Blog

LEADERSHIP CIRCLE:
Silver LEVEL MEMBER
Optimum Seismic logo
LEADERSHIP CIRCLE:
Silver LEVEL MEMBER
Kaiser Permanente logo
LEADERSHIP CIRCLE:
Gold LEVEL MEMBER
Verizon
LEADERSHIP CIRCLE:
Silver LEVEL MEMBER
Athens Service
LEADERSHIP CIRCLE:
Bronze LEVEL MEMBER
UCLA Health Logo
LEADERSHIP CIRCLE:
Gold LEVEL MEMBER
Wellsfargo
LEADERSHIP CIRCLE:
Bronze LEVEL MEMBER
Help with my Loan logo

COVID 19-Update for October 10, 2022

CASES: 

Despite major progress, the pandemic isn’t over-Some declare victory, but experts remain concerned over death rates, new variants. By Luke Money and Rong-Gong Lin for the LA Times: SCIENTISTS will have to see months of stability before it’s certain the pandemic is over. The ultimate wild card is whether a problematic new variant soars to prominence.  

“The pandemic is over.”

It’s a pronouncement we’ve heard several times in the more than 2½ years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.
As California enters fall with the coronavirus very much on the decline, some are once again declaring victory. But health experts say that despite the significant progress, it’s less about turning the page than about understanding that COVID-19 remains quite unpredictable.

The heat was recently turned up on the long-simmering question when President Biden declared “ the pandemic is over ” during an interview with “60 Minutes.” Days later, Biden acknowledged the criticism he received over his statement but added that the pandemic “basically is not where it was.” It wasn’t the first time the president has sought to project the end of the pandemic. On the Fourth of July 2021 — almost seven months into the nation’s vaccine rollout — Biden said, “ we’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.”

But that declaration, which came when the U.S. COVID-19 death toll stood at a bit more than 605,000, proved premature. Nearly 450,000 COVID-19 deaths have been reported since, fueled by last summer’s Delta variant and the dual-pronged Omicron waves that first struck after Thanksgiving.
Officials across the nation widely acknowledge the substantial gains made in the fight against COVID-19. The U.S. is awash in vaccines and effective therapeutics, and new boosters targeting the dominant circulating coronavirus strain are now available .

And even after the arrival of the Omicron variant — which sent cases soaring to unprecedented levels — California came nowhere close to reinstituting the shutdowns or other stringent restrictions that typified earlier phases of the pandemic.

Still, public health experts remain concerned at the considerable number of daily deaths . And there is worry that too few Americans have gotten a single booster shot, which is important to protect against severe illness.

“We are much better off now,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical advisor for the pandemic, said at a recent virtual talk of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But we are not where we need to be if we are going to, quote, ‘live with the virus.’ ”

There’s no doubt conditions have improved since the darkest days of the pandemic, when more than 3,000 Americans were dying every day. Since August, the U.S. has been reporting 350 to 500 COVID-19 deaths a day. That’s above the low of about 200 before last year’s Delta surge, and is “unacceptably high,” Fauci said.

Over a year, that would add up to 125,000 to 180,000 COVID-19 deaths — four to five times the average annual number of flu deaths, which is about 35,000.

Although there’s no shortage of pundits, politicians and other prognosticators clamoring to declare the end of the pandemic, the ultimate call is up to the WHO . And that’s a decision that will probably be based on a scientific committee’s review of data, not personal sentiment.

“The definition of a pandemic is an outbreak of disease that has then spread beyond any one or two countries to a global spread,” said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, an epidemiologist and infectious disease expert with the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

One challenge to defining the end of a pandemic is figuring out when we’ve returned to some kind of baseline for coronavirus cases and deaths. For now, “we don’t have what the baseline is for COVID because we’ve never had it before,” Kim-Farley said.

declared a global pandemic was the H1N1 swine flu in 2009 . That pandemic, however, ended up being less deadly than initially feared, and the agency declared its end the following year.

A prior system outlined by the WHO broke a pandemic flu’s trajectory into phases — including a “post-peak” period, in which “pandemic activity appears to be decreasing; however, it is uncertain if additional waves will occur,” followed by a “post-pandemic period.”

But COVID-19 is the first pandemic known to be caused by a coronavirus.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has sought to balance the unmistakable data showing the pandemic is improving while emphasizing it’s not over. He noted in early September that the number of weekly reported COVID-19 deaths had fallen to the lowest level since the start of the pandemic.

Scientists will have to see many months of stability before it’s certain the pandemic is over. Declaring the end too soon could be like sounding an all-clear announcement after a major earthquake when there’s still the potential for significant aftershocks.

There are also additional practical ramifications.

Chin-Hong said his definition of a pandemic’s end is when there’s a level of predictability and a lower number of deaths — and neither of those criteria has been met.

COVID-19 was the third- leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2021, behind only heart disease and cancer. And during the first four months of this year, the per capita death rate for the illness in L.A. County was higher than the rate for diabetes, motor vehicle crashes and flu/pneumonia.

 Older residents are continuing to die at elevated rates. L.A. County’s COVID-19 death rate between May and July 2022 for those age 65 and older was significantly higher than during the same period in 2021. The pandemic also continues to disproportionately affect poorer residents and people of color. Unvaccinated individuals also remain at higher risk — of being infected and of suffering the worst health outcomes of COVID-19.

The Economy:  From the New York Times: By many measures, the labor market is still extraordinarily strong even as fears of a recession loom. The unemployment rate, which stood at 3.7 percent in August, remains near a five-decade low. There are twice as many job openings as unemployed workers available to fill them. Layoffs, despite some high-profile announcements in recent weeks, are close to a record low.

But there are signs that the red-hot labor market may be coming off its boiling point.

Major employers such as Walmart and Amazon have announced slowdowns in hiring; others, such as FedEx, have frozen hiring altogether.

Americans in July quit their jobs at the lowest rate in more than a year, a sign that the period of rapid job switching, sometimes called the Great Resignation, may be nearing its end. Wage growth, which soared as companies competed for workers, has also slowed, particularly in industries like dining and travel where the job market was particularly hot last year.

More broadly, many companies around the country say they are finding it less arduous to attract and retain employees — partly because many are paring their hiring plans, and partly because the pool of available workers has grown as more people come off the economy’s sidelines.

The labor force grew by more than three-quarters of a million people in August, the biggest gain since the early months of the pandemic. Some executives expect hiring to keep getting easier as the economy slows and layoffs pick up.

Pondering Retirement? The LA Times asked financial planners what they are advising potential retirees

Don’t be put off by bear market. Some version of an exit may be a good fit. By Jon Healey

The pandemic caused tectonic shifts in the job market as workers young and old quit and searched for something better — in their work or in their life. According to the Pew Research Center, a little more than half of adults ages 55 and older had ditched the grind by late 2021, compared with 48% in the months before the first case of COVID-19 was recorded.

If you’ve spent the better part of your earthly existence punching a clock, you may be sorely tempted to join the throng of cool kids on the sidelines. 

And if you’ve been working for a company with 50 or more workers, chances are good that you’ve accumulated some retirement savings through a pension or retirement plan — especially if you’ve not spent your career in a service industry .

Experts caution, however, that the transition from a life of work to a life of leisure isn’t simple, and that it’s crucial to have a plan. David John, senior policy advisor for AARP’s Public Policy Institute, said researchers have found that “people who do the planning and do budgeting end up with a much better retirement outcome than people who just wing it or use a rule of thumb.”

The souring stock market and the rekindling of long-dormant inflation also throw cold water on the idea of retiring now. “If you ask any financial planner, they’re going to tell you, just sit this one out,” said Mo Wang, a retirement scholar who directs the Human Resource Research Center at the University of Florida.

But here’s the thing. It’s misleading to think of retirement as life without work. For many Californians, it’s a life with less work.

“Call it semi-retired: You work doing what you have to do for 40 years, then you work doing what you want to do for the next 10 to 15,” said John Pilkington, a wealth advisor executive at Vanguard Personal Advisor Services.

That’s why some version of “retirement” may be available to you even if you haven’t socked away much for your dotage. Many of us haven’t — according to the Federal Reserve, in 2019 half of Americans ages 55 to 64 had $134,000 or less in retirement savings. That’s not exactly Lotto riches.

The Times consulted two dozen researchers, financial planners and counselors about how to tell when you’re ready for retirement. Here are their tips and insights.

Are you financially ready to retire?

If you haven’t started planning yet, then the answer is probably “no time soon.” That’s because retiring successfully is, in part, a number-crunching exercise to make sure you can sustain the life you want to live on the income you’ll be collecting.

“Expense control is critical,” Mark Berg, a certified financial planner in Wheaton, Ill., said in an email. In fact, he wrote, you should start preparing to moderate your lifestyle five to eight years before retiring.

That may be too long a runway for people eager to retire. Still, Pilkington said it’s important to review your investments at least three years ahead of retirement to start “dialing down the risk exposure.” He added, “You don’t want to find yourself overallocated to risky assets.”
With the Nasdaq composite down 30% from its peak in November, his point shouldn’t be lost on anyone.

Reality check. The first step, David John said, is figuring out whether you’ll have enough regular income in retirement to at least cover your basic needs, such as housing and healthcare. Vida Jatulis, a certified financial planner in Oak Park, Calif., put it this way: “It’s like solving a mathematical problem. ‘This is what I have coming in; what can go out?’ It’s a finite resource.”

Unfortunately, solving that problem requires a degree of realism that eludes many of us, said Rashida Lilani, a certified financial planner in Roseville, Calif. “We tend to underestimate how much we spend and overestimate how much we make,” she said.

That’s why everyone should have a budget, Lilani said, to show them how much they are actually spending and what they’re spending it on. Having a budget doesn’t have to feel like dieting; think of it more like putting a meter on your spending so you can be more deliberate about it.

Plenty of tools online can help, and some are free. These include free apps from companies such as Mint and paid services from the likes of You Need a Budget and EveryDollar that can automatically track credit and debit card usage.

The Social Security calculation. The vast majority of American retirees are eligible for Social Security, but those benefits fall well below what most Californians spend every month — on average, they amount to only 37% of a person’s earnings . Yet the most popular age to start collecting those benefits is 62, when they first become available — at a level 25% to 30% below what they would be at full retirement age ( 66 to 67 for anyone born after 1943).

Experts say that if you’re in good health, you shouldn’t claim your benefits until you’re 70, when they will be more than 25% higher than they would be at full retirement age. But that’s not an option if you don’t have other reliable sources of post-retirement income.

And even the reliability of Social Security is subject to some debate. According to the trustees overseeing the program, Social Security isn’t collecting as much money in taxes as it needs to pay full benefits to all eligible Americans after 2034. Unless the federal government does something to boost the program’s revenue before then, benefits will have to be cut 23% , the trustees reported.

Jatulis said there are retirees who manage to live off of their Social Security benefits alone. But it’s still a good idea to have some savings to meet the unexpected expenses that inevitably arise, she said, even if that means scaling back your spending for a few years before retiring so you can sock away some dough.

Obtaining expert guidance. “It really does help to get professional advice,” John of AARP said. “And professional advice doesn’t necessarily include your brother-in-law. ... Let’s just say relatives’ goals and aspirations don’t necessarily keep your best interest at heart.”

An advisor cannot only help you come up with a plan but also stick with it when the economy sours and the markets go sideways.

“My role as an advisor is bad-decision insurance,” said Neela Bushnell Hummel, a certified financial planner in Santa Monica. “When things get hard, I’m on the phone with my clients to keep them in their seats,” not panic-selling.

There are thousands of professionals not related to you by blood or marriage offering to help plan for your retirement, and they tout an alphabet soup of titles and designations . The most important question to ask anyone offering you financial advice is how they get paid. Do they have a stake in the investment choices you make — for example, by receiving a commission if you invest in a particular mutual fund? To avoid this kind of conflict, look for an advisor who pledges to act as your “fiduciary,” who will be legally obligated to put your interests first.

There are good sources of free advice too. Using funding from Wells Fargo, the Assn. for Financial Counseling & Planning Education offers to connect anyone seeking help with an accredited financial counselor or fitness coach (who could be a counselor or a financial planner) for one or more free, virtual sessions. To sign up, go to the website of the Coordinated Assistance Network , which is administering the program. Alternatively, veterans can sign up at the network’s site for one free session with an accredited financial counselor.

There are also community organizations, such as the San Diego Financial Literacy Center, that offer free financial planning help. The center’s Smart With Your Money Financial Opportunity Clinics offer virtual one-on-one counseling from certified financial planner volunteers.

To find free financial guidance in Los Angeles County, check the L.A. County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs’ directory of “ financial empowerment resources .” Make sure to check the credentials of any counselor you meet with.

Do-it-yourself options. A number of financial services companies offer “ robo advisors ,” which are online tools that help you choose investments and keep your portfolio balanced. The advice is personalized to some degree and there may be experts on call, but you won’t get the kind of one-on-one attention you would if you hired a certified financial planner.

Some, such as Schwab Intelligent Portfolios and SoFi Automated Investing , are available at no charge; they make their money off the fees you pay to the funds you invest in, some of which are affiliated with them. Others, such as Vanguard Digital Advisor , Betterment and the female-focused Ellevest , charge a low monthly fee or a small percentage of the assets they’re managing for you.

As with any investment advice, ensure you understand your robo advisor’s business model and whether it’s acting as your fiduciary.

For an even more DIY approach, there are online calculators and other tools that can help you work out how much income you’ll need in retirement and whether your current investments can provide it. A good place to start is the rundown of nine online calculators by the personal finance news site The Balance .

Bear market blues. Researchers at Vanguard found that people making withdrawals after a sequence of low returns were more likely to outlive their wealth than people who withdrew after a period of normal growth. And even if they didn’t run out of money, Vanguard found, their income streams would be 11% smaller, and they’d leave 37% less to their heirs.

That’s one reason many retirement pros advise people to postpone their swan songs until their accounts rebound. But Vanguard’s researchers also found that the worst effects could be parried by dialing back withdrawals by a few percentage points for five years.

Don’t forget to factor in healthcare costs. “As your retirement goes on, gradually the amount you need to spend will decrease, but it will also change over time,” John said. “As you start to get much older, you’re less likely to travel, you’re less likely to spend on certain luxuries, but at the same time, your healthcare spending is likely to go up.”

Medicare is available to every American 65 and older, and its hospital coverage is available for free to the millions of people who paid Medicare taxes over the years. But it doesn’t cover all of your healthcare bills, nor will it pay for many types of long-term care.

A couple turning 65 this year is likely to face $315,000 in healthcare costs not covered by insurance during their retirement, accounting for about 15% of their annual expenses, Fidelity Investments estimated . If history is any guide, that amount is likely to rise every year faster than the inflation rate.

About your house. Many Americans’ main asset heading into retirement is their home. If you’re still paying off your mortgage, you might want to hold off retiring, said Andy Millard, a certified financial planner in Columbus, N.C. “I never want to see someone enter retirement with a monthly house payment,” he said.

And in California, that monthly payment is bound to be a doozy. Yet other experts say that having a mortgage isn’t a deal-breaker for retirement, especially if the interest rate is low. The real priority should be getting rid of your consumer debt, such as credit card balances, said Shonty Spatola, a certified public accountant and personal financial specialist in Woodland Hills.

A second question is whether you have more house than you need. Downsizing to a smaller home could free up cash to add to your retirement savings, noted Jason Stein , a certified financial planner in Irvine. If you want to generate real savings, though, you’ll probably have to move far from California’s hot real estate markets .

Finally, experts say that taking out a reverse mortgage — that is, borrowing against the equity in your home, with the loan repaid when the house is sold or bequeathed — can be a viable option in some circumstances. One drawback of these loans, though, is that the revenue they generate may not last as long as you do. Your home’s value is finite, after all.

Are you psychologically ready to retire?

“A lot of people don’t think about the emotional readiness of retirement,” said Joanne Danganan, an accredited financial counselor as well as a financial educator and coach in Los Angeles. If you’re about to leave behind a working life that consumed 40 or more hours of every week, she said, you need to ask yourself how you’ll spend those hours going forward. “You can only do so much Netflix in a day,” she said.

“There’s a reason why instances of depression and suicide increase post-retirement,” said Joshua Escalante Troesh , a certified financial planner in Rancho Cucamonga. “Part of this is you’re moving from one identity to another.” For most of your adult life you’ve been introducing yourself to people by telling them your name and profession, he said, so what will you tell people when you retire?

“The key with retirement is to make sure you are retiring to something rather than from something,” said Jay Zigmont , a certified financial planner who specializes in advising people who don’t have kids. “Retirement is not about a ‘magic number’ but about a different quality of life.”

Wang of the Human Resource Research Center said it’s important to have activities with a clear time structure to replace the one provided by work. People don’t adjust well to retirement without that kind of structure, Wang said.

The uncertainty about the daily routine — when to wake up, when to eat, what to do — isn’t relaxing; it’s stressful, he said. The freedom might seem liberating for a while to some retirees, he added, but “they cannot travel the world forever; they cannot live without structure forever.”
Working less, living more. For a growing number of older Americans, retirement and work aren’t mutually exclusive. “The line between retirement and being a full-time employee is really quite blurred,” Wang said.

In the last 10 years, he said, one-third to two-thirds of the people who retired have continued to engage in some kind of work.

“For most people,” Hummel said, “the goal is ‘work-optional.’ It’s to be able to pursue work that they are financially independent from.” Many just want to work without worrying about how much they’ll make. Others, she said, want to switch to a career that’s more enjoyable but less lucrative.

“You can’t sit on a beach for 30 years. You can’t hit a golf ball for 30 years. It’s just not realistic,” Jatulis said. Besides, it’s healthier to be out in the world and not isolated. “Staying engaged in some way, at work or in a side hustle, I think is the new retirement,” she said.

The blurring line between work and retirement may also explain why more people are looking to “retire” early.

James Lee, a certified financial planner in Sarasota Springs, Fla., who’s president-elect of the Financial Planning Assn., said, “Typically, when I started, people would by default say that they wanted to retire at age 65. More and more I’m seeing people who want to retire in the early to mid-50s.”
What other factors should you consider?

Another key issue, Wang said, is whom you’ll be spending your retirement with. “You don’t want to have a social network where everyone is working, and you’re the only one retired,” he said.

The jury’s still out on whether a social network online is a useful substitute for one in real life, Wang said. Beyond the concerns about privacy and fraud, he said, there’s also the risk of getting stuck in an echo chamber.

Women also face a number of challenges that men typically don’t. Mary Meadows Livingston, a certified financial analyst and certified financial planner in Birmingham, Ala., outlined several in a blog post , including:

Fewer years of earned income. Largely because of the time they spend caring for family members, women spend 12 fewer years in the workforce, on average, than men.

Less pay on average for the same work. Even if a woman is squirreling away the same percentage as a male colleague, the difference in wages — 18% in 2022 — means less money saved. And even if her investments perform equally well, the savings gap will grow over time.
Less aggressive investing styles. Women start investing later in life and put their money into less aggressive growth-oriented assets, even though studies show they are no more risk-averse than men. This translates into lower returns in the long run.

Longer life expectancies. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, women who turn 65 in the U.S. can expect to live almost 20 more years , compared with 17 for men. Longer life spans require more resources in retirement.

One final thought from Troesh, the certified financial planner: You’ll need to prepare yourself for the abrupt shift away from accumulating money and assets to depleting them.

We’ve trained our brains to release dopamine and oxytocin when we see our account balances rise, he said, and cortisol and adrenaline when they go down.

“On one magical day, we’re supposed to rewire that? That’s a hard thing for people to do.”

Economic and Business Summit October 13th presented by Help With My Loan, Verizon and Wells Fargo. Where is our economy going? What do we need to know to plan for the future?

The Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, Help With My Loan, Verizon and Wells Fargo invite leaders of business and industry to a  forum on the local economy and the future of business in Pasadena at the eighth Pasadena Business and Economic Summit. Join us on Thursday, October 13, 2022, at 11:30am at The University Club at 175 North Oakland  Avenue in Pasadena.

The Business and Ecnomic Summit features presentations and discussions by economic experts and industry leaders. Cost to attend is $65 and includes valet parking and lunch. A corporate table of eight, including signage and recognition on the program, costs $600. 

Keynote Speaker: Charles Dougherty. Charlie Dougherty is a vice president and economist with Wells Fargo’s Corporate and

Investment Bank. Based in New York, he covers the U.S. economy with a focus on commercial real estate, housing, construction and regional sectors of the economy. He regularly writes indicator reports, produces special commentary, and contributes
to the company’s Weekly Economic & Financial Commentary. His commentary on the U.S. economy has been featured in various regional and national media publications, including Bloomberg News, Yahoo Finance and The Washington Post.businesses.   

City of Pasadena Economic Development Director David Klug will present information on the latest developments in Pasadena as well as trending industries and more.

Patrick Church, Managing Director, Jones Lang LaSalle Brokerage, Inc. (JLL) will discuss commercial real estate, the evolving office environment as well as

Econ Summit 2019 - Hampton.jpg

Vice Mayor Hampton at Economic and Business summit
Vice Mayor Tyrn Hampton welcomed 150 business and community leaders to the Chamber Economic and Business summit.
the growing life sciences industry in Pasadena.

Invitations are in the mail. If you would like to be added to the invite list, please email Leanne@pasadena-chamber.org. You can sign up and pay online at www.pasadena-chamber.org/forms/business-and-economic-summit.

For information call the Chamber at (626) 795-3355 or visit our website at www.pasadena-chamber.org.

 

Join us to promote Your Business, Make New Contacts and Enjoy Lunch at our Networking Luncheon Allance on October 5th at Brookside sponsored by Velvet Cannabis

Promote your business and make important connections and contacts at the Chamber networking lunch and breakfast.

The Pasadena Chamber networking lunch is growing. Join us to take advantage of valuable opportunities for our members and other business people to get together to promote your business, expand your contacts, find and visit with friends and find new customers. 

Please join us in OCTOBER to promote your business and meet fellow Chamber members and friends.

The Luncheon Alliance is at Brookside Golf Club (near the Rose Bowl) on the first Wednesday of each month at 11:30am. This month we will meet on October 5th, at 11:30am. Join us to network, promote your business and reconnect with Chamber friends. Velvet Cannabis sponsors October's Lunch. Dr. Seth emcees the lunch in September.

Cost for the lunch will be $35 for Pasadena Chamber members and $40 for non-members. Costs must increase due to the significant cost increases in labor and food that the venues are experiencing. COVID cleaning protocols are more labor intensive and take more time, so venues have to bring workers in earlier. Also the cost of workers has risen as has the cost of food. 

Those who reserve after 5pm on the Monday prior to the event pay an additional $10. Because of rising costs and procurement issues, the venue charges us more for late RSVPs.

Those Pasadena Chamber members paying quarterly can save 10% and pay $95 per quarter.

Anyone not able to attend must tell us before noon on the Monday prior to the event or forfeit your payment.  We cannot credit for missed events as we must guarantee and pay for any meals in advance of the meeting. 

All attendees must register and pay in advance. We cannot accommodate walk-in guests under any circumstances. 

We cannot take any reservations after close of business on the Monday prior to the event. We must give the venues a solid count of attendees by the end of business on Monday. 

To pay and reserve for the Luncheon Alliance, click here: RESERVE FOR THE LUNCHEON ALLIANCE

Brookside Golf Club is at 1133 Rosemont Avenue adjacent to the Rose Bowl. There is FREE parking in the nearby Rose Bowl parking lot. If you park on the street, please be aware of time restrictions as you may get a parking ticket.

COVID-19 Update for October 3, 2022-the economy, cases and more

Cases: Pasadena Public Health reported 16 new cases and no fatalities on Friday, September 30th. LA County reported 1682 cases on Friday and 6 deaths. 

Subvariant warns winter is coming AN INCREASE in COVID-19 cases is widely expected this fall and winter. By Rong-Gong Lin II and Luke Money for the LA Times: As officials in California and beyond try to assess how severe a fall-and-winter coronavirus wave may be, one key factor is the growth of several new subvariants now emerging.

It’s too soon to say whether any of the newer variants will rise to prominence in the ways Omicron and Delta did. None have been documented in significant numbers in California or the nation. Still, experts say another super-spreading subvariant — combined with more people being indoors when the weather gets cold — could bring new challenges.

For now, California remains in a lull, with cases and hospitalizations declining since mid-summer. But in Los Angeles County, weekly deaths remain elevated and well above springtime lows, likely fueled by a case rate that, while improved, is still substantial.

But officials can’t rule out the possibility of a severe wave, given the unpredictability of the coronavirus.

Following the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, the pandemic’s previous surges have coincided with the emergence of new variants or subvariants that were more transmissible and circumvented the protections afforded by vaccines or previous infections. Such constant mutations make the coronavirus a moving target. So while officials are largely confident that California and the U.S. are relatively well positioned heading into colder months — thanks to ready supplies of vaccines, therapeutics and the rollout of updated booster shots — they continue to keep a watchful eye on the horizon.

Among them is BA.2.75.2, which Fauci identified as “one that looks suspicious — that it might start to evolve as a [troublesome] variant.”
BA.2.75.2 has not been found widely in the U.S., and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is not counting it separately from the less worrisome but similarly named BA.2.75. The concern with BA.2.75.2 is that our collective antibodies — whether primed from past vaccination or a previous case — may be less able to recognize this new subvariant and ward off infection.

Another subvariant, BA.2.3.20, could potentially be even worse because it has lots of mutations, though its level of immune escape hasn’t been characterized, Topol said. And a fourth mutation worth watching is known as XBB.

UC San Francisco infectious-disease expert Dr. Peter Chin-Hong is keeping an eye on another subvariant, BF.7, also known as BA.5.2.1.7, which could be contributing to a significant share of cases in Belgium and other European countries.

None of these subvariants are circulating at high levels in the U.S., CDC data show. And there’s hope that updated bivalent boosters — formulated specifically to target BA.5 and another Omicron subvariant, BA.4 — will also afford extra protection against those subvariants’ descendants, such as BF.7 and BA.4.6. But what’s worrisome about other strains that have a high level of immune escape, including BA.2.75.2, is that they could begin a new surge and potentially reinfect people who have recovered even recently — something that occurred this summer when BA.5 supplanted BA.2.12.1.

Masks: Saying community levels of COVID-19 transmission in the city declined since Sept. 5, the Pasadena Public Health Department revised its health order requirement that face masks be worn on buses, trains and other mass transit vehicles into only a recommendation on Friday. 

Face coverings are now only “recommended” and not required on transit vehicles, including ride-hail vehicles, and at transit hubs.

Los Angeles County took similar action. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced it was adhering to the health order guidance and would no longer require masks.

The Economy (worldwide): (From the New York Times): The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge remained elevated in August, data released on Friday showed, further evidence that the central bank is contending with a stubborn problem as it tries to choke off the worst inflation in four decades.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures inflation measure, which is the measure the Fed officially targets as it tries to achieve 2 percent annual inflation, climbed 6.2 percent over the year through August. While that was a slowdown from 6.4 percent in July, it was higher than the 6 percent that economists in a Bloomberg survey had expected.

The details of the report were even more concerning. Price increases have been moderating somewhat on an overall basis, partly because gas prices have been declining. But after volatile fuel and food prices were stripped out to get a sense of underlying inflationary pressures, the index climbed 4.9 percent over the year through August, an acceleration from 4.7 percent the month before. And on a monthly basis, the core index picked up by 0.6 percent, the fastest increase since June.

US stocks have notched their their longest streak of quarterly losses since the market collapse of 2008, weighed down by central banks’ determination to tame inflation through higher interest rates.Stocks end month down 9.3%, worst drop since March 2020. Wall Street closed out a miserable September on Friday with the Standard & Poor’s 500 posting its worst monthly skid since March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic crashed global markets.

The benchmark index ended the month with a 9.3% loss and posted its third straight losing quarter. It’s now at its lowest level since November 2020 and is down by more than a quarter since the start of the year.

The main reason financial markets continue to struggle is fear about a possible recession, as interest rates soar in hopes of beating down the high inflation that’s swept the world.

The European Commission reported on Friday that consumer prices in the countries that use the euro as their currency rose at an annual rate of 10 percent in September, again reaching the highest level since the creation of the euro more than two decades ago.

The double-digit pace was a big jump from 9.1 percent in August, the previous record.

The numbers are just the latest evidence of how the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, which once provided most of Europe’s energy, is undermining economic growth, sowing anxiety and straining government resources in Europe more severely than in the United States and many other regions.

Energy prices, which rose at an annual rate of 40.8 percent in the eurozone in September, were the main contributor to the accelerating inflation, driven higher by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Food prices rose 11.8 percent in September, from 10.6 percent in August.

And this: UNDERSTANDING RETIREMENT-Is another crisis looming for public pension funds? By Laurence Darmiento for the LA Times:  Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was shock enough for pension funds holding Russian assets, suddenly worth little.
Then, the prolonged conflict and lingering pandemic drove inflation to heights not seen in 40 years — raising interest rates and putting an end to a decade-long bull run in stocks, the biggest driver of pension fund gains.

The collateral damage wrought by the disruption as well as fears of a protracted recession are now raising questions about the finances of the multibillion-dollar systems relied upon by more than 4 million California public workers to carry them through their retirement.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS, the nation’s largest state pension fund, experienced a 6.1% investment loss in the fiscal year that ended June 30. It was the first annual loss since the Great Recession for the fund that provides pension benefits to employees of the state and nearly 2,900 counties, cities, special districts and other public employers. Assets fell to $440 billion after topping $500 billion last year.

The California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or CalSTRS, the nation’s largest teachers’ pension plan, lost 1.3% last fiscal year, its first decline too in more than a decade .
And things may not get better anytime soon.

Growth in advanced economies is expected to drop sharply from 5.1% in 2021 to 2.6% this year, according to a forecast released this summer by the World Bank that is 1.2 percentage points lower than its January projection — leading to worries that lackluster market returns may extend indefinitely.

In California, current and retired employees covered by CalPERS, CalSTRS and other public-sector pension plans have some of the nation’s best protection against such downturns.

A set of related court decisions called “the California rule” guarantees, with only rare exceptions , that the benefits promised to a public employee the day they begin work are the same ones they will get the day they retire.

State bolsters benefits in paid family leave program-Low-income workers can see 90% wage replacement. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a bill that will increase the amount of money workers receive under the state’s paid family and medical leave program. The move will provide a boost to ensure that low-wage workers are not locked out of a benefit they are already paying for, supporters say.

Beginning in 2025, the state will pay up to 90% in wage replacement for new parents and those who need to take time off to care for a seriously ill family member or themselves.

Senate Bill 951 by Sen. María Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) also ensures that the wage replacement will remain between 60% and 70% during the next two years, after the rate was scheduled to return to 55% beginning Jan. 1, 2023.

 

Pages