Bloomberg Businessweek-Europe Edition October 18, 2021

● Worldwide coronavirus cases have topped 239m Almost 4.9 million people have died, and about 6.6 billion vaccine shots have been given. Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics sought emergency use authorization in the U.S. for molnupiravir, which would be the first oral antiviral treatment for Covid-19. ● U.S. Social Security benefits will rise by 5.9% in 2022, tied to increases in the cost of living. Consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers ● The global logjam of container ships continues. Outside the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, 60 vessels waited for a berth to offload on Oct. 9. The average wait is now more than 11 days, up from a high of about 8 days in April. ● Expressing concern about the world’s two-track recovery from the pandemic, the IMF…

Fund managers have long been eager to satisfy global investors’ appetite for assets that meet environmental, social, and governance standards. But the ESG movement is facing a backlash—and not without reason. As Bloomberg News has reported, many of the promises made to claim ESG virtue turn out to be meaningless, and corporations issuing “green bonds” aren’t always very green. Former champions of the movement have been speaking out about weak or contradictory assurances, describing an industry more devoted to virtue signaling than to real action. The ESG sector does have questions to answer. Many funds are run in a way that will do little or nothing to advance the movement’s stated goals. Even at their best, these efforts are no substitute for wise government policy. Yet prudent ESG investing serves a…

▶ The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meets in Atlanta on Oct. 21-22 to consider broadening the use of vaccine boosters against Covid-19. ▶ The People’s Bank of China will set its benchmark lending rate on Oct. 19. Analysts expect the one-year prime rate to hold steady at 3.85%. ▶ Canada and the U.K. report their September rates of inflation on Oct. 20. Forecasters say prices should continue to trend upward on both sides of the Atlantic. ▶ IHS Markit publishes its Euro Area Composite PMI, tracking business trends in the service and manufacturing sectors, on Oct. 22. Expansion in the region has slowed from a peak in July. ▶ The NBA kicks off its season on Oct. 19, but star players in some cities—including Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets—won’t be allowed…

On a sunny Monday in mid-September, scientist Michael Mina sits down at his desk at Harvard for the first time since the pandemic began. It’s been so long that, through the window behind him, an entire gleaming 11-story building has sprung up. A neglected office plant is brown and withering, and a stack of scientific journals nearby date to February and March 2020. The 37-year-old epidemiologist, immunologist, and physician says it didn’t have to be this way: Workplaces, schools, event spaces, and more that have been desolate for better than a year could have stayed open—and safely—with a technology that’s been here all along. Mina has long been a tireless champion of inexpensive, do-it-yourself SARS-CoV-2 antigen tests that can return a positive or negative result in about 15 minutes, arguing for…

Medicare is big business for insurance companies such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana, and CVS Health’s Aetna unit. Selling private versions of the U.S. government health program for seniors—known as Medicare Advantage plans—is among the fastest-growing and most profitable markets in health care. About 26 million Americans, or 42% of all Medicare beneficiaries, choose to get their Medicare benefits through private plans, bringing more than $300 billion annually into insurers’ coffers. Now federal authorities are raising alarms about the program’s cost. Private Medicare plans, pitched as a way to deliver better care at lower costs, have never saved the government money, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), a panel of independent advisers to Congress that earlier this year noted that some “policies are deeply flawed and in need of immediate…

Kjell Emil Kallestad never pictured himself in an electric vehicle. But when his partner traded in her diesel SUV for a battery-powered crossover last year, the 67-year-old machine operator in Straume, Norway, followed suit. In one sense the purchases by the residents of this tiny island village were nothing out of the ordinary in the country, where EVs have caught on faster than anyplace else in the world. But what’s unusual is where the two models, an MG ZS and an Xpeng G3, came from: Both were produced in China. “It says ‘Made in China’ on almost everything,” says Kjersti Midttveit, Kallestad’s partner. “I was not afraid of that at all.” More than a dozen Chinese automakers are or will soon be exporting electric models to Europe and the U.S., and most…