Month: December 2021

President Joe Biden signed a nearly $770 billion defense bill into law on Monday, which includes an overhaul on sex assault crimes prosecution.The National Defense Authorization Act for military appropriations in the 2022 fiscal year includes $740 billion for the Department of Defense, which is $25 billion more than Biden’s budget request. It also includes $27.8 billion for  Department of Energy defense-related activities and another $378 million for other defense-related activities.

The bill includes funding to change how the military prosecutes sexual assault cases, along with other items, such as military construction, basic pay increase for troops, national security programs and intelligence programs, a brief White House statement shows.

The bill also specifically includes a 2.7% pay raise for troops, an independent commission to review the two-decade war in Afghanistan. Biden said in a White House statement: “The Act provides vital benefits and enhances access to justice for military personnel and their families,” Biden also said in the statement that “unfortunately,” certain sections of the legislation continue to bar the use of funds to transfer Guantanamo Bay detainees into the United States or custody of certain foreign countries unless certain conditions are met. He added that these restrictions “constrain the flexibility of the executive branch with respect to its engagement in delicate negotiations with foreign countries over the potential transfer of detainees,” and urged Congress to eliminate the restrictions.

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) announced on Monday that Americans who test positive for COVID-19 but do not have symptoms can stop isolating after five days as long as they continue wearing masks, cutting in half the agency’s previous isolation period down from 10 days.  The CDC also said it was loosening its guidance for quarantining after a COVID-19 exposure for unvaccinated Americans or those eligible for a booster who have not yet received their additional shot. It now recommends a five-day quarantine followed by five days of strict mask-wearing, but says that if quarantine “is not feasible,” it can be skipped as long as they wear a mask in the 10 days after exposure.

The CDC says people who are fully vaccinated and boosted do not need to quarantine after exposure. The agency had previously said all vaccinated Americans, regardless of whether they had received a booster shot, did not need to quarantine after a close contact as long as they did not have symptoms.

The change mirrors a similar move by the CDC announced last week to shorten its isolation guidance for health care workers. Many communities are now seeing record numbers of cases and rising hospitalizations fueled by the variant. Nationwide, the daily average of cases tallied by the CDC has accelerated to a pace not seen since the deadly surge of cases last winter.

Several industries have blamed the recent surge in Omicron cases for crippling much of their workforce. Thousands of flights were canceled or delayed over the holiday weekend, as pilots, flight attendants and other airline workers were forced to isolate after breakthrough cases.In deciding to shorten the recommended isolation period, the CDC said data shows the majority of transmission “occurs early in the course of illness,” within two days before symptoms begin and three days after. The CDC also cited recent data from South Africa and the United Kingdom, where Omicron has spread widely, showing a booster shot could restore vaccine effectiveness against infection.

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According to a report published Sunday by the credit card company Mastercard, retail sales during the holiday season jumped 8.5% compared with 2020  E-commerce sales were up 11% in 2021 for the holiday season running from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24 compared to the previous year, and online sales were up a massive 61% from 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic led to a historic increase in shopping online.  Online shopping made up 20.9% of all retail sales in 2021, up from just 14.6% in 2019 while the e-commerce boom rages, according to the report.

Steve Sadove, senior adviser for Mastercard, said in a statement that the growth in holiday sales happened early because of “conversations surrounding supply chain and labor supply issues.  Consumers splurged throughout the season, with apparel and department stores experiencing strong growth as shoppers sought to put their best-dressed foot forward.”

The Mastercard report noted that jewelry sales increased 32% percent in 2021 from 2020, and are up 26.2% compared to 2019. Apparel sales are up 47.3% in 2021 compared to 2020, and up 29% compared to 2019.

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On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that cases of the COVID-19 Omicron variant are likely to climb “much higher” as the variant wreaked havoc on holiday traveling, with 2,271 flights cancelled as of Sunday.  Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told ABC New’s This Week that  “every day it (Omicron cases) goes up. The last weekly average was about 150,000, and it will likely go much higher.”  As of Sunday, 71,044 people nationwide had been hospitalized with COVID-19. New York on Sunday reported 36,454 new COVID-19 cases, down from a record 44,431 on Friday.

Delta canceled 212 flights, JetBlue 195, American Airlines 158 and United 115 as the major airlines cited staff shortages due to COVID-19 outbreaks. A JetBlue spokesman told CNBC that the airline came into the holiday with is highest staffing levels since the beginning of the pandemic but was still forced to cancel flights amid the Omicron surge.

Fauci on Sunday urged Americans not to “get complacent” despite studies showing Omicron appears to be less severe in terms of causing hospitalizations, noting that a high volume of new infections “might override a real diminution in severity. If you have many, many, many more people with a less level of severity, that might kind of neutralize the positive effect of having less severity when you have so many more people. And we’re particularly worried about those who are in that unvaccinated class … those are the most vulnerable ones when you have a virus that is extraordinarily effective in getting to people.”

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