Cases: Pasadena Public Health reported 76 new cases of COVID and one fatality in Pasadena.
A dizzying number of subvariants has emerged since Omicron first landed on California’s shores around Thanksgiving.
Since April, three subvariants — BA.2, BA.2.12.1 and BA.5 — are estimated to be the dominant strain nationwide. That has made it possible for people to get reinfected within a relatively short period of time. Since the start of the pandemic, some people have reported getting infected two, three or even four times.
Previously, scientists suspected that people infected with the coronavirus had several months of particularly strong immunity to protect against reinfection. But now, some patients are reporting getting reinfected within weeks.
Getting reinfected with the coronavirus may increase long-term health consequences. Even one infection is associated with increased risk of death and other symptoms.
Reinfection has been associated with additional risk of death, hospitalization and adverse health outcomes, affecting the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, neurological and renal systems.
It has also been associated with an increased risk of diabetes, fatigue and mental health disorders, according to a preprint study written by scientists with the Washington University School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Healthcare System.
The additional risk of reinfection was seen in both unvaccinated and vaccinated people and was not only present in the acute phase of illness but persisted in the months after the initial infection had resolved.
Most risks “were still evident at six months after reinfection,” said the report, which surveyed the medical records of veterans, including nearly 39,000 people who had two or more coronavirus infections, 257,000 who had one infection and more than 5 million without a record of infection.
New vaccine approved: The United States approved its fourth vaccine for use against the coronavirus. The new vaccine from Novavax, a Maryland pharmaceutical company, works differently from the three other Covid vaccines in use.
While Novavax doses are expected to play a limited role in the country’s immunization campaign, at least initially, having another approved tool to fight the virus as it continues to mutate is a positive development. Here’s what else you need to know about the new shot.
The technology. Contrary to the three Covid vaccines authorized in the U.S., the Novavax version provokes an immune response with nanoparticles made up of proteins from the surface of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. Similar protein-based vaccines have been used globally for decades.
Effectiveness. With two doses spaced three weeks apart, the vaccine demonstrated an overall efficacy of 90.4 percent, on par with the vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna, and higher than the one-shot vaccine from Johnson & Johnson. The Novavax vaccine showed an efficacy of 100 percent at preventing moderate or severe disease.
How to deal with reinfection: These days, it seems like no one is safe from Covid. The U.S. is recording around 130,000 new cases per day on average, but public health experts have suggested that the real number could be many times higher because so many people are testing at home. President Biden’s positive test is just the latest sign that infections during the Omicron BA.5 wave have become increasingly difficult to avoid.
The latest wave is also causing a surge in reinfections, even among people who have had the virus as recently as a few weeks or months ago.
What should we know about reinfection with BA.5?: For most people, with this variant, getting infected should not be serious, because they will have some level of immunity either from prior infection or from having had two or maybe even three or four doses of a vaccine. But even more than in prior waves, the difference will really be stark compared to people who are unvaccinated.
What does reinfection do to the body — particularly in terms of long Covid? We don’t know very much about whether every infection increases the risk of having long Covid or whether you build up immunity and the risk goes down. But one recent study suggested that your risk goes up with every event, so the more times you are infected, the higher the risk that you’re going to develop long Covid. There is a pretty strong correlation between those who developed long Covid and those who were severely sick to begin with. But it’s not a clean connection. There are cases of people who had very mild symptoms and were barely sick at all, but who still have lingering effects for months.
How much protection does a previous infection offer someone? A lot of people got infected in the winter wave, but we know that immunity from BA.1 doesn’t seem to be superprotective. It didn’t seem to produce really high levels of the kind of antibodies you need to prevent another infection. So that partly explains why we’re seeing reinfections even among people who had it in January. But the current variant — BA.5 — looks like it produces a stronger immune response than BA.1 did. So hopefully people who are getting infected now will have immunity for longer than they did after a BA.1 infection.
How long can someone who recently got sick expect their protection to last? With BA.1, we saw that people were getting reinfected within two to three months sometimes. But the risk seems to vary depending on how strong your infection was. The more severe your symptoms, the stronger your immune response, and the longer it might last. There are a lot of variables at play, but I would say that if it’s been three months or longer since your previous infection, you probably want to be more careful.
Is there a difference between the protection afforded from an infection, as opposed to vaccination? Infection is more likely to give you antibodies in the nose, which is really where you need them to prevent future infection, whereas vaccination generates antibodies in the blood. On the other hand, many studies have shown that the immunity you get from infection is variable and may not hold up well against Omicron, so vaccines are still your best bet against the virus.
President Biden probably contracted a highly contagious subvariant of the coronavirus spreading rapidly through the U.S., and now has body aches and a sore throat since his positive test , according to an update from his doctor Saturday.
The subvariant, known as BA.5, is an offshoot of the Omicron strain that emerged late last year, and it’s believed to be responsible for the vast majority of coronavirus cases in the country.
The economy: After months of gas prices making life more expensive, they have quietly started to go down — providing financial relief for many Americans.
The average nationwide price this week was $4.49 a gallon, down from a peak of $5.01 in June. The average price of gas is still about $1.30 higher than it was a year ago, but it has now fallen for more than a month.
The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark policy rate by 0.75 percentage points for the second month in a row as it doubled down on its aggressive approach to taming soaring inflation despite early signs the US economy is starting to lose steam.
At the end of its two-day policy meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee lifted the target range of the federal funds rate to 2.25 per cent to 2.50 per cent. In a statement that accompanied the announcement, the FOMC said it “anticipates that ongoing increases in the target range will be appropriate”.
From the LA Times: GDP’s pullback may not be so bad-The economy shrank again, raising fears of a recession — and hope for taming inflation.
The government’s announcement Thursday that the U.S. economy had two straight quarters of no growth set off new fears about an impending recession, but for most Americans, there was underlying good news mingled with the bad.
That’s because the slowing economy signals that the Federal Reserve’s campaign to curb inflation by raising interest rates, coupled with other developments here and abroad, may be starting to work.
And although recessions usually bring higher unemployment, a far greater number of workers and families suffer from inflation.
Also there’s good reason to think that any recession-related layoffs won’t be as bad this time around, especially if the downturn is relatively mild and short-lived, as most economists predict.
Moreover, many Americans will enter any recession with higher-than-usual savings, and the labor market remains strong, despite a smattering of layoffs across the country. Thursday’s economic report showed rising incomes and a still-solid savings rate of 5.2% in the second quarter.
Such criticisms, and the White House’s staunch denials that the economy is in a meltdown, are certain to continue in the months leading to a midterm election that will determine which party controls Congress.
Beneath the political rhetoric, there’s some truth in both sides’ claims. Most economists are predicting a moderate recession at some point.
Although recessions are rarely viewed as positive, they are a regular feature of the U.S. economy, with one on average every 6½ years since 1945.
What complicates things this time is the fact that inflation has erupted at the fastest pace in decades.
A moderate recession that raises unemployment by a percentage point or two from the current 3.6% is likely to cost on the high end around 3 million jobs.
But the U.S. workforce numbers around 160 million people, so only a small fraction will be in danger of unemployment.
Inflation and surging prices, on the other hand, hurt all but the richest members of society.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell said as much Wednesday when he announced another big interest rate hike and signaled more to come as the central bank tries to beat back inflation that climbed to a four-decade high of 9.1% in June.
Even if the Fed’s tightening of financial conditions sends the economy into recession, causing unemployment to rise and creating other financial hardships for some, Powell said choking off inflation would be a plus for everyone as it’s a crucial precondition for stable and sustainable growth.
Powell said he didn’t think the economy was currently in a recession, especially because of the robust labor market.
At the moment, based on the report Thursday from the Commerce Department, the economy seems to be gliding along the edge. Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, slowed but still increased modestly over the second quarter. People spent less for home furnishings and clothes, but more at hotels, restaurants and other services.
Were it not for the fact that companies stockpiled fewer goods, which in part was due to persistent supply constraints, the economy would have posted a small positive number for the spring quarter.
Thursday’s report showed that the nation’s GDP, the broadest measure of economic activity, declined at an annualized rate of 0.9% in the second quarter, dragged down by smaller inventory buildup but also a falloff in housing and other business investment and government spending.
That came after a bigger 1.6% drop in the first three months of the year.
Last year GDP expanded at an exceptionally rapid pace of 5.7%, the fastest since 1984, as the economy bounced back from the brief plunge caused by the pandemic.
Most economists agree there isn’t yet the significant broad-based drop-off in economic activity that would mark an official recession.
The Biden administration has pushed back against Republican attacks on its handling of the economy, but the party in power, and the president in particular, traditionally carries the political burden of responsibility.
Beyond the political chest-beating and the academic debate among economists, the reality is that the American economy is still grappling with COVID-19 pandemic-induced shocks.
And if the forecasters are right and a recession is mild — and inflation is tamed — over the long haul, that should bring more good than bad for most people.
From the New York Times: Recession. Are we or aren't we? From the New York Times: The latest G.D.P. numbers — suggesting that the economy shrank in each of the past two quarters — have intensified a debate about whether the U.S. economy has fallen into a recession.
Are the economy’s problems likely to get worse in coming months or will the situation stabilize and possibly even improve?
That question has tangible effects for people’s lives. It may influence your decisions about whether to buy a house or car, whether to look for a new job and whether to become more cautious in your spending. There is no clear answer, but there is some useful information.
It helps to start with a basic framework: The country’s economic policymakers want the economy to weaken, just not too much.
The main economic problem in recent months has been an overheated economy, with more demand for goods than supply of them, leading to the highest levels of inflation since the early 1980s. To bring down inflation, the Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates, which leads families to spend less money and, in turn, causes prices to stop rising so rapidly.
“We have high inflation and historically high inflation,” Cecilia Rouse, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told me and other journalists yesterday. “In order to bring down inflation, we understand the economy needs to cool.”
But it is very hard for the Fed officials to get the balance right. They are trying to cause a large enough decline in spending to reduce inflation but not such a large decline that companies cut jobs, unemployment rises and the economy falls into a vicious cycle.
When people talk about whether the economy is entering a recession, the tangible underlying question is whether that sort of vicious cycle is beginning. So far, it does not appear to have done so. Yet the risks over the rest of 2022 are substantial.
Deep, broad, sustained: There is no single definition of a recession. One informal definition is two consecutive quarters of shrinking gross domestic product (a measure of the economy’s output). With yesterday’s G.D.P. report, the economy met that standard.
Most economists, however, don’t like the two-quarters definition. They consider it too narrow because it is based on a single economic indicator. Any one indicator, even G.D.P., can sometimes be misleading.
Right now, G.D.P. may be overstating the economy’s problems for a couple of technical, temporary reasons involving global trade and corporate inventories, Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said. Another broad measure of the economy, known as gross domestic income, has not been declining in recent months, and it tends to be less volatile than the initial estimates of G.D.P. (Yesterday’s number was an initial estimate, and the government will revise it — maybe even to a positive number — as more information comes in.)
The volatility of the initial G.D.P. numbers is why economists generally prefer a different definition of recession. The National Bureau of Economic Research, a private nonprofit, appoints a small standing committee of academic economists who make pronouncements that many other experts treat as official. The N.B.E.R. defines a recession as a significant, persistent and broad decline in economic activity, and the committee members tend to wait months, until enough data is available, to declare a recession to have started.
One big reason to doubt that the economy has already entered a recession is the strength of almost every indicator other than G.D.P. Consumer and business spending, for example, are both still rising, as is employment. “It is difficult to see how we suffered a recession during the first half of this year when the economy created so many jobs, unfilled positions were at a record high and layoffs near record lows,” Zandi said.
There is one caveat: Professional economists are almost always late in recognizing the start of a recession. Why? They are making judgments based on delayed data, and, like other human beings, they are susceptible to irrational optimism.
Historically, when economic forecasters have said that the odds of a near-term recession are at least 30 percent, it means that a recession is actually more likely than not. I’ve referred to that number in the past as the Anxious Index. What is it now? About 44 percent, according to the most recent Wall Street Journal survey of forecasters. The Anxious Index is flashing red.
“Are we in a recession? We don’t think so yet. Are we going to be in one? It’s a high risk,” Joel Prakken, the chief U.S. economist for S&P Global Market Intelligence, told Ben Casselman.
The Fed’s interest-rate increases — combined with the high energy prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the continuing Covid disruptions around the world — have created a significant chance of a vicious cycle of spending cuts and jobs cuts. The Fed, of course, is still hoping to avoid that outcome and achieve a so-called soft landing of lower inflation and continued economic growth. But, as Michael Feroli, an economist at J.P. Morgan, told my colleague Jeanna Smialek, “The degree of difficulty has probably increased.”
It’s a strange moment for the economy. On the one hand, the G.D.P. numbers seem to have exaggerated the economy’s weaknesses over the past six months. On the other hand, there are legitimate reasons to worry about the economy over the next six months.
Health costs to rise for many in the Southland (from the LA Times): Individual health insurance premiums are set to rise by an average of 6% on the state marketplace next year amid rebounding demand for medical care and uncertainty surrounding federal financial assistance, Covered California said Tuesday.
The hike is the largest in the last few years on the individual marketplace, which includes Covered California customers.
Each year from 2020 to 2022, rates in the state rose by less than 2%, Covered California said in a release. But California’s average 6% increase for 2023 is below the national average due to the program’s 1.7 million enrollees and “the state’s healthy consumer pool.”
Northeast Los Angeles County is set to see an average rate increase of 5.9%, while southwest L.A. County will see an increase of 6.8%.
Mono, Inyo and Imperial counties will see the largest average increase, at nearly 12%, while Fresno, Kings and Madera counties could see virtually no increase.
The increases are “due in part to the return of a normal medical trend that existed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the potential end of the increased and expanded financial help offered to eligible consumers through the American Rescue Plan,” said Covered California, the insurance marketplace created by the 2010 Affordable Care Act for working-age people not covered by an employer health plan.
Bosses still lean toward in-office work and many continue to lease space as they ride out COVID uncertainty. Hybrid models seem likely.
About 85% of companies want employees to spend half or more of their work time in the office, according to a national survey. Meanwhile, a consulting firm found that many staffers would look for a different job or take a pay cut to continue working from home. SOME COMPANIES have put unused offices on the market for sublease. Others are expanding: Amazon, for example, said it plans to rent at the Water Garden complex in Santa Monica, above.
Most bosses remain steadfast in their desire to see their white-collar employees in the office despite many workers’ desire to stay home most of the time. About 85% of companies say they want employees to spend half or more of their work time on site, according to a recent national real estate brokerage survey.
But surges of COVID-19 keep injecting caution into employers’ attitudes about enforcing in-person work, which are evolving as leaders and workers try to figure out how much time they want to spend in the office and how much room they’ll need to do their jobs when they are together.
Office leasing patterns in Los Angeles County in the second quarter revealed uncertainties about how working from home will change office use in the years ahead.
Los Angeles-area office buildings remain less than half as populated as they were before the pandemic, real estate industry observers said.
Yet some businesses are making big commitments to their offices and signing long leases for large blocks of space, according to second-quarter leasing numbers from real estate brokerage CBRE. Amazon, for instance, said in May that it will rent 200,000 square feet at the Water Garden office complex in Santa Monica to add corporate and tech jobs. Many other employers keep paying the rent on their underused offices while pondering whether they’ll need more or less space when their leases are up.
Some companies — including Netflix, Yahoo and Verizon — pay the rent but have put unneeded offices on the market for sublease, helping drive up overall vacancy to a high 25% in L.A. County, CBRE data show.
Netflix recently laid off 300 workers after reporting its first decline in subscribers in more than a decade but remains the world’s largest streamer and the largest office tenant in Hollywood.
Although people have been adapting to it for more than two years, working from home is a long way from a settled practice for employers.
Most of them plan to permanently adopt some kind of hybrid model of working at home some days and in the office on others, but its form is still evolving.
So although 85% of companies responding to a CBRE survey said they want employees in the office at least half the time, there is little consensus about how to achieve this goal.
Bosses are almost evenly split about whether the required number of days in the office should by decided by the company alone or in consultation with employees.
Economists at the brokerage predict U.S. workers will spend an average of 3.4 days per workweek in the office, down from 4.4 days a week before the pandemic.
Employees may want fewer days in the office, even if it involves a salary reduction or a new job. Just over half of U.S. workers want to work remotely more often than they currently do, a recent survey by human resources consulting firm OperationsInc found. Nearly half said they would even take a pay cut to increase or retain their remote work arrangements. Others plan to be proactive: 40% said they will look for a new job in the next six months so that they can work remotely more often or every day.
The June survey revealed tension around employee desires and expectations, however, as 56% acknowledged they will probably have to go to the office more frequently in the next six months, perhaps every day.
Three-fourths of workers said their direct supervisor has expressed a desire to see them in person more often. But many bosses hope that being around other people will be appealing, the way it often is in recreational settings.
Improvements in technology have been gradually liberating workers from the need to be at their desks for years, but remote work forced by the pandemic accelerated the push away from assigned seating. Technology may hold keys to making the office more appealing.
Most employers expect to increase their use of alternatives such as activity-based seating, which might entail workers with laptops and cellphones using a private room or cubicle for focused work, or staffers gathering in “huddle rooms” for group projects or setting up a laptop in a lounge or coffee bar. Some work locations may be reserved electronically.
Such configurations may require ample space, which wouldn’t reduce companies’ office footprints and rent — a goal for many. “Hotdesking,” the practice of having employees grab an open desk when they show up, can reduce space needs, and a majority of employers expect to use it more as they settle in post-pandemic.
CBRE said 52% of its survey respondents intend to reduce their office space over the next three years, mostly to eliminate space they expect to be freed up by remote work and more efficient use. That’s up from 44% in last year’s survey. Other firms are growing, as 39% of companies say they plan to expand their office portfolios over the next three years, mostly because of hiring and business growth. That’s up from 29% that said last year that they expected expansion.
Examples of shifts in Los Angeles County last quarter include First Republic Bank, which expanded to five floors in Century City when it renewed its lease at 1888 Century Park East. Century City and the rest of the Westside “has continued to be a very popular place for people to be,” Pion said, led by companies in entertainment and technology. In downtown Los Angeles, which has had an oversupply of offices for decades, asset manager TCW Group agreed to a new lease that will reduce its space by more than 20% when it moves its headquarters to another building in January 2025.
Downtown offices across the country were hit particularly hard by the pandemic, as people avoided high-rises and the public transportation they rode to work.
The pace of returning workers grew in June, according to the most recent pedestrian traffic report by tracking service Springboard. Cameras in big cities picked up more people walking around, which Springboard said appears to be a consequence of more people returning to the office.
Weekday pedestrian traffic in U.S. downtowns strengthened in June to 26% below the pre-pandemic level of 2019, compared with 42% below that mark in January, Springboard reported.
According to Kastle Systems, which provides key-card entry systems used by many companies and tracks patterns of workers’ card swipes, the average U.S. office population hit a low of 14.6% in mid-April 2020. Last week it was at 44.1%, about the same as at the end of June. Los Angeles was below average at 41.8%.
Vacancy in Class A Los Angeles County office buildings (not including sublease space) was 17.5% in the second quarter, slightly lower than it was both a year earlier and in the first quarter. Landlords’ average monthly asking rents of $3.88 per square foot also changed little from the previous periods.
Tenants have the upper hand in rent negotiations, real estate brokerage Savills said, even though the Los Angeles regional economy has fully reopened since the pandemic started and the labor market is historically tight.