Florida’s A “Shelter From the Storm”, Shrinking Brains & COVID-19 Vaccines - Top 3 Takeaways – January 4th, 2024
- A shelter from the storm. What storm you may ask? No, I’m not referencing the pending snowmageddon that’s expected in the form of a nor’easter this weekend, which by the way, serves as the latest reminder that it’s great to be a Floridian where we consider it to be freezing in the 50’s. Instead, I’m referring to a quote from one of Florida’s top economists, Sean Snaith. The director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Forecasting has long been one of the most accurate economists and in his first report of the new year he’s projecting a much rosier outlook for Florida than he is for the country. Most specifically, he’s calling Florida “a shelter from the storm”, which is nice for us but that also provides a bit of insight regarding what he thinks is instore for the overall US economy this year. As Snaith says... The United States may be entering an economic slowdown in the coming months, but Florida’s economy will be largely sheltered from this storm in 2024. His choice of words is notable as he hedged against outright calling for a US recession – instead referring to “an economic slowdown” instead. But his reference points suggest he thinks one is coming. As he notes: After the 2008-09 and 2020 recessions hit Florida’s economy disproportionately hard, a slowing national economy won’t have the same devastating impact on the Sunshine State. He cites Florida’s population growth as a key catalyst as to why we’ll continue to outperform, and as I’ve previously discussed, the maturation of Florida’s economy from one which was heavily reliant on hospitality and tourism related services to a dynamic one which is now a national leader in medicine, finance, and technology as well all but ensures we’ll not experience a repeat of what we lived through during the Great Recession of over a decade ago. Snaith is predicting that Florida’s economy will remain positive for the year – regardless of what happens nationally and he’s making these calls that could impact us along the way. 1) A softer labor market 2) Inflation woes 3) Even higher-priced housing 4) Transportation troubles. Starting with the labor market, he believes that the unemployment rate will be higher at the end of the year than is today, not a lot, but some. On inflation, he’s breaking with the consensus forecasts calling for interest rate cuts this year and instead believes that inflation will continue to come down, but slowly, remaining above the Fed’s target rate of 2% for the entire year. Regarding housing, Snaith believes that low inventory levels of homes available for sale will generally remain that way throughout the year keeping pricing pressure high regardless of what mortgage rates may do. And on transportation...Snaith believes that as affordability challenges persist across the state for Floridians, expanding transportation projects, a la Brightline, which can help get workers from locations they can afford to live in, into cities where they work, will become increasingly important. So yeah – Snaith’s forecast isn’t sunshine and lollipops for Florida, but it remains a better forecast than what’s happening north of us.
- Shrinking brains. In case your new year's resolution is to quit smoking and you’re already struggling to stay the course this story is especially for you. If you don’t want your brain to shrink...stop smoking. For all of the many known maladies associated with smoking comes a new one. The incredible shrinking brain. A new study out of the Washington University School of Medicine has found that smoking shrinks the brain. Literally. It goes like this. Smoking causes a literal reduction in brain volume with the deterioration of gray and white matter. Any amount of smoking does this and therefore the more one smokes the more brain shrinking that occurs. And unlike other parts of the human anatomy which may recover after one’s stopped smoking – the brain doesn’t work that way. Once the gray matter is gone...it’s gone. It, nor the white matter, make a comeback, even if one quits. Effectively what the researchers showed, in this study of greater than 32,000 smokers, is that the act of smoking immediately ages the brain. This was found to be true regardless of age or genetic predispositions. It also shows the direct link causing the increased risk of dementia among smokers. So yeah, if your goal is to quit there’s some additional fuel for your fire. Quoting a lead researcher: You can’t undo the damage that has already been done, but you can avoid causing further damage. There’s one thing you can change to stop aging your brain and putting yourself at increased risk of dementia, and that’s to quit smoking. Speaking of your DNA and quitting things...
- Halt the use of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. That’s the message from Florida’s Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo. He’s long been a skeptic of the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines as recommended by the FDA, which given the promises made on the onset of the vaccine rollout and where we are today, has made him largely correct. Ladapo’s most recent recommendation, for the 2023-2024 flu season, is against the use of a COVID-19 vaccine for those under the age of 65. At the time he issued the recommendation he said this: Once again, the federal government is failing Americans by refusing to be honest about the risks and not providing sufficient clinical evidence when it comes to these COVID-19 mRNA shots, especially with how widespread immunity is now. The lack of “honesty” and transparency from the feds regarding the vaccines plays into Ladapo’s call for a halt in the use of COVID-19 vaccines. On December 6th Ladapo sent a letter to the FDA and CDC regarding the discovery of billions of DNA fragments per dose of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. Without getting into the weeds of the scientific details Ladapo is alleging that significant amounts of contaminated DNA can make its way into human cells through the use of the vaccines. In the letter he asked for the feds to address the findings and his concerns. Just over a week later federal officials responded with a “written response providing no evidence that DNA integration assessments have been conducted to address risks outlined by the FDA themselves in 2007”. So, if Lapapo’s right about the risks in the vaccines that are going unaddressed, what could go wrong? He’s outlined two pretty nasty risks. 1) DNA integration could theoretically impact a human’s oncogenes – the genes which can transform a healthy cell into a cancerous cell. 2) DNA integration may result in chromosomal instability. Potentially having unstable cells and increased cancer risk likely sounds worse than the virus itself if contracted, which most of us have had whether we’ve been vaccinated or not. And that’s why Florida’s Surgeon General is now calling for a halt to the COVID-19 vaccines...which one might reasonably interpret as a change in recommendation against vaccination for even those over the age of 65.