Vox Sentences - Everything is expensive

US inflation has hit a new high; WHO's Africa director says the region most likely seriously under-reported its Covid-19 cases. 

Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes.

US inflation jumps 7.5 percent over the past year

Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

• January’s inflation rate shows a 7.5 percent increase over the past year, continuing the steady increase of US consumer prices due to factors including supply chain strain and increased consumer demand. The numbers from January represent a 0.6 percent increase from December’s numbers, with the cost of food specifically showing a 0.9 percent increase overall. [Reuters / Lucia Mutikani]
• The prices for consumer goods skyrocketed faster than economists predicted, and at the fastest rate since 1982. The Federal Reserve has signaled for months that it will raise interest rates — making borrowing more expensive and limiting the disposable income people have to spend on consumer goods, including necessities like food and rent. [NYT / Jeanna Smialek]
• Thursday’s numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the price increases affected nearly every sector, from automobiles to services. While economists expect prices to fall in the coming months, “There is no playbook for derailing inflation in this environment,” chief economist at Graham Thornton Diane Swonk said. [Washington Post / Rachel Siegel and Andrew Van Dam]
• The Federal Reserve has been hinting that it will look at a rate increase after its March meeting, but economists caution against overly aggressive action just yet. Not only would raising interest rates half a percentage point, as some project might happen, burden many American households, such a move could worry investors, causing market destabilization. [Politico / Victoria Guida]
• Furthermore, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says, an aggressive interest rate hike could roll back the significant gains workers have achieved over the course of the pandemic, particularly increased wages. “We should not attack a supply-side problem by lowering demand and increasing unemployment,” he wrote in an op-ed, saying that to do so “might dampen inflation if it is taken far enough, but it will also ruin people’s lives.” [MarketWatch / Joseph Stiglitz]
• “Raising interest rates will do nothing to address the root causes of rising prices: decades of disinvestment in our supply chains and corporate profiteering,” Lindsay Owen, the executive director of progressive economic policy nonprofit Groundwork Collaborative, told Vox via email. “In fact, raising rates will increase unemployment by tamping down demand, harming exactly the same people who are feeling the pressure of rising prices.”

WHO says Africa’s Covid-19 cases could be up to seven times higher than reported

• The World Health Organization estimated in a Thursday press briefing that Covid-19 cases in Africa might be up to seven times higher than reported — and deaths could be between two and three times higher. “We’re very much aware that our surveillance systems problems that we had on the continent, with access to testing supplies, for example, have led to an underestimation of the cases,” regional director Matshidiso Moeti told reporters. [Reuters]
• The WHO has recorded more than 7.9 million cases on the African continent, and more than 165,000 deaths, entering the pandemic’s third year. The omicron variant, which was first seen on the continent, caused a massive spike in cases at the end of 2021, but without a corresponding spike in mortalities. [The Hill / Mychael Schnell]
• Vaccine and testing inequality continues on the African continent, Moeti said; while more vaccine shipments have arrived to African countries in recent weeks, many places struggle to store and distribute the doses. Still, health care resources in many African countries have adapted successfully to each new surge, she said, cutting down the duration of each spike in infections. [NYT / Lynsey Chutel]
• The next step is living with Covid-19, Moeti said during the news conference. “We think that we’re moving now, especially with the vaccination expected to increase, into what might become a kind of endemic living with the virus,” she told reporters. [Al Jazeera]

Thousands of Afghan refugees protested their conditions after being held for months at a camp in Abu Dhabi, with no indication of when they will be resettled. [WSJ / Jessica Donati]

• The European Union has delivered a united response on behalf of the 27 member countries to Russia regarding its security demands, in defiance of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s request that each nation deliver its own response. [Reuters]
• The US Senate has passed a bill that will end the use of forced arbitration of sexual assault and harassment complaints in the workplace. [NYT / Annie Karni]
• Former President Donald Trump has remained in contact with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, according to a new book on Trump by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman. [The Hill / Caroline Vakil]

“Our system isn’t broken — it’s designed to do what it’s doing: produce measurable inequity.”

[Gary Chambers, a candidate for the US Senate representing Louisiana, in his latest campaign video, “Scars and Bars,” in which he discusses the cruel and destructive legacy of the Confederacy and burns a Confederate flag]

How a ski lodge became trapped in a border dispute. [YouTube]

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