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Good morning and Happy Earth Day. Here are three fun facts from the Earth Day Wikipedia page:
- The man who coined "Earth Day," Julian Koenig, was a copywriter who also helped create the iconic "Think Small" campaign for Volkswagen. Koenig said he was inspired because "Earth Day" rhymes with "birthday," and his birthday is on April 22. He would've turned 100 today.
- The first Earth Day, held in 1970, remains the largest single-day protest in human history.
- Every Earth Day, Leonardo DiCaprio turns into a tree to honor the planet hey wait a minute...
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MARKETS 1-DAY PERFORMANCE
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*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 5:00pm ET.
Here's what these numbers mean.
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Markets: Stocks rebounded after a two-day slump, and Intuitive Surgical, the biggest company you've never heard of, became the latest to join the $100 billion market cap club. It’s known for its “da Vinci” surgical robotic system.
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Nation: Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a major probe into Minneapolis’s policing practices a day after a jury found former officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murdering George Floyd. It’s the biggest action Garland has taken yet.
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Francis Scialabba
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Remember the days of refreshing your browser every 10 seconds until a Covid vaccine appointment magically appeared? Now, in many locations, they’re handing 'em out like towels at a Steelers game.
According to a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, in just a few weeks the US will reach a “tipping point” on vaccine enthusiasm where the supply of doses will exceed the number of people who want to get jabbed. In fact, it's already starting to happen, writes the NYT:
- A county health official in Wyoming asked the state to stop sending vaccines because the freezer was full of doses nobody wanted.
- In Iowa, volunteers were told to stay home from a clinic because so few people had signed up for appointments.
Big picture: The reasons for not wanting to get the Covid-19 vaccine vary, but political leaning sticks out as a key variable. Both willingness to receive a vaccine and actual vaccination rates are lower in counties where a majority voted for Trump in 2020. And polls show that more than 40% of Republicans say they’re not planning on getting the vaccine.
President Biden is trying to encourage more demand
And he’s using his favorite legislative tool: a stimulus plan. Yesterday, Biden said the government will offer tax credits to small businesses that give employees paid time off to get their shots.
- "No working American should lose a single dollar from their paycheck because they are doing their patriotic duty to get vaccinated," he said.
Biden also announced that the US hit the administration’s goal of administering 200 million shots in his first 100 days. While that’s great news...the next 200 million will be much harder.
Some experts think that vaccine hesitancy levels are so high that the US will never fully achieve herd immunity against Covid-19. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb estimates that only 150 million Americans (less than half the population) will get a vaccine.
While that’s not enough to achieve herd immunity, it is enough to substantially reduce the spread of the coronavirus, Gottlieb said.
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Amazon
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Amazon has had a lot going on. In the past two weeks, Jeff Bezos delivered his final shareholder letter as CEO, while the company waited anxiously for a union vote at an Alabama warehouse and got into a Twitter fight over pee bottles. Now that the dust has settled, the company is getting back to its bread and butter of freaking out competitors with new product launches.
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Get the Bezos cut. The company announced yesterday it was opening a hair salon in London with augmented reality tech to show you how you’d look with different hair colors.
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Amazon to Wayfair: RUN! Amazon is reportedly planning to launch a new furniture assembly service to try and one-up Wayfair and loosen its grip on the housewares retail space.
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Use your palm to pay. In some of its retail locations, Amazon has already experimented with tech that lets you skip checkout lines. Now, its new contactless payment method will expand from Amazon Go and Amazon Books stores to seven Whole Foods locations in the Seattle area.
The public doesn’t have full access to these services yet, but here’s an exclusive look into Amazon’s new salon, via Morning Brew’s TikTok.
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Giphy
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To ring in Earth Day, President Biden is hosting a virtual climate summit of 40+ world leaders, some of whom will inevitably forget to unmute themselves.
Biden is expected to come hot out of the gate this morning to announce the US’ commitment to halve carbon emissions by 2030, nearly doubling the previous pledge of a 26–28% cut by 2025.
From there, the summit could become an “international chess match.” Leaders are expected to announce their own commitments that match, exceed, or Wizard Chess-counter Biden’s proposal. How many leaders say “ditto” could define Biden’s presidency.
The guest list is a who’s who of politics and power
The pope, presidents and prime ministers, a chancellor (Germany’s), a king (Saudi Arabia’s), and a bitter rival (China's Xi Jinping) will Zoom in. Business royalty will also join the call:
- Bill Gates
- Mike Bloomberg
- Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser
- Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan
Zoom out: From rejoining the Paris Agreement to his $2 trillion infrastructure plan to hosting this summit, President Biden is using his first 100 days to try and reassert American leadership on climate.
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Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
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Today’s KPI section is focused exclusively on the alarming surge of Covid-19 currently devastating India.
Stat: India accounts for one in three new coronavirus cases globally, tallying nearly 300,000 cases and 2,000 deaths a day. Experts blame relaxed restrictions, mass gatherings, and the spread of variants, including B1617.
Quote: "There's no oxygen. A hospital bed is hard to find. It's impossible to get a test. You have to wait over a week. And pretty much every system that could break down in the health care system has broken down.”
—Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of New Delhi’s Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics, and Policy to CNN.
Read: A deep dive into the situation. (John Burn-Murdoch)
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If your calendar looks like a Tetris field about to spill over, consider...not going.
Back-to-back meetings without breaks cause a measurable buildup in the brain of stress-related beta waves, according to a new study from Microsoft's Human Factors Lab. Even short breaks can help the brain "reset" and improve focus during meetings.
See for yourself  . When Microsoft measured brain activity in 14 workers during four back-to-back meetings, the introduction of quick breaks with a downtime activity like meditation resulted in fewer beta waves. (Blue = less stress, red = more stress.)
Microsoft Human Factors Lab
Sound familiar? A recent Stanford study backs up that more video calls → more stress. "When someone's face is that close to ours in real life, our brains interpret it as an intense situation that is either going to lead to mating or to conflict," the authors wrote.
- Microsoft's tips: Default to shorter meeting times and start five minutes after the hour or half-hour mark, giving everyone a five-minute break.
Big picture: As more companies embrace a hybrid workforce, preventing digital overload is a growing concern.
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In an effort to spur tourism, Australia and New Zealand opened a travel “bubble” on Monday that allows residents to visit each other without having to quarantine.
Thousands of relatives, partners, and friends crossed the Tasman Sea to see each other for the first time in more than a year, and ... sorry ... dang allergies are so bad this spring ...
James D. Morgan and Jenny Evans via Getty Images
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Chipotle sales rose 23.4% last quarter thanks to all of you ordering burrito bowls to go.
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SPAC deals have slowed to a trickle: There have been just 10 in April compared to more than 100 in March.
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JPMorgan hired 190 bankers to help alleviate worker burnout.
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UiPath, which makes software that automates repetitive office tasks, rose 23% in its IPO. It could end up being one of the biggest US software IPOs in history.
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The French wine industry is concerned after professional tasters got Covid and lost their sense of taste and smell.
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You don’t see a light: In a viral LinkedIn post, a program manager at a London investment bank shared his thoughts on work after suffering a heart attack.
The best of that meme: You know, the one where people draw brackets on things and comment. Here are some good ones (rated PG-13).
Copycats: As this image of SUVs shows, there are no original thoughts.
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There are rumors that today’s Three Headlines and a Lie section is the reason the Super League fell apart—Manchester City looked at the four headlines, turned around, and left. See if you can spot which headline is fake out of these four:
- “Polar bears are mating with grizzlies to become ‘Pizzly Bears’”
- “France cuts two nuclear-powered submarines in half to make one new one”
- “UK sees garden gnome shortage after Suez Canal incident”
- “Mango White Claw only alcoholic beverage many can taste after Covid dulled their senses”
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Somehow, we did not make up the polar bear one. The White Claw headline is fake.
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