Cases: On Thursday, September 8th Pasadena reported 39 new cases of COVID-19 infection. There were no new fatalities in Pasadena. LA County reported another 1819 cases and 23 more fatalities.
Huntington Hospital reported 24 COVID patients,
Vaccine: The latest booster helps ward off Omicron variants of COVID-29. The vaccine has been approved and is becoming available as supplies arrive at local health and vaccine providers.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people ages 12 and older get the new booster shots. To be eligible, residents need to have completed their primary vaccination series and also be at least two months out from their last dose of any COVID-19 vaccine.
CVS, Walgreens, RiteAid are among the pharmacies that say they’re offering appointments for the updated Omicron booster.
The L.A. County Department of Public Health said the updated booster will be available as soon as Wednesday at hundreds of sites across the county, including 12 operated by the agency, more than 700 mobile vaccine clinics and nearly 250 community, pharmacy and clinic sites. Residents can look up locations at VaccinateLACounty.com. Residents can also call (833) 540-0473 between 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., seven days a week.
L.A. County has already pre-ordered about 170,000 doses and expected to receive them sometime last week.
People who have received all of the booster doses for which they’re eligible have a 13-fold lower risk of dying from COVID-19 compared with unvaccinated people.
What if I just had COVID-19? Can I still get the booster right away? No. In that case, you’ll probably need to wait three months since you tested positive for an infection or you experienced your first COVID-19 symptoms, whichever came first. But the CDC said other factors could alter the timing, such as the level of COVID-19 in the community and the person’s risk factors for severe disease. The reason for the delay is the same as getting too many shots too close together — it blunts the booster’s impact.
Want a booster? You can find a location to receive your free booster here: https://myturn.ca.gov/
In LA County 82% of eligible persons are at least partially vaccinated. 74% are fully vaccinated. 99.9% of eligible Pasadenans have had at least one dose of vaccine. 93.3% are fully vaccinated.
The Economy: File under THERE'S ALWAYS SOMETHING: A potential nationwide freight rail strike is looming, threatening to cripple the U.S. economy ahead of the holiday shopping season and November’s midterm elections.
Roughly 115,000 rail workers could walk off the job as soon as Sept. 16 if they cannot agree to a new contract with railroads.
That’s the first day workers could legally strike after a White House-appointed panel released collective bargaining recommendations aimed at ending years of contentious negotiations.
Five of the 13 unions representing rail workers have reached tentative agreements with railroads to enact the Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) recommendations, which call for 24 percent pay raises, back pay and cash bonuses.
But the bulk of railroad workers belong to unions that haven’t yet agreed to a deal. It’s also unclear whether workers would vote to ratify PEB recommendations that don’t address their concerns about punishing hours and rigid schedules that make it difficult to take time off for any reason.
Federal law gives Congress the power to block or delay a railroad strike. If workers were to walk out, lawmakers could vote to enact the PEB deal or appoint arbitrators to fast-track a new contract, among a range of other options.
The Association of American Railroads, which estimates that a national rail shutdown would cost the U.S. at least $2 billion a day, said that lawmakers should vote to implement the PEB recommendations in the event of a strike to “instantly reward employees and reduce economic uncertainty.”
Experts say that an extended walkout would devastate industries that rely on freight to transport grain, coal, diesel, steel and motor vehicle parts. Shipping containers would pile up at ports, severely congesting supply chains and sending prices soaring ahead of the holidays.
U.S. unemployment was at 3.7% in August.
The US added another 315,000 jobs in August as the jobs market remained strong amid signs of a worsening economy.
The US jobs market lost 22 million jobs in early 2020 at the start of the pandemic but roared back after the Covid lockdowns ended. It has remained strong despite four-decade-high rates of inflation and slowing economic growth. In July, the US unexpectedly added 526,000 new jobs, restoring employment to pre-pandemic levels.
There are mixed signals about the health of the job market. Large employers including Ford and Walmart have announced plans for widespread layoffs, and 50% of businesses surveyed by PriceWaterhouseCoopers last month said they were reducing their headcount or planning to.
At the same time, the government reported this week there were 11.2m open job positions in July – two openings for every unemployed person. New claims for jobless benefits – seen as a proxy for layoffs – fell last week to a two-month low.
The government’s latest job report follows the monthly survey of private employers from ADP, the US’s largest payroll supplier. Private employers added only 132,000 jobs in August – less than half the number ADP calculates were added in July.
Interest Rates: Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller on Friday echoed recent sentiments from his colleagues, saying he expects a big interest rate increase later this month. He also said policymakers should stop trying to guess the future and instead stick to what the data is saying.
Those comments are similar to recent remarks from Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Vice Chair Lael Brainard and others, who said they are resolute in the effort to bring down inflation.
Markets strongly expect the central bank to take up its benchmark borrowing rate by 0.75 percent point, which would be the third consecutive move of that magnitude and the fastest pace of monetary tightening since the Fed began using the benchmark funds rate as its chief policy tool in the early 1990s.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen declared on Thursday that President Joe Biden's agenda has made the economy stronger than before the COVID-19 pandemic, but said more work was needed to protect the gains, especially by tackling inflation.
Traveling to Detroit to tout the impact of recent legislative achievements ahead of congressional elections in November, including hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in semiconductors, research, health care, green energy and infrastructure, Yellen said combating inflation was the still the administration's "top economic priority."
She said the recently passed CHIPS Act, Inflation Reduction Act and last year's infrastructure package would expand the U.S. economy's productive capacity and put Biden's goal of halving U.S. carbon emissions by 2030 from 2005 levels "well within reach," partly due to tax credits for North American made EVs like Ford's F-150 Lightning pickup truck made in Dearborn.
Wary consumers cause holiday worries for Amazon sellers-Amazon.com Inc. sellers are bracing for a bleak holiday shopping season as inflation-bitten consumers curb their spending. Many merchants, who sell more than half of the goods through Amazon’s web store, fear they’ll be forced to cut prices to move a mountain of inventory. It’s an abrupt change from the previous two years, when sellers scrambled to get enough products into Amazon warehouses to meet pandemic-fueled demand even as chronic shortages let them jack up prices.
This year, U.S. online sales will rise only 9.4% to $1 trillion, the first time growth has slipped into the single digits, according to Insider Intelligence, which in June lowered its earlier annual forecast. Spending on Amazon will hit $400 billion, up 9% and slower than the overall industry, the research firm says.
Amazon has since abandoned dozens of existing and planned facilities around the U.S., according to the research firm MWPVL International Inc. Some of the closings are related to a modernization program, an Amazon spokesperson said, and the company continues to open facilities where customer demand requires extra capacity.
Responding to merchants’ concerns about a lackluster holiday shopping season, an Amazon spokesperson said sellers using the company’s logistics service typically pay less than other methods. Amazon has also expanded a program offering low shipping costs on inexpensive items to include products weighing as much as 3 pounds; previously the limit was 12 ounces.
Meanwhile, merchants are making their own moves to cut shipping costs.