US: 43.1M Cases - 694.6K Dead - 32.6M Recovered
Worldwide: 229.9M Cases - 4.7M Dead - 206.6M Recovered

Former Senior Loss Prevention Executive
Know of any fallen LP exec? Let's remember & recognize.

Private Industry Security Guard Deaths: 315  
Law Enforcement Officer Deaths: 410
*Red indicates change in total deaths

COVID Hot Spots Across the United States

COVID's Historic Death Toll
The US death toll from Covid-19 just surpassed that of the 1918 flu pandemic
Despite all the scientific and medical advances of the past 103 years, the Covid-19 pandemic has now killed more Americans than the 1918 flu pandemic did. More than 675,000 people in the United States have died from Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University. That surpasses the estimated US death toll from the deadliest pandemic of the 20th century.

In April 2020, CNN published a list of lessons learned from the 1918 pandemic that could help mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic. They included not ditching safety precautions too early; not getting a false sense of security among those young and healthy; and not relying on unproven treatments.

But Kissler said those lessons were not heeded by many. "A lot of the mistakes that we definitely fell into in 1918, we hoped we wouldn't fall into in 2020," Kissler said. "We did." cnn.com

Deadliest Month of the Pandemic Since February
September on track to be deadliest month for Covid since winter surge
September 2021 is on track to be the deadliest month in the Covid-19 pandemic since the winter surge in February, with an average of more than 2,000 Americans dying from the virus each day. NBC News’ Ellison Barber reports from Des Moines, Iowa, where local media says someone “reported positive for Covid-19 about once every 50 seconds over the last seven days.” nbcnews.com

Beefing Up Security as Customers Push Back Against Mandates
NYC restaurants hire security as customers resist vaccine mandate
If eating out at New York City restaurants wasn’t already different enough during the COVID-19 pandemic, some businesses are going through another change: beefed-up security.

With Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Key to NYC Pass” vaccine mandate in effect, restaurant staff are now required to ask customers 12-years-of-age and older for proof of vaccination if they want to dine-in.

Some restaurants are adding or considering hiring security guards to protect staff as they carry out this new task. This comes after a hostess at the popular Carmine’s restaurant in Manhattan’s Upper West Side was attacked by three customers from Texas when, according to police, the hostess asked them to show whether or not they were vaccinated. The assault landed the hostess in the hospital, and the three customers in jail.

Other restaurant workers told PIX 11 they’ve had people scream in their faces when questioned about vaccination status.

New York City restaurants that don’t comply with the vaccine checks can be fined $1000 or more. Officials said city inspectors have gone around to more than 5,000 restaurants throughout the boroughs since the mandate began Monday to ensure compliance.

More than 2,000 of the restaurants were caught not enforcing the vaccination requirement. At this point, city officials said they’re only giving out warnings, but those warnings will turn into hefty fines if restaurant owners don’t start complying.

Meanwhile, some city leaders are calling for the fines and penalties to be increased on anyone convicted of assaulting a restaurant worker just trying to do their job by asking about vaccination status. wfla.com

Frontline Retail Workers Facing Pandemic Violence Worldwide
A gas station attendant is killed in Germany after telling a customer to mask up
A 20-year-old student working at a gas station in southwestern Germany was shot and killed after refusing to sell beer to an unmasked customer, the local prosecutor said.

When an unmasked 49-year-old man entered the gas station on Saturday night and placed two six-packs of beer on the counter in the town of Idar-Oberstein, near the French border, the cashier insisted that he wear a mask, said Kai Fuhrmann, the district attorney in charge of the case, in a telephone interview.

Masks have been mandatory in shops in Germany since shortly after the pandemic started.

The man then left the store only to return an hour later, still unmasked but with a gun — one not licensed under Germany’s strict weapons laws. When the clerk asked him a second time to put on a mask, Mr. Fuhrmann said, he killed him with a single shot to the head.

Although Germany has seen protests, sometimes including violence, over its mask and hygiene rules, this is believed to be the first death in the country directly linked to the restrictions.

The suspect, who has no previous police record, told the authorities that he saw the cashier as “responsible for the situation because he was enforcing the rules,” Mr. Fuhrmann said. nytimes.com

Retailers Rethink Pandemic-Battered Manhattan
Starbucks has closed more than 40 stores, while adding mobile-order pickup counters in others. Other chains like Sonic are taking advantage of vacancies to establish themselves in New York.

By the end of 2020, the number of chain stores in Manhattan — everything from drugstores to clothing retailers to restaurants — had fallen by more than 17 percent from 2019, according to the Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit research and policy organization.

Across Manhattan, the number of available ground-floor stores, normally the domain of busy restaurants and clothing stores, has soared. A quarter of the ground-floor storefronts in Lower Manhattan are available for rent, while about a third are available in Herald Square.

Starbucks has permanently closed 44 outlets in Manhattan since March of last year. Pret a Manger has reopened only half of the 60 locations it had in New York City before the pandemic. Numerous delicatessens, independent restaurants and smaller local chains have gone dark.

“Midtown clearly has been the hardest hit of any of the areas of Manhattan.”

But in a city where one person’s downturn is someone else’s opportunity, some restaurant chains are taking advantage of the record-low retail rents to set up shop or expand their presence.

In the second quarter, food and beverage companies signed 23 new leases in Manhattan, leading apparel retailers, which signed 10, according to the commercial real estate services firm CBRE.

Still, with so much uncertainty about when employees may fully return to Midtown offices, some companies are proceeding carefully. nytimes.com

Pandemic could prompt reassessment of alcohol's role at work
One study published in December 2020 by the National Institutes of Health found that 60% of U.S. adult respondents reported increased alcohol use compared to what they consumed prior to the pandemic, and about 46% of this contingent cited increased stress as a reason for that increase. hrdive.com

Extra J. & J. shot substantially boosts protection against Covid, the company reports

Another Year of Uncertainty Ahead for Retail
WSJ-CFO: Retailers Navigate Freight Costs, Scarce Inventory & Uncertain Future

Despite rosy earnings outlooks, finance chiefs warn of myriad challenges for at least another year

Finance executives in the retail industry continue to face a multitude of challenges as they plan for the fall and the holiday season despite being generally optimistic on their companies’ earnings outlook.

Retailers are grappling with ongoing supply-chain disruptions that are keeping inventory low and often causing delays, forcing companies to pay premiums to accelerate shipments. Deliveries from Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries have slowed as local governments limit factories’ production capacity due to the Delta variant, potentially resulting in delays and shortages of certain products. Companies say they are experiencing a level of uncertainty not seen since the onset of the pandemic, putting their financial plans in doubt.

Despite these obstacles, U.S. finance chiefs have maintained a positive outlook on future profits and demand for their products, due in part to strong consumer spending. Sales at U.S. retailers climbed 0.7% in August, a rebound from a drop in July, the Commerce Department said.

About 30% of the 108 retailers in the S&P 1500 index revised their annual guidance through Aug. 31, nearly all upward except for discount retailer Dollar Tree Inc., according to data provider FactSet Research Systems Inc. That’s up 25 percentage points from the prior-year period, when 5% of the retailers updated their guidance. About 8% haven’t changed their annual guidance so far this year, while the remaining 62% didn’t provide such a forecast, with some—including Burlington Stores Inc. and Victoria’s Secret & Co.—citing uncertainty as a reason.

In August, Dollar Tree said it cut its forecast for the fiscal year ending in January to earnings per share of $5.40 to $5.60, down from its May forecast of $5.80 to $6.05, driven by higher freight costs. Macy’s Inc., which also operates the Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury brands, forecasts supply constraints will be its biggest challenge in the fall and winter months, said CFO Adrian Mitchell, who has been in the role since November.

Chief financial officers are working to offset some of the hurdles, including ordering inventory earlier than usual, revising long-term contracts with ocean carriers, spending more on airfreight, increasing prices and moving their operations. wsj.com

Stores Closures vs. Openings
New store opening announcements are up 58% from 2020: Coresight
In brick and mortar, the script has flipped between 2020 and 2021. This time last year, after bankruptcies surged amid COVID-19 disruption, store closures outpaced openings by more than 150%, according to Coresight.

Retailers have announced 4,969 store openings so far in 2021, which represents a 58.3% increase over last year, according to a report from Coresight Research. That figure slightly outpaces announced closures for the year, which stand at 4,889, down 37.9% from 2020.

Dollar General has announced far more openings than any other retailer and represents more than 20% of all announced openings so far this year, according to Coresight data.

Other discounters are among those retailers opening the most stores as well, including Dollar Tree, Family Dollar — which together under Dollar Tree Inc. are rolling out a combined format store targeting rural markets — and Five Below. But it's not all discount and off-price. Foot Locker is opening stores (109), as is Signet Jewelers (87), Tractor Supply (80), Aerie (76), Bath & Body Works (49) and plenty of others. retaildive.com

Europol Assist in Arrests of 106 Italian Mafia Online Fraudsters

About € 10 million ($11.7M U.S.) was stolen in just a year

The Spanish National Police (Policía Nacional), supported by the Italian National Police (Polizia di Stato), Europol and Eurojust, dismantled an organised crime group linked to the Italian Mafia involved in online fraud, money laundering, drug trafficking and property crime. The suspects defrauded hundreds of victims through phishing attacks and other types of online fraud such as SIM swapping and business email compromise before laundering the money through a wide network of money mules and shell companies. Last year alone, the illegal profit is estimated at about € 10 million ($11.7M U.S.)

This large criminal network was very well organized in a pyramid structure, which included different specialised areas and roles. Among the members of the criminal group were computer experts, who created the phishing domains and carried out the cyber fraud; recruiters and organizers of the money muling; and money laundering experts, including experts in cryptocurrencies. Most of the suspected members are Italian nationals, some of whom have links to mafia organizations. Located in Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain), the suspects tricked their victims, mainly Italian nationals, into sending large sums to bank accounts controlled by the criminal network. They then laundered the criminal proceeds through a wide network of money mules and shell companies.

Europol facilitated the information exchange, the operational coordination and provided analytical support for this investigation, which lasted over a year. The Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT) at Europol supported the operation. This standing operational team consists of cyber liaison officers from different countries who work from the same office on high profile cybercrime investigations. europa.eu

Congress Considering $700,000 OSHA Penalties
A Congressional committee has approved maximum penalties of $700,000 per item for violations of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards.

The move would mean more than a fivefold increase of maximum “willful,” “repeated,” and “failure-to-abate” violations from $136,532. Minimum penalty amounts for such infractions would increase from today’s $9,753 to $50,000. “Serious” violations would increase from a current maximum of $13,653 to $70,000.

Announcing its intent to “invest in increased enforcement of labor law … and set meaningful civil monetary penalties for violations of wage and hour, worker safety and labor laws” in the “Build Back Better Agenda,” the House Committee on Education and Labor approved the multiplied penalty levels, as well as a $707 million budget for the agency.

The penalty increases mirror provisions in the “Protecting America’s Workers Act,” a measure that has been proposed in recent Congresses but has never passed. The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the new measure and send it to the Senate, which could enact the measure with a simple majority vote. jacksonlewis.com

Editor's Note: 'Just in Time' - Talk about timing. Congress needs money just about as much as everybody else, if not more. With this $7.5T budget bill, seems like they'd have enough to support the INFORM Consumers Act.

Employee 'Ghosting'
Employers say 'ghosting coasting' is a growing problem, but workers have their reasons for quietly walking away from a job

Recruiters and managers say they have been left high and dry by new hires who vanish without explanation.

Over a summer marked by rage quits, the Great Resignation, and other high-profile walkouts by overworked and under-appreciated employees, another headache has been quietly brewing. Where many employees have gone out with a bang this year, a growing number are instead departing without so much as a whimper.

Hiring and retention has become a defining challenge in the current labor market, and the Federal Reserve's most recent summary of economic conditions in the US says a growing trend is giving employers new headaches.

"Retention continued to be a growing problem for firms," the Atlanta Fed said in its September Beige Book entry. "Restauranteurs noted concerns over 'ghosting coasting,' where a new hire works for a few days and moves on to the next restaurant without notice before they are let go due to lack of skills."

Granted, the practice itself is not new, but it does appear to be more widespread than ever before as job openings outpace job seekers, allowing workers to reclaim a measure of the power in a situation that has favored employers for decades. businessinsider.com

FedEx to Spend $100 Million on Boosting Delivery-Van Safety
FedEx Corp. plans to spend more than $100 million to improve delivery-van safety and reduce costs from accidents, potentially dragging on short-term earnings as the courier faces pressure from rising wages and other expenses.

The company’s Ground unit is offering $1,500 per vehicle to reimburse its contractors for installing cameras and sensors that warn drivers of obstacles or other vehicles, according to documents viewed by Bloomberg News. The unit’s contractors operate about 72,000 vehicles, FedEx said. news.bloomberglaw.com

Aldi trials first check-out free store in UK