining capacity to 50 percent in March, for example, while Connecticut lifted all capacity limits on restaurants. Coronavirus War Room, a project of the Democratic-aligned group Protect Our Care, took the rare step this week of publicly calling out Democratic governors in those states, along with Republican governors, for reopening despite the CDC’s warnings. The group issued a release saying: “CDC Director Warns of 'Impending Doom' As States Scrap Safety Measures and Rush to Reopen.” The Biden administration, while generally urging governors not to lift restrictions, has for the most part refrained from naming and shaming states. In a speech Tuesday, President Biden called on governors who have lifted mask mandates to reimpose them, but did not make the same call for indoor dining restrictions or other limits on businesses. Asked on Wednesday why the CDC has not issued guidance to states for reopening indoor dining and other gathering points, Walensky pointed to the agency’s urging of people to take precautions on an individual level. “We continue to articulate in these press conferences and others the importance of masking, distancing, not traveling, and decreasing crowds,” she said. William Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, called states reopening a “bad idea,” and said they should “at the very least be pausing things.” Business restrictions often mean lost revenue, though, and many people are simply tired of following precautions, a challenge that public health experts acknowledge. “I know we’re all so tired of the pandemic,” Boucher said. “If we can just hang in there a little bit longer.” The summer is widely expected to be much better and closer to normal, given that by then a large share of the population should be vaccinated. Boucher noted that variants of the virus are a bit of a “wild card,” but the vaccines have shown promising results against them. The more immediate threat is from a variant first identified in the United Kingdom, called B.1.1.7, which responds well to the vaccines but is also more transmissible, posing a threat in the short term while vaccinations are still underway. The situation is also not equally bad in all parts of the U.S. Outside the Northeast and Midwest, the pandemic is somewhat better at the moment, even though many Southern states have been looser with their COVID-19 restrictions. Boucher noted that in Florida, where there have been images of crowded spring break gatherings, “their numbers aren’t great, but they’re not as bad as places like Michigan or Massachusetts.” She said variations in weather or in the strains of the virus that are present could help explain those differences, but there could be some unexplained factors as well. Despite the current danger, vaccinations have made important progress. According to the CDC, about 74 percent of people 65 and older have received at least one dose, as have 38 percent of adults overall. Still, the flip side is 26 percent of seniors and 62 percent of all adults remain unvaccinated. The vaccination gains among the elderly are likely to blunt somewhat the hospitalizations and deaths in the recent rise in cases, without entirely eliminating them, given that some people remain unvaccinated, experts say. The vaccines have been shown to provide very strong protections against hospitalizations and deaths for people who are fully vaccinated. As Monica Gandhi, an infectious diseases expert at the University of California-San Francisco, put it: “If there were no vaccines and we didn’t have this incredible intervention, I would be sweating bullets.”
If you pay people more to sit at home then to do their jobs --- they are just going to sit at home. Welcome to the U.S. equivalent of what occurs when you effectively institute UBI. Restaurants struggle to find employees despite declining COVID cases Some owners of eateries claim stimulus checks remove incentive to work https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy...-find-employees-despite-declining-covid-cases With Covid cases on the decline, many restaurants are opening back up to full capacity. Yet owners say they are struggling to hire new staff to keep up with demand. FOX Business spoke with multiple restaurant owners across the country who say applicants, drawn by the lure of unemployment benefits and stimulus checks, have tapered off over the course of the pandemic and it remains unclear whether that trend will continue. Tom Sacco is the CEO of Happy Joe’s Pizza & Ice Cream, a chain based in Bettendorf, Iowa – or as he calls it, “the heartland of America.” “I can’t beg borrow or steal an employee. It’s that difficult to hire. And I’m in Iowa,” Sacco told Fox Business. “I’m not in New York or Los Angeles where there are millions and millions of people.” Sacco said the company has had to put more funds into advertisements just to get people to come in and apply. He estimates that on average, about 50% of the employees that the company has hired do not work out. Eric Slaymaker, the CEO and founder of Wingers Restaurant & Alehouse, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, says his company is in an “employment crisis.” “It has been tougher and tougher to retain people,” Slaymaker said. “Just amazed it is so difficult just to even get applicants right now in the markets that we’re operating in. We’re struggling to do everything we can to be able to staff our restaurants.” Slaymaker said his restaurants have had some success in retaining employees but getting applicants has been the primary struggle – something that is not unique to his company. “Everybody we talk to in our markets is just dealing with the same thing,” Slaymaker told Fox Business. Slaymaker said he hopes that as the pandemic fades away, restaurants will start seeing a reversal of this trend. “We’re crossing our fingers that as things become safer and the vaccine gets out there, we hope that it’ll pry loose more workers who feel safe and feel like they want to get out and are comfortable working,” Slaymaker said. Carl Howard, the CEO of Fazoli’s, a chain of Italian restaurants based in Lexington, Ky., blamed the lack of applicants on the unintended consequences of government decisions. He noted that in many states unemployment benefits can sometimes exceed minimum wage. “That’s way above what we can really afford to offer. Where’s the incentive to go back to work?” Howard said. “If I was in my 20s and didn’t really have a career path laid out, I’d stay home and make the $18.80 an hour playing PlayStation until four o’clock in the morning.” Howard predicted that this trend will continue until stimulus checks dry up and compel more people to return to work. “I think we’ve overstimulated to the point where it’s causing problems,” he said. Kyle Frederick, the COO of Bellagreen and Original ChopShop – both based in Dallas, said the challenge of hiring and retaining qualified people has become an “adage” for the restaurant industry, particularly amid the ongoing pandemic. “Around the times of stimulus checks appeared to be when you’d see either a turnover or less applicant flow,” Frederick said. “Within the last four weeks where a stimulus check has been given out for a lot of families, it may be more money than they were even making at their job. So, they’re seeing it as an opportunity either not to work or go do something different.” U.S. lawmakers passed a third round of stimulus checks in mid-March. The measure included $1,400 stimulus checks for many Americans, extended unemployment benefits at $300 a week through Sept. 6, and an expansion of the child tax credit.
The U.S. Has Had 'Vaccine Passports' Before—And They Worked https://time.com/5952532/vaccine-passport-history/ A teenage boy is vaccinated against smallpox by a school doctor and a county health nurse, Gasport, N.Y., March 15, 1938 Harry Chamberlain—FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images southbound passenger train halted in southern Quebec near the Vermont border, where an elderly, bespectacled man boarded the train. This man, a physician named Dr. Hamilton, worked his way down the aisles, asking each passenger, “Been vaccinated?” Unless they had documentation proving that they had been, Hamilton asked them to display their arms, where he looked for a “fresh scar” indicating a recent inoculation. If he could find no scar, a local paper informed readers, he either vaccinated the passenger on the spot or asked them to leave the train before it entered the United States. The year was 1885. U.S. border officials in the late 19th century did not expect travelers to carry the identification documents that international transit requires today—but they did often require passengers to provide evidence that they had been vaccinated from smallpox. Whether at ports of entry including New York’s Ellis Island and San Francisco’s Angel Island, or along the U.S. border with Canada or Mexico, officials expected border-crossers to prove their immunity. As an El Paso newspaper put it in 1910, travelers needed to show one of three things: “A vaccination certificate, a properly scarred arm, or a pitted face” indicating that they had survived smallpox. Today, as Americans have begun to look ahead to life after the COVID-19 pandemic, some have argued that a printed or electronic certification of a person’s vaccination status, often referred to as a vaccine passport, would allow a safe return to communal life. A few major sports arenas have already announced that they will only allow fans to attend games with proof of vaccination. Many are also speculating that proof of vaccination will be necessary for international travel this summer. Detractors claim that requiring such documentation infringes on individual liberties. Some even suggest that these passports could be the beginning of a slippery slope toward “1940s Nazi Germany” or a surveillance state. Florida Governor Ron De Santis has announced a blanket ban on all vaccine passports, calling it “unacceptable for either the government or the private sector” to require vaccination in order for citizens to be “able to participate in normal society.” But this would not be American history’s first example of a vaccine passport—and in fact, Americans’ long campaign against smallpox shows that the benefits of such a system can extend far beyond the venues into which such a passport would grant admission. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter Introduced to the western world in the 18th century, the smallpox vaccine was the first of its kind. It was administered not with a syringe but by scratching pustular material on a person’s arm. Typically, the vaccinated area would form a blister, scab over, and leave behind a distinctive scar. Because of its unique appearance, Americans treated the smallpox scar as a documentation of vaccination, or a sort of early vaccine passport. Toward the end of the Civil War, a smallpox outbreak in Tennessee led Union Brigadier General Ralph Pomeroy Buckland to order that physicians inspect everyone in Memphis and vaccinate “all found without well marked scars.” By the late 19th century, American public health professionals pushed for an even more aggressive approach to vaccination. During another smallpox outbreak in Tennessee, in 1882 to 1883, for example, a Memphis newspaper reported, “At Chattanooga, when a doctor and a policeman enter a house together the folks inside know that they have to show a scar, be vaccinated, or answer to the law. There is no nonsense in that way of stamping out disease and saving life.” During a series of smallpox outbreaks across the United States from 1898 through 1903, many states authorized compulsory vaccination, while other leaders sought to use the power of public and private institutions to pressure reluctant Americans to accept the vaccine. A Chicago physician wrote in 1901 that “Vaccination should be the seal on the passport of entrance to the public schools, to the voters’ booth, to the box of the juryman, and to every position of duty, privilege, profit or honor in the gift of either the State or the Nation.” Health officer Jones questions persons before permitting them to pass the quarantine barriers that have been placed at Barclay Street in Newark, N.J., in 1931 to check the spread of smallpox. All entering or leaving must show a vaccination not more than five days old. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images Employers across the country acted to make smallpox immunity a condition of employment. Factories, mines, railroads and other industrial workplaces with tight quarters were particularly forceful in demanding proof of vaccination. In 1903, Maine’s government decreed that “no person be allowed to enter the employ of, or work in, a lumber camp who can not show a good vaccination scar. Though workers sometimes resisted, corporations and governments usually ensured that they took the vaccine in the end. Social gatherings and clubs, too, sometimes required proof of vaccination in order to attend. When smallpox swept through Kansas City in 1921, one newspaper reported that “‘Show a scar’ has been officially adopted as the passwords to lodges and other meetings.” Public school leaders across the country also required students to present a “plain scar, the records of a school or a certificate by a reputable physician” in order to enter their institutions. Among others, the superintendent of the Savannah, Ga., school system in 1897 arranged for students to be provided with “admission cards” to their school once they provided proof of vaccination. Read more: The history of vaccines, from smallpox to COVID-19 Some Americans resisted these public health measures. The predecessors of today’s anti-vaxxers questioned the vaccine’s effectiveness or falsely claimed that it caused smallpox or other side effects. One Illinois writer dramatically claimed in 1923 that “A scar from forced vaccination is a brand, a mark of medical tyranny and despotism.” Newspapers brimmed with rumors about young women who tried to avoid vaccination to avoid blemishing their arms with the ugly scar. Much of the American public viewed this hesitancy as a relic of a bygone, unenlightened age. In 1893, a Raleigh newspaper carried an account of an elderly man recalling with undisguised scorn the anti-vaxxers of earlier decades who believed that childhood vaccines would lead young people to develop “bovine propensities.” Some, he remembered, regarded a vaccination scar as the “mark of the beast” referenced in the Bible’s Book of Revelations. (Today, misinformation concerning the new COVID-19 vaccines has led many Americans to the same sort of confusion that Americans felt concerning early smallpox vaccines. Indeed, U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene recently referred to proposed vaccine passports as “Biden’s mark of the beast.”) And despite any backlash, stringent enforcement of smallpox vaccination requirements successfully pressured vaccine-hesitant populations to accept them. Though some groups continued to resist these public health campaigns, far more Americans acquiesced to vaccination rather than endanger their employment, mobility or their children’s education. After decades of widespread vaccination, the United States effectively eradicated smallpox within its borders by the middle of the 20th century. That the United States practiced aggressive, and even compulsory, vaccination campaigns at the turn of the 20th century may surprise Americans today. These actions were possible in part because they took place in an age of progressive experimentation in government policy—a time, as historian Michael Willrich notes in his book Pox, when Americans were beginning to conceive of liberty not only as freedom from government regulation, but also as freedom to meaningfully and actively participate in public life. Vaccination requirements involved some limitations on individual behavior, but they also made it easier for communities to forego complete quarantines and to thrive. They also set a precedent that schoolchildren still benefit from, as every American state now requires that most students be vaccinated against diseases such as measles, polio and pertussis. Americans today have inherited the widespread smallpox-era consensus that some “vaccine passports,” by another name, are necessary. Unlike the smallpox vaccines of the past, COVID-19 vaccines leave no visible marks. In one sense, this is helpful as it prevents one strain of earlier vaccine hesitancy from returning. But the absence of scarring also renders vaccination invisible and uncertain, making it almost impossible for us to know who is immune and who remains vulnerable. Ensuring that a person’s vaccination status can be verifiable and visible through documentation would be an important tool for lifting quarantines and defeating COVID-19. Like the scars of the past, vaccine passports could help Americans to finally bring this pandemic to an end.
Is the end of the COVID pandemic on the way? Fauci urges Americans to ‘hang in there’ https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article250497909.html Millions of Americans are getting vaccinated against COVID-19 every day. Experts agree it’s the nation’s best strategy to overcome the pandemic. And it’s working. Infections, hospitalizations and deaths are plummeting among adults age 65 and older who were prioritized for vaccination beginning in late December. A recent report shows that new COVID-19 cases among nursing home residents have dropped by 96% since the end of last year. However, younger, unvaccinated people are bending downward more encouraging trends into upward more concerning ones, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday during a White House COVID-19 briefing. In Michigan, for example, COVID-19 hospitalizations for people in their 30s has jumped 633% since March; for people in their 40s, admissions rose by 800%. A medical center in New Jersey saw an 18% decrease in admissions of patients 70 or older and an increase of 10% among 40 to 59 year olds from January to March. Walensky noted that older adults who have not been vaccinated also continue to be hospitalized. “We’re still hearing stories of, ‘You know, I got my vaccine yesterday, and today I have COVID.’” But the reality is that there isn’t going to be a precise number of new infections, hospitalizations or deaths that marks the finish line, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s medical adviser, said during the briefing. “I think what we’re going to see is that, as we get more and more people vaccinated, you’re going to see a concomitant diminution in the number of cases that we see every day and, with that, you know, the cascading domino effect of less hospitalizations and less deaths,” Fauci said. “I don’t think it’s going to be a precise number. I don’t know what that number is. I can’t say it’s going to be ‘this’ percent,” he added. “But we’ll know it when we see it. It’ll be obvious as the numbers come down rather dramatically.” Biden announced Tuesday that all adults in the U.S. will be eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines beginning April 19, though some states have already opened up eligibility. The finish line is “on the way,” Fauci said. “Hang in there.” Still, experts say children must join the mix in order for the country to head into pre-pandemic normalcy. “The one group that I think we really need to add into the equation to achieve community protection … are children. Clinical trials for children are well underway. Children make up about 23% of the population,” Dr. Emmanuel Walter Jr., chief medical officer at the Duke University Human Vaccine Institute, said during a Wednesday webinar. “Reaching our goal to achieve herd immunity, I think we need to consider vaccinating children.”
COVID-19 vaccinations are accelerating, forcing CEOs to plot a return to the office sooner than expected. ‘Yes, you can ask for proof.’ https://www.chicagotribune.com/colu...0210408-qwca7ummmvhxxj3miz62nf3jzy-story.html As COVID-19 vaccinations ramp up, so are timelines for Chicago companies bringing workers back to the office. The quicker-than-expected return to the workplace means CEOs and human resources departments are under increased pressure to make difficult decisions. Those include how quickly to mandate on-site work, whether to ask for proof of vaccinations and how to navigate shared spaces where people gather for coffee breaks and meetings. Corporations also must nail down policies on how much, or little, work will continue to be done remotely. Some of the world’s best-known companies — including Amazon and Google, which have large offices in Chicago — have begun telling employees they’re getting close to welcoming large numbers of workers back to the office. Other companies say they’ll create a hybrid environment, with employees in the office, but less than five days a week. “Now that vaccinations have picked up, that has created a parallel momentum for company managers to get their act together in planning to bring people back,” said Philippe Weiss, president of Seyfarth at Work, a subsidiary of law firm Seyfarth Shaw that consults companies on workplace relations. “A month ago, a lot of my clients were talking about the summer at the earliest. Now when companies call me, they may be bringing people back by May.” One of the most debated topics is whether to require workers to be vaccinated, or to meet other conditions, in order to return. Weiss said 25% of his clients are considering requiring vaccinations. The topic has come up often enough that Kastle Systems, which provides key-card entry systems and other security technology to landlords and employers, has begun offering options such as whether a worker has been vaccinated or recently tested for COVID-19 as new criteria for building access. No companies have signed on yet, said Mark Ein, chairman of Virginia-based Kastle Systems. “Every company is going to have to make their own decisions,” Ein said. “My personal belief is that the vast majority of people are only going to feel safe if they know everybody in the office doesn’t have COVID, either because they’ve been vaccinated or because they’ve been tested. People will only come back if they have that assurance. “I think once most people are vaccinated, the return to the office will be quicker and at higher levels than many people predict.” Kastle, which works with about 3,000 companies in 165 Chicago-area buildings, found only 14.2% of workers had returned as of late March. That was the second-lowest rate of 10 metropolitan areas tracked by the company, trailing only San Francisco. The average is 24.2% occupancy. The past couple of weeks have provided glimpses of hope for downtown, whichsome experts have predicted could take years to fully recoverfrom the near-total shutdown of the economy that began in March 2020. Amazon and Google’s plans to head back to the office are significant because many had speculated that technology firms would be among those most likely to embrace remote work long-term. The pace of return will vary by location, depending on vaccination and infection rates, Amazon said. Seattle-based Amazon has more than 700 corporate and tech workers in its downtown Chicago office, only about 10% of whom are currently on-site on any given day, said company spokesman Jose Negrete. Google has told workers they will begin returning to offices over the next few weeks, although on-site work will remain voluntary until September. It has 1,400 employees in Illinois, mostly in Fulton Market district offices that serve as the company’s Midwest headquarters. The companyplans extensive hiring in Chicago, as part of an effort to add 10,000 employees nationwide this year. Neither tech giant is requiring workers to be vaccinated. Some companies are offering incentives to encourage workers to get vaccinated, such as time off to get the shots. No Chicago company has publicly said it will require vaccinations as a condition for going back to the office. The spring and summer are likely to be key moments in the debate about whether vaccines should be mandated. About 20 states including Illinois are considering legislation on the issue, and building owners could create their own rules, taking the decision out of employers’ hands. Managers also will need to set and enforce rules for workplace etiquette on a range of issues, including whether masks will be required and for how long. In time, those debates will pass with the eradication of COVID-19. “It’s hard to mandate something that most of the population hasn’t had access to,” said Chicago lawyer Aimee Delaney, a partner at Hinshaw & Culbertson. “Employers have been able to delay and think through the decision. That’s changing as vaccines become more widely available.” For now, companies face a juggling act between protecting workers’ privacy and allaying the fears of workers who are reluctant to work in an office and who may want to know whether people in the same meeting have been vaccinated, she said. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has said companies are within their rights to require vaccinations. But there are exceptions, such as medical or religious reasons. “Yes, you can ask for proof of vaccination, but you have to make sure you’re not getting any other health or disability information,” Delaney said. “You have be careful about asking why someone hasn’t been vaccinated, and you need to avoid implementing a policy that you haven’t fully thought through.” Employers and building owners faced similar challenges in the early weeks of the pandemic, when many office buildings were still heavily occupied. When an employee tested positive for COVID-19, warnings were sent out to co-workers and other employees in the building or office complex, without providing personal information. In many cases, colleagues who had been in close contact were notified separately. “Employers had to toe that line of not disclosing an employee’s name, but notifying relevant groups that they had exposure,” Delaney said. “It was a constant discussion, and I think most employers navigated that pretty well.” Other scenarios will play out in the months ahead, such as what happens when one employer in an office building that houses multiple companies requires vaccinations. “If a company makes it mandatory for all of its employees, will that company go to the landlord and ask that it apply to the entire building?” Weiss said. “It would not be entirely surprising if that’s where we end up.” For the past year, building owners have revamped their buildings to reassure workers, such asimproving air quality, adding more cleaning crews and posting signs to encourage distancing. Some issues that seemed significant initially, such as how to handle elevator etiquette, are less of a concern, said Farzin Parang, executive director of BOMA/Chicago, an association of 240 downtown buildings. Now building owners and managers are awaiting details on employers’ return-to-work policies and timing. “My sense is it will be a slow phase-in,” Parang said. “I don’t think it will be a flood. After everyone gets comfortable with it, you might see a big jump. “There’s a fair amount of employers looking around and asking, ‘What are other companies doing?’ Once a few companies make their decisions, I think you’ll see a lot of others follow.” Commercial real estate services firm Avison Young is beginning with a nudge, albeit a firm one. Employees have been told they should start returning to the office for at least some of the week, CEO Mark Rose said. For now there’s no penalty for continuing to work from home. Employees with difficulty accessing vaccines or child care, or with anxiety about riding public transportation or other issues can talk it through with their managers, Rose said. “If not, then we expect you to start finding your way back to the office,” Rose said of employees. The Toronto-based company has more than 5,000 employees worldwide, including more than 200 in the downtown Chicago office that serves as its North American headquarters. Vaccinations will not be required to return, Rose said. “People are meant to be with people,” Rose said. “I’m very concerned about the development of our young workers and middle management. That just doesn’t happen over video.” Rose likens the pandemic to the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center twin towers in New York. “After 9/11, it took about two years to get everybody comfortable again,” Rose said. “People said they’d never go into a named building or the upper floors of a tall building. But landlords invested in security and eventually people felt comfortable again. “This time I think there will be a stream of people returning, and then there will be an inflection point, maybe this summer, where everyone realizes: Hey, there’s no reason not to go back.”
Texas courts defy CDC eviction pause https://thehill.com/regulation/5474...use-as-state-sits-on-1b-in-federal-rental-aid Some Texas state courts are openly defying a federal order to halt evictions amid the coronavirus pandemic, even as the state sits on more than $1 billion in undistributed federal rental aid with more assistance from Washington on its way. New guidance issued by a state judicial advisory panel has given a green light to Texas courts presiding over eviction cases to disregard a moratorium from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that temporarily halts evictions through June. “Texas courts-ignoring the CDC moratorium-have started ordering evictions,” Emily Benfer, a law professor at Wake Forest University, tweeted. “Today, in Arlington, sheriffs evicted a single mom with a 5 yr old child. They were pushed out to the street just like their belongings & offered no assistance.” (More at above url)
I take no position on the morality of the eviction.. But why the heck should a state even consider what the CDC has to say about real estate after maybe a week or two to evaluate the impact of evicting people during the pandemic? Separation of powers is real. I am glad two Federal Courts found the CDC did not have the power. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas found that while there may have been a public health benefit, the residential eviction moratorium was not economic in nature, was too attenuated from interstate commerce and was an unprecedented exercise of federal government authority in an area well within the scope of the states' traditional police power. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio found that the CDC's order exceeded the agency's statutory authority to make and enforce regulations to stop the spread of communicable diseases between states because that authority was limited to actions to address infected animals, objects or properties. https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/p...declare-cdc-eviction-moratorium-unenforceable