An informed guide to the pandemic, with the latest developments and expert advice about prevention and treatment. |
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 | | The New York Times |
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 | | Updated boosters are on the way.Erika P. Rodriguez for The New York Times |
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The new versions of the vaccine are expected to perform better against the BA.5 subvariant that is dominant now, although the data available so far is still preliminary. Pfizer and Moderna assured the F.D.A. recently that they could deliver millions of doses by mid-September. |
Federal officials were considering expanding second-dose booster eligibility to Americans under 50 this summer, but with updated formulations seemingly close at hand, they decided it was better to wait, ahead of a feared winter surge. |
All adults are expected to be eligible for the updated booster shots, and children could be eligible as well, according to people familiar with the deliberations. |
Right now, the federal government also plans to stress that anyone who is eligible for additional shots — Americans over 50 and those over 12 with certain immune deficiencies — should get them as soon as possible. |
Welcome to the postpandemic economy |
The U.S. economy is in a strange place, one that is still clearly showing the ripple effects of pandemic disruptions. |
For more on Covid's effects on our wallets, I spoke to my colleague Ben Casselman, who covers economics. |
How would you describe the moment the economy is in, as it relates to the pandemic? |
From an economic perspective, not from a public health perspective, we're starting to see a postpandemic economy take shape. I don't think we are done with that process, and I don't think we know exactly what the postpandemic economy will look like. But we're no longer in the acute phase. |
You used to see that every time there was a spike in cases, there was a decline in restaurant bookings or a decline in in-person activities. Then, as cases fell again, those activities would return. But for good or ill, we don't see that behavioral response to nearly the same degree anymore. |
How is the pandemic still affecting the economy? |
It's not always easy to draw a one-to-one connection. |
For example, significantly fewer people are working or even looking for work than before the pandemic. Early on, it was pretty easy to attribute that to people being afraid of the virus or to child care disruptions or — early on — to business shutdowns. But those explanations have become steadily less convincing as time has gone on. |
In many ways, the economy has returned to normal. But given that many workers still haven't returned, it seems logical to think that that's at least indirectly due to the pandemic, even if it's no longer absolutely direct. You hear lots of stories about people reconsidering their priorities and changing the way that they approach work and life in the wake of the pandemic. |
However, there are a couple of things that we know are happening because of the pandemic. We know that there are global supply chain disruptions that are clearly the effects of the pandemic, including disruptions that are continuing because China continues to have a very aggressive approach to controlling the spread of the coronavirus. And we know that a significant amount of the inflation that we're experiencing now — although the details are in dispute — is, to one degree or another, the result of the pandemic, as well as the government response to the pandemic. |
How will the interaction between the pandemic and the economy play out in the next few months? |
There are a couple of plausible scenarios. |
If you think back to when the economy began to reopen, many of us thought that we would have a period of disruption, and then things would return to normal. That obviously hasn't happened. But, in one scenario, we were basically right that these effects were temporary, and we were just wrong in thinking that they would go away quickly. So if that's the case, over the next several months, we will see supply chains normalize. We will see people's spending patterns normalize. We will see people return to work. And we look back on this and say, "Well, that took longer than expected, but we still ended up where we always thought we would be." |
It is also possible that the pandemic has changed our lives and the economy in lasting ways that are going to take much longer to adjust to. We've obviously seen this in terms of the way we work. People have not returned to the office in anywhere close to the numbers that there were before the pandemic. And if that continues, eventually, the economy will adjust to that. Coffee shops will open up in residential neighborhoods and close down in urban business districts. And the economy will reorient itself around this new reality. But those kinds of adjustments will take time, and they won't be clean and smooth. |
 | | Some consumers are struggling to keep pace with rapidly rising prices.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times |
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Your experiences with pandemic economics |
We asked readers about their financial circumstances during the pandemic and how they feel about the future. Thanks to everyone who wrote in. |
"The pandemic began OK, to be honest. The unemployment boost and the stimulus checks helped me bolster my savings a ton. For most of 2020 and 2021, my living expenses were not too bad. I started graduate school and felt pretty confident that things would be all right. Now I'm paying 30 percent more for rent than I was in 2021, groceries are more expensive and things just feel very precarious. Without a big pay raise, I'm just going to be treading water rather than building up savings outside of my retirement account." — Martin Bate, Fort Worth, Texas |
"The pandemic has actually been good to me and my household. My job in FiDi went remote in March 2020. With this freedom from commuting costs and occasional office lunches, we were able to save much more, and were able to move to a bigger place to accommodate my new W.F.H. setup. I've also been able to pick up a part-time remote role, allowing for even more savings cushioning. I've found that we stress less about finances than we did prepandemic, so my husband and I have been arguing less and spending more time together now that we have all this time to see each other's faces." — Asia, Bloomfield, N.J. |
"The pandemic has indirectly made my economic situation much worse. Using the pandemic as an excuse, my landlord raised my rent $617. I am feeling afraid, frustrated and angry about my current economic situation. I am retired and living on a government pension and Social Security. The only thing I can do to adjust for the future is cut expenses to the bone: no eating out, no new clothes, no going to the theater, no travel. I also will be looking for a cheaper apartment." — Karen Raschke, New York City |
"I am a small-time landlord with 24 units, mostly in low-income areas. When tenants fell behind on rent in 2021, I drained my savings but was able to recoup about 80 percent by filling out forms for government aid. In 2022, no such aid exists. Courts are backed up. I'm losing $10,000 per month, and I am now trying to sell properties to stop the bleeding. — Alan Shechter, Fairport, N.Y. |
"My situation is drastically, and dramatically, worse. Less income, with higher prices of everything, driven by the hike in oil prices, which led to the rise of shipping prices. I'm worried that as winter approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, we will be at a point around early October where, even if you did have enough money to purchase most basic food items, there will be nothing available to buy. I feel I'm just in this for the ride, and I am powerless against it. No matter what I do, it would be like standing on a beach trying to fend off a hurricane with a stick." — Mohammed Al-Haj Khalil, Kuwait |
What else we're following |
Let us know how you're dealing with the pandemic. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter. |
| Thanks for reading. I'll be back Monday. — Jonathan |
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