New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he plans to sign an executive order that would allow the state government to take personal protective equipment and ventilators from hospitals with less need and redeploy them to areas harder hit by the coronavirus outbreak.
The governor said he has spoken with hospital administrators and understands the reluctance to give up essential equipment, but that he wants to avoid a situation where COVID-19 patients are dying in one part of the state while ventilators sit unused in another part of the state.
"The theory is that if the government gets them, they will never get them back. I understand that, but I don't have an option," Cuomo said.
The move marks an expansion of a broader effort to coordinate the state's patchwork of regional health systems and public and private hospitals. The state is surveying hospitals nightly to determine case-loads, personnel needs, and inventories of needed medical supplies.
"Those institutions will either get their ventilator back or they will be reimbursed and paid for their ventilator so they can buy a new ventilator," the governor said. "I can't do anything more than that."
Several hundred ventilators could be shifted from upstate to downstate New York, according to Cuomo, though the exact amount remains to be determined. He said he's banking on hospitals' goodwill and pushed back against the use of the word "seize" in describing the policy.
"First of all, don't use the word seize," he said. "That's a harsh kind of word. It's sharing of resources. We're not going to have any part of the state not have the resources we need because we didn't share resources."
Cuomo also announced that the 2,500-bed emergency field hospital at the Javits Center in Manhattan will transition into treating COVID-19 patients. It was formerly intended as an overflow hospital for non-COVID cases, but there hasn't been enough demand for those cases.
"As it turned out, we don't have non-COVID people to any great extent in the hospitals," he said. "Hospitals have now turned into, effectively, ICU hospitals for COVID patients."
He said that the general shutdown of the state economy has led to a downturn in other types of medical needs, due to a drop in automobile-related injuries, violent crimes, and other incidents.
The latest numbers on the outbreak include 102,836 total cases, 14,810 hospitalizations, and more than 2,900 deaths, up from 2,300 deaths, which Cuomo called the "highest single increase in the number of deaths since we started."
A new report from ProPublica and the Washington Post found that Facebook Groups played a major role in the spread of misinformation linked to the January 6 insurrection with more than 650,000 posts claiming that Joe Biden's election victory was illegitimate.
Millions of Americans with young children have relied on the child tax credit since the federal government began issuing checks in July 2021. The last round of payments was sent out just before the Christmas holiday — at the same time as the omicron variant surged. Leah Hamilton, associate professor of social work at Appalachian State University, joined Cheddar to discuss what the end to the tax credit means as the U.S. sees the end of many relief programs and its highest number of COVID cases since the start of the pandemic. "It'll become harder for families to meet their basic needs, increasing national childhood poverty rates and the proportion of families who have difficulty putting food on the table, maintaining stable housing, and paying their bills," Hamilton said. She also pointed to research that the credit as a long-term investment in children offsets claims that it contributes to macroeconomic impacts like inflation.
U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the week-end, just days after he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The call comes as Washington prepares to meet with Moscow on January 10, as tensions mount over Russia's military build up near its border with Ukraine. Cheddar News speaks with Mustafa Tameez, a former advisor to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, about the issue.
Several Silicon Valley insiders are being accused of contorting a 1990s-era tax break to avoid taxes on millions of dollars of investment profits. The tax break is known as the qualified small business stock exemption, and it allows early investors in certain companies to avoid half of the taxes on up to $10 million in capital gains. A piece recently published in the New York Times says venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz replicated the tax exemption by giving shares of companies to friends and family, who would otherwise face a 23.8% capital gains bill. The CEO of Roblox is also accused of replicating the tax break for his family members at least 12 times. Although the loophole known as 'stacking' is considered to be legal, the Times piece implies that the exemption has been manipulated for the ultra-wealthy to become more wealthy. Greycroft co-founder and Chairman Emeritus Alan Patricof joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Chris Sommerfeldt, City Hall reporter for the New York Daily News, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he discusses both the wins and losses of Bill de Blasio's eight years as New York City Mayor.
The push to regulate the gig worker economy is gaining steam as the share of workers who participate in freelancing through businesses like Uber and Lyft have also exponentially grown during the pandemic. Employment attorney Mark Kluger, founding partner at Kluger Healey, LLC, joined Cheddar to break down how the battle to reclassify gig workers will continue in the new year, and why the issue continues to generate conflict. "More and more workers are using gig work as their primary source of income and as a result of that they are not like employees in the sense that they don't have benefits like health insurance," Kluger noted.
2021 saw markets continue to be impacted by the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic -most recently in the form of the Omicron variant- in addition to the global supply chain shortage, and increased inflation. But it wasn't all bad news, as crypto soared throughout the year, and meme stocks continued to have a moment. With the year coming to a close, investors are keeping an eye out to see if they should expect more of the same in the new year. Chris Vecchio, Senior Analyst, at DailyFX tells us what market trends to be on the watch for in 2022.
