Long COVID's Economic Drag

Leaving the lockdown/Not leaving COVID

Early debate about the COVID lockdown was it was bad for business and bad for the economy.

The same arguments were used in opposition to masking mandates and in opposition to social distancing. 

The answer has become, we are now living with COVID. The answer ignores the economic impact on the everyday people who are still becoming sick and 500 people a day dying in this country because of COVID 19. 

Kate Bach writes in an article for The Brookings Institute, “With 16.3 million working-age Americans afflicted and annual wage losses totaling nearly $200 billion, long COVID is already a meaningful drag on U.S. economic performance and household financial health. And absent intervention, the situation is likely to worsen.” Data shows Long COVID is keeping as many as 4 million people out of work.

Other cost include 

• With 10.6 million unfilled jobs at the time, Long COVID potentially accounted for 15% of the labor shortage. 
• Estimates of medical care and lost quality of life related to Long COVID cost an additional $544 billion each year. 

Stemming the Economic Drag

Bach cites five things government can do help those with Long COVID and lessen the economic impact.

• Better prevention and treatment options
• Expanded paid sick leave
• Improved employer accommodations
• Wider access to disability insurance
• Enhanced data collection

There's a cost to living with COVID. Those costs need to be addressed. Claiming those left behind are just so much collateral damage seems cruel and unusual. Are we a nation that cares about its people more than the corporate bottom line? Victory celebrations are premature.

Podcasts: Infinite Choices?

 How far back does this go?

Did you ever do this as a kid? It takes two mirrors facing each other. The reflections seem to go on forever. I often wondered how far back into the the past (or future) I could look. There had to be an end point or beginning, right?

It's kind of like the philosophical question about what came first. If there is infinity, are there beginnings and endings? 

What does Aristotle say about infinity?

Aristotle postulated that an actual infinity was impossible, because if it were possible, then something would have attained infinite magnitude, and would be "bigger than the heavens." However, he said, mathematics relating to infinity was not deprived of its applicability by this impossibility.

What?

What does this have to do with podcasts? Nothing, really. According to the latest statistics there are 2.4 million podcasts and 66 million downloads. 177 million people listen to podcasts. It just seems like there are an infinite number of podcasts. The top podcasts according to Riverside.fm are:

#1 The Joe Rogan Experience

#2 The Daily

#3 This American Life

#4 Stuff You Should Know

#5 Pod Save America

#6 The Ben Shapiro Show

After dropping below the top twenty, or perhaps 50 podcasts, there's the rest of us.

Measuring Success

According to improvepodcast.com, 5,000 listeners per episode almost guarantees a successful monetization. This is where a lot of interesting things start happening. Having more than 5,000 listeners per episode makes a podcast over 29 times more likely to be monetized successfully.

Slamagency.com predicts Less than 20% of the podcasts that have launched this year will make it to next year. Most podcasts fail. 

If most fail, why go there? Improvepodcast.com came up with 21 reasons you should start up a podcast. Here's a few:

• 1) You’re passionate about a topic or have something to say
• 2) Podcasting Is an Easy Platform to Create Content
• 3) You Can Create Long Form Content
• 4) Podcasting Can Help You Build a Personal Brand
• 5) Podcasting Can Become a Second Income
• 6) You Can Develop Multiple Different Skill Sets
• 7) There Are Minimal Start-Up Costs
• And for public media? You're on the platform used more often by a potentially younger audience.  Most podcast users are between 12 and 54.

Volunteers

In the not too distant past, volunteers were the backbone of public radio. They covered most of the airshifts. They helped with marketing, membership, IT, newsgathering and events.

Unfortunately, on the programming side, they took ownership of those shifts. That was something that held back growth at many stations. We had 28 different radio stations, not one. I was dropped into that situation to try to bring order and a sense of unity.

There were 28 community volunteers covering weekday, weekend and night shifts. They had all been doing their own thing for years before I was hired as a student intern to take some control of the music programming.

I set up guidelines covering break structure, forward and cross promotion, and certain expectations in music selection. And a set of rules about professionalism. Volunteers used to snipe at each other over music selection. Each individual thought they were the true purveyors of Jazz.

Some unity had to be instilled to create a stationality. Listeners develop loyalty to the station, not the individual talent. (This is a much longer discussion). 

Individual meetings and appreciative gatherings were instituted. The idea was to make them feel like they were part of something much larger. Some cooperated, some did not. 

I would like to say it was a success. Progress was made, but the issue of little cross appeal was never really solved. In the end, music was dropped in favor of news and information. A professional staff was hired. Volunteers helped with events and fundraising, but their on air presence came to an end. Not all at once, but over a relatively short period of time music shifts came to an end.

It would have been nice to have some guidance coming into that situation.  Today, tools and guidance are much easier to find. A ten minute on-line search, and dozens of ideas on training and expectations and positive reinforcement are a fraction of a second away.

A structure...some sort of expectations...would have made the job less frustrating.

Republicans & Murder Rate

 A Republican talking point is being tough on crime. But the facts don't match the rhetoric when it comes to the murder rate. "Nationwide, shootings are down 4 percent this year compared to the same time last year. In big cities, murders are down 3 percent. If the decrease in murders continues for the rest of 2022, it will be the first year since 2018 in which they fell in the U.S." -nytimes

Notice the rate started climb when #45 was in office. The upward trend continued for another year after he left office. Two years later the murder rate is dropping.

Are talking point effective? It depends on who's listening. No matter, the truth must be told. It must be out there.

Extremism

 Extremism is essentially a political term which determines the activities that are not in accordance with norms of the state, are fully intolerant toward others, reject democracy as a means of governance and the way of problem solving and also reject the existing social order. Ojp.gov

Seem familiar?

Resilience

 

We have a history of being gutted, and yet remember this especially ... we have also, of necessity, perfected the knack of resurrection.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estés, “Letter to a Young Activist During Troubled Times”