Hits: 626

WPCNR FBI WIRE. From the Federal Bureau of Investigation. December 21, 2022:

A federal jury in the Northern District of Illinois convicted a former trader at JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse today of fraud in connection with a spoofing scheme in the gold and silver futures markets.

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Christopher Jordan, 51, of Mountainside, New Jersey, was an executive director and trader on JPMorgan’s precious metals desk in New York from 2006 to 2009, and on Credit Suisse’s precious metals desk in New York in 2010.

Between 2008 and 2010, Jordan placed thousands of spoof orders, i.e., orders that he intended to cancel before execution, to drive prices in a direction more favorable to orders he intended to execute on the opposite side of the market.

Jordan engaged in this deceptive spoofing strategy while trading gold and silver futures contracts on the Commodity Exchange (COMEX), which is a commodities exchange operated by the CME Group. These deceptive orders were intended to inject false and misleading information about the genuine supply and demand for gold and silver futures contracts into the markets.

Jordan was convicted of wire fraud affecting a financial institution. He is scheduled to be sentenced at a later date and faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Four other former JPMorgan precious metals traders were previously convicted in related cases.

In August 2022, Gregg Smith and Michael Nowak were convicted after trial in the Northern District of Illinois of wire fraud affecting a financial institution, commodities fraud, attempted price manipulation, and spoofing.

In October 2018, John Edmonds pleaded guilty in the District of Connecticut to one count of commodities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, commodities fraud, price manipulation, and spoofing.

In August 2019, Christian Trunz pleaded guilty in the Eastern District of New York to one count of conspiracy to engage in spoofing and one count of spoofing. Smith, Nowak, Edmonds, and Trunz are awaiting sentencing.

In September 2020, JPMorgan admitted to committing wire fraud in connection with (1) unlawful trading in the markets for precious metals futures contracts and (2) unlawful trading in the markets for U.S. Treasury futures contracts and in the secondary (cash) market for U.S. Treasury notes and bonds.

JPMorgan entered into a three-year deferred prosecution agreement pursuant to which it paid more than $920 million in criminal monetary penalties, criminal disgorgement, and victim compensation, with parallel resolutions by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities Exchange Commission announced on the same day.

Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and Assistant Director Luis Quesada of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division made the announcement.

The FBI New York Field Office investigated the case.

Trial Attorneys Matthew Sullivan, Lucy Jennings, and Christopher Fenton of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section are prosecuting the case.

Individuals who believe that they may be a victim in this case should visit the Fraud Section’s Victim Witness website at https://www.justice.gov/criminal-vns/case/jpmorgan-chase-co-deferred-prosecution-agreement for more information.

Hits: 3278

THE PLANNING BOARD MEETS ON THE FARRELL ESTATES PROPOSAL TONIGHT 7 TO 9 PM AT CITY HALL

WPCNR THE LETTER TICKER. December 20, 2022:

Dear Planning Board Members,

Thank you for following up on our email of November 30th relating to “water issues” on the old golf course property.  We understand that many of you made a visit to inspect the property in person and we appreciate your interest and concern.  

The above picture from our house was during last Friday’s rain.  Some of our questions include: 

Are the mini-lakes from the natural sloping of the original golf course?  Or from the piping of the underground streams that may be damaged?  Or maybe the original developer of the golf course planned this area as wetlands?  When Farrell builds 4 homes and a City street over this area where does the water that we see now flow to?

Surrounding residents like ourselves have been seeing wetlands like this for years. . .at times even worse. 

That is why in our prior email we asked for an independent expert to give a Second Opinion on the “water issues” for the whole golf course.  

And hopefully Farrell will use this study as the basis for describing the current water conditions on the old golf course property in his environmental submissions. 

In fact we would like to see Farrell beforehand review his summary of the current conditions with the Gedney Association. . .as we recall from a decade or so ago FASNY’s initial SEQUA description had so much misinformation that we had difficulty recognizing our own neighborhood.Thanks again for your visit and follow up questioning.

Marie and Ron Rhodes

Hits: 282

WPCNR IMPRESSIONS TAKEAWAYS TRANSITIONS. By John F. Bailey, December 19, 2022:

My father once told me in discussing job intervews, “You never have a second chance to make a first impression.”

I learned that again Friday at a photo shoot involving 36 persons from the White Plains High School and Middle School, including Mayor Tom Roach Council President Justin Brasch and State Senator Shelley Meyer.

Staff administrators from the White Plains School District, members of the police and fire department, the mayor, the state senator, and other dignitaries, along with other well-known individuals working in the White Plains participated.

The  non-profit Common Cause conducted an all-day photography shoot at the high school Friday, capturing 36  school employees in a variety of clothing of their choice.

Each participant was photographed in a variety of outfits of their choosing as part of a planned traveling museum “pilot” program. The program is being used to demonstrate to those looking at 10 different pictures of the same person, instinctively make a snap judgment what the person is as to character, safety, respect, attraction.

The program is named:

“We are White Plains: Bridging, Belonging and Building Community.”

It is scheduled to be unveiled in the halls of White Plains High School March 2023.

Photographer Bayete’ Ross Smith composed the compositions in the all day session.

He shot 10 portraits of each  of the 36 participants photographing them in ten distinctly different fashion presentations chosen by the subject who posed with  a blank expression in each outfit.

The blank countenance you encounter  when looking at the  10 photographs of each person, you were not swayed by a smile, a scowl, or grimace or a laugh, forcing you as an individual to discover that seeing the same person in a different outfit, you make a different judgment.

Sue Spiegel and Marla Felton of the non-profit, Common Circles, Inc. are using the arts, conversation, interactives and storytelling to help students in the White Plains School District and the broader White Plains community explore identity.

Superintendent of Schools Dr. Joseph Ricca organized the program with Common Circles

The dynamic revelation was conceived by Mr. Ross Smith as part of his “Our Kind of People” series. “Our Kind of People” examines how perception about someone’s identity, value and character is affected by appearance such as clothing.

The finished exhibition scheduled to appear at the High School in March consists of photos of each of the participants in 10 different outfits, such as this photo below. on Mr. Ross Smith’s website.

When I observed this Mr. Ross for the first time, I realized how right my father was about not getting a second chance to make a first impression.

Hits: 271

Your Local Epidemiologist

Long COVID: An update and gauging risk

Earlier this year I wrote a four-post series on long Covid: burden; impact on specific health systems, like the heart; long Covid among kids; predictors of long Covid and treatment. Today’s newsletter is meant to be an update—I’m picking up where I left off, so I highly recommend reading those first, if you haven’t already.

---

The individual risk of death from a COVID-19 infection is now close to the flu thanks to vaccines, immunity, and treatment. However, death is not the only outcome of SARS-CoV-2. Long Covid—or the persistence of symptoms after an infection beyond three months—is still a threat to living a healthy and prosperous life.

Overall burden

A recent study pooled more then 54 long Covid studies (which included a total of 1.2 million people) and found that 6% of individuals who had symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection experienced long Covid in 2020 and 2021. This is consistent with a massive study in Sweden (2020-2021) that found the proportion receiving a long Covid diagnosis was 1% among individuals not hospitalized for their COVID-19 infection, 6% among those hospitalized, and 32% among those treated in the ICU.

Today, the U.K. estimates that 3% of the general population has long Covid. In the U.S., the population-level burden of long Covid has been historically difficult to grasp. But in August 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau added four questions about long Covid to its Household Pulse Survey. What did they find?

• 16 million working-age Americans (aged 18 to 65) have long Covid today. This equates to ~8% prevalence.
• Of those, 2-4 million are out of work due to long Covid.
  • The annual cost of lost wages is ~$170-$230 billion a year.
• The prevalence of severe long Covid is unequally distributed across race/ethnicity and age.

Economically, long Covid is a big deal to this country. The total economic cost is $3.7 trillion in the U.S., without accounting for future cases.

Changing risk

Just like the risk of death, the risk of long Covid appears to have changed over time.

In general, there are three things that are decreasing the risk of long Covid today:

1. Vaccines. A number of studies show vaccines reduce the risk of long Covid. The problem is that these studies greatly vary in the estimated reduction: some say vaccines reduce long Covid by 85%, others say 15%. The “truth” is likely somewhere in-between.
2. Paxlovid. One study found Paxlovid reduced the risk of long Covid by 25%.
3. Omicron. A very strong study in the Lancet found the odds of long Covid after an Omicron infection were significantly lower compared to after a Delta infection.

All of these help, but are not bullet proof.

Of course, the more the virus mutates to become more contagious, the risk of infection (and thus long Covid) increases.

Death from long Covid

The National Center for Health Statistics released the first long Covid mortality report yesterday. The scientists started with over 1 million death certificates dated from January 1, 2020 to June 30, 2022 that indicated COVID-19 as the underlying or contributing cause of death. Then they searched for clues that the patient had long Covid by looking for words like: “chronic COVID,” “long COVID,” “long-haul COVID,” or “post-COVID syndrome.” What did they find?

• 3,544 deaths—or 0.3 percent of the total—had text on their death certificates about long Covid
• Long Covid peaked in June 2021 (1.2%) and in April 2022 (3.8%)
• Long Covid death rate was highest among adults aged 85+, non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native people, and males.

A simple search of words like this has major limitations, so we cannot make causal claims. This is more of an exploratory analysis to see if “long Covid” appeared on death certificates. My hunch is that this is a huge underestimate of long Covid deaths, but it could be an overestimate. More work needs to be done.

Increased death from SARS-CoV-2 is not limited to acute illness

We are at the mercy of time to see the impact of SARS-CoV-2 infection beyond symptoms, for example blood clots.

One rattling study in the Lancet found that people infected with SARS-CoV-2 had more than 3 times the risk of dying over the following year compared with those who remained uninfected. For COVID-19 cases aged 60 years or older, increased mortality persisted until the end of the first year after infection, and was related to increased risk for heart and/or respiratory causes of death.

An Australian report of excess death found something similar.

A report from Singapore also found an increase in excess mortality after infection (people without recent infections had no additional excess deaths), however it was not linked to cardiovascular events.

Implications

On a population level, it’s clear that the footprint of SARS-CoV-2 will extend for decades to come. But what this looks like is highly debated, and there are two camps of scientists:

• One camp thinks long Covid will be a mass debilitating event that will define the economies of countries for decades
• The second believes long Covid is real, incredibly debilitating for the people who have it, but, given the change in risk, will not be such a big event that our future economies or health systems will fail.

Time will tell.

On an individual level, assessing risk of long Covid is extremely difficult. How much should long Covid impact my daily decisions? To me, it’s easiest to understand a new threat by comparing it to familiar threats, like driving. I did this using MicroMorts a few months ago, comparing the risk of dying from COVID-19 to, for example, skydiving.

Here is what I found (keep in mind these are super rough estimates):

• Driving: The annual risk of getting into a car accident is 1 in 30 per year for the average driver. Of those accidents, 43% are likely to be injured. And, of those injured, 10% are permanently impaired. So, the annual risk of permanent impairment from driving is 1 in 700.
• Long Covid: The risk of getting an Omicron infection (asymptomatic and symptomatic) per year is ~1 in 2 (before Omicron it was ~1 in 4). If we take into account 3% of infections lead to long Covid and, of those, ~18% will have disease so severe that they are unable to work. So, the annual risk of severe long Covid (unable to work) is 1 in 370.
• Other annual risk comparisons:
  • Severely injured during a house fire: 1 in 20,000
  • Needing reconstructive surgery after a dog bite: 1 in 400

So, the risk of debilitating long Covid is double the risk of permanent impairment from driving. Risk of debilitating long Covid is much higher than getting injured during a house fire and about the same as getting a serious dog bite.

Of course, individuals can do a lot of things to reduce risk for all of the above: Wear seatbelts. Drive less. Make sure your fire alarms work. Don’t approach growling dogs. But, we also make conscious (or non-conscious) decisions to increase risk: texting while driving; unplugging the annoying beeping fire alarm. It’s an every day balancing act. But, just like speeding tickets, required fire exit signs, and leash laws, there are policy level initiatives that could help with long Covid, too.

Bottom line

Long Covid is an incredibly debilitating disease and millions are suffering. While risk is changing, we don’t know what the future will hold.

This leaves us with a difficult balancing act. I find myself not willing to take risks in some instances, and more willing in other instances—as with many things I do in my daily life, like driving. A person next to me will be very different. I think it will be years until this calculated decision-making becomes easier.

Editor’s Note: On Monday December 12, the New York State Covid Tracker reported 346 cases of new covid were reported (Lab Test verified) bringing the first two days of this week total to 645 new cases, continuing a third week of highly increased cases immediately after the weekend, putting the county on track for a third week of over 2,000 new cases.

Hits: 257

Si quiere leer la versión en español, pulse aquí.

Trust in public health is eroding, and the implications are far reaching. We, as a field, have to fix this.

Over the weekend

Any forward-facing scientist can tell you that receiving dangerous messages has been a common occurrence throughout the pandemic. But the hate, resentment, frustration, and anger was crystallized in one instance over the weekend: Elon Musk—the world’s richest man and new owner of Twitter—wrote the post below.

Elon Musk @elonmusk

My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci10:58 AM ∙ Dec 11, 20221,176,815Likes177,693Retweets

Five words, that were wrong on so many levels, garnered more than 1.17 million “likes,” 177,000 retweets, and international attention in mass media. Anyone who dared to disagree received a wave of truly grotesque comments. Even Musk noticed as he followed up on his original tweet with: “Truth resonates…”

Of course, the viral reaction is due to many things: social media algorithms, a polarized country, politics, misinformation, disinformation, opinions about Twitter, opinions about Elon. I also think Musk is trying to deflect negative attention from himself.

It’s also a reflection of humans’ difficulty coping with randomness—people need someone to blame for the pandemic, the fear they experienced, the people they lost, or the jobs and livelihoods that were changed. The viral reaction was also an indication that people finally felt heard.

But all of the above also overlap with public health. And, their accumulation has been funneled into one sentiment towards our field: distrust.

Change in trust

Every year, the Pew Research Center conducts a survey with Americans on public confidence in certain groups. Overall, trust in scientists has decreased throughout the pandemic, but ever so slightly. Interestingly it remained higher than public confidence in business officials, the military, public school principals, religious leaders, police officers, and elected officials.

If we compare the responses based on political affiliation, though, the story becomes jarring: confidence in scientists among Republicans dropped significantly. In fact, 1 in 3 Republicans have no confidence at all.

Furthermore, declines in trust in science were most pronounced among White adults. Americans with higher levels of education expressed more positive views of scientists than those with lower levels of education.

This is a huge problem, as trust equals lives

An Oxford report continually assesses country-level factors that most strongly predict COVID-19 deaths. The answer?

Not pandemic preparedness. Not government. It was interpersonal trust—a measure of how much people think they can trust another citizen who they don’t already know. In other words, public health worked better in high-trust countries.

We cannot have one group trust public health and another not.

This is not how viruses work.

Infectious diseases violate the assumption of independence—what one person does directly impacts the person next to them.

This is unlike cancer or diabetes, for example. Everyone has to be against a virus, or the virus thrives.

Perhaps most concerning is that this isn’t going to be our last pandemic. Since the 1918 flu, we’ve seen diseases emerge faster and faster. Public health also touches on our daily lives beyond infectious diseases: what we eat, social problems, gun violence, and all other acute and chronic medical problems. We need the trust of the community to move the needle for any of these.

What to do?

As the field of public health copes, self-reflects, and digests the past three years and weighs how to build for a better future, we have to make it our goal, our opportunity, to improve trust.

As one scientist said, “You earn public confidence in small drops and you [lose] it in buckets.”

Bottom-up engagement is absolutely necessary. We need to enter conversations with humility.

A conversation about false dichotomies (lock down vs. throwing caution to the wind) is necessary.

A conversation about disease vs. the needs of a community is necessary.

An honest conversation on what we (CDC, state epi, local epi, leaders, communicators) got wrong, got right, and why.

What does this look like? I have a few ideas:

1. Listening sessions. Not hearing and not telling, but listening to people and trusted messengers who are not in “our world.” Bringing them into the solution. It will be painful. It will be time consuming. But it has to be done.
2. A COVID-19 commission that is congressionally mandated, like the 9/11 commission. There is text in the PREVENT Act, but it’s not clear if PREVENT will pass.
3. Preparation for the future. Putting communication at the center of pandemic preparedness. This is still not being done. Building capacity for effective scientific communication needs to be a core of our national strategy. As I’ve written before, a lot needs to be done in this area.

I’m sure there are more and even better ways. And I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. But the fact of the matter is there is no one solution.

And this is going to take a whole lot of time.

Bottom line

We need to understand why five words in a Tweet carry so much weight in public health and threaten our entire profession. Will trust in science survive the pandemic? 

Maybe. It depends on what we, as a field, do next.

If we don’t win hearts and minds, we won’t win against this virus or the next. Trust is key in public health.

Our scientific work depends on it. Our health depends on it. Our lives depend on it. Now everyone needs to act like it.

That includes, you, Mr. Musk.

(Editor’s Note: Locally, on Sunday December 11 in Westchester County, 299 persons tested positive to start the week of covid surveillance. Rockland County had 72 new cases. Orange County, 56, Dutchess, 42 and Putnam County 37, Ulster, 17. The Mid-Hudson Region saw 540 person test positive for covid of 9,863 Lab-verified tests an infection rate of 5%. Nassau County and Suffolk County reported 1,158. Of 19,797 tested in those 9 counties (Mid-Hudson and Nassau and Suffolk) there were 1,678 positives in one day an infection rate of 8% . New York City reported 2,376 new cases. )