SWC’s Fast Five
Cancer deaths are down again, and there’s a new COVID-19 vaccine around the corner so that’s good! Also, impeachment, businesses contemplate mob violence and now people are pretending to commute.
So, here’s this week’s Fast Five:
1 An impeachment explainer
The House of Representatives can vote to impeach a president with a simple majority having no practical effect until it goes to the Senate, which must hold a trial. If convicted, the president is removed from office and the vice president takes power. It is likely this will be the first impeachment trial of an ex-president and there is some dispute whether the Constitution allows such a thing. What it does allow, for a convicted president – disqualification from holding “any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States” in the future.
2 Businesses take a new look at security risks following U.S. Capitol riot
“Mob attacks could come at a brand,” said Mark Beasley, director of the Enterprise Risk Management Initiative at North Carolina State University. “Every entity ought to be thinking: ‘Could our walls be scaled? Could there be enough anger against my product that that kind of breach could occur?’”
3 Another one-year record decline in the U.S. cancer death rate
The overall cancer death rate has been falling since 1991. From 2017 to 2018, it fell 2.4 percent, according to an American Cancer Society report, with lung cancer accounting for almost half of the overall decline in cancer deaths in the past five years.
4 Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, maybe better but late
Outside scientists expect Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine to strongly protect people against COVID-19 with the advantages that it requires only one dose and can stay stable in a refrigerator, without being frozen, for months. Clinical trial data is due early February. Even with speedy FDA approval, manufacturing delays will reduce the number of doses and their arrival.
5 Fake commute. This is a thing now.
“Fake commuting” is a substitute for the “me time” commuters once got on their way to a formal office space, whether they walked, drove, read a book or listened to a podcast.
