After a year of hunkering down, the country is about to bask in the biggest boom in nearly four decades, but the scars of the pandemic linger.
It's going to be like the roaring '80s again with the Biden re$tart!!
By summer, most American adults should be vaccinated, and life is expected to return to something approaching normal as people eat in restaurants, hop on a plane, or catch a game at Fenway Park. Getting out of the house for work and recreation will swell the economy, juiced by another big federal stimulus program and trillions of dollars in savings that consumers are eager to spend, yet that rosy outlook isn’t reflected in the sentiments of many local employers who would benefit greatly from a post-pandemic resurgence. Hammered by COVID-19 shutdowns, they remain wary after earlier forecasts about the trajectory of the disease proved too optimistic.
Instead of the rapid rebound projected by economists, these employers — from small business owners to big institutions such as hospitals and universities — expect a more gradual recovery marked by fits and starts. So they’re ramping up slowly and delaying hiring decisions until the picture is clearer.
The hospitals are being bribed by King Baker -- at taxpayer expense!
So much for the show hearing.
Massachusetts is digging out of an especially big hole. We were among the first states to shutter our economy last March to contain the coronavirus, and now, as other states such as Connecticut and Texas lift most pandemic restrictions, we’re likely to be among the last to reopen. The state ended 2020 with 335,000 fewer jobs than the year before, a 9.1 percent decline that was the fourth-largest in the country.
Yet somehow Baker is tremendously popular?!
The virus continues to create a fluid situation for two pillars of the Massachusetts economy: higher education and health care.
After going remote-only last March, the University of Massachusetts system laid off or furloughed nearly 1,000 employees tied to residential dormitories and cafeterias. UMass president Marty Meehan said he wants to bring students back to all five campuses in the fall and rehire those employees, but won’t decide until July or August when he has a better sense of whether the virus is under control.
“I don’t know if it is going to be September,” Meehan said of students’ return to campus. “We can’t count on anything. Who would have believed when we went fully remote on March 16, we would still be largely remote? I wouldn’t believe it.”
I would say Who CARES, but it turns out the $timuloot was used to bribe people and pay off institutions to go along with the Great Re$et.
COVID is a MA$$IVE WEALTH TRAN$FER $CAM meant to usher in a worldwide totalitarian tyranny and it's proceeding rather well.
Kevin Tabb, chief executive of Beth Israel Lahey Health, said he feels “cautiously optimistic” that 2021 will be better than 2020. Still, Tabb does not anticipate hospital volume to return to normal until 2022. Tabb said nearly all employees who were furloughed or laid off last year have been rehired while he’s worried about keeping talent after a traumatic year in medicine, which is causing people to retire early or leave the workforce.
They laid off and furloughed heroes at the apex of a 100-year event called a pandemic?
$eriou$ly?
WTF?
“When I think about the business challenges in the coming years and recovery, it is as much about our people and the strain as much of anything else,” said Tabb. “We need to think a lot about the issue of resilience and burnout.”
That is just what you want your health provider to be thinking about, and there wouldn't be burnout if you kept the staff, right?
Why would heroes want to leave the job security anyway?
Didn't want the vaxx?
The US economy is expected to expand by 5 percent or more this year, according to forecasts. That would be the fastest annual growth since 1984, when the country was roaring back from the back-to-back recessions early in Ronald Reagan’s first term.
The optimism also comes from forecasters counting on another federal rescue package, which could include stimulus checks of $1,400 for many Americans, as well as the unleashing of pent-up demand. With consumer spending sharply curtailed during isolation, Americans added more than $4 trillion to their bank accounts in the 12 months ended in January, four times the usual annual increase, according to the Federal Reserve.
That is likely the last one so make good use of the loot.
“That’s a lot of financial firepower,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, wrote in a recent note to clients, but the pandemic poses other challenges that could hamper the recovery. The virus, for example, continues to upend the supply chain, disrupting manufacturing and driving up costs, just as consumer spending is expected to take off.
“It’s not just Jordan’s, but the entire furniture industry has never experienced anything like this. Every day it becomes more challenging to be able to get product, and prices seem to be constantly going up,” said Eliot Tatelman, president of Jordan’s Furniture. “I am very nervous about inflation.”
Of course, and he should be the way the Fed is printing the money and Democrats toiling it out "big."
Before the pandemic, Jordan’s Furniture filled most customer orders within a week because items were in stock at its Taunton warehouse. Now it can take several weeks — sometimes months — for items such as a custom sofa because the virus has delayed everything from production to shipping.
No it hasn't. Political puppets and their billionaire $tring-pullers have done that, to their own $elf-de$truction in $ome ca$e$.
Last year furniture retailers benefited from home-bound consumers wanting to redecorate and set up home offices, using the money they saved by not eating out or traveling.
Tatelman said Jordan’s had a good year last year and 2021 is off to a strong start, but it’s hard to predict whether that pattern will continue.....
Related: The New Normal (Phase 2)
That is a well-crafted piece describing in exactitude the agenda-pushing quality of today's pre$$. They couldn't go on with a lockdown emergency forever, especially since the fraud has now been widely exposed.
It's now time to advance to the next part of the New World Order Plan, and that increasingly appears to be the vaxipa$$ being used as a weapon of terror and extortion despite the ma$$ media mask.
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"The ‘new normal’ is coming: Mass. set to enter final phase of reopening in March" by Andy Rosen, Anissa Gardizy and Diti Kohli Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, February 25, 2021
Massachusetts sports venues, concert spaces, and theaters will be able to reopen in coming weeks, Governor Charlie Baker announced Thursday, laying out for the first time a concrete timeline to bring back segments of the economy that have remained shuttered since the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly a year ago.
The governor said indoor performance venues will be able to open as soon as Monday at half of their normal capacity, and stadiums and arenas will be slated to welcome small crowds again three weeks later, on March 22. The moves are part of a broader reopening plan that also will end capacity limits for restaurants next week if they can continue social distancing and other restrictions for patrons.
Baker’s announcement was a signal of cautious optimism that the state will continue to beat back the pandemic, and that his administration will make further progress on its rollout of the vaccines. Word of the changes came as Baker was testifying in an unusual hearing called by the Legislature amid mounting frustrations with the state’s troubled vaccination booking website.
Baker has previously referred to the final stage of reopening as the “new normal,” and the changes he laid out Thursday evoked the prospect of a return to some of the patterns of regular life — alongside clear reminders of the ongoing crisis.
The Red Sox could play before fans at Fenway Park by Opening Day (April 1), for instance, but only with 12 percent of the normal crowd. Summer camps, too, will be allowed to reopen — though they are awaiting details on the infection control measures they’ll have to follow.
Who gives a f**k about the Red Sox?
Oh, right, the Great Re$et wears Red Sox!
Better off going to a hockey game instead.
Baker’s plan still leaves some significant parts of the economy waiting for a timeline to reopen, including bars, nightclubs, and other drinking establishments that don’t serve food.
For people in the arts and entertainment industries, who were forced to shut down abruptly last March, the planned reopening is only the start of what could be a slow and painful recovery, and of course, there’s no guarantee that Baker’s vision will come to pass. New spikes in infections, delays in vaccinations, or complications with new variants of the coronavirus could lead the administration to rethink its timeline.
Please explain this then:
Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence walked along the platform next to an Acela train at South Station in a scene for Netflix's upcoming film "Don't Look Up." (John Tlumacki/Globe Staff).
So much for masks and social distance if you are a "celebrity," and how much tax loot is that costing us, btw?
Baker’s office said residents must continue to wear masks and are encouraged to avoid contact outside of their immediate households.
Wendy Parmet, a faculty director for the Center of Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University, said members of the public should remember that the virus will remain dangerous even if the government has deemed new activities to be appropriate.
“People do need to hear some good news, but it can be dangerous to send the message that things are OK. We don’t want everybody to think ‘we got this,’ because we don’t,” Parmet said. “If this is a leap too far too fast, we won’t know that for a while.”
I'm so sick of this $hit based on a non-existent virus that is simply seasonal cold and flu with a fancy name.
This has reached EPIC CRIMINAL PROPORTIONS!
Baker laid out a two-step process. On Monday, Massachusetts will move into what it calls Step 2 of the third phase of reopening. In addition to performance spaces, the state will also allow indoor recreation such as laser tag, roller rinks, trampolines, and obstacle courses to resume at 50 percent capacity.
Many other indoor facilities will be able to increase their capacity to half, including arcades, fitness centers, libraries, museums, and offices, and restaurants on Monday will no longer be subject to percent capacity limits, provided they can continue with measures including 90-minute dining limits, a maximum of six people per table, and mask requirements for people not actively eating and drinking. They’ll also be able to have live music again — in time for St. Patrick’s Day.
Though some establishments said the capacity limits would make little difference given the other restrictions, the return of live music activates a crucial revenue source.
“The live music coming back is huge for us because a lot of our venues, their identity and DNA is based in live music,” said Ryan Jones, vice president of operations for Lyons Group, whose venues — including Lucky’s Lounge and The Lansdowne Pub — have been making do with live broadcasts of concerts held remotely......
Good luck dealing with the union, and be sure to remit those sales taxes right away as government behaves more and more like a mob boss.
If there is any justice he will soon be doing the funky chicken.
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The Globe shows you around town:
"City of Boston has a shot at developing Fort Point Channel neighborhood into a waterfront for all. Can it?" by Shirley Leung Globe Columnist, March 6, 2021
Boston has a chance to turn the Fort Point Channel neighborhood into the waterfront the Seaport District has failed to become. Can the city deliver, or will we see, yet again, more broken promises?
The stakes are higher now as the opportunity to create public space — think expansive green parks and basketball courts — dwindle as more of the South Boston waterfront gets developed. The Boston Planning & Development Agency — charged with overseeing the design of the district — is mindful of not repeating the mistakes of the Seaport, a corporate enclave with scant diversity and pocket parks.
Well, it is getting a makeover with whites moving out (this is what the Globe ad service suggests wearing), but they need to quit leasing land and turn it into a bird sanctuary -- something that has already begun if the breezes are correct.
Of course, it was the Biogen conference in Boston that was Ground Zero regarding the COVID $camdemic, and no amount of genome editing can change the rough ride it has been for the last year.
The Seaport may have emerged as a magnet for some the country’s most innovative companies, from Amazon to Vertex, but that is not what makes Boston special. It is the creation of shared spaces, beautiful and humanizing, from the Esplanade to the Public Garden, the Emerald Necklace to the Rose Kennedy Greenway, that elevates cities to greatness — as both places to live and to do business.
Just don't use the bathrooms because they have become a haven for the homeless and drug addicts.
Of course, it is the Globe's job to polish that turd of a city to a gleaming brightness despite the $tink.
The city’s ambitious vision is worth fighting for: Imagine popping out of South Station, walking across the Summer Street bridge, and stepping into a waterfront park connecting a series of green spaces that stretches from the channel’s edge toward the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. Each park will have its own personality, but let’s not kid ourselves about how difficult this will be to pull off and whether everyone can or will stick to the plan.....
She was a little more optimistic a day prior:
"Widett Circle offers Boston a chance to think big. There is still time to keep thinking" by Shirley Leung Globe Columnist, March 5, 2021
How the mighty aspirations have fallen. I’m talking about you, Boston.
Six years ago, a bid to host the Olympics put forth a sweeping vision to transform an industrial eyesore next to the city tow lot into a sparkling neighborhood by the Red Line. Not long after that, Boston was on the short list of cities looking to land Amazon’s second corporate headquarters and the 50,000 jobs that were to come with it.
Neither the 2024 Summer Games nor Amazon’s HQ2 came to be, but the process of competing for them left us with amped up ambitions, a renewed sense of what is possible.
Our new attitude has been that Boston can change on a grand scale. We can be better, and we can create the city we always thought possible ― one rich with opportunity for everyone, not just the narrow class of elites who for decades brokered power.
Sadly, the pandemic has exacerbated entrenched inequities between rich and poor, Black, Latino, Asian and white. A lot of things must happen to change that. Putting a massive Amazon warehouse on what could be prime real estate isn’t one of them.
It's a "pandemic" that the crocodile-tears pre$$ helped push along.
The new owners of Widett Circle — just south of downtown between South Boston and the Southeast Expressway ― are in serious talks with the all-powerful company to build a major shipping hub on the roughly 20-acre site, according to a Globe story by Tim Logan and Jon Chesto.
Massachusetts is already home to 20 Amazon distribution facilities, with 14 more in the works. Clearly, many of us love our Amazon Prime accounts, same-day delivery, and instant gratification shopping fixes, but at what cost?
This is not an anti-Amazon screed. The company has a major presence in Massachusetts and recently announced another in a series of expansions in Boston. It will occupy a new tower in the Seaport District, filling it with 3,000 good-paying jobs, but an Amazon distribution center ― and its much-lower-paying jobs ― at Widett Circle is a far cry from what the city laid out in 2017 in its “Imagine Boston 2030” plan. Widett was touted as a potential transit-oriented neighborhood with retail and housing connecting South Boston to the South End.
Change is already taking place all around Widett, with development plans drawn up for the Fort Point Channel neighborhood and Dorchester Avenue in South Boston. Just across the Southeast Expressway, South Bay is finally coming into its own, evolving from a big box shopping strip into a live-work-play neighborhood with housing, restaurants, and better transit via the Fairmount Line.
It's almost as if COVID doesn't even exist!
A distribution center with delivery trucks coming and going 24-7 through local streets is hardly a way to make the neighborhood more livable, walkable, and bikable.
The timing of it all stinks, too.
Few people had even heard of Widett Circle before 2015. Making us think big about it will be part of Mayor Marty Walsh’s legacy, but with one foot out the door as he prepares to become President Biden’s labor secretary, Walsh is not in a position to stop lowered expectations from prevailing at Widett Circle, and it seems like the new owners of the property — a group led by developer Bill Keravuori — are capitalizing on the power vacuum at City Hall that comes with mayoral transitions.
Believe me, if Walsh were seeking a third term, no developer would suggest plunking a warehouse on Widett, but here we are. Amazon is among four potential tenants of the site, including a life sciences firm and a biomanufacturing company. The pandemic has upended the commercial real estate market, making new condo and office towers difficult to finance as more people look to work from home long term.
An analysis done for the 2024 Summer Olympics bid estimated that turning Widett into a neighborhood would require more than $1 billion just to prep the site. Any developer would have to lean on government subsidies and investment to pull off such an ambitious mixed-used project, but that’s how the city got the Seaport District, an albeit imperfect but new neighborhood that replaced a sea of pock-marked parking lots.
It’s clear that the owners of Widett are taking the easy way out with a sure thing — a company that will keep minting money as online retail takes off even more so after the pandemic. I get it. There is not only economic uncertainty involved in creating a vision for Widett but also a political gantlet.
It would have been simpler to develop Widett if the site also included the adjacent city-owned public works yard and tow lot off Frontage Road, but City Councilor Michelle Wu (now a candidate for mayor) has been raising concerns about the best use of those 18 acres. (For those keeping score at home, Bob Kraft once eyed that area as a potential site for a soccer stadium for the New England Revolution.)
The developer is only going to think as big on Widett Circle as the next mayor. Wu and any other contenders should care about the future of Widett and commit to transforming the neighborhood, and yes, that probably means involving taxpayer money.
How long until Bo$ton looks like Beijing?
City Council President Kim Janey, who will become the acting mayor once Walsh departs, said in a statement that development at Widett Circle must come “with a robust community process and achieves our goals for more equitable and sustainable growth.”
As for Amazon, Janey said a distribution center must also come with a commitment for “fair treatment and fair wages to the drivers and warehouse workers we all rely on, and building stronger pathways for Boston residents to careers at the forefront of innovation and technology.”
Creating something beyond a massive warehouse center is going to be complicated, but this is Boston. We are a city and region full of brilliant people who untangle the complicated on a daily basis. When we set our minds to it, we accomplish the seemingly impossible. I don’t have to reach far back for an example: When the pandemic struck, scientists at Moderna developed a vaccine stunningly fast.
If we can put a breakthrough vaccine in arms, we can put a great neighborhood in Widett. Let’s not forget who we are, how we got here, and what we’re capable of becoming.
The last two paragraphs are the main reason I rarely read here columns.
The conceit that comes through as she cheerleads for that stinking city makes one want to vomit.
Also see:
It was once touted as the potential site of an Olympic stadium, and I wonder how they will deal with the union.
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Now get out there and $hop:
"With vaccinations underway, the economy needs consumers to spend again, but don’t, if you have debt; Those healthy saving habits you’ve picked up during the pandemic? Don’t let ‘revenge spending’ set you back" by Michelle Singletary Washington Post Columnist, Feb. 26, 2021
Even though most of us can’t wait to get a coronavirus vaccination, many consumers still won’t feel comfortable venturing out afterward to splurge at their favorite stores.
Nearly a quarter of U.S. adults said they would still avoid shopping at local businesses or dining inside restaurants after being vaccinated, according to a new national survey of 2,305 U.S. adults conducted by YouGov on behalf of Bankrate, compared with 76 percent who said they would be very or somewhat comfortable going to businesses or eating out after receiving the coronavirus vaccine.
It’s a prudent move to stay cautious, as new variants of the coronavirus are cropping up and the number of reported covid-19 deaths has surpassed 500,000 in the United States, but the economy can’t fully recover until consumers do what they do best in America. Consumer spending can lift the economy overall, but it would be a shame if people went back to normal and forgot some important financial lessons forced on them because of the pandemic.
Forced on us by criminal politicians working for their mon$ter ma$ters.
It would be a shame if you were to return to prior behavior, but not Wall $treet like after the last crash. They went right back the the scams and enriched themselves yet again.
Sorry, but this f**king $hit spewed forth by the Wa$hington Compo$t is literally sickening.
Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst for Bankrate, said, “It is important, obviously, for the consumer to reengage, but spending needs to be sustainable for the individuals. If consumers go overboard, then they’re going to run into an economic recovery hangover of their own.”
Hamrick is concerned, as I am, that the broader need for businesses to put people back to work so that they can feed their families, pay for their housing and hopefully have some money left over to save for their future financial needs will conflict with the necessity that many people continue being frugal.
WTF?
I was just told we are sitting on trillions with pent-up demand.
Only 39 percent of Americans could cover an unexpected $1,000 expense from their savings, such as a car repair or emergency-room bill, according to a separate survey from Bankrate released last month.
The overwhelming majority would end up in debt: 38 percent of U.S. adults said they would have to borrow the money, 18 percent would need to use a credit card they couldn’t pay off right away, and 12 percent would borrow from family or friends. The remaining folks would reduce spending to find the money they need to handle the financial emergency.
For those spendthrifts whose incomes weren’t affected by the coronavirus crisis, the pandemic pause created an opportunity for them to change their ways.
She means the billionaires who MADE $3.9 trillion during the pandemic while workers LOST $3.7 trillion -- one of whom is her bo$$!
Since last March, as the coronavirus crashed an almost decade-long consumer spending spree, people attending the monthly financial workshops I hold — now virtually — have testified about getting out of debt at last while being stuck at home. Folks finally have emergency funds. They’ve paid off their auto loans early or are contributing to a 529 college investment fund for their children.
It ruined the greatest economy ever so they could remove one man.
Just two months into 2021, workshop participants who follow the financial principles I’ve taught them reported paying off close to $200,000 in debt.
Before the pandemic, consumer credit card debt grew for eight consecutive years, reaching a record high of $829 billion in 2019, according to data collected by Experian, one of the three major credit bureaus. After the coronavirus hit, debt wasn’t just dropping — people were also using less of their credit lines, Experian found. The average consumer credit utilization ratio (how much you currently owe divided by your credit limit) dropped to 25 percent, the lowest it’s been in at least 10 years, according to Experian.
That's because the banks yanked the credit lines, but at least you got a refund from Citigroup for being overcharged years ago.
The U.S. personal savings rate soared in April of last year, reaching nearly 34 percent. It’s fallen since then, dropping to 13.7 percent in December, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
“Americans aren’t sure when they will return to normal, pre-COVID levels of activity for things like dining in at restaurants and attending in-person gatherings outside their household,” according to a recent Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index poll. “For both items, around one in four say they don’t know when they will do this, and then people are split on whether the signifier is when they/their circle are vaccinated, when health officials say it is safe, or if they have already done this.”
The answer is NEVER if it is left up to politicians, "public health officials," and the pre$$.
Meanwhile, Hamrick said he’s also worried that many consumers, once they feel safer about venturing out to retail stores and restaurants, will engage in “revenge spending” to make up for the isolation they’ve experienced since the coronavirus hit the United States.
Parents will give their children even bigger birthday parties. Families will take expensive vacations. Holiday spending at the end of this year will soar as people overspend after having to celebrate giftless with relatives on Zoom.
“We need to have our own social safety net,” Hamrick said. “I want to remind people that they should try to prioritize their savings and to pay down debt.”
The have-nots were struggling before the pandemic and business shutdowns and slowdowns have made their financial situation even more precarious. They have no choice but to continue to pull back on their spending, but you — the fortunate ones who can afford to save — shouldn’t relapse to retail therapy. Keep paying off those credit card balances. Scale back that big wedding. When things get back to normal, you shouldn’t rush to the malls. You were scared straight during the pandemic, and that was the best thing for your financial security.
UNREAL and IN$ULTING!
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What do you mean the shelves are empty?
"Global shipping in chaos; Transportation as demand soars" by Peter S. Goodman, Alexandra Stevenson, and Niraj Chokshi, New York Times, March 7 2021
Around the planet, the pandemic has disrupted trade to an extraordinary degree, driving up the cost of shipping goods and adding a fresh challenge to the global economic recovery. The virus has thrown off the choreography of moving cargo from one continent to another.
At the center of the storm is the shipping container, the workhorse of globalization.
That's how they plan to explain runaway inflation due to the Fed printing pre$$es running white hot?
Americans stuck in their homes have set off a surge of orders from factories in China, much of it carried across the Pacific in containers — the metal boxes that move goods in towering stacks atop enormous vessels. As households in the United States have filled bedrooms with office furniture and basements with treadmills, the demand for shipping has outstripped the availability of containers in Asia, yielding shortages there just as the boxes pile up at US ports.
If you are not fighting eviction, right?
Containers that carried millions of masks to countries in Africa and South America early in the pandemic remain there, empty and uncollected, and at ports where ships do call, bearing goods to unload, they are frequently stuck for days in floating traffic jams. The pandemic and its restrictions have limited the availability of dockworkers and truck drivers, causing delays in handling cargo from Southern California to Singapore. Every container that cannot be unloaded in one place is a container that cannot be loaded somewhere else.
Economies around the globe are absorbing the ripple effects of the disruption on the seas. Higher costs for transporting US grain and soybeans across the Pacific threaten to increase food prices in Asia.
Part of the forced famine that is coming to help you take that shot!
Empty containers are piled up at ports in Australia and New Zealand; containers are scarce at India’s port of Kolkata, forcing makers of electronics to truck their wares more than 1,000 miles west to the port of Mumbai, where the supply is better.
Yeah, flattening curve wasn’t enough for New Zealand so they have started imposing prison terms for violators of quarantines and are ready if the virus returns during summer vacations -- before New Zealand’s largest city of Auckland went back into a seven-day lockdown after a new unexplained coronavirus case was found(!) so you ladies stay clean and pray upon the altar of history.
As for Australia, it’s normally a secondary market for big-brand shows developed in New York and London, but has become an unexpected pandemic pioneer: a model and a test case for the global theater industry.
I wonder how much government $ubsidy they get down under.
Rice exporters in Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia are forgoing some shipments to North America because of the impossibility of securing containers.
Unlike the U.S., which is exporting much-needed foodstuffs and after months of calm, Thailand is now challenged by the virus outbreak, which it had kept largely in check for most of the year, after thousands of people lined up for coronavirus tests in a province near Bangkok on what is Thailand's version of Sesame Street.
The chaos on the seas has proved a bonanza for companies like Maersk, which in February cited record-high freight prices in reporting more than $2.7 billion in pretax earnings in the last three months of 2020.
No one knows how long the upheaval will last, though some experts assume containers will remain scarce through the end of the year, as the factories that make them — nearly all of them in China — scramble to catch up with demand.
Since they were first deployed in 1956, containers have revolutionized trade by allowing goods to be packed into standard size receptacles and hoisted by cranes onto rail cars and trucks — effectively shrinking the globe.
The Great Re$et requires that be rolled back.
Containers are how flat panel displays made in South Korea are moved to plants in China that assemble smartphones and laptops, and how those finished devices are shipped across the Pacific to the United States.
What was the carbon footprint on that, and why should I have to pay for it?
Any hitch means delay and extra cost for someone. The pandemic has disrupted every part of the journey.
It's the globalists ending globalism in favor of a worldwide totalitarian tyranny!
More than a decade ago, during the global financial crisis, shipping companies saw their businesses savaged. As a mysterious virus emerged in China early last year, the shipping industry braced for a replay. Carriers cut their services, idling vessels, tet even amid the downturn, orders surged for protective gear like masks and gowns used by front-line medical staff, much of it made in China. Chinese factories ramped up, and container ships carried their products to destinations around the planet.
Peter Baum’s company in New York, Baum-Essex, uses factories in China and Southeast Asia to make umbrellas for Costco, cotton bags for Walmart, and ceramics for Bed Bath & Beyond.....
Once again, the cho$en ones are the bottom of everything!
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Enjoy your summer anyway:
"Many of us are eager for a return to fun in the sun — could it be possible this summer?" by Zoe Greenberg and Emma Platoff Globe Staff, March 6, 2021
With hope finally on the horizon, residents are beginning to cautiously plan for a summer that might actually be fun, filled with vacations, camp, and gatherings of the non-Zoom variety. Rentals are already filling up on Cape Cod for peak summer weeks and event planners are seeing interest spike for bigger weddings in July and into the fall.
It’s a slow, careful journey, riddled with potential snags. The tremendous pent-up longing to live it up again — to entertain and be entertained, to recreate, gather with friends, eat out, travel — is running into the hard lessons in vigilance the pandemic has taught.
“This is good. This is reason for optimism and hope,” Dr. Shira Doron, hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, said of the highly effective vaccines and the lessening case counts, but, she cautioned, “it isn’t reason to act like it’s 2019.”
Some are just happy to have a shot at normal. Katie Cole and Graham Sager-Gellerman are planning to celebrate their wedding in August — a year after their initial date.
It will certainly not be the wedding they envisioned. Their smaller guest list will not include two grandparents who passed away during the last year, and their guests won’t be able to spend the night on Thompson Island, the salt marsh and heron-filled destination where Cole pictured a late-night bonfire on the beach, but they expect all guests to be vaccinated, and after a year’s delay, they’re thrilled just to think of celebrating at all.
“We’re rolling with the punches to see what changes in terms of seating assignments and dance floors and occupancy,” Cole said. “We just want to get married.”
Baker’s recent loosening of restrictions allows indoor theaters and concert halls to run at greater capacities, and removes some limits for restaurants, which can now host musical performances, too, but much remains unknown, Doron said, including whether vaccine production will remain on track, and how many people agree to be vaccinated. It’s also not clear how other states and other countries will fare during a globally unequal vaccine rollout. The uncertainties have made it difficult for organizations and individuals to plan ahead.
Some iconic summer institutions, like Tanglewood in the Berkshires, are paring down their aspirations and hoping for the best. Summer camps, too, are trying to negotiate the uncertainties, but for businesses across the region, progress is modest.....
Of course, the relaxing of restrictions really doesn't change anything, and “there is no reason we couldn’t wait for another month.”
At least the daylight will soon be lasting longer.
