COVID-19 Weekly Digest (August 19, 2020)

Recent models hint that the protective effects of a population that has already been infected by the COVID-19 virus may exist at much lower percentages than previously thought. Instead of requiring that 70 to 80 percent of a population be immune, that threshold may be less than 50 percent, or even as low as ten percent. At the very least, some degree of immunity may slow the spread of successive waves of infection. The new models may also help countries determine which groups should have priority in vaccination because they may be the most vulnerable and the most likely to spread the virus.

COVID-19 Weekly Digest (August 12, 2020)

Even though unemployment still remains high, and the US economy took a nosedive during the second quarter of 2020, US households managed to decrease their overall debt for the first time in six years. Even in the face of unemployment, credit card debt dropped by $76 billion during the second quarter as households cut back on non-essential spending. In the first six months of 2020, consumers reduced their credit card debt by $110 billion, the largest decreases since the New York Fed began tracking this in 2003.