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Brands are already marketing to Generation Alpha

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My greatest desire as a toddler was to own a play kitchen, complete with miniature appliances, utensils, and plastic food. All my neighborhood playmates had one. The kitchens were everywhere, according to my mother: displayed in toy catalogs and television commercials, in day care centers, and in the homes of family friends.
It was, in hindsight, one of my very first consumerist desires, a toy that sought to instill ideals of domesticity in young girls. That didn’t matter to my parents, or to 3-year-old me. I was learning to want things: snacks, games, and gadgets that were strategically dangled in front of my barely formed child brain, even if my parents held all the buying power. This parent-child dynamic — in which the child ceaselessly annoys their caretaker to receive a desired object — likely won’t ever change.
Americans’ consumption patterns have changed, though, especially over the past decade. The next generation of consumers, dubbed <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/02/generation-after-gen-z-named-alpha/606862/">Generation Alpha</a> by demographers, is being born at the height of American excess. They will grow up in a world oversaturated with <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/4/2/21203128/dtc-home-brands-marketing-sales-emails">direct-to-consumer brands</a> attempting to “disrupt” every sector imaginable, one where <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22412098/social-commerce-explainer">social media is shoppable</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/10/21215953/amazon-fresh-walmart-grocery-delivery-coronavirus-retail-store-closures">Amazon is ubiquitous</a>. Today’s parents are <a href="https://blog.fieldagent.net/1500-parents-surveyed-about-shopping-for-kids-during-coronavirus-pandemic">less likely</a> to scour the aisles of their local Target or Toys “R” Us when the internet’s boundless array of online products can be delivered to their doors with just a few clicks.
The unique consumer identity of the toddlers and babies of Generation Alpha — a term used to describe those born between 2010 and 2025 — is currently being developed for them. It will be shaped through the toys, baby food, clothes, and toddler gadgets purchased by their parents and relatives. A real-time example of this phenomenon is Ryan Kaji, the 9-year-old star of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChGJGhZ9SOOHvBB0Y4DOO_w">Ryan’s World</a>, one of the most lucrative YouTube channels on the platform. For now, though, most kids are too young and offline to be drawn into social media’s marketing schema. Brands, instead, are turning to parents to wean the next generation of consumers.
“There’s a subset of young, millennial moms who are invested in buying the best products they can afford for their kids,” said Heather Dretsch, an assistant professor of marketing at North Carolina State University. “As a result, the next generation of kids are going to have very similar tastes to that of their millennial parents when it comes to brands, unlike Gen Z.”
Both new and traditional kid-focused brands have, for the most part, abandoned the kitschy, rainbow-colored packaging used in the ‘90s and early aughts. Think of the commercials for Fruit Gushers candy and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBAIpMpSGrc">Kid Cuisine</a> microwavable meals. Instead, they’ve defaulted to the <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2020/03/will-the-millennial-aesthetic-ever-end.html">minimalist aesthetic</a> familiar to any millennial-aged shopper, with serif fonts and cohesive pastel color schemes that subtly inform the consumer that this brand is ethical, economical, and safe for their child. “You can tell Gen Alpha are kids of millennials because their snacks are filled with these labels,” <a href="https://twitter.com/iiiitsandrea/status/1421168662078177285">tweeted</a> Andrea Hernández, a food and beverage trend analyst. “Paleo, keto, probiotic, low carb, low sugar, plant based.”
For parents, the bevy of available brands can be overwhelming. “There’s a lot of pressure not knowing what your kid needs now and what they need next,” said Julie Rogers, the co-founder of the baby shoe brand Ten Little. “Parents are always wondering how they can buy things kids can grow into instead of something that lasts only a few minutes.”
Parenthood, then, is as much a state of being as a shoppable identity. Now that baby- and child-related products are less ugly and utilitarian, it’s easier than ever for parents to express their individual style and, by extension, cultivate their child’s taste. It’s similar to the marketing notion of a “<a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/trickle-down-effect.asp">trickle-down effect</a>,” which refers to how upper-class fashion trends influence working-class styles. This is only the first chapter of Gen Alpha’s consumerist future. They certainly aren’t the first cohort of kids to be targeted by mass media (<a href="https://www.awn.com/animationworld/dr-toon-when-reagan-met-optimus-prime">marketing deregulation</a> in the 1980s led to an onslaught of loosely disguised children’s advertisements). They will be, however, the first to inhabit a world of bountiful digital-first brands, brands that have had eyes on them at an extremely young age.
Sara Petersen has noticed a dramatic shift in her buying impulses between her first child, who was born in 2012, and her youngest in 2019. “It felt like everyone was buying the same stuff back in 2012, the same playmats and plastic highchairs that were ugly, chunky, and only sold in primary colors,” said Petersen, who is working on a book about digital culture and motherhood. “Now, in part thanks to Instagram, there’s an aesthetic shift toward natural wood tones, creams, and neutral pastel shades.”
Mothers have always been a key marketing demographic, she added. But in the past, it was a category that felt “identity-killing.” Even progressive, working women felt they had to conform toward a general mold of motherhood. “Everyone bought the same ugly shit, and in some ways, you felt better and worse about it,” Petersen said. “Our consumer identity was flattened into one broad, unexciting group, and there were few brands that prioritized your individual needs, that specifically catered to you.”
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<aside><q>“Our consumer identity was flattened into one broad, unexciting group”</q></aside>
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The era of mommy blogs in the 2000s precipitated the <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22368693/mom-boss-capitalism-scary-mommy">mom-as-influencer industrial complex</a>, but it was predicated around a similar idea: that one’s domestic struggles can be solved and made better by an endless array of products. The prevailing stereotype of the millennial parent is of a health-conscious caretaker, wary of processed foods, and the potential of unnatural chemicals and toxins present in their child’s food or toys. They want the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/12/11/18134598/best-of-everything">best of everything</a> for their kids. It’s an idea rooted in a materialist and classist assumptions of what “good” parenting looks like.
“Parenting as an industry, if you can even call it that, is very old and hasn’t changed in nearly a century,” said Lisa Barnett, co-founder of Little Spoon, a direct-to-consumer baby and children’s meal brand. “Every service, every product hasn’t really changed. We recognize that there’s a new generation entering the life stage of being a parent.”
It made little sense, then, that baby food brands and kiddie snacks were designed with the child in mind, rather than the parent. “It’s ironic because, at least for us, the baby doesn’t internalize what the packaging looks like,” Barnett added. “We’re trying to attract the parents, thinking about what they want to look for.”
Legacy food brands like Gerber and Beech-Nut are playing catch-up to new, online-only companies like Little Spoon. They’ve altered their packaging and offered organic options, but that won’t be enough to stem the expansion of DTC, kid-focused companies. The parenting industry — or the “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaklich/2019/05/10/the-new-mom-economy-meet-the-startups-disrupting-the-46-billion-millennial-parenting-market/?sh=6130a7545130">mom economy</a>” — has moved largely online during the pandemic. Consumers are not only accustomed to buying clothes, household items, and toys online; parents are seeking out technology and products that are convenient and transparent.
“So much of the power of shopping from mommy Instagram lies in the really impossible state of motherhood in the US, especially during the pandemic,” Petersen added. “It makes you feel better about the state of everything, even while American society has failed to provide policies that could make mothers’ lives better, like free preschool or universal paid leave.”
Granted, most brands aren’t trying to pose as a solution or a substitution for America’s inadequate child care policies. Their aim is to support a modern vision of parenthood, one where both parents are likely working and juggling child care tasks. It just so happens that, in this pursuit, brands and parents are subtly shaping the tastes and imagined lifestyles of their little ones. The long-term effects of coming of age in a terrazzo-filled home with wooden toys, of course, remain to be seen.
So, why are advertisers so keen on millennial parents and their Gen Alpha toddlers in the first place? “Starting from the turn of the century, we began to realize that millennials would wield the greatest consumer power in the world, compared to all other age groups,” said Dretsch. While market research further broke down the millennial demographic into subcategories, the broad delineation stuck and became widely used.
Generational labels became a vague nod to a type of lifestyle or ideology held by a group of similarly aged people, often as expressed on social media. During the advent of the BuzzFeed internet in the 2010s, millennial-dom morphed into an <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/tag/generation">online identity</a>. Eventually, it all compounded into a sort of <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/tag/generation">generational lore</a> that was privy to stereotypes: <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/11/19/20963757/what-is-ok-boomer-meme-about-meaning-gen-z-millennials">Baby boomers</a> are wealthy and unempathetic toward the financial plight of young people; Gen Z is obsessed with broadcasting their “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/we-all-have-main-character-energy-now">main character”</a> lives on TikTok; millennials were associated with, among many signifiers, avocado toast, student loans, Harry Potter, liberalism, and jaded youthfulness.
Thus, age became an inexact metric for commonality while glossing over nuances of race, class, geography, and religion that also define an individual’s tastes. Regardless, the raging generational wars are a fruitful development for advertisers, who championed demographic labels in an effort to appeal to specific swaths of consumers. The ability to concretely define, and thereby appeal to, a certain group is coveted knowledge, at least in the marketing world.
In an interview with Mark McCrindle, the Australian consultant who’s credited with the term “Generation Alpha,” the New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/fashion/meet-alpha-the-next-next-generation.html?_r=1">described</a> generations as “less of a collection of individuals than a commodity: to be processed into a manufactured unit, marketed and sold to clients.” Defining the next generation (which includes the unborn) in the era of not-so-subtle targeted ads, in which age range is a key factor, is “like staking claim in a gold rush.”
Yet the characteristics of Gen Alpha remain largely unknown. They are too young and their pre-adolescent life too varied to conduct concrete research. McCrindle argued that data on Gen Alpha’s parents, the millennials, can forecast how these children will be raised. That premise, however, was challenged in a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316326529_Generation_Alpha_Marketing_or_Science">2017 paper</a> “Generation Alpha: Marketing or Science” by two Hungarian researchers, who concluded that there was not yet any evidence of a post-Gen Z group.
“By definition, an age group will become a generation if they have common experiences, concepts, and language or vocabulary that differs from the previous generations,” one researcher <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/marketing-generation-alpha/">told Wired</a>. “We still have no representative data on the characteristics of ‘alphas,’ only speculations about what their common, cohesive force might be.”
Even so, population researchers have admitted that age delineations are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/04/01/your-generational-identity-is-a-lie/">somewhat arbitrary</a>; they prefer to group people into cohorts rather than fixed generations, based on major life events like marriage and family formation. While none of us can accurately predict the defining characteristics of Gen Alpha, marketers and brands are embarking on a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
According to Dretsch, the marketing professor, children are capable of developing brand associations as young as 3 years old. “Whatever the parents expose the child to, the more often they will come to identify with that brand even from a very young age,” she told me. “Those connections happen very naturally and almost non-consciously.”
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22611284/brands-gen-alpha-millennial-parents">https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22611284/brands-gen-alpha-millennial-parents</a>

vox Brands are already marketing to Generation Alpha

My greatest desire as a toddler was to own a play kitchen, complete with miniature appliances, utensils, and plastic food. All my neighborh...

No, school isn’t going to be “normal” this fall

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Not too long ago, it seemed possible that the 2021-22 school year would be a “normal” one for American kids. Parents and experts alike hoped that vaccination rates among adults would drive down community spread of Covid-19 to manageable levels. There was talk that vaccines for younger kids would arrive, giving them the same protection as adults.
But now fall is upon us, and neither of these things has happened. A combination of lagging vaccination rates and the spread of the delta variant means that a majority of counties in America are considered to be at “substantial” or greater risk of Covid-19 transmission, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/07/27/new-cdc-mask-guidelines/">according to the CDC</a>. Vaccine approval for kids under 12 could still be <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/vaccines-kids-under-age-12-expected-mid-winter-fda-official-n1274057">months away</a>. All of that poses big challenges for school districts that are planning to welcome students back in person, five days a week.
The challenges aren’t insurmountable, though. Perhaps the biggest feat is for lawmakers, school officials, employers, families — indeed, everyone involved — to accept that the pandemic is not over, and act accordingly.
Many public health experts say masking, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/26/health/covid-19-testing-in-schools-debate-wellness/index.html">virus testing</a>, and other mitigation factors can make a return to in-person school safe and feasible, but the problem is many districts are not requiring masks this year — and some states are even <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/many-classrooms-won-t-require-masks-children-year-it-s-n1274657">forbidding mask mandates in schools</a>. Add to that the fact that vaccinations lag far behind the rate experts say is necessary to curb spread, with rates especially low in some of the same places that won’t be requiring masks.
Then there is the concern for children’s health and the ongoing disruption to family life. While most children are not at high risk for severe Covid-19, and the availability of vaccines for adults — which dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalization and death from the virus — may blunt the impact of school outbreaks, parents are still understandably concerned about their kids getting sick. The constant quarantines if caseloads are high in schools also place a big burden on working parents, many of whom lack paid sick leave and have spent much of the past 18 months trying to manage remote school while holding down a job.
That’s especially true for mothers, who have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/upshot/pandemic-chores-homeschooling-gender.html">borne the brunt</a> of child care and homeschool duties throughout the pandemic. “I’m hearing a lot of moms panicking,” Robin Lake, director of the <a href="https://www.crpe.org/">Center on Reinventing Public Education</a>, a research organization at the University of Washington, told Vox.
There are solutions that could make schools safer and family life more livable this fall — from masks in schools to employer policies that allow flexibility to care for a child. As Kanecia Zimmerman, a professor of pediatrics at Duke University who has studied Covid-19 in schools, told Vox, “We can do this, and we can do this safely.” But these solutions will require a level of coordination, political will, and acceptance of the reality of the situation that, during the many months of this pandemic, haven’t always been in evidence.
The delta variant has thrown a wrench into everyone’s plans for this school year. But the good news about delta, if there is good news, is that strategies developed for older variants of the virus should still be effective to fight it. The most effective, experts say, are vaccines.
For teachers, staff, parents, and children 12 and over, vaccines are important for Covid-19 safety in all settings. “Everyone, regardless of whether they’re in school or not, who is eligible for the vaccine, should just be getting the vaccine,” Yvonne Maldonado, a professor of global health and infectious diseases at Stanford University, told Vox. “This virus is not going to go anywhere until we have a highly, highly vaccinated community.”
For children under 12, though, vaccines may not be available <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/vaccines-kids-under-age-12-expected-mid-winter-fda-official-n1274057">until mid-winter</a>, so for now, the best protection is masking. Schools that used masks well were still able to keep transmission low last year, Maldonado emphasized. And masks still work against delta, Zimmerman said, but with the variant more transmissible, it’s more critical than ever for schools to be meticulous about compliance. “It can’t be that there’s a slippage, or it’s hanging down at your chin for 10 minutes.”
Schools should practice distancing — the CDC <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/k-12-guidance.html">recommends 3 feet</a>, if possible — but not at the cost of keeping kids on hybrid or remote schedules, Zimmerman said. “It’s better to have people in the school building than not.” If schools can’t adhere to distancing, masking compliance becomes even more important.
Proper ventilation can be helpful too, though there’s not yet perfect data on exactly what that means, Zimmerman said. Experts do know that Covid-19 transmission is much less likely outdoors, so schools should do what they can to mimic an outdoor environment, such as opening windows. But even some urban schools in North Carolina with decades-old ventilation systems still managed to keep transmission low, she said. Their secret: “They were very adherent to masking.”
Overall, schools will need to be vigilant about face coverings until their surrounding communities achieve a combination of high vaccination rates and low rates of community spread, Zimmerman said. Before delta, “we were talking over 70 percent” as a vaccination threshold; now, “we may be talking over 80 percent.” Measures of community spread are a little harder to pin down, but the CDC’s standard for “lower” transmission — less than 20 new cases per 100,000 people over the last 14 days — could be one benchmark. “The combination of those two things is likely a scenario where things would be safe enough to eliminate masking,” Zimmerman said.
Unfortunately, the country isn’t where it needs to be when it comes to vaccines or masks. Vaccination rates have picked up across the country in recent days, likely in response to fears about delta, but many areas remain far off target. In Missouri, for example, just <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/50-states-report-rising-vaccination-rates-covid-infections/story?id=79224863">41 percent of people</a> are fully vaccinated. Rates like that coupled with the transmissibility of the delta variant have led to high levels of community spread across much of the US.
Schools can stay open even in areas of high community spread, experts say — if everyone wears masks. But mask policies in schools remain a mixed bag. Of the 100 school districts tracked by CRPE, about a third plan to require masks, a third will make them optional, and a third have yet to announce a policy, Lake said.
Moreover, many of the same areas with low rates of vaccination also lack mask mandates in schools — and eight states outright ban such mandates. In Arkansas, for example, just <a href="https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/state/arkansas#:~:text=In%20Arkansas%2C%201%2C430%2C838%20people%20or%2047.41%25%20of%20the%20population%20have,population%20have%20been%20fully%20vaccinated.">37 percent of people</a> are fully vaccinated, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/us/covid-arkansas-mask-mandate.html">cases are surging</a>. But a state law <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/us/covid-arkansas-mask-mandate.html">passed earlier this year</a> bans districts from requiring masks.
That leaves parents worried for their kids’ safety. “I just feel like they have taken away the only tool they have for the younger kids who can’t get vaccinated,” Arkansas mom <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/many-classrooms-won-t-require-masks-children-year-it-s-n1274657">Jennifer Carter told NBC News</a>. (The ban has been challenged in court, and last Friday, a judge <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/06/world/arkansas-mask-mandate-asa-hutchinson.html">temporarily blocked it</a>.)
For families who don’t feel confident in their school’s mitigation measures, it’s not clear if remote options will be available. Many districts, like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/nyregion/nyc-schools-reopening-remote-learning.html">New York City</a>, have said they will not allow students to choose full-time remote learning in the fall, even though a large number of families, especially in communities of color, have said they <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/opinion/remote-learning-nyc.html">prefer remote learning</a> for now.
Quarantines and testing protocols are another big unknown. With community rates of Covid-19 high going into the fall, cases are bound to pop up in schools. In the past, that’s meant quarantines and closures of classes, grades, and even whole schools for up to 10 days — a move that aimed to reduce the spread of the virus but also caused disruption for parents and students alike. The <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/k-12-guidance.html">CDC now says</a> that as long as all students are masked and maintain 3 feet of distance, students do not need to quarantine from school if exposed to an infected student. However, some districts, such as Los Angeles, are still planning to require quarantines regardless of masking, Zimmerman said.
And in districts that don’t offer a remote option, it’s not clear how students will be able to learn if they’re sent home to quarantine. “There is no contingency plan in most places as far as I can tell,” Lake said.
Across the country, planning for the fall remains a patchwork, with guidance from state governments limited and issues like masks highly politicized. Advice from the CDC, too, “has been pretty slow in coming and fairly hands-off,” Lake said.
Despite more than a year of experience with pandemic learning, this summer looks a lot like last summer, she added, when many districts rushed toward normalcy without adequate plans for how to backtrack. “It is shocking to me that we’re in the situation that we’re in,” she said. “But on the other hand, it feels very, very familiar.”
It’s not yet clear whether the delta variant causes more severe disease in children than earlier versions of the virus, Zimmerman said. In general, delta’s impact on severity is still being studied. But since it’s more transmissible, more children are catching it, and some of them will become severely ill. “Kids get sick” from Covid-19, Zimmerman said. “That has never been a question.”
That’s not a reason to keep schools closed, Zimmerman said. Shutting school buildings again “should be the absolute last thing that people do.” But failing to use the tools we know work, like masks, puts kids — and adults — needlessly at risk. As Zimmerman put it, delta shouldn’t change the calculus around schools unless “people are not going to do the things that are necessary to protect children and protect staff.”
And while kids getting sick is a major worry on parents’ minds, it’s not the only one. They also have to contend with the uncertainty inherent in another year of pandemic schooling. For students, another year of subpar planning for quarantines and remote options could mean more instruction time lost, already a big concern among education experts. After <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/us/covid-schools-at-home-learning-study.html">two school years impacted</a> by Covid-19, “the academic losses are really high,” Lake said.
For parents, meanwhile, another year of quarantines means another year when they may be unable to work for days or even weeks at a time because a child can’t go to school. Known Covid-19 exposures aren’t the only issue. The ordinary coughs and colds that are part of children’s lives have taken on a new seriousness, with parents often needing to pull kids out of school for multiple days until they can get a negative Covid-19 test.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Anyone else been crying everytime you think about fall & your kids starting school and how we still don't have childcare & your pretty sure you & your kids will be exposed & you'll have to quarantine, which means being home & trying to work all hours of the day, again. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ItsFine?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ItsFine</a>
— RNA Randi (@R_Ulbricht) <a href="https://twitter.com/R_Ulbricht/status/1423625654264795146?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 6, 2021</a></blockquote>
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And the burden of these pandemic-era school disruptions tends to fall disproportionately on moms. In <a href="https://www.marketplace.org/2020/10/15/mothers-overwhelmingly-supervise-remote-learning-poll-finds/">one survey last October</a>, 63 percent of mothers said they were primarily responsible for their children’s online schooling, compared with just 29 percent of dads. Over the last 16 months, “Who was figuring out the schooling situation? Moms. Who were the main communications going to? Moms,” Susannah Lago, a mother of two and founder of the group Working Moms of Milwaukee, said. “That’s really hard.”
Women have <a href="https://www.vox.com/21536100/economy-pandemic-lose-generation-working-mothers">disproportionately dropped out of the workforce</a> over the last year, with child care likely a factor. After all, mothers with kids under 12 spent an average of eight hours a day on child care last year, <a href="https://19thnews.org/2021/08/moms-child-care-pandemic-full-time-job/">the equivalent of a full-time job</a>. And many say that ongoing uncertainty over school in the fall is keeping them from going back to work. “I can’t ask in an interview: ‘Do you mind if I take off two weeks with no notice,’” Bee Thorp, a mother of two in Virginia, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/upshot/covid-child-care-schools.html">told the New York Times</a>.
For those still working, meanwhile, the delta variant and schools’ inconsistent policies just mean even more of the juggling, stress, and confusion that some hoped they’d left behind when the vaccines arrived. Parents are saying, “I can’t do this again,” Lake said.
The situation this fall isn’t what anybody hoped for. But there are still ways for district officials and other decision-makers to help students, staff, and families have the best school year possible. The first is, very simply, to follow the science.
For now, that means masks in schools, Maldonado said. In places where state or city officials haven’t mandated masks, districts may need to take the lead. “If they go beyond what the states or the counties are mandating, then so be it,” Maldonado added. “They may need to be the guardians of the safety of their children.”
That could be a challenge in places where mask mandates are banned. But at least four school districts in Florida have said they will require masks in the fall, in defiance of the state’s ban, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/08/03/florida-schools-mask-mandate/">according to the Washington Post</a>. “Now is a good time for folks to kind of dig deep and really think about what are student interests and what do we have to do to protect those interests,” Lake said.
Promoting vaccines — not just in schools but around the country — is also crucial, public health experts say. So far, few districts are planning to mandate vaccines for students or staff, and <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/566024-new-york-state-teachers-union-opposes-staff-vaccine-mandates">some teacher’s unions</a> have opposed mandates. But even without a mandate, parents can help protect themselves and their communities by making sure they and any eligible older children get the vaccine. “Get everyone in your family who can be vaccinated vaccinated so that you can, at least, protect your bubble as much as you possibly can,” Zimmerman said.
Beyond mitigation measures, districts need to communicate with parents clearly and with as much notice as possible about what they can expect for the fall, Lake said. “As the pandemic has shown us, they’ve got to be able to respond to changing conditions quickly and communicate to families how that’s going to work.”
Meanwhile, employers will need to be understanding of the fact that for working parents, this fall won’t be back to normal. They need plans in place to make sure workers can take time off if their kids are home from school, and they need to offer mental health support to parents who are dealing with the stresses of a pandemic for yet another year. More than anything, they need to demonstrate the same level of flexibility that families are being asked to show in dealing with the uncertainties of school in the Covid-19 era.
“That goes two ways,” Lago said. It’s “not just families being flexible for Covid; it’s employers being very flexible to support the people that make their company run.”
Indeed, everyone involved may need to acknowledge that, yet again, school isn’t going to look the way it did before the pandemic, and everyone needs to plan for that. “Let’s not pretend that things are back to normal,” Lake said. “We’re not out of this yet.”
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22609711/school-covid-cdc-2021-fall-reopening">https://www.vox.com/22609711/school-covid-cdc-2021-fall-reopening</a>

vox No, school isn’t going to be “normal” this fall

Not too long ago, it seemed possible that the 2021-22 school year would be a “normal” one for American kids. Parents and experts alike hope...

"Death Knell For Fossil Fuels": UN Chief After Damning Climate Report

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Antonio Guterres called the IPCC's climate science assessment "code red for humanity" (File)
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Paris:
A bombshell climate science report "must sound a death knell" for coal, oil and gas, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Monday, warning that fossil fuels were destroying the planet.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that the 1.5C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement would likely be breached around 2030 -- a decade earlier than it itself projected just three years ago.
Guterres called the IPCC's assessment -- the most detailed review of climate science ever conducted -- "code red for humanity".
"This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet," he said in a statement.
"Countries should also end all new fossil fuel exploration and production, and shift fossil fuel subsidies into renewable energy."
In its first major scientific assessment since 2014, the IPCC said that Earth's average surface temperature is projected to hit 1.5 or 1.6 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels at around 2030, no matter what trajectory greenhouse gas emissions take in the meantime.
By mid-century, the 1.5C threshold will have been breached across the board, by a tenth of a degree along the most ambitious pathway, and by nearly a full degree at the opposite extreme.
'The Alarm Bells Are Deafening'
In his most frontal assault yet on the fossil fuel industry that powers the global economy, Guterres said "immediate action" was needed to decarbonise the energy sector.
"The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk," said Guterres.
The Portuguese diplomat said keeping the 1.5C temperature goal in play meant that no new coal plants could be built and that all energy derived from burning coal must come from renewable sources by 2040.
Atmospheric levels of planet-warming CO2 are currently at their highest in at least the last two million years, with methane and nitrous oxide levels at their highest since 800,000 years ago.
Despite a record drop in carbon pollution last year driven by pandemic restrictions, the IPCC found "no detectable decrease" in the rate of greenhouse gas accumulation.
Guterres called on world leaders to ensure the COP26 climate summit in November leads to ramped up emissions cuts and finance to countries already dealing with the fallout from global heating.
"If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe," he said.
"But, as today's report makes clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/death-knell-for-fossil-fuels-un-chief-antonio-guterres-after-damning-climate-report-2506243">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/death-knell-for-fossil-fuels-un-chief-antonio-guterres-after-damning-climate-report-2506243</a>

news world "Death Knell For Fossil Fuels": UN Chief After Damning Climate Report

Antonio Guterres called the IPCC's climate science assessment "code red for humanity" (File) Paris: A bombshell climate s...

Once-In-50-Year Heat Waves Now Happening Every Decade: UN Climate Report

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Once-In-50-Year Heat Waves Now Happening Every Decade: UN Climate Report" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2019-07/cbc8l34g_europe-heatwave-afp-650_650x400_25_July_19.jpg" title="Once-In-50-Year Heat Waves Now Happening Every Decade: UN Climate Report" /></div>
The future looks even grimmer, with more warming meaning more frequent extreme events.
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Extreme heat waves that previously only struck once every 50 years are now expected to happen once per decade because of global warming, while downpours and droughts have also become more frequent, a UN climate science report said on Monday.
The report found that we are already experiencing those effects of climate change, as the planet has surpassed more than 1 degree Celsius in average warming. Heat waves, droughts and torrential rains are only set to become more frequent and extreme as the earth warms further.
It is the first time that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has quantified the likelihood of these extreme events in a wide variety of scenarios.
The report found that once-in-a-decade heavy rain events are now 1.3 times more likely and 6.7% wetter, compared with the 50 years up to 1900 when major human-driven warming started to occur.
Previously once-in-a-decade droughts could happen every five or six years.
Scientists emphasized that these effects of climate change are already here, with events like the heat wave in the U.S. Pacific Northwest killing hundreds in June and Brazil currently experiencing its worst drought in 91 years.
"The heat wave in Canada, fires in California, floods in Germany, floods in China, droughts in central Brazil make it very, very clear that climate extremes are having a very heavy toll," said Paulo Artaxo, a lead author of the report and an environmental physicist and the University of Sao Paulo.
The future looks even grimmer, with more warming meaning more frequent extreme events.
Heat waves show stronger increases in frequency with warming than all other extreme events. Twice in a century heat waves could happen roughly every six years with 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, a level which the report says could be surpassed within two decades.
Should the world become 4 degrees Celsius hotter, as could happen in a high-emissions scenario, those heat waves would happen every one to two years.
Carolina Vera, another report author and a physical climate scientist at University of Buenos Aires and Argentina's main agency for science research (CONICET), said there is also an increasing likelihood that multiple extreme weather events could happen at the same time.
For example, extreme heat, drought and high winds - conditions that could feed wildfires - are more likely to happen at the same time.
The IPCC has a medium or high-level confidence that many important agricultural regions around the world will see more droughts or extreme rain. That includes parts of Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil that are major growers of soybeans and other global commodities.
"It is scary, sure, with the risk that fires, heat waves, droughts will affect humans in the form of weather and food insecurity, energy insecurity, water quality and health - mainly in poor regions," said Jose Marengo, a climatologist at the Brazilian Science Ministry's disaster monitoring center.
Marengo was not involved in the IPCC report.
For example, regions that are already prone to drought are likely to experience them more frequently, including in the Mediterranean, southern Australia, and western North America, said Friederike Otto, IPCC author and climatologist at University of Oxford.
Increased frequency of drought and heavy rain also are not mutually exclusive and are predicted in places like Southern Africa, she said.
The projections on extreme weather events laid out in the report reinforce the importance of curbing climate change to the levels laid out in the Paris Agreement, scientists said.
"If we stabilize at 1.5 degrees, we can stop them from getting much worse," Otto said.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/un-climate-report-once-in-50-year-heat-waves-now-happening-every-decade-2506239">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/un-climate-report-once-in-50-year-heat-waves-now-happening-every-decade-2506239</a>

news world Once-In-50-Year Heat Waves Now Happening Every Decade: UN Climate Report

The future looks even grimmer, with more warming meaning more frequent extreme events. Extreme heat waves that previously only struck on...

China's Economic Risks Build as Delta Cases Spread, Prices Gain

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Latest trade data also showed an easing in global demand, another headwind for China's growth.
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China's economic risks are building in the second half of the year, with growth set to slow while inflation pressures are picking up, clouding the outlook for central bank support.
A report Monday showed factory-gate inflation surging again to 9% in July as commodity prices climbed, while core consumer prices -- which strip out volatile food and fuel costs -- rose the most in 18 months.
At the same time, the spread of the delta variant is threatening China's outlook, with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. downgrading growth forecasts for the third quarter and full year, and predicting more central bank easing.
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The latest developments are another complication for policy makers, who have already pledged fiscal and monetary support for the economy in the second half of the year. While some economists see inflation risks limiting the room for central bank action, many see the uncertain growth environment as a bigger worry, with more easing likely to come.
"As the outbreak unfolds, China's domestic demand will weaken, and the overall inflation pressure will decline," said Xing Zhaopeng, senior China strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. "Even though prices are still high, they won't have much momentum to rise further, so it won't create a huge constraint on monetary policy."
Chinese government bonds extended losses after the data, with the yield on the 10-year security rising 4 basis points, the most since January, to 2.85%.
What Bloomberg Economics Says...
Inflation, though, is unlikely to be a key consideration for monetary policy in the near term. The growth outlook -- under pressure from new outbreaks of the Covid-19 variant -- will be a bigger concern that could prompt the People's Bank of China to do more to support the economy, following a cut in the required reserve ratio in mid-July.
The jump in factory-gate inflation was largely due to higher commodity prices, in particular oil and coal. Beijing has been trying to quell the surge in commodity prices by releasing inventory from the nation's strategic reserves, cracking down on hoarding and speculation, and ordering state-owned enterprises to limit their exposure to overseas commodities markets.
Core CPI rose 1.3% in July from a year ago, suggesting domestic demand is getting stronger. Food prices declined 3.7% from a year ago, mainly due to a 43.5% plunge in pork prices, a key item in the CPI basket.
"PPI will probably be around 6% by the year-end. This will to some extent limit the room for monetary easing," said Zhou Hao, senior emerging markets economist at Commerzbank AG in Singapore. "The possibility of a rate cut is extremely small."
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Latest trade data also showed an easing in global demand, another headwind for China's growth. Export growth slowed to 19.3% in July, missing forecasts, the customs administration said Saturday. Extreme weather conditions and local Covid outbreaks have disrupted production and shipping in parts of China, while record-high freight costs have squeezed exporters' profits.
"This puts the policy makers in a dilemma: inflation is rising and growth is slowing," said Zhang Zhiwei, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management. "The pandemic worsened and caused more disruption in the global supply chain."
China's zero-tolerance approach to controlling the spread of the virus means more scrutiny on cross-border movement of cargo and travelers, which will probably put further stress on the supply chain, he said.
JPMorgan sees GDP growth now at 6.7% year-on-year in the third quarter, down from 7.4% previously, and 8.9% expansion for the full year versus 9.1% earlier. Goldman downgraded its 2021 forecast to 8.3% from 8.6%, while Nomura Holdings Inc. lowered theirs last week to 8.2%.
Rate Cuts
The government's target is for GDP growth of more than 6% this year. Zhu Baoliang, the chief economist of a think-tank connected to China's economic planning agency, forecast growth of about 6.3% and 5% in the third and fourth quarters respectively, and full-year growth of about 8.7%, according to a report in Financial News.
Speculation is rising that the central bank will ease policy again after a surprise move in July to cut the reserve requirement ratio for banks and after the Communist Party's top leadership pledged more targeted support for the economy at a Politburo meeting late last month.
JPMorgan's economists see two more RRR cuts of 50 basis points each in October and January, as well as a possible 5 basis-point reduction in the seven-day reverse repurchase rate and the one-year medium-term lending facility rate.
"The pandemic outlook continues to require a close watch," the economists led by Zhu Haibin wrote in a note Monday. "Sentiment in the financial market remains very fragile and it remains unclear how the recent developments may further unfold and affect private investment and portfolio flows."
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/chinas-economic-risks-build-as-delta-cases-spread-prices-gain-2506233">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/chinas-economic-risks-build-as-delta-cases-spread-prices-gain-2506233</a>

news world China's Economic Risks Build as Delta Cases Spread, Prices Gain

Latest trade data also showed an easing in global demand, another headwind for China's growth. China's economic risks are buildi...

Covid Boosters Sooner For Those With Weaker Immunity, Urges Dr Fauci

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="As Delta Pushes US To 100,000 Daily Cases, Dr Fauci's Advice on Boosters" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-08/eb0b7ot_anthony-faucibloomberg-_625x300_09_August_21.jpg" title="As Delta Pushes US To 100,000 Daily Cases, Dr Fauci's Advice on Boosters" /></div>
Antony Fauci said he also supports vaccine mandates at local levels, such as schools and universities.
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Anthony Fauci, the U.S.'s top infectious-disease doctor, said he's "strongly in favor" of speeding booster shots to people with weakened immune systems, a further sign of how the delta variant continues to shift the strategies for curbing the pandemic.
"We need to look at them in a different light," Fauci said on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on Sunday. "We will almost certainly be boosting those people before we boost the general population that's been vaccinated, and we should be doing that reasonably soon."
Fauci spoke as debate grows over "breakthrough" infections among fully vaccinated people and whether official approval should be given for booster shots. In Israel, the first nation to roll out boosters widely, more than half a million people aged 60 and over will have their third injection by the end of Sunday.
Fauci said most people who have compromised immune systems, including those with organ transplants or who are on chemotherapy, "never did get an adequate response" from their Covid-19 vaccination.
Across the U.S., the delta variant has fueled a rebound to more than 100,000 new infections a day, levels last seen six months ago. While the daily average number of deaths remains far below the levels of last winter, the pressure on hospitals is mounting -- the seven-day moving average for new admissions has consistently increased since June 25, according to official data.
In New York and New Jersey, urgent care chain CityMD is resuming its virtual line system and adjusting operating hours to accommodate what it calls the "recent surge in Covid-19 testing."
In San Francisco, anyone who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine can get a supplemental dose of Pfizer Inc. or Moderna Inc.'s shots at city-run sites, if they wish to do so after consulting with their doctor, according to the city's Department of Public Health.
Health officials don't take breakthrough infections "lightly," Fauci said. More testing is needed in order to understand the exact scope of breakthrough cases, he said on CBS' "Meet the Press."
When asked if other groups should get booster shots, Fauci said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is ready to give a recommendation as soon as they see clear evidence to do so from the data.
The CDC has been tracking various groups including the elderly, those in nursing homes and young people month by month, he said. "As soon as they see that level of durability of protection goes down, then you will see the recommendation to vaccinate those individuals."
But, he stressed: "The vaccines are still doing what you originally want them to do -- to keep you out of the hospital to prevent you from getting seriously ill."
Local Mandates
Fauci said he also supports vaccine mandates at local levels, such as schools and universities, after a full approval from the Food and Drug Administration on the Covid-19 vaccines.
"You're going to see the empowerment of local enterprises giving mandates," Fauci said on NBC. "That could be colleges, universities, places of business, a whole variety, and I strongly support that."
A full approval could arrive "within the next few weeks," Fauci added. "I hope it's within the month of August."
Vaccines in the U.S. have so far been given under emergency-use approval -- a reason some people give for refusing to be vaccinated.
He said the variant presents the additional problem that vaccinated people can also transmit the virus to someone else. That has led to the CDC revising its mask guidelines recently.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
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news world Covid Boosters Sooner For Those With Weaker Immunity, Urges Dr Fauci

Antony Fauci said he also supports vaccine mandates at local levels, such as schools and universities. Anthony Fauci, the U.S.'s top...