Job growth in June was driven by industries recuperating from pandemic-induced losses and employment is now just a touch away from pre-pandemic levels, down 524,000, or 0.3%, from February 2020. A recovery in private-sector job creation is responsible for the overall gains. Government employment has lagged behind, with a shortfall of 664,000. A recent wave of layoffs in the tech and housing sectors have made headlines, yet employment in professional and business services is 880,000 above its February 2020 level, and overall hiring last month showed no sign of slowing.
The latest omicron offshoot, BA.5, has quickly become dominant in the United States. Antibodies from vaccines and previous COVID infections offer limited protection against BA.5, leading Eric Topol, a professor at Scripps Research who closely tracks pandemic trends to call it “the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen.”
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‘My Body, My Choice’: How vaccine foes co-opted the abortion rallying cry
In the shadow of L.A.’s art deco City Hall, musicians jammed onstage, kids got their faces painted, and families picnicked on lawn chairs. Amid the festivity, people waved flags, sported T-shirts, and sold buttons — all emblazoned with a familiar slogan: “My Body, My Choice.”
This wasn’t an abortion rights rally. It wasn’t a protest against the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gutted Roe v. Wade. It was the Defeat the Mandates Rally, a jubilant gathering of anti-vaccine activists in April to protest the few remaining COVID-19 guidelines, such as mask mandates on mass transit and vaccination requirements for health care workers.
Similar scenes have played out across the country during the pandemic. Vaccine opponents have appropriated “My Body, My Choice,” a slogan that has been inextricably linked to reproductive rights for nearly half a century, to fight mask and vaccine mandates across the country — including in California, where lawmakers had vowed to adopt the toughest vaccine requirements in the U.S.
As the anti-vaccine contingent has notched successes, the abortion rights movement has taken hit after hit, culminating in the June 24 Supreme Court decision that ended the federal constitutional right to abortion. The ruling leaves it up to states to decide, and up to 26 states are expected to ban or severely limit abortion in the coming months.
Now that anti-vaccination groups have laid claim to “My Body, My Choice,” abortion rights groups are distancing themselves from it — marking a stunning annexation of political messaging.
“It’s a really savvy co-option of reproductive rights and the movement’s framing of the issue,” said Lisa Ikemoto, a law professor at the University of California, Davis Feminist Research Institute. “It strengthens the meaning of choice in the anti-vaccine space and detracts from the meaning of that word in the reproductive rights space.”
Couples derailed by virus get mass ‘re-wedding’ in New York
Hundreds of couples whose weddings were derailed or scaled back due to the COVID-19 pandemic got a do-over at no less than a New York City landmark.
The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts hosted “Celebrate Love: A (Re)Wedding” for 500 couples on Sunday evening in the pavilion outside the center.
Lincoln Center’s website calls it ”a special day for newlyweds, those whose weddings were canceled or diminished, and people who want to recommit their love to their partners and the city we love.”
It featured a multicultural ceremony — not legally binding — as well as music, dancing and remarks from New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Private-sector employment has recovered to pre-pandemic levels
Job growth in June was driven by industries recuperating from pandemic-induced losses and continued business investment in sectors still benefiting from formidable demand for their goods and services, even as borrowing costs increase.
Employment is now just a touch away from pre-pandemic levels, down 524,000, or 0.3%, from February 2020. A recovery in private-sector job creation is responsible for the overall gains. Government employment has lagged behind, with a shortfall of 664,000.
Job growth in educational services was solid, seasonally adjusted, suggesting that employment in that sector fell less than usual at the start of summer.
A recent wave of layoffs in the tech and housing sectors have made headlines, yet employment in professional and business services is 880,000 above its February 2020 level, and overall hiring last month showed no sign of slowing.
“High inflation and a shift of consumer spending from goods to services is causing job losses in some sectors of the economy, but most workers who are losing jobs are finding new ones quickly,” said Bill Adams, chief economist for Comerica Bank, a large commercial bank based in Dallas.
New coronavirus mutant raises concerns in India and beyond
The quickly changing coronavirus has spawned yet another super contagious omicron mutant that’s worrying scientists as it gains ground in India and pops up in numerous other countries, including the United States.
Scientists say the variant – called BA.2.75 – may be able to spread rapidly and get around immunity from vaccines and previous infection. It’s unclear whether it could cause more serious disease than other omicron variants, including the globally prominent BA.5.
The latest mutant has been spotted in several distant states in India, and appears to be spreading faster than other variants there, said Lipi Thukral, a scientist at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi. It’s also been detected in about 10 other countries, including Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada. Two cases were recently identified on the West Coast of the U.S., and Helix identified a third U.S. case last week.
Hong Kong mulls movement restrictions as COVID cases rise
Hong Kong authorities are considering implementing a health code system in the city that would restrict the movements of those infected with the coronavirus and overseas arrivals, as infections rise again.
The system is similar to that of mainland China, in which a red code completely restricts a person’s movement, a yellow code is for partial restriction, while a green code means freedom of movement. The colors would appear on Hong Kong’s risk-exposure app LeaveHomeSafe.
Hong Kong’s health chief said Monday that if such a system is implemented, real-name registration would be required and those who test positive for COVID-19 would be given a red code “to identify those who have been infected” and prevent them from interacting with the community.
Authorities are also considering reducing the current seven-day hotel quarantine for incoming travelers, and moving part of it to home isolation and health monitoring.
Such travelers may be issued yellow health codes, and will not be allowed to remove their masks or enter high-risk premises such as hospitals and elderly care homes.
“We hope that we will be able to enforce the home quarantine in a more effective way and try to prevent these people from causing community outbreak,” Lo said.
Tennis is done with COVID, but the virus isn’t done with tennis
WIMBLEDON, England — With the final match looming, this year’s edition of Wimbledon has already proved many points.
Rafael Nadal can play top-level tennis with a zombie foot and a tear in an abdominal muscle, but only for so long. Iga Swiatek is beatable, at least on grass. With Moscow-born, Kazakhstan-representing Elena Rybakina making the women’s singles final, barring Russian players does not necessarily make a competition free of Russian players.
But perhaps most surprisingly, after 27 months of tournament cancellations, spectator-free events, constant testing and bubblelike environments, tennis may have finally moved past COVID-19.
For nearly two years, longer than just about every other major sport, tennis struggled to coexist with the pandemic.
In November, when the NFL, the NBA, the Premier League and most other sports organizations had resumed a life that largely resembled 2019 — no masks, no testing, no bubbles — tennis players were still living with restrictions on their movements, conducting online video news conferences and having cotton swabs stuck up their noses at tournaments.
Read the full story to learn more about how tennis is moving past the pandemic.