Archives for March 2021

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The road to a COVID-19 shot often leads through a maze of scheduling systems: Some vaccine seekers spend days or weeks trying to book online appointments. Those who get a coveted slot can still be stymied by pages of forms or websites that slow to a crawl and crash.

The technological obstacles are familiar to L. Shapley Bassen, a 74-year-old retired English teacher and editor in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. She lost track of the hours she spent making phone calls and navigating websites to get appointments for herself and her 75-year-old husband, Michael.

“A lot of us don’t sleep at night worrying about whether or not we’ll be able to get in,” Bassen said.

Technological shortcomings across the nation’s fragmented public health system have frustrated millions of Americans trying to get shots and left officials without a full picture of who has been vaccinated.

“We’re creating an unnecessary amount of human suffering. This could have been avoidable, and we could have done better,” said Tinglong Dai, a professor who studies health care operations at Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School.

The White House promised improvements, pledging to establish a new website and an 800-number by May 1 to help people find nearby locations with vaccines.

“No more searching day and night for an appointment for you and your loved ones,” President Joe Biden said Thursday in a prime-time address to the nation.

The administration also promised to send technical teams to states that need help improving their websites.

The bottleneck in vaccine demand seems to be easing in some locations, and on Friday the U.S. surpassed 100 million doses administered. Nearly 66 million people have received at least one dose. But vaccine slots are sometimes still so hard to obtain that people resort to vaccine hunter Facebook groups and bots that scan sites for open appointments. Vaccine seekers who are not accustomed to those methods and don’t have anyone to help are at a steep disadvantage.

Bassen finally landed a slot at a pharmacy near home for her husband. The website even offered to schedule the second dose, but when she clicked on it, nothing happened.

Figuring it was a glitch, they printed out the appointment-confirmation email. When he arrived, he was rejected. They told him he had to schedule the second shot at the same time as the first.

The rejection sent Bassen back down into the rabbit hole of state, local government and pharmacy websites and phone numbers. She likened it to a game of musical chairs.

“From the point of view of the patient, the consumer, there seemed to be no continuity amongst these three entities,” Bassen said.

The confusion isn’t surprising. An investigation by The Associated Press and Kaiser Health News found that since 2010, spending for state public health departments has dropped by 16% per capita, and spending for local health departments has fallen by 18%. Little money was left for investing in technology.

To help states prepare for the rollout of COVID-19 shots, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began building a vaccine-management system known as VAMS.

Many states were hesitant to commit because it takes time for employees to learn new programs, and new systems often have kinks. Few state health departments adopted the CDC program, and at least one has since decided to drop it.

In New Hampshire, officials planned to switch to their own program after thousands of people were unable to schedule second shots within the recommended time frame. Others had their appointments canceled after the system mistakenly allowed them to book slots for which they were not eligible.

Coming up with a national program that worked well everywhere was never likely to happen, especially given the unprecedented scale of tracking COVID-19 vaccinations, said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers.

Prior to the pandemic, local vaccine registries around the country were used mostly to track childhood vaccines. Some are decades old and were never meant to be used to schedule appointments.

“A lot of them are just sort of that spaghetti bowl of code, where you just keep adding on,” said Rebecca Coyle, executive director of the American Immunization Registry Association.

Many vaccine providers such as smaller pharmacies also were not hooked up to the registries before the pandemic because of the time and cost of doing so — including the required maintenance, which involves constantly uploading data and ensuring it’s properly stored and shared.

“There’s always been this perception that you build it and you’re done,” Coyle said.

Many states have concluded that they need a single, easy-to-access “front door” for scheduling shots, Dr. Deidre Gifford, acting commissioner of Connecticut’s health department, noted during a recent CDC forum.

The best system, Dai said, would be to send everyone to register in a central location and, based on supply, give each person a reasonable estimate for receiving a vaccine. That could be a few weeks or months away, but managing expectations would ease some anxiety.

“The core idea is to give people the confidence, give people reassurance,” Dai said.

West Virginia has nearly done that with a one-stop statewide preregistration system that uses crisis-management software to collect every person’s demographic and contact information, as well as details such as occupation, so certain critical workers can be targeted. Then, they get a text or phone call to book a slot when vaccine doses are available in their county, said Krista D. Capehart, who coordinates the state’s pharmacy response.

Other states have struggled with their vaccine websites, or designed sites that give some help, but make people do a lot of work to find available shots. The Massachusetts site was so overwhelmed that it crashed. Washington state’s site lets people print a piece of paper saying they are eligible, but finding and booking an appointment is still left to the individual.

Maryland established a preregistration portal, but people still need to go to other websites to find a slot. Dai said even he has struggled after becoming eligible and preregistering with his county. When he was invited to schedule an appointment, the link did not work.

“By the end of yesterday, I had received five links, but none of them worked,” he said Thursday. He ended up booking on his own at Walgreens.

Given the confusion, many worry about what will happen when eligibility opens to an even broader population. People could find it so difficult and time consuming to score a shot that they simply give up.

“The situation will be even worse,” Dai said.

The disease detectives who monitor the pandemic are also concerned about the lack of consistent data on vaccinations.

“If we don’t have good systems to track the number and the type of people that are getting the vaccine, we may not actually be as efficient and effective as possible with the limited resource that we have,” said Janet Hamilton, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.

Race and ethnicity data is only available for a little over half of the people who have received vaccines so far. That could be because vaccine recipients are not providing the information or because the places where they receive the shot are not collecting it, not entering it or entering it too slowly.

In many cases, the data was entered, but glitches with different software systems cause those fields to disappear, said Dr. Marcus Plescia, of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, calls the vaccine rollout embarrassing.

“If we would have fought World War II the way we’re doing this,” he said, “there’s no question that we would have lost.”

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Choi reported from New York. Associated Press Writer Carla Johnson in Washington state contributed to this report.

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LONDON (AP) — A digital art piece, tweaked using cryptocurrency technology to make it one-of-a-kind, sold at auction this week for nearly $70 million. That transaction made global headlines and buoyed already-mushrooming interest in these kinds of digital objects — known as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs — that have captured the attention of artists and collectors alike.

A NON-WHAT TOKEN?

In economics jargon, a fungible token is an asset that can be exchanged on a one-for-one basis. Think of dollars or bitcoins — each one has the exact same value and can be traded freely. A non-fungible object, by contrast, has its own distinct value, like an old house or a classic car.

Cross this notion with cryptocurrency technology known as the blockchain and you get NFTs. These are effectively digital certificates of authenticity that can be attached to digital art or, well, pretty much anything else that comes in digital form — audio files, video clips, animated stickers, this article you’re reading.

NFTs confirm an item’s ownership by recording the details on a digital ledger known as a blockchain, which is public and stored on computers across the internet, making it effectively impossible to lose or destroy.

At the moment, these tokens are white-hot in the collecting world, where they’re being used to solve a problem central to digital collectibles: how to claim ownership of something that can be easily and endlessly duplicated.

I STILL DON’T GET IT. CAN’T ANYONE JUST COPY DIGITAL STUFF OFF THE INTERNET?

Sure, anyone can download a copy of Beeple’s art from his social media feed, print it out, and hang it on the wall. Just like you can take a photo of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre or buy a print from the museum gift shop. But that doesn’t mean you own those original artworks.

One purpose of NFTs is that they can be used to trace an object’s digital provenance, allowing a select few to prove ownership. In the broader picture, it’s a way to create scarcity — albeit artificial — so that you can sell something for higher prices thanks to its scarcity.

“All the time, money and effort you spend in your digital life, you can create value for that,” said Chicago fund manager Andrew Steinwold, who started an NFT fund in 2019. “You have property rights in the physical world. Why don’t we have property rights in the digital world?”

Some NFT issuers give full copyrights to the buyer, though others do not.

SO WHAT’S A BEEPLE?

Beeple is an American digital artist based in South Carolina whose real name is Mike Winkelmann. He’s been creating digital sketches using 3D tools on a daily basis for the past 13 years. Auction house Christie’s calls his work “abstract, fantastical, grotesque or absurd.” He has 1.9 million followers on Instagram.

In December, the first extensive auction of his art brought in $3.5 million, an eye-catching amount that was surpassed by this week’s record-shattering sale of his collage “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days” for nearly $70 million, paid in a digital currency known as Ethereum.

SO WHO ELSE IS SELLING NFTs?

William Shatner of “Star Trek” fame sold 90,000 virtual trading cards last year for $1 each. Electronic musician Grimes sold $6 million worth of her digital art last month, including a video clip featuring winged cherubs floating in pastel dreamscapes that went for $389,000. Clips of NBA star LeBron James dunking are selling for as much as $225,000. Actress Lindsey Lohan sold an image of her face. You can also buy virtual land in video games and meme characters like Nyan Cat.

Digital artist Anne Spalter started out as an NFT skeptic but has now sold multiple artworks using the tokens. The latest was a video called “Dark Castles” — of mysteriously distorted castles generated by artificial intelligence technology – that sold for $2,752.

“NFTs have opened up art to a whole bunch of people who never would have gone to a gallery in New York,” said Spalter, who pioneered digital fine arts courses at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design in the 1990s. “They’re investors, they’re tech entrepreneurs, they’re in that world.”

BUT WHO WOULD SPEND $70 MILLION ON ONE?

Christie’s on Friday identified the buyer of Beeple’s work as the financer of a digital art fund who goes by the pseudonym Metakovan, an announcement that could fuel concerns of a bubble in the cryptocurrency art market. The buyer founded Metapurse, described as the world’s largest NFT fund, which is likely to benefit from the heightened attention.

The British auction house said the purchase makes Beeple’s piece the third-most valuable artwork ever sold by a living artist, behind works by Jeff Koons and David Hockney.

Spalter said she expects this bubble to pop, though she still believes NFTs hold promise for artists as a way to reduce fraud and misattribution of works.

“I’m still mystified by the prices and how high they are,” she said. “I think there will be a correction.”

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AP technology writer Matt O’Brien contributed to this report from Providence, Rhode Island. For all of AP’s tech coverage, visit https://apnews.com/apf-technology

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A late-afternoon burst of buying helped nudge several U.S. stock indexes to all-time highs Friday, despite a pullback in Big Tech companies as bond yields headed higher.

The S&P 500 rose 0.1% after having been in the red for most of the day. The benchmark index also notched its second straight weekly gain. Financial and industrial companies led a broad rally, outweighing the slide in technology and communications stocks.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and Russell 2000 index of smaller company stocks also hit all-time highs for the second day in a row. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite fell, shedding some of its gains from a day earlier.

The bond market was the dominant force in pulling tech stocks mostly downward, because as yields push interest rates higher, they make high-flying stocks look expensive. After remaining stable for most of the week, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note jumped to 1.62% from 1.52% a day earlier. Investors had sold off stocks late last week after that yield crossed above the 1.60% mark.

“Bond investors are trying to determine how much future growth is in the economy and what that means for inflation,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer for Independent Advisor Alliance. “It could be over the course of this year or the next couple in terms of trying to find the right level.”

The S&P 500 rose 4 points to 3,943.34, extending its winning streak to a fourth straight day. The Dow added 293.05 points, or 0.9%, to 32,778.64, lifted by industrial stocks like Boeing and Caterpillar. The Nasdaq dropped 78.81 points, or 0.6%, to 13,319.86.

The Russell 2000 picked up 14.25 points, or 0.6%, to 2,352.79 and ended the week 7.3% higher. That blows away the S&P 500’s 2.6% gain for the week.

The stock indexes were mostly lower for much of the day as technology stocks, which had spent most of the week holding steady or climbing, fell broadly as bond yields rose.

Apple fell 0.8%, Facebook dropped 2%, Google’s parent company slid 2.4% and Microsoft lost 0.6%. These giant tech companies soared last year as investors bet that pandemic-quarantined Americans would spend even more time online. But as the pandemic eases this year, and bond yields rise, more expensive stocks such as these have struggled.

The increase in bond yields comes as President Joe Biden signed into law the $1.9 trillion stimulus plan, which will include $1,400 checks for most Americans as well as additional payments for those with children or those who collected unemployment benefits last year. President Biden also laid out a plan, in a primetime speech Thursday, to expand vaccine eligibility to all Americans by May 1.

These moves have given investors confidence that the U.S. and global economy will likely experience a strong recovery in the second half of the year as well as potentially increase the rate of inflation.

Wall Street got another sign Friday that inflation is creeping higher. The Labor Department said its producer price index, which measures inflation before it reaches consumers, rose by 0.5% last month following a record jump of 1.3% the month before. Over the past year, wholesale prices are up 2.8%, the largest 12-month gain at the wholesale level in more than two years.

Some economists fear that inflation, which has been dormant over the past decade, could begin to rise under the extra demand generated by the government’s new $1.9 trillion stimulus package signed into law Thursday. Others disagree, pointing out that there are 9.5 million fewer jobs in the American economy than there were before the pandemic hit a year ago, and argue that unemployment will keep a lid on inflation.

“The fact remains that there is a tug-of-war regarding the inflation question,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial. “And that is, whether or not the inflationary pressure that some in the market expect, whether or not it’s temporary or transient as the Fed characterizes it, or a prelude to a higher inflationary environment as the U.S. economy normalizes.”

Meanwhile, shares of big banks have climbed. Banks are often a proxy for a broader economy, as the ability for borrowers to repay debts matters to banks’ balance sheets and higher interest rates means they can charge more to borrowers. The KBW Bank Index of the 24 largest banks rose 1.7% and is up 26% this year.

Investors got another piece of data that showed that American consumers are feeling increasingly confident about returning to normal, and hopefully returning to their old spending habits. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index for March came in at a reading of 83.0, well above the reading of 80.0 that economists had expected.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A coalition of automakers has told the Biden administration it would agree to raise mileage standards to reduce tailpipe emissions but with tradeoffs and at rates lower than those brokered by California with five other car manufacturers.

If agreed to, the proposal could give President Joe Biden a quick win by securing cuts in greenhouse gas emissions rather than waiting months, if not years, to legally undo a giant rollback approved when Donald Trump was president.

But environmental groups say the proposal doesn’t go far enough to ward off the damaging effects of climate change and automakers are rejecting tougher Obama-era standards that they have the technology to meet.

It also could result in two different sets of standards, one for California and the states that follow its rules, and another for the rest of the country. This could drive up vehicle prices.

Asked Friday about the proposal, the White House said discussions with the auto industry on a fuel emissions standard were still early. It declined to comment on whether the administration would accept an agreement that falls below the California deal or Obama-era standards, stressing that tough requirements would be needed to get popular and less-efficient SUVs off the road.

Under the plan, automakers would agree to stricter standards in exchange for a “multiplier” that would give them additional credit toward meeting the standards if they sell more electric vehicles, three people with knowledge of the talks said. The deal would incentivize automakers to get more electric vehicles on the road, thereby reducing pollution, said the people, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to reveal internal negotiations.

The proposal would raise mileage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a rate between Trump’s rollback and standards brokered by California in a 2019 agreement with five automakers — Ford, Honda, BMW, Volkswagen and Volvo — that is now followed by 13 states.

Most other automakers, including General Motors, Toyota and Fiat Chrysler (now Stellantis) backed Trump’s rollback. They’re among the automakers putting forward the new proposal. The companies had no official comment.

The Trump rollback increased mileage requirements by 1.5% per year from the 2021 through 2026 model years. The California deal has 3.7% annual increases, while the Obama standards were about 5% annually.

Under the Obama-era standards, automakers got double credit for fully electric vehicles toward meeting their fuel economy and pollution requirements. That “multiplier” was removed in the Trump rollback.

The Trump administration had blocked California’s legal authority to set its own standards under the Clean Air Act. The Biden administration is expected to take steps next month to undo that with a rule that environmental groups hope will pressure automakers to agree to higher standards.

A spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, which regulates pollution, wouldn’t comment on the automakers’ proposal but said the agency “continues to advocate for the most rigorous vehicle standards possible.”

Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee who has met with Biden over efficiency and vehicle emission standards, has said the California agreement is a useful starting point that he believes all automakers should join as the two sides negotiate longer-term standards to go beyond model year 2026 to fulfill the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

Following the roadmap of GM’s recently announced goal of making all passenger vehicles electric by 2035, the coalition of automakers is pledging efforts to increase production of electric vehicles and hybrids, the people said.

Automakers argue that it’s difficult to reach stricter standards because of continuing consumer demand for less-efficient SUVs and trucks, the top-selling vehicles in the country. By promoting more sales of zero-emission electric vehicles, which accounted for less than 2% of U.S. new vehicle sales last year, the United States can achieve greater emissions reductions down the road.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whose department is overseeing a rewrite of Trump anti-pollution rules along with the Environmental Protection Agency, has signaled openness to granting industry more credits for EV development.

The automakers’ proposal is being presented in hopes of having a preliminary deal by Earth Day, April 22, when the administration is expected to release broader emissions targets at a U.S.-hosted climate summit. It highlights the obstacles ahead for Biden, who during the campaign promised “ambitious” fuel economy standards that also support job creation. Transportation emissions is the single biggest U.S. contributor to climate change.

The Alliance for Auto Innovation, a large industry trade group, deferred to a February statement saying it wants to work with the administration on making fuel economy improvements soon, while strengthening the economy and benefitting consumers.

The Trump rollback of the Obama-era standards would require a projected 29 miles per gallon in “real world” stop and start driving by 2026. That’s well below the requirements of the Obama administration rules that would have increased it to 37 mpg.

The California deal with Ford and the other automakers has vehicles getting about 33 mpg on average, according to environmental groups, after accounting for credits for electric vehicles.

Biden has said he would forcefully address climate change by returning to the Obama-era standards.

“When the previous administration reversed the Obama-Biden vehicle standard and picked Big Oil companies over American workers, the Biden-Harris administration will not only bring those standards back, we’ll set new, ambitious ones that our workers are ready to meet,” Biden said in late January.

Biden also has made boosting electric vehicles a top priority. He has pledged billions of dollars as part of an upcoming infrastructure and climate spending package to build 550,000 charging stations over the next decade to support such vehicles.

In a letter to the White House late last month, two dozen environmental and green-friendly groups including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council urged acceptance of nothing less than the Obama standards as part of a longer-term path to make all new cars and light-duty trucks zero-emission by 2035. They described credits granted to automakers for electric vehicles as “loopholes” that do little to reduce emissions in the short term.

“Not only are the automakers rejecting standards they agreed to 10 years ago, they are even refusing a weaker deal that five carmakers cut with California,” said Dan Becker, a director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The administration should follow the science. We need to have much stronger national rules so we’re not guilty of looking global warming in the eye and blinking.”

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Krisher reported from Detroit. AP writers Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento, California, and Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.

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