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U.S. advisory group lays out detailed recommendations on how to prioritize Covid-19 vaccine

Posted on by • Posted in Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Coronavirus, Essential Workers, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Healthcare Providers, National Institute of Health (NIH), Scientists, Vaccine, Vulnerable Populations • Leave a comment

U.S. advisory group lays out detailed recommendations on how to prioritize Covid-19 vaccine

A new report that aims to prioritize groups to receive Covid-19 vaccine lays out detailed recommendations on who should be at the front of the line, starting with health care workers in high-risk settings, followed by adults of any age who have medical conditions that put them at significantly higher risk of having severe disease.

Also toward the front of the line would be older adults living in long-term care homes or other crowded settings.

The draft report, which runs 114 pages, was released Tuesday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which was tasked with the work by Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, and Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A virtual public meeting on the recommendations will be held Wednesday afternoon, and the committee’s final report will be submitted later in September.

When Covid-19 vaccines are approved for use, initial supplies will be tight — potentially in the tens of millions of doses. Most of the vaccines under development will require two doses per person: a priming dose followed by a booster either three or four weeks later.

The report suggests that a second phase of vaccinations should involve critical risk workers — people in industries essential to the functioning of society — as well as teachers and school staff; people of all ages with an underlying health problem that increases the risk of severe Covid-19; all older adults not vaccinated in the first phase; people in homeless shelters and group homes, and prisons; and staff working in these facilities.

Young adults, children, and workers in essential industries not vaccinated previously would make up the third priority group. Remaining Americans who were not vaccinated in the first three groups would be offered vaccine during a fourth and final phase.

The report is meant to serve as a guide for more detailed prioritization plans on the order in which Americans will be offered vaccine. That more granular work is already being conducted by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an expert panel that crafts vaccination guidance for the CDC, and by state, local, and tribal health authorities, who must identify the actual people in their regions who fall into the priority groups.

There has been discussion of prioritizing people of color, who have been disproportionately badly hit in this pandemic. But the report does not recommend that Black, Hispanic, Latinx people, or American Indians or Alaskan natives be treated as a distinct priority group.

The committee suggested that there does not appear to be a biological reason for why these communities are more seriously affected by the pandemic. Instead, it argues, the high rates of infections and deaths in these communities are due to systemic racism that leads to higher levels of poor health and socioeconomic factors such as working in jobs that cannot be done from home or living in crowded settings.

The report therefore prioritized other factors — people with underlying medical problems, people living in crowded environments, for instance — rather than creating priority categories for racial or ethnic groups.

The ACIP’s recommendations will go to the CDC. It remains unclear, however, whether the CDC, Operation Warp Speed — the task force set up to fast-track development of Covid-19 vaccines, drugs and diagnostics — or the White House will make the final determinations on who will be vaccinated first.

The task of determining who should be at the front of the vaccines line is not an easy one, and must be made without key pieces of information. It’s not yet known how many vaccines will prove to be successful, when they will be approved for use and in what quantities. Critically, some vaccines may prove to be more effective in key groups — the elderly, for instance — than others. Knowing that in advance could influence the recommendations, but people working on the priority groups cannot wait for that information to become available.

Initial discussions suggest large numbers of Americans would qualify as members of priority groups, a reality that will likely require additional tough decisions to be made.

CDC estimates that there are between 17 million and 20 million health care workers in the country, and roughly 100 million people with medical conditions that put them at increased risk of severe illness if they contract Covid-19. There are roughly 53 million Americans aged 65 and older and 100 million people in jobs designated as essential services. There is some overlap among these groups — health workers, for instance, are also essential workers.

A report released last month by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security recommended dividing priority groups into two tiers, with health workers and others essential to the Covid-19 response in the first tier and other health workers in the second.

In that report, people at greatest risk and their caregivers, and workers most essential to maintaining core societal functions would also be designated to be in the first tier.

 

 

 

 

PPP loan forgiveness could result in big tax bills

Posted on by • Posted in Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Operating Expense Tax Deductibility, Operating Expenses, Paycheck Protection Program • Leave a comment

https://www.cfodive.com/news/ppp-loan-forgiveness-tax-IRS/584431/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202020-09-01%20CFO%20Dive%20%5Bissue:29408%5D&utm_term=CFO%20Dive

Dive Brief:

  • Businesses that received Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans are anxiously eyeing an IRS ruling that could affect whether they apply for loan forgiveness. In a notice this spring, the IRS said it had ruled out tax deductions for wages and rent paid with forgivable PPP loans in order to prevent a “double tax benefit.”
  • The ruling means contractors cannot write off these types of expenses if they were paid for with PPP loan funds, leaving many wondering whether it will cost more in taxes than to pay the loan back.
  • According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a forgiven PPP loan is tax-exempt but using the loan can also reduce how much a construction firm can write off on its business taxes. Usually, expenses like payroll, rent and utilities are deductible from normal taxable income, but without the deduction, a business may owe more taxes than it normally pays, the Chamber said.

Dive Insight:

Some elected leaders are pushing back on the IRS ruling. The Small Business Expense Protection Act introduced in the Senate in early May would reverse the IRS decision and make the expenses deductible. According to Forbes, there has been pushback on the legislation.

“Earlier this summer, the bill seemed likely to pass, but that is hardly certain now,” Forbes contributor and tax expert Robert W. Wood wrote.

Joseph Natarelli, leader of the national Construction Industry Practice group at accounting firm Marcum LLP,  said some contractors are unaware of the tax implications of PPP forgiveness on their businesses if the ruling is not reversed.

“Using simple numbers, the contractor who decided to borrow $9 million to keep their people employed is now going to owe,” he said. “If you’re in a 50% tax bracket, that’s $4.5 million dollars, so where are you going to get that money from?”

Many of Natarelli’s clients are considering not applying for PPP forgiveness in order to avoid a hefty tax bill, he said.

“They’re saying, ‘If I knew then what I know now, then I wouldn’t have taken the loan and I would have had to lay people off,'” he said.

The bottom line for contractors, Natarelli said, is to check with their accountants about tax implications before applying for loan forgiveness.

“It’s an issue that contractors need to be aware of and I think people took PPP loans that don’t even know it’s taxable now, which is scary,” he said.

 

 

 

 

Employers face liability under payroll tax deferral guidance

Posted on by • Posted in Coronavirus, Deferred Payroll Tax Liability, Economic Crisis, Economic Stimulus, Executive Orders, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Payroll Tax • Leave a comment

https://www.cfodive.com/news/employers-liability-payroll-tax-deferral-guidance-IRS/584434/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202020-09-01%20CFO%20Dive%20%5Bissue:29408%5D&utm_term=CFO%20Dive

The onus to collect and pay back deferred payroll taxes, under guidance the IRS has released on President Trump’s executive order, falls on employers.

Trump signed the order last month after Congress failed to agree on extending COVD-19-related stimulus benefits. It directs participating employers not to withhold the 6.2% payroll tax that employees owe each pay period to cover their portion of Social Security taxes.

The absence of withholding gives employees a bigger paycheck, although they still must repay the deferred withholdings next year, unless Congress waives the liability. 

The benefit applies to employees earning less than $4,000 every two weeks, or about $104,000 a year. It’s in effect for paychecks issued between September 1 and the end of the year.

Effectiveness in doubt

Under the IRS guidance, liability for paying back the uncollected taxes could ultimately fall on employers; there’s no language explaining how deferred taxes will be returned to the Treasury if an employee quits between now and the end of the year or otherwise can’t pay the deferred taxes.

“You could give [the tax deferral] to the employee, but then a year from now you might be on the hook for the money,” University of Chicago law professor Daniel Hemel told CNBC.

“Liability is going to stick to the employer like flies to flypaper,” Marianna Dyson, a lawyer at Washington firm Covington & Burling, told The Wall Street Journal.

Low participation

Many employers may choose not to participate, which would dampen the stimulus impact.

“Many [employers could] decline putting the extra money in workers’ paychecks — blunting any potential economic or political boost Trump had hoped to reap,” an Accounting Today/Bloomberg News analysis said.

The last-minute revamping of systems to administer the change could also deter participation.

“The programming changes are substantial in scope,” the National Payroll Reporting Consortium said in an August 20 statement. 

The deferral is also not a clear win for employees, who could face double withholdings when taxes must be repaid early next year.

“It’s not clear employees will want to take it, even if they qualify.” Pete Isberg, vice president of payroll processing company ADP, told the Washington Post.

 

 

 

 

Administration’s new pandemic adviser pushes controversial ‘herd immunity’ strategy, worrying public health officials

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Asymptomatic Transmission, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Credibility, Crisis, Crisis Management, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Expert, Expert Opinion, False Hope, False Narrative, Herd Immunity, Immunity, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Judgement, Leadership Cares, Leadership Culture, Leadership Decentralized, Leadership Integrity, Leadership Intent, Leadership Messaging, Leadership Political, Leadership Trust, Long COVID, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Partisanship, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Schools, Public Trust, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Silencing, Silencing Speech, Social Distancing, Transparency, Trust, Truth, Wishful Thinking, World Health Organization (WHO) • Leave a comment

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-coronavirus-scott-atlas-herd-immunity/2020/08/30/925e68fe-e93b-11ea-970a-64c73a1c2392_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most

 

 

One of President Trump’s top medical advisers is urging the White House to embrace a controversial “herd immunity” strategy to combat the pandemic, which would entail allowing the coronavirus to spread through most of the population to quickly build resistance to the virus, while taking steps to protect those in nursing homes and other vulnerable populations, according to five people familiar with the discussions.

The administration has already begun to implement some policies along these lines, according to current and former officials as well as experts, particularly with regard to testing.

The approach’s chief proponent is Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist from Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, who joined the White House earlier this month as a pandemic adviser. He has advocated that the United States adopt the model Sweden has used to respond to the virus outbreak, according to these officials, which relies on lifting restrictions so the healthy can build up immunity to the disease rather than limiting social and business interactions to prevent the virus from spreading.

Sweden’s handling of the pandemic has been heavily criticized by public health officials and infectious-disease experts as reckless — the country has among the highest infection and death rates in the world. It also hasn’t escaped the deep economic problems resulting from the pandemic.

But Sweden’s approach has gained support among some conservatives who argue that social distancing restrictions are crushing the economy and infringing on people’s liberties.

That this approach is even being discussed inside the White House is drawing concern from experts inside and outside the government who note that a herd immunity strategy could lead to the country suffering hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lost lives.

“The administration faces some pretty serious hurdles in making this argument. One is a lot of people will die, even if you can protect people in nursing homes,” said Paul Romer, a professor at New York University who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2018. “Once it’s out in the community, we’ve seen over and over again, it ends up spreading everywhere.”

Atlas, who does not have a background in infectious diseases or epidemiology, has expanded his influence inside the White House by advocating policies that appeal to Trump’s desire to move past the pandemic and get the economy going, distressing health officials on the White House coronavirus task force and throughout the administration who worry that their advice is being followed less and less.

Atlas declined several interview requests in recent days. After the publication of this story, he released a statement through the White House: “There is no policy of the President or this administration of achieving herd immunity. There never has been any such policy recommended to the President or to anyone else from me.”

White House communications director Alyssa Farah said there is no change in the White House’s approach toward combatting the pandemic.

“President Trump is fully focused on defeating the virus through therapeutics and ultimately a vaccine. There is no discussion about changing our strategy,” she said in a statement. “We have initiated an unprecedented effort under Operation Warp Speed to safely bring a vaccine to market in record time — ending this virus through medicine is our top focus.”

White House officials said Trump has asked questions about herd immunity but has not formally embraced the strategy. The president, however, has made public comments that advocate a similar approach.

“We are aggressively sheltering those at highest risk, especially the elderly, while allowing lower-risk Americans to safely return to work and to school, and we want to see so many of those great states be open,” he said during his address to the Republican National Convention Thursday night. “We want them to be open. They have to be open. They have to get back to work.”

Atlas has fashioned himself as the “anti-Dr. Fauci,” one senior administration official said, referring to Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease official, who has repeatedly been at odds with the president over his public comments about the threat posed by the virus. He has clashed with Fauci as well as Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, over the administration’s pandemic response.

Atlas has argued both internally and in public that an increased case count will move the nation more quickly to herd immunity and won’t lead to more deaths if the vulnerable are protected. But infectious-disease experts strongly dispute that, noting that more than 25,000 people younger than 65 have died of the virus in the United States. In addition, the United States has a higher number of vulnerable people of all ages because of high rates of heart and lung disease and obesity, and millions of vulnerable people live outside nursing homes — many in the same households with children, whom Atlas believes should return to school.

“When younger, healthier people get the disease, they don’t have a problem with the disease. I’m not sure why that’s so difficult for everyone to acknowledge,” Atlas said in an interview with Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade in July. “These people getting the infection is not really a problem and in fact, as we said months ago, when you isolate everyone, including all the healthy people, you’re prolonging the problem because you’re preventing population immunity. Low-risk groups getting the infection is not a problem.”

Atlas has said that lockdowns and social distancing restrictions during the pandemic have had a health cost as well, noting the problems associated with unemployment and people forgoing health care because they are afraid to visit a doctor.

“From personal communications with neurosurgery colleagues, about half of their patients have not appeared for treatment of disease which, left untreated, risks brain hemorrhage, paralysis or death,” he wrote in The Hill newspaper in May

The White House has left many of the day-to-day decisions regarding the pandemic to governors and local officials, many of whom have disregarded Trump’s advice, making it unclear how many states would embrace the Swedish model, or elements of it, if Trump begins to aggressively push for it to be adopted.

But two senior administration officials and one former official, as well as medical experts, noted that the administration is already taking steps to move the country in this direction.

The Department of Health and Human Services, for instance, invoked the Defense Production Act earlier this month to expedite the shipment of tests to nursing homes — but the administration has not significantly ramped up spending on testing elsewhere, despite persistent shortages. Trump and top White House aides, including Atlas, have also repeatedly pushed to reopen schools and lift lockdown orders, despite outbreaks in several schools that attempted to resume in-person classes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also updated its testing guidance last week to say that those who are asymptomatic do not necessarily have to be tested. That prompted an outcry from medical groups, infectious-disease experts and local health officials, who said the change meant that asymptomatic people who had contact with an infected person would not be tested. The CDC estimates that about 40 percent of people infected with covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, are asymptomatic, and experts said much of the summer surge in infections was due to asymptomatic spread among young, healthy people.

Trump has previously floated “going herd” before being convinced by Fauci and others that it was not a good idea, according to one official.

The discussions come as at least 5.9 million infections have been reported and at least 179,000 have died from the virus this year and as public opinion polls show that Trump’s biggest liability with voters in his contest against Democratic nominee Joe Biden is his handling of the pandemic. The United States leads the world in coronavirus cases and deaths, with far more casualties and infections than any other developed nation.

The nations that have most successfully managed the coronavirus outbreak imposed stringent lockdown measures that a vast majority of the country abided by, quickly ramped up testing and contact tracing, and imposed mask mandates.

Atlas meets with Trump almost every day, far more than any other health official, and inside the White House is viewed as aligned with the president and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on how to handle the outbreak, according to three senior administration officials.

In meetings, Atlas has argued that metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago and New Orleans have already reached herd immunity, according to two senior administration officials. But Birx and Fauci have disputed that, arguing that even cities that peaked to potential herd immunity levels experience similar levels of infection if they reopen too quickly, the officials said.

Trump asked Birx in a meeting last month whether New York and New Jersey had reached herd immunity, according to a senior administration official. Birx told the president there was not enough data to support that conclusion.

Atlas has supporters who argue that his presence in the White House is a good thing and that he brings a new perspective.

“Epidemiology is not the only discipline that matters for public policy here. That is a fundamentally wrong way to think about this whole situation,” said Avik Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a think tank that researches market-based solutions to help low-income Americans. “You have to think about what are the costs of lockdowns, what are the trade-offs, and those are fundamentally subjective judgments policymakers have to make.”

It remains unclear how large a percentage of the population must become infected to achieve “herd immunity,” which is when enough people become immune to a disease that it slows its spread, even among those who have not been infected. That can occur either through mass vaccination efforts, or when enough people in the population become infected with coronavirus and develop antibodies that protect them against future infection.

Estimates have ranged from 20 percent to 70 percent for how much of a population would need to be infected. Soumya Swaminathan, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, said given the transmissibility of the novel coronavirus, it is likely that about 65 to 70 percent of the population would need to become infected for there to be herd immunity.

With a population of 328 million in the United States, it may require 2.13 million deaths to reach a 65 percent threshold of herd immunity, assuming the virus has a 1 percent fatality rate, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.

It also remains unclear whether people who recover from covid-19 have long-term immunity to the virus or can become reinfected, and scientists are still learning who is vulnerable to the disease. From a practical standpoint, it is also nearly impossible to sufficiently isolate people at most risk of dying due to the virus from the younger, healthier population, according to public health experts.

Atlas has argued that the country should only be testing people with symptoms, despite the fact that asymptomatic carriers spread the virus. He has also repeatedly pushed to reopen schools and advocated for college sports to resume. Atlas has said, without evidence, that children do not spread the virus and do not have any real risk from covid-19, arguing that more children die of influenza — an argument he has made in television and radio interviews.

Atlas’s appointment comes after Trump earlier this summer encouraged his White House advisers to find a new doctor who would argue an alternative point of view from Birx and Fauci, whom the president has grown increasingly annoyed with for public comments that he believes contradict his own assertions that the threat of the virus is receding. Advisers sought a doctor with Ivy League or top university credentials who could make the case on television that the virus is a receding threat.

Atlas caught Trump’s attention with a spate of Fox News appearances in recent months, and the president has found a more simpatico figure in the Stanford doctor for his push to reopen the country so he can focus on his reelection. Atlas now often sits in the briefing room with Trump during his coronavirus news conferences, even as other doctors do not. He has given the president somewhat of a medical imprimatur for his statements and regularly helps draft the administration’s coronavirus talking points from his West Wing office as well as the slides that Trump often relies on for his argument of a diminishing threat.

Atlas has also said he is unsure “scientifically” whether masks make sense, despite broad consensus among scientists that they are effective. He has selectively presented research and findings that support his argument for herd immunity and his other ideas, two senior administration officials said.

Fauci and Birx have both said the virus is a threat in every part of the country. They have also put forward policy recommendations that the president views as too draconian, including mask mandates and partial lockdowns in areas experiencing surges of the virus.

Birx has been at odds with Atlas on several occasions, with one disagreement growing so heated at a coronavirus meeting earlier this month that other administration officials grew uncomfortable, according to a senior administration official.

One of the main points of tension between the two is over school reopenings. Atlas has pushed to reopen schools and Birx is more cautious.

“This is really unfortunate to have this fellow Scott Atlas, who was basically recruited to crowd out Tony Fauci and the voice of reason,” said Eric Topol, a cardiologist and head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego. “Not only do we not embrace the science, but we repudiate the science by our president, and that has extended by bringing in another unreliable misinformation vector.”