07 December 20
We Need “Some” Money to Run It - Help!
We have to have some money to run this process. We have a large dedicated readership, but the donations - only - come in when the situation turns absolutely dire.
We should not be struggling like this for basic funding.
Respectfully.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
Sure, I'll make a donation!
Update My Monthly Donation
If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts
CA 95611
07 December 20
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
WHY ARE YOU HERE? Why have you chosen to be and stay here with Reader Supported News? It means something to you, no? This organization is underfunded … Because 1% of the subscribers can’t bring themselves to respond to the fundraising appeals!? That’s crazy. “Be here”, we need you. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News
Sure, I'll make a donation!
Rudy Giuliani in Hospital After Testing Positive for COVID-19
ABC News
Excerpt: "Giuliani, 76, was admitted to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington Sunday."
@RudyGiuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus. Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!" Trump tweeted.
Giuliani, 76, was admitted to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington Sunday, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. It is unclear when exactly Giuliani tested positive or the details of his condition.
The former New York City mayor tweeted out Sunday night that he's feeling good.
"Thank you to all my friends and followers for all the prayers and kind wishes," Giuliani tweeted. "I’m getting great care and feeling good. Recovering quickly and keeping up with everything."
He has spent the last month traveling the country fighting the 2020 election results in states including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona on behalf of the president. On Wednesday, Giuliani attended a hearing in the Michigan House of Representatives where he was seen without a mask and argued the election was riddled with fraud.
The next day he appeared at a hearing at the Georgia Senate Judiciary Committee to contest that state's results. Not all of the state senators in the hearing were seen wearing masks.
"Senate staff members who were present in the committee room for the hearings have been instructed to work from home until they have an opportunity to take a COVID test and receive the results," a spokesperson for the Georgia state senate told ABC News.
The Trump campaign claims Giuliani "did not experience any symptoms or test positive for COVID-19 until more than 48 hours after his return" and tested negative before he traveled to each state, the campaign said in a statement Sunday.
The Trump campaign also says that other "team members" who came in close contact with Giuliani will "be following their physicians’ directives and CDC guidelines on self-isolation and testing"—but the campaign does not name any names or mention if Trump Legal adviser Jenna Ellis will be quarantining.
Ellis was with Giuliani Thursday and attended the White House senior staff Christmas party Friday. She previously had the coronavirus over the summer, sources tell ABC.
Giuliani appeared in an interview on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo Sunday that was taped at 9 a.m.
He becomes the latest in a growing list of White House officials who have tested positive for the virus. The president, along with first lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron, contracted the virus in October, a week after they hosted a gathering of officials to announce the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and campaign adviser Chris Christie were also diagnosed with COVID-19 around that time.
More officials have announced they contracted the disease in the last few weeks. On Nov. 9, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson contracted COVID-19.
On Nov. 20, Giuliani's son, Andrew Giuliani, who serves as a special assistant to the president, tested positive for the coronavirus and a day later, Donald Trump Jr. tested positive.
The country is seeing a jump in new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Experts warn that the numbers will get worse as America heads into the winter.
Last week, the White House Coronavirus Task Force issued a warning to the nation's governors urging them to advise senior citizens to avoid leaving their homes for nonessential activities.
"It must be made clear that if you are over 65 or have significant health conditions, you should not enter any indoor public spaces where anyone is unmasked due to the immediate risk to your health," the memo said.
The memo also warned that Americans who celebrated Thanksgiving with anyone outside their household are infectious and “dangerous to others.”
READ MORE
Volunteers Gulliana Pola, left, and Tatiyana Grant sort through produce during a Feeding South Florida drive-thru food distribution at Quiet Waters Park in Deerfield Beach on December 4, 2020. (photo: Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Unemployment, Sick Leave and Housing Aid Are Set to Expire, Threatening Americans With Sudden Financial Ruin
Tony Romm, The Washington Post
Romm writes: "More than two dozen federal stimulus programs crafted to help cash-strapped workers and businesses weather the coronavirus pandemic are set to expire in a matter of weeks."
The looming deadlines have added new urgency to congressional talks over a new $908 billion stimulus package
.... adding urgency to congressional negotiations over a new $908 billion relief package that might help break months of political deadlock.
Without the new aid, the end of a series of key stimulus programs threatens to push the country closer to the financial cliff. Millions of Americans are set to lose unemployment benefits, access to paid sick leave and protections against evictions. Businesses no longer may be able to count on a handful of key tax credits to help their bottom lines, and state and local governments run the risk of having to return millions of dollars they had hoped to spend on the public-health crisis and the financial carnage it has wrought.
“If we let things that are going to expire [actually] expire in December, you are truly going to have widespread hardship,” warned Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which estimated 25 aid programs from Congress and the White House are set to expire without Washington action. That’s on top of a slew of other annual tax and spending provisions that still have not been renewed in 2020.
“All the bad things we were worried would happen — but were successfully addressed in the first round of bills — could hit at once,” she said. “It would be blatant neglect to allow all these things to expire.”
The looming deadlines have grown all the more pressing amid fresh signs that the U.S. economy is backsliding as the pandemic continues to worsen. The country added only 245,000 jobs in November, according to new federal data released Friday, marking the slowest month of growth since the recovery started this summer. The dour figures arrived as states including California started instituting new restrictions on businesses and public gatherings last week amid a meteoric rise in coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
The new decline has galvanized Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill in recent days, resulting in the first major bipartisan stimulus compromise in months. The new $908 billion package outlined in the Senate includes some of Democrats’ long-sought priorities, including enhanced unemployment aid and a fresh injection of cash for cities and states that are suffering financially. It also puts new money behind Republicans’ push to bolster small businesses’ bottom lines and protect a wide array of corporate entities from coronavirus-related lawsuits.
The bipartisan deal has managed to unite the two parties in rare, early accord. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) spoke about the matter last week, and McConnell exited the conversation expressing a belief that both sides are “interested in getting an outcome” — though he has also proposed a more scaled-back stimulus plan of his own. President-elect Joe Biden also has encouraged lawmakers to broker the deal, stressing in a speech Friday that the “future will be very bleak” unless Congress acts swiftly.
As the talks have progressed, a wide array of groups representing restaurants, retailers, airlines, hotels and local governments lent their voices to the last-minute push. Roughly 300 associations — belonging to the Covid Relief Now Coalition — wrote Congress on Friday to call on them to adopt a compromise before the end of the year and build on their progress later, warning the economic consequences of continued inaction could be vast.
“Our country can’t wait until 2021,” they wrote.
The economy’s recent contraction has presented the greatest risks to an estimated 12 million Americans who stand to lose their unemployment benefits before the end of the month if Congress does not act.
The government’s $2 trillion stimulus plan, the Cares Act, greatly boosted jobless assistance: It authorized an extra 13 weeks of aid, increased federal funding for benefits, and offered new help to millions of Americans who drive for Uber, deliver for Grubhub or work for other so-called “gig economy” companies. Without a new stimulus bill, though, some workers are set to run out the clock on their unemployment insurance before they are able to return to the workforce at a time when hiring may be slowing.
Many Americans who have been out of a job for months are set to receive their last checks for the week ending a day after Christmas, according to Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for workers’ rights.
The expiration of that aid threatens to reverberate throughout the economy. “People don’t fully comprehend how somebody else’s pain is going to affect them,” she said. “It’s not just 12 million people losing benefits; it’s what those 12 million people would have done with those benefits. It’s the landlords not getting rent. It’s the financial services companies not getting mortgages and car payments. Belt tightening is real.”
Six days after the aid expires, millions of Americans could face an additional economic blow: Federal protections against evictions are set to expire as well. The Trump administration announced the moratorium in September, arguing that removing renters from their homes threatened to force families into unsafe, cramped living conditions, contributing to the spread of the coronavirus. But the government’s order — enacted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — is slated to end after Dec. 31.
Entering January, renters may owe “anywhere between $30 billion and $70 billion in back rent and have no ability to pay,” said Diane Yentel, the president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. She said that an estimated 30-to-40 million people, in 17 million households, could soon face the threat of eviction.
Some landlords initiated eviction proceedings against their tenants even while the CDC order was in place, seeking to capitalize on the Trump administration’s confusing policy and a wave of lawsuits filed by organizations representing owners. The result could be a swift opening of the spigot starting in a matter of weeks, as landlords file a new wave of evictions or seek to enforce the proceedings that already have been started.
“The only thing that remains between the renter and being kicked out on the streets is expiring on December 31,” Yentel said.
The White House repeatedly declined to comment on the eviction order. Instead, spokesman Judd Deere attacked Pelosi and said in a statement the president “understands that Americans are hurting and need relief, which is why the White House continues to engage with those in congressional leadership who are serious about moving quickly to approve billions in aid.”
The CDC didn’t respond to a request for comment.
For other Americans, the end of the year brings the end of paid family and sick leave benefits. Congress earlier this year required small employers to offer two weeks of paid sick leave as well as additional family leave for those unable to work as a result of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. If those benefits expire, it could create a wave of uncertainty about workers’ health at a time when the U.S. is experiencing its most severe surge in coronavirus cases.
“As people are trying to figure out how to keep schools and workplaces safe, having the ability to take the time off you need is pretty essential,” said Tamara Fucile, the senior adviser for government affairs at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Millions of Americans had no access to such benefits before the pandemic, according to Fucile, leading lawmakers to introduce the provisions as part of their first major stimulus bill in early March. Nine months later, the soon-sunsetting aid has helped illustrate an evolution in thinking in Washington, as policymakers come to terms with the reality that the coronavirus — and its economic harms — are unlikely to be short-lived.
“No one at the time thought that we would be in this situation at the end of the year,” Fucile said.
Businesses, meanwhile, could lose access to employee-retention credits and other tax benefits at the end of December, months after the Paycheck Protection Program, totaling billions of dollars in forgivable federal loans, ran its course. The aid helped protect businesses’ bottom lines after many closed or limited their operations as a result of the coronavirus, cutting into their revenue and forcing them to slash their workforce.
Cities and states are set to face their own cash crunch, as a $150 billion program that covers coronavirus-related expenses is set to lapse at the end of the month. Any dollars they don’t spend — including those that aid workers, renters, businesses and even doctors and testing sites — must be returned to the U.S. Treasury even if they have a use for the funds. Many governors have called on Washington to extend the deadline.
“It’s going to be a pretty big transition point at the end of the year,” said Garrett Watson, a senior policy analyst for the Tax Foundation, “given the sheer scope of what the Cares Act was doing for individuals and businesses beginning in the spring.”
READ MORE
Hospital care. (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
Headlines Don't Capture the Horror We Saw
Kasey Grewe, The Atlantic
Grewe writes: "I chronicled what COVID-19 did to a hospital. America must not let down its guard."
ou likely know that the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 is surging across the country. But headlines from distant states do not capture the horror of a hospital without enough intensive-care beds. I was an anesthesiology resident in a large academic medical center at the peak of the pandemic in New York City this spring.
During a time when journalists had little access to what was happening inside New York hospitals, I wrote regular email updates to friends and family. These messages—edited for length and clarity below—showcase the frightening reality of what care looks like in an overwhelmed hospital. (Where I describe individual cases in significant detail, I’ve obtained the consent of the patient or family in question.) The emails relate the experiences of health-care workers, and young doctors in particular: the anxiety, the fear, the overwhelming responsibility, and the ethical burden of hard decisions. Even after the pandemic is over, the weight of these experiences will remain with us for a lifetime.
These messages form a chronicle of what COVID-19 has already done in America and a reminder of what it could do again this winter.
Thursday, March 26
A senior anesthesiology resident holds the stat intubation pager, which goes off when a patient anywhere in the hospital needs a breathing tube right away. My co-residents and I first noticed that things were changing when the pager started to go off every few hours, and then every hour. When the hospital ran out of ICU beds, my department swiftly converted our operating rooms into a giant ICU. A co-resident and I spent Tuesday pushing beds and anesthesia machines around to plan how to fit up to four beds in an operating room. The “OR-ICU” fits multiple COVID-19 patients into one operating room, ventilated via the anesthesia machine’s ventilators. Their daytime doctor, an anesthesia resident in PPE, doesn’t leave their side until their nighttime doctor—another anesthesia resident in PPE—comes to take over.
On Tuesday night, one of my co-residents did 17 emergency intubations. Upon running to respond to yet another intubation page, she was horrified to see that the patient was one of our supervising physicians. Today, one of our surgeons was intubated. Off duty in my Upper West Side apartment, I hear an ambulance go by every 10 minutes. It’s hard to sleep. My colleagues wonder out loud: Is this chest pain from the virus, or just intense anxiety?
Wednesday, April 8
I spent the past few days and nights working in the OR-ICU. It is truly a scene from a science-fiction movie. When I put on my PPE (N95 mask, goggles, face shield, hair cover, gown, and two pairs of gloves) to enter the operating room, it almost feels as though the goggles are a virtual-reality headset. Upon entering the OR, I am confronted with the sight of four patients, all deeply sedated, each intubated and connected to an anesthesia-machine ventilator and many, many pumps for IV medications. Some—the lucky ones—are also connected to machines that perform dialysis. It’s loud. Huge fans filter viral particles from the air, and there are hundreds of overlapping beeps from the monitors, ventilators, and pumps. And it’s a mess. For days I wondered about some patient belongings in the corner: a pile topped with a pair of dark jeans and a cotton polo shirt. I inspected it more closely and saw the name tag of a patient who had passed away several days earlier. Yesterday I noticed a loose paper on the ground and picked it up. “Body Bag Instructions,” it read.
My team is responsible for the care of 12 ventilated patients. Of the 12, six are age 50 or under. Most are showing no signs of progress. One is a relatively young person who has been intubated for more than 10 days. We became optimistic that this patient, who had been breathing well with little support from the ventilator, could be disconnected from the machine. On Monday morning we removed the breathing tube, but the patient quickly deteriorated, and we had to re-intubate.
End-of-life care has always been the work of intensivists. It’s hard but profoundly rewarding to feel that you can help families through some of the most vulnerable moments in their lives. It’s part of the reason I chose to become a critical-care doctor. Pre-COVID, we were used to seeing patients pass away with at least one family member at their side. ICU doctors are desensitized to death, but even for us, the fact that people are dying alone is devastating to watch.
We have a team of doctors—who because of their age or other conditions are at high risk for the coronavirus—working from home as “family liaisons.” They call the family members of every ICU patient to give updates and help make decisions about care. When I arrived at work in the morning, our family liaison informed me that a family wanted to withdraw care from their father. He asked me to call into a Zoom meeting so they could see their dad and make a final decision.
Normally, we meet families in the ICU, but in this case I had never met the family. I called in wearing my full PPE, and was met with the faces of the patient’s children, who looked to be about my age. I introduced myself and asked what their understanding of the situation was. They explained that they understood their dad was very sick and that they didn’t want to keep treating him so aggressively. I expressed that I agreed with their assessment of his condition, and that we would support whatever decision they made. I explained that what they were about to see would likely be disturbing—that their dad might be unrecognizable to them—and asked again if they were sure they wanted to see. They insisted that they did. I slowly went to his bedside and flipped the camera so they could see his face. They immediately started to cry. I cannot imagine how jarring it must have been to see him for the first and last time with a breathing tube, deeply sedated, and in shades of yellow and purple. “That’s not Dad anymore,” one of the children said. I showed them the many machines and IV medications he was connected to. They agreed that he wouldn’t have wanted all this, and said they wanted to proceed with the withdrawal.
I asked if they wanted to say anything to him. I put my phone up to his ear, and one of them said, “I love you, Dad.” I asked if there was any music he liked that they wanted me to play. They said that he didn’t really like music. I offered to call a chaplain to pray with him and they said he would like that. I said, “I’m really sorry. This isn’t fair. I wish things were different.” They said, “Thank you, Doctor. Please let us know when it is done.”
I left the room and wiped my phone aggressively with bleach wipes. I called the chaplains’ office, only to learn that in-person visits were not being made to COVID-19 patients. The family accepted this. I asked a nurse to turn off the patient’s dialysis machine. I turned off the medications supporting his blood pressure, turned down his ventilator, and turned up all his sedative medications to make him more comfortable. I watched him die from outside the room on a vitals monitor while looking over data for other patients. I came back to do the official death exam and pronounce him dead. The nurse was overwhelmed, so I took out all his lines and bandaged him myself. I cleaned the grime off his face.
I called his son and told him that he’d passed away peacefully. His son confided that he was unsure whether they’d made the right decision. Their dad was very sick, and his chances of recovering to his baseline were definitely slim. But there is so much we don’t know about the disease. This man was in his 60s, a little younger than my father. If he were my dad, would I have withdrawn care? What would I have wanted to hear from a doctor on the other end of the line? “There is no right decision,” I said. “The best answer is just what you think he would have wanted. When we turned everything off, he passed away very quickly without the support. Maybe that was his way of telling us.” The son seemed to take solace in that.
During sign-out I told the overnight ICU supervising physician that I had withdrawn care on this patient. She marked on her map that we would have another open bed. “Oh, was he on dialysis?” she asked. “You freed up a machine. Maybe I can salvage this guy downstairs whose potassium is 8”—a level typically considered incompatible with life.
My lesson so far is that this disease, for the subset of patients who become critically ill to the point of requiring mechanical ventilation, is far worse than we ever imagined. It is certainly not pure respiratory failure. At the moment, we still have enough ventilators, but more and more I feel that this won’t save us. Our patients’ kidneys are failing, they remain febrile for weeks with no bacterial infection, they form blood clots in all their lines and likely their pulmonary vasculature, and, most strikingly, even the ones who look entirely ready to breathe on their own often fail when we remove mechanical support. The public conception that one ventilator means one life saved is evidently false.
Two of our own physicians remain intubated in the medical ICU.
Even when speaking to other doctors, my colleagues struggle to explain our situation. While we scramble to stay afloat, doctors from fancy hospitals in other states go on TV in makeup. Frankly, I’m not interested in what’s happening at Massachusetts General Hospital, or Stanford, or the Mayo Clinic. When people academically pontificate on possible treatments from afar, I feel frustrated by their lack of understanding of the issue. We have tried virtually every drug and none of them has worked. We are struggling to provide basic ICU supportive care. None of the experimental drugs will be of any utility in an environment where there are not enough hospital beds, doctors, and nurses.
Wednesday, April 22
I’ve been really shaken by the emergency intubations this week. The patients have been terrified. By the time I’m called, they are gasping for air. Because no visitors are allowed, they are alone. These encounters are emergencies and can be chaotic. We are all wearing PPE, so they can’t see our faces. I try to be kind and reassuring. I ask if they have any questions. But so often, as a result of the patient’s respiratory distress and the oxygen mask over their face, I can’t make out what they are trying to say. I have to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t really understand. We are going to put you to sleep now and put in a breathing tube.” I push medications to sedate and paralyze them, and then put a tube through their vocal cords. Looking down at them as they go to sleep, I’m the last person they see. And for the ones who don’t survive, I will have been the only one to hear—or rather, not hear—their last words.
The main resources we lack are respiratory therapists and ICU nurses. Our department has organized a huge operation in which doctors explicitly fill the roles of nurses and respiratory therapists outside of our regular physician shifts. This week, I’m working two overnight shifts as a respiratory therapist. The chair of my department is walking from room to room suctioning breathing tubes. Senior physicians are brushing patients’ teeth.
In the ICU, patients become voiceless and personless. We take care of their bodies for weeks: examining them, adjusting their ventilators, titrating their sedation, and carefully considering their medical management. But in the absence of family contact, we have no idea who they truly are. Last week, when we were rounding in the OR-ICU, I noticed my intern perusing a colorful website rather than the medical record. A note from a family-liaison doctor had pointed him to a support site for one of our patients. We saw for the first time that this patient was a teacher. The website had hundreds of comments from students and parents: “We are thinking of you every day!” and “We are praying that you make it through this!” There were dozens of photos of a middle-aged man with his students—in the classroom, at school sporting events, wearing different silly costumes. He had a huge, toothy grin. My intern stared at the website, stunned. It took my breath away. My attending physician said, “I can’t look at this. Please close it.” We get through our day in the OR-ICU by compartmentalizing—by ignoring the fact that our patients are people who are deeply suffering. When reality cuts through our fantasy, the job can be unbearable.
I’ve been asked when I think this will be over. There is a human impulse to believe that something this horrible will inevitably improve. But we cannot mistake fewer sirens for organic progress. If the curve has flattened, it is only through the deliberate work of millions of people who have accepted the reality of homeschooling their children, missing their friends and relatives, and forgoing their income. I think we have to trust the scientists who argue that reopening in the absence of a robust testing program or a vaccine will fail. Thank you for all of the sacrifices you have made, and continue to make, in the name of protecting those who are the most vulnerable.
READ MORE
U.S. forces flying over Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2017. Under a draft order, the number of American troops in the country would be halved from the current deployment of 4,500. (photo: Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images)
Michael Klare | Trump's Pernicious Military Legacy: From the Forever Wars to the Cataclysmic Wars
Michael Klare, TomDispatch
Klare writes: "People seldom notice that Trump's approach to military policy has always been two-faced."
READ MORE
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs New York City's subway and buses and two commuter rail lines, is threatening drastic service cuts. (photo: Jonah Markowitz/NYT)
'Existential Peril': Mass Transit Faces Huge Service Cuts Across US
Christina Goldbaum and Will Wright, The New York Times
Excerpt: "In Boston, transit officials warned of ending weekend service on the commuter rail and shutting down the city's ferries. In Washington, weekend and late-night metro service would be eliminated and 19 of the system's 91 stations would close."
Reeling from the pandemic, transit agencies are grappling with drastic reductions in ridership and pleading for help from Washington.
In Atlanta, 70 of the city’s 110 bus routes have already been suspended, a move that could become permanent.
And in New York City, home to the largest mass transportation system in North America, transit officials have unveiled a plan that could slash subway service by 40 percent and cut commuter rail service in half.
Across the United States, public transportation systems are confronting an extraordinary financial crisis set off by the pandemic, which has starved transit agencies of huge amounts of revenue and threatens to cripple service for years.
READ MORE
British chief negotiator David Frost and EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier arrive for talks on a trade deal in Brussels, Belgium August 21, 2020. (photo: Yves Herman/Reuters)
The Potential Impact of Brexit Without a Trade Deal
Guy Faulconbridge and John Chalmers, Reuters
Excerpt: "Britain and the European Union are seeking a post-Brexit trade deal, with failure likely to result in increased chaos in mutual trade, financial markets tumbling and huge economic costs."
Here are some of the potential pressure points of a no-trade deal after five years of Brexit crisis.
STERLING
Investors and banks have predicted that a deal will eventually be done, so a no-deal would hit sterling, according to major foreign exchange traders.
The shock referendum result on June 24, 2016 sent the pound down 8% against the U.S. dollar, its biggest one-day fall since the era of free-floating exchange rates began in the 1970s.
That was nearly double the 4.3% drop on Sept. 16, 1992, when financier George Soros “broke the Bank of England” after his bets against the pound were instrumental in the currency’s exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
TRADE
Overnight Britain would lose zero-tariff and zero-quota access to the European Single Market of 450 million consumers.
Britain would default to World Trade Organization (WTO) terms in its trade with the 27-state bloc, making it in effect as distant to its biggest trading partner as Australia.
Britain would impose its new UK global tariff (UKGT) on EU imports while the EU would impose its common external tariff on UK imports. Non-tariff barriers could hinder trade, with prices predicted to rise for consumers and businesses.
Borders risk disruption, especially the main crossing points, with shortages of certain foods possible as Britain imports 60% of its fresh food.
Any disruption would be felt most keenly by sectors that rely on just-in-time supply chains, including autos, food and beverages. Other sectors likely to be affected would include textiles, pharmaceuticals, and chemical and petroleum products.
The EU is Britain’s biggest trading partner, accounting for 47% of its trade in 2019. It had a trade deficit of 79 billion pounds ($106 billion) with the EU, a surplus of 18 billion in services outweighed by a deficit of 97 billion pounds in goods.
Even with a deal, Britain’s reasonable worst-case scenario is that 7,000 trucks bound for the continent could stack up in the southern English county of Kent.
THE ECONOMY
A no-trade deal would wipe an extra 2% off British economic output in 2021 while driving up inflation, unemployment and public borrowing, Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has forecast.
The OBR said tariffs under WTO rules and border disruptions would hit parts of the economy such as manufacturing that were emerging relatively unscathed from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The long-term hit could be costly for both Britain and the 27 remaining EU members. Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, is Britain’s biggest EU trading partner.
The shock would be felt unevenly across continental Europe, with those likely to be hit worst including Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Malta and Poland.
The Halle Institute for Economic Research has forecast that EU companies exporting to Britain could lose more than 700,000 jobs if no trade deal is agreed.
NORTHERN IRELAND
Both sides want to avoid a hard border between the United Kingdom’s Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the EU. Implementing the Northern Ireland protocol of the 2020 Brexit Treaty will be complicated without a trade agreement.
Under the treaty, Northern Ireland remains, in effect, in the EU’s single market for goods and aligned to its customs rules after Dec. 31 unlike the rest of the United Kingdom.
Exactly how checks, regulations and paperwork will work between Britain and Northern Ireland is not yet clear. But without a trade deal, the divide between Britain and Northern Ireland would become more distinct.
Brexit without a trade deal could allow Northern Ireland to become a back door into the EU’s single market, thus raising the spectre of a hard border on the island of Ireland for the first time since a 1998 peace deal.
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement brought an end to three decades of sectarian violence between mainly Protestant Unionists who favour continued British rule and mainly Catholic Irish Nationalists who want a united Ireland.
ACRIMONY
Both sides would likely blame each other for any chaos after a no-deal exit and Europe would be split just as it faces the challenges of China’s rise, Russian assertiveness and the continuing fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Such a failure could shake the bloc that was created to bind the ruined nations of Europe into a global power after World War Two.
The EU would lose one of Europe’s leading military and intelligence powers, its second-largest economy and the only financial capital to rival New York. Britain would be alone, left far more dependent on its alliance with the United States.
Britain is also pushing ahead with legislation known as the Internal Market Bill that would allow it to break parts of the 2020 Brexit Treaty relating to Northern Ireland, making it unclear how far it would implement the divorce deal.
CITY OF LONDON
London, the world’s international financial capital, is largely ready for Brexit as a trade deal was never going to cover Britain’s most globally competitive industry.
While most banks and investors have found ways to navigate Britain’s departure from the bloc, the long-term impact of an acrimonious Brexit would be unpredictable and the EU would likely try to grab more market share from the City of London.
London is the centre of the world’s $6.6 trillion a day foreign currency markets, accounting for 43% of global turnover. Its nearest EU competitor, Paris, accounts for about 2%.
The British capital is also the global centre for euro trading, a potential headache for the European Central Bank.
READ MORE
Great Barrier Reef. (photo: iStock)
Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Site Reduced to 'Critical' Condition
Julia Jacobo, Yahoo! News
Jacobo writes: "The conservation status for Australia's Great Barrier Reef has declined from 'significant concern' to 'critical' due to increasing impacts associated with climate change, a new report has found."
The damage to the reef is a result of ocean warming, acidification and extreme weather, which has resulted in coral bleaching, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) 2020 World Heritage Outlook report, which tracks whether the conservation of the world's 252 natural World Heritage sites is sufficient to protect them in the long term. The process of coral bleaching occurs when water is too warm and the algae the corals expel from their tissues cause them to turn completely white.
The decline of the coral has also resulted in decreasing populations of certain marine species, researchers found. The reef, the most extensive in the world, houses more than 1,500 species of fish.
A third of the natural World Heritage sites are currently being threatened by climate change, the IUCN reported.
Warming temperatures have exacerbated the spread of invasive species in the protected areas of the Cape Floral region in South Africa, and the Pantanal Conservation Area in Brazil was heavily damaged by wildfires in 2019 and 2020, according to the report. In addition, the rapid melting of the Kaskawulsh Glacier, part of Kluane Lake in the Yukon, has changed the river flow, which has led to depleting fish populations.
Since 2017, the conservation outlooks of 16 sites have changed to deteriorating, while only eight showed improvement, and the threats are expected to continue, according to the report.
Climate change continues to be the No. 1 threat to natural World Heritage sites. In 2014, the IUCN identified climate change as the most significant potential threat, and it 2017, it became the fastest-growing threat. In 2020, climate change remains the "most prevalent current threat," and it is assessed as a "high" or "very high" threat in 83 of 252 sites, according to the report.
After climate change, the next two significant threats to these natural sites are invasive alien species and tourism impacts.
In addition to the Great Barrier Reef, the islands and protected areas of Mexico's Gulf of California have also entered the critical category, the report found. It was included in the IUCN's List of World Heritage in Danger in 2019 due to the imminent extinction of endemic vaquita, which the World Wildlife Fund describes as the "world's rarest marine mammal."
There are currently 18 sites on the critical list, including the Everglades National Park in Florida and the tropical rainforest in Indonesia.
“Natural World Heritage sites are amongst the world’s most precious places, and we owe it to future generations to protect them,” Bruno Oberle, the IUCN director general, said in a statement. “The IUCN World Heritage Outlook 3 reveals the damage climate change is wreaking on natural World Heritage, from shrinking glaciers to coral bleaching to increasingly frequent and severe fires and droughts. As the international community defines new objectives to conserve biodiversity, this report signals the urgency with which we must tackle environmental challenges together at the planetary scale.”
READ MORE
Contribute to RSN
Update My Monthly Donation
