By Staff
Wednesday, June 9, 2021 5:33 PM
NEW YORK—The Memorial Day holiday led to declines in ECPs’ gross revenue last week, May 31 to June 6, the 23rd week of 2021, according to data from Jobson’s latest Practice Performance Tracker. While the comparable 23rd weeks of 2019 and 2020 both exactly matched an average week for gross revenue (assigned an index value of 100) because neither included the Memorial Day holiday, and 2020 was also recovering from COVID’s impact by that time, gross revenue for this past week fell 17 index points below the levels achieved the past two years during the same time period.
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By Staff
Wednesday, June 9, 2021 1:08 PM
Believe it or not, the
Olympics are scheduled to go ahead this July, reportedly featuring more than 10,000 athletes alone. So, how is the COVID-19 situation in Japan, what safety protocols are in place, and what can we expect ahead of the Olypmics? Head over to
The Cut to learn some more.
By Staff
Wednesday, June 9, 2021 12:51 PM
The U.S. is gradually recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, and states have heavily relaxed their COVID-19 restrictions. As a result, the unemployment rate has dropped to 5.8 percent from its high of 14.8 percent in April 2020.
The country’s progress toward economic recovery has been largely possible because of the strides it has made toward a public health recovery, due to the distribution of the vaccine. As of June 7, around 42 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated. The country has already seen a significant decline in new COVID-19 cases and deaths, and that decline will only continue as more people get vaccinated. The greater level of safety will also lead to increased consumer confidence.
Even though the U.S. is making progress as a whole, some states are recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic much faster than others. In order to determine the states that are having the most successful recoveries, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 21 key metrics. WalletHub’s data set ranges from the share of the population fully vaccinated to the real GDP compared to pre-COVID levels.
Click
here to read the full story from WalletHub.
By Staff
Wednesday, June 9, 2021 12:27 AM
NEW YORK—The Memorial Day holiday led to declines in ECPs’ gross revenue last week, May 31 to June 6, the 23rd week of 2021, according to data from Jobson’s latest Practice Performance Tracker. While the comparable 23rd weeks of 2019 and 2020 both exactly matched an average week for gross revenue (assigned an index value of 100) because neither included the Memorial Day holiday, and 2020 was also recovering from COVID’s impact by that time, gross revenue for this past week fell 17 index points below the levels achieved the past two years during the same time period.
By Staff
Tuesday, June 8, 2021 9:30 AM
After a steep decline in
2020, global smartphone sales to end users grew 26 percent in the first quarter of 2021, according to
Gartner, Inc. Overall worldwide mobile phone sales to end users grew 22 percent year over year.
“The improvement in consumer outlook, sustained learning and working from home, along with pent-up demand from 2020 boosted sales of smartphones in the first quarter. Consumers started spending on discretionary items as the pandemic situation improved.
By Staff
Monday, June 7, 2021 1:46 PM
It's likely that we will need to get a
booster shot for our COVID-19 vaccine at some point, but lots of questions still remain. When will the shot be needed? Why do we need it? Does everyone need one? We don't have the answer to all these questions yet, due to time, but there are some things we know for sure. Head over to
The New York Times to learn what scientists know about COVID-19 boosters, and what we can expect moving forward.
By Staff
Friday, June 4, 2021 12:45 PM
Last April, during a peak in COVID-19 cases, the International Olympic Committee postponed the Summer Olympics—due to be held in Tokyo—for a year. At the time, Americans supported that decision. This year, the virus is still with us, and another postponement is being discussed.
In the latest
Economist/YouGov poll, Americans aren’t sure of whether it is safe for the Tokyo Olympics to be held this year, or should they be postponed another year due to COVID-19. As many would postpone the Games again (36 percent) as would have them played this summer (37 percent).
An Asahi Shinbun poll conducted in Japan last month found 83 percent of voters there saying the Games should be postponed or canceled.
The highest levels of interest in this year’s Games—if they are held—is not much different from what it was five years ago in an Economist/YouGov poll conducted before the Rio 2016 Olympics.
Then, one in four (28 percent) also said they would be watching “a lot of events.”
By Staff
Thursday, June 3, 2021 12:24 AM
NEW YORK—Even though national optical sales declined last week (May 24-30), overall gross revenue generated during Week 22 of this year still remained substantially higher than during the comparable weeks of both 2019 and 2020, according to data from Jobson’s latest Practice Performance Tracker. This is primarily due to Week 22 of 2020 being in the midst of the pandemic and because Memorial Day fell within Week 22 of 2019.
By Staff
Thursday, May 27, 2021 2:20 PM
The U.S. has administered more than 300 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, meeting another milestone in the effort to tamp down the coronavirus. Now 63.5 percent of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine dose, and 51.5 percent of the total population has received at least one dose. Despite the progress, the country may fall short of President Joe Biden’s goal for 70 percent of adults to receive at least one shot by July 4.
By Staff
Thursday, May 27, 2021 2:17 PM
Anthony Fauci, MD, the chief White House medical adviser, has called on China to release information about nine people who got sick with a COVID-like illness before the coronavirus began spreading around the world—six miners who went into a bat cave in 2012 and three Wuhan lab workers in late 2019.
By Staff
Thursday, May 27, 2021 2:14 PM
Immunity to the novel coronavirus could last for a year—and possibly longer—particularly after COVID-19 vaccination. Two recent studies indicate that most people who contracted COVID-19, recovered and then got vaccinated later may not need a booster shot, according to
The New York Times. Those who were never infected and then got vaccinated may need a booster shot later, the newspaper reported.
By Staff
Thursday, May 27, 2021 2:14 PM
Across the nation, states are offering prizes to boost inoculation rates in the country. In Ohio, the “Vax-a-Million” plan has gained national acclaim, and for two Ohio residents, the plan became payday. The plan was introduced by Gov. Mike DeWine (R) as a way to get more people vaccinated in the state.
By Staff
Thursday, May 27, 2021 2:11 PM
With rising COVID-19 cases in Japan and the Tokyo Olympics less than 2 months away, canceling the Summer Games “may be the safest option,” according to a new editorial published Tuesday in the
New England Journal of Medicine. Several U.S. public health experts called for officials to protect Olympic athletes from COVID-19 and urged a risk-management approach to reduce potential spread of the virus.
By Staff
Thursday, May 27, 2021 1:40 PM
The online payments landscape is continuing to diversify, and COVID-19 has been an accelerant. Consumers have changed the way they pay online during COVID-19, and plan to make these changes permanent. In many cases, consumers now have a new preferred payment method, according to a recent consumer survey from Paysafe, a leading specialized payments platform that enables businesses and consumers to connect and transact seamlessly through payment processing, digital wallet, and online cash solutions.
Overall, consumers appear to be slightly more confident in the security of online payments than this time last year—63 percent of consumers would advocate tightening security processes to make payments safer, and 40 percent are willing to accept whatever security measures are required if it eradicates fraud.
At the same time tolerance for being a victim of fraud is lower. Less than half (45 percent) of consumers agreed that a certain level of risk of fraud is inevitable when shopping online, compared to 56 percent that agreed the same in 2020. And this lower tolerance for fraud is universal across every market; even in the U.S., where the highest percentage of consumers accept some risk (53 percent), this has fallen from 63 percent in 2020.
By Staff
Thursday, May 20, 2021 12:04 AM
I don’t think someone should correlate the extent of their reactions to the vaccine with protection from infection. We know that people who don’t respond to a vaccine in terms of the side effects still are well protected.