LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review: Episode 30 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tony D’Onofrio, and Tom Meehan

Episode Date: October 29, 2020

China retail sales up 3.3%. 52% of consumers have not been to a mall or department store since the pandemic started.  On this week's episode, our co-hosts discuss these topics and more, including election results preparation, state-sponsored cyberattacks, Twitter's misinformation warnings, Antifa, violent crime trends, retail's holiday season data, and increased shipping costs for retailers.

Hi everyone, welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we aim to explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Be a leader in loss prevention by implementing integrated solutions that enhance safety, reduce shrink, and help to improve merchandising, operations, and customer service. operations, and customer service. Bosch Integrated Security and Communication Solutions spans zones one through four in the LPRC's zones of influence, while enriching the customer experience and delivering valuable data to help increase retail profitability. Learn more by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com. Welcome everybody to another episode of Crime Science the Podcast. This is our latest in our weekly series, joined by my friends and colleagues, Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan, also our producer, Kevin Tran. And so what we're doing is continue to move through what we call 2020 together and mentioning a little bit about COVID as per each week. I think some of the bigger news that we're seeing is that the United Kingdom,

UK, Britain, is preparing to conduct challenge trials, possibly in January. And a challenge trial is something that's been very heavily debated in the United States and around the world. And typically, a challenge trial means that we expose an individual to a particular virus or bacteria and see how they respond. In this case, obviously a virus. But normally, there is some sort of what's often called a rescue therapy available. In other words, it's either not a very serious disease that's expected, or if it is something that could be serious, that there again is a strong, powerful, efficacious, and safe therapy or therapies available in case the test participant, the subject, should take on serious illness.

But what they're doing in this case to more rapidly learn and much more deeply understand this particular SARS-CoV-2 virus and how it generates COVID-19, the disease itself, what that looks like at a lot of levels, in this case, by controlling the environment, controlling the individual, knowing all about that individual's genomics, their health history, their health status, and so on. You can imagine the science that could come out of that pretty quickly, and including exposing them to different therapies and treatments and so on. So it's a great way to do science. We do experimental research, as you all know, but we have to be very careful about it. And always, every time we include any human subject or participant, we go before the Institutional Review Board 2 for behavioral social science and get reviewed by that team. So in this case, they've got permission from their

overall IRB evidently in the UK. And they're going to start out with young healthy people, which doesn't mean that what they find there necessarily is generalizable to a larger audience, including older, but it is an interesting step forward. There have been hundreds of scientists in the United States and hundreds more around the world that have even signed letters and agreements arguing that we should be conducting challenge trials, that while some do present with very serious disease, in fact, the disease, as we well know, can be fatal, that the fatality rate is, while it might be three to five times larger than for typical seasonal flu or influenza, is still relatively low probability. We won't get into that.

We're not physicians and we're not sending advice. But the idea here is it's pretty big news. And it's interesting that the UK is moving forward with challenge trials in the UK itself. We also see on the broader front, the concept of pandemic fatigue that many or probably everybody in the entire world is a little bit over the COVID-19 crisis, which would be predictable and expected. But at the same time, we need to maintain caution. The masking, again, more and more evidence coming around. I saw where on one side, well, X amount of people in this one study that had COVID-19 claimed they were wearing masks. And we've mentioned this before.

That's not a particularly rigorous study. It's helpful. All studies can provide data points and evidence that we need to look at. But there have been just numerous tests coming out almost weekly showing that, again, if one party or particularly both parties are masked up, and again, the quality of the mask counts, and that the nose and mouth both need to be snugly protected or covered to better preclude pushing out or pulling in the viral particles. And the particles, again, is not what's uh the main issue the main issue is that those particles have to be carried through time and space to get from one person to another which

is happening every day around the world um but they go on some sort of some size droplets and we know that those droplets can vary in size um and there's a lot of science going on around that but at the end of the day, the openings, the mass, which doesn't look like it has openings, does clearly at the microscopic level. But those openings, if they can preclude the onboarding or the passage of the larger water droplets that are transmitting the viral components,

and there could be a million of those in one droplet, is what's at issue here. So they're trying to block the droplets, therefore the transport, the vector, the vehicle, the mechanism that the virus used to move from one person to the next. So nobody hates masks more than I do, but I still think we all should be masking up when we're around others, if for no other reason, just in case we're asymptomatic but transmissing, you know, viremic and passing it on, they were helping and protecting them or their loved ones that they are in turn exposed to.

Moving on to testing. We all know that now very rapid testing is occurring. I mentioned, I think last week, got tested to go back on the University of Florida campus or into labs. And it was a saliva test. It was a rapid test. labs and um we it was a saliva test it was a rapid test um it was an interesting experience and dynamic standing in a room very well separated while everybody's drooling in the test tubes so to speak and so on but the point is uh less than 24 hours later we had the results and i got a

green check mark on my little app that i could go back to work physically if need be. The testing continues to speed up its accuracy and turnaround times, and as well as becoming less and less expensive, not needing refrigeration, and therefore getting into all communities around the United States and the world, even those that are the most rural or lower socioeconomic status and so forth. And that's good news, knowing who is or isn't actually infected, whether they're transmitting or not, or expressing any kind of symptoms is going to be a key part of trying to move on from this global crisis. Currently, therapies to treat those of us that have COVID-19, there are 13 that are now tentatively approved that they look pretty good.

They're not ready to be fully approved. Two that look promising, very promising above that, and one that's fully approved, of course, remdesivir. And remdesivir, I heard the other day by some physician scientists were describing it as the Goldilocks, one of those Goldilocks type therapies. In other words, if you give it too early or you give it too late, it's not particularly effective. You have to give it what's just right in the progression of the disease. And so, you know, that's why we need a range of therapies. Other studies increasingly are showing a combination of therapies that are working to suppress the virus, reduce the transmission to improve the immune

response. And these combinations of things, reduce inflammation, treat the blood vessels, and things like that are looking good. That's what you see with some people around the world, including the United States, President Trump receiving that cocktail of cutting-edge therapies designed, each with its own mode and mechanism of action that are affecting the disease or the body's response to disease in different ways, but positive and collective ways, which reminds me of what we're all trying to do working with and for you all on reducing crime in and around your places and your people and against and for your people. Moving to vaccines, now currently 34 in phase one, safety and efficacy in dosing trials,

14 in phase two trials that are more extensive trials. Again, looking at the efficacy, continuing to look at safety and then better understanding dosing levels and intervals. look at safety, and then better understanding dosing levels and intervals. Do you need one dose, two, three? When, how much per dose, that type of thing, to maintain that balance of highly efficacious, generating a robust and effective immune response against that particular virus or the variations of the virus, but not harming the patient. The robust immune system response that we get, like I mentioned before, with the Shingrix

vaccine also can generate, because your body's responding, a lot of side effects like some fever and fatigue and so on as your body is generating, ginning up its immune response and capability. And then the T cells remembering that for if now we ourselves are challenged by the actual virus in the wild from somebody else that's not messed up. And so the next level at phase 3, 11 now in phase 3 trials and 6 now with some early approval, very limited early approval. Now in China and Russia, they've

got a little more clearance than the rest of the world, but now we're moving pretty rapidly through that. We understand now that clearly with at least a half a dozen or more of these vaccines because of Operation Warp Speed that the administration and others funded and put forth that there are now hundreds of millions of doses of several of these vaccines that are already available with more, millions more being produced almost weekly across the globe for the different vaccines with a lot of heavy planning on how the military and then the state and local governments will carefully and very purposely distribute the vaccines and make them available to those that are most, again, exposed, like healthcare workers and essential workers, those that are most vulnerable

to serious disease. And then, again, those that are the most trends that are the highest spreaders of the disease, or at least the virus that generates the disease. So Astra, we know that now they've just come out with new data showing that their vaccine not only generates a robust, safe and robust immune response in overall test subjects, but it looks like very critically and older, those older that are over 55, they're seeing a very generous and robust and efficacious response, it appears so far. Moderna is at full enrollment. Several others are now at full enrollment. In other words, probably 25,000 to 60,000 to 80,000 participants, some around the world. They've all, it looks like, have been spending a lot of time or spent a lot of time and effort enrolling test participants or subjects across different genetic groups, geno and phenotypes, in other words, varying races, combinations of races, ages, and so a lot of combinations. And because of the large sample sizes can do the sophisticated

analytics to understand how well and how safely the vaccines are working across the population of interest. So some encouraging news that here we are, we kind of started hearing about this in December, January, and we already have some vaccines that may, and I say may, be highly efficacious, safe, in such a short time period. And in fact, that there are millions of doses. Well, it's going to take a long time to, in other words, till next summer. They're predicting spring, summer, even fall, depending on the actual vaccine, when its testing started and when its production started to have enough to vaccinate everybody in the world. But that's the goal, clearly, to make that available. So really quickly, going over to LPRC, our engagement lab continues to be taking care

of Natanya and our team. Natanya Cruz, she has now deployed over 120 solutions, more and more happening every day. I get on a few calls here and there. She's on calls every day working on ways to put in new solutions, but also very critically is integrating solutions. We had a great call yesterday working at entry and exit points where multiple combinations of cameras and other sensors can work together in combination. So exciting what's going on there. Also, all of them are mapped and Matterport tagged, MatterTag, so that we can describe online. Anybody at their convenience will be able to virtually go in.

And we can do that now here, and we'll make that publicly available, hopefully sooner rather than later, sometime in November, where people will be able to go in and check out the lab, explore, and understand. We're going to be doing the same thing outside in Zone 4, the parking lot. The election call went well. Again, Tom may be able to share a little bit more about that, working with groups in Europe and the UK and Canada and elsewhere to see how LPRC might expand. I'm going to go ahead and go over to Tom Meehan, and we'll continue today. And then I've got to run off and do a presentation, but I appreciate everybody getting on here. So Tom, if I might, I'll go to you. Thanks, Reid. Good stuff. So just to kind of wrap up what Reid was saying about the

election specifically, we did have an election call and really well, a lot of participation and thanks for all the folks that are coming on. And we continue to build the fusion net. And obviously, you know, we're a week away from election. And I think by the time you hear this episode, we'll just be a few days away. And we're continuously monitoring the situation. I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the things that are surfacing right now in the real world, and then we'll touch on a little bit later. But I wanted to get right into actually,

there is really a host of threat information specific to the election itself. So just recently this week, there was several reports listed from pretty much all of the government agencies that you would expect from the Cybersecurity Advisory Council to the FBI, the Joint Cybersecurity Council, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. And I'm naming them just because these agencies generally are nonpartisan in their reporting. And there have been state-sponsored attacks directly on different segments of the election. So probably if you heard or read the news, there was some information about voter information that Iran had gotten a hold of and started to reach out to people and actually intimidate people in the voting standpoint. There's also some specific information around Russia, state-sponsored, advanced, persistent attacks on the U.S. government targets.

That one's a little bit broader and a little bit more concerning in the sense that, yeah, there's a focus on the U.S. government targets. That one's a little bit broader and a little bit more concerning in the sense that, yeah, there's a focus on the election. There's also a focus on infrastructure. And there was actually some Russian-sponsored attacks specific to aviation. While there's no, you know, data to support that there was any attempt to, you know, do anything nefarious specific to aviation, they are attempt to, you know, do anything nefarious specific to aviation. They are looking at, you know, sensitive network configuration and passwords, operating procedures, looking at how multifunction authentication is put and IT infrastructure, how passwords are reset, vendor and purchasing information and access information. So this is all information that the government released. And it kind of leads to continuously talk through the challenges

that we're faced with state-sponsored attacks. And it also kind of reminds us all of that state-sponsored attacks are not just government-driven, they're actually big business-driven and retail is a big target. So it's very mindful of that this is a reality. Additionally, today with a lot of these election-based attacks, they're specific to people that they are targeted towards people and they are influencing or attempting to influence. So in some of these cyber security incidents, information is obtained about a voter, and then the state actor is actually spamming or reaching out or even calling to try to influence the vote. This is not new. I think one of the things that's important to note is this has actually happened in the past.

The methodology has changed in the last, I would say, five to 10 years, where the internet really plays a different role in social media has a huge impact on this because you can and will be able to determine someone's position by monitoring their social media, which then allows these state actors to target a specific group of individuals. So I always use the analogy of Facebook is great for advertisers. It's really great for anybody that's looking to segment a specific group of people. Switching gears to Twitter, Twitter just recently this week, and I think last week we talked about some of the challenges with the New York Post article being blocked. So Twitter this week actually released a statement and introduces a banner on debunking voter misinformation. This is a different kind of stance where as opposed to just

outright blocking it, they're actually putting a banner and tagging that it could be misinformation or it is misinformation. This is kind of that mid-level approach of, I don't want to block a post and get this negative oversight of that Twitter's making a decision. This allows kind of the media to still be pushed out there, the information to be pushed out there, but Twitter having kind of a fact checking. If you recall looking at Facebook, you would see that this has been something similar has been in place for a while, but this really allows everyone to kind of be in the middle and make their own decisions. And that's kind of my recommendation to date, probably more than anything today is to use good

common sense and read a couple different sources before you take it definitively. And regardless of your position or thought there, it is a good rule of thumb when you read something even in traditional media sources that you might want to take a second gander at a different source and then just use your best judgment of what works. I think you will continue to see this in the social media world

where it's how do we protect people's free right of speech and still limit misinformation and also hate speech and among other things. So this is kind of that mid-rune of trying to stop the spread of misinformation, but not absolutely outright blocking. And it's important to note that when we talk about these posts is that they're at times coming from very respectable news agencies and or politicians. So it is this delicate balance of what's someone's opinion versus what's fact and where the lines get blurred and how we as individuals perceive this. And I think when we talk about elections and we talk about the fusion

net and how we monitor things, this was one of the purposes of the fusion net was so that the member base could, in fact, go to a place, the LPRC member base can go to a forum regardless of what it looks like and read information and help validate information together. And the easiest example is, is there an actual event occurring in that market right now? Or is it kind of moved or misinformation being spread of a small event that is led to be a large event or vice versa so that people can make business decisions based on that information available? Switching gears, we taped the podcast on Tuesday. If you look in the news last night, which would have been Monday the 26th or the 21st, there was a are very, very mixed about thousands, hundreds or small groups protesting and rioting throughout downtown Philadelphia based on a reaction to this shooting. So more information is being gathered, but it's important to note that I did just a cursory look last night and this morning, and the news was all over the place. It went from very small groups to very large

groups, to thousands, to hundreds. And the point here is just that you have multiple news agencies, both local and at a national level, reporting on the same incident with very, very stark, different accounts of it. So the importance of actually going in and running through. And then I'm going to round out with kind of a story around Antifa that I thought was very interesting. This was published by Wire. If you haven't read it, I would encourage everybody to. It's the true story of Antifa invasion of Forks, Washington. And it really is one of the headlines is when Antifa comes to town, not really. And this really speaks of a true story that occurred in Forks, Washington, a very small town, actually the setting of the Twilight movie, where there was misinformation spread on Facebook, which caused a very small town to respond in a very big way. And when we talked about the Proud Boys last week, and we talked about some of these groups and how misinformation spreads, this is actually a really

good depiction of what occurs when information starts and goes through a chain. And to give you the basis of the story is that there was some talk of buses of Antifa that go into this very small town. And then someone who was vacationing with a RV-type bus broke down in the town and was mistaken for Antifa. And I did a lot of fact-checking on this story because I felt that it was necessary before I talked about it. But it's a really good story for everybody who's listening to the podcast to take the five minutes to read it because what it really highlights is the danger of misinformation and how quickly

misinformation can turn into something. And in this particular story, you have an individual who says busloads of Antifa are going to come in and they're going to take over our town. And this is a logging town where the majority of folks own firearms. It's a, it's a very, um, beautiful area. If you haven't been there, I've been there. And I will tell you that it's a small niche town that in a matter of minutes through a Facebook post responded, and then a bus, um, who needed a new battery and some folks that were on vacation were basically, um, you know, surrounded and it

really became this heightened, you know, very tense situation. Fortunately, no one was hurt. But what it really leads to is the importance of not just reacting to it. And I think this goes to, again, that kind of analogy of the Proud Boys is this very small kind of non-threatening group. The real challenge is when you get a small group of people that aren't in a group that'll round out, I've gotten quite a few calls in the last couple of weeks about the contrast between the 1968 riots and the election of Nixon and today. And as I often say, social media changed the landscape. It's very, very hard to compare what occurred when Nixon was being elected to today because news travels differently. The information spectrum is completely different. Everybody is a

reporter. So I don't think that there are fair comparisons. I don't think that you will see any of the same things. Although it is very interesting that at that time, the Indian flu was around and 193,000 people died. So there are some eerie similarities. The biggest difference today is that the information and the way information travels is so different, which in some cases is very positive and others creates some of these misinformation or confusion around where it's at. So with that, I wish everybody well. I'm going to turn it over to Tony D'Onofrio. Thank you very much, Tom. Very good information from both you and Reid.

Let me reinforce actually the volatile world that we're in. D&D Daily has actually been tracking violent crime in 20 major cities every week. So nearly 3,000 shootings and 700 deaths have taken place since July, the July 4th weekend. And July 4th weekend was the peak where 233 shootings and 70 deaths took place. This past weekend, there were 158 shootings and 43 deaths. The highest number of shootings this weekend were in Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. And the highest number of deaths were in Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Houston, and Philadelphia. So it's a volatile environment from a whole bunch of different perspectives, including what was just said in terms of the election coming up.

But one of the things that retailers are really concerned about is what all this stuff is going on, what kind of holiday season, and what are the predictions, and how do we get ready, and how do we optimize? So actually this week, I'll be publishing a blog summarizing the latest predictions from multiple sources in terms of what this holiday season are going to look like. So let me just summarize for this audience a little bit some of that. So first of all, the good news is that retail is actually going in strong into the holiday season from a point of view in the world's two largest economies. In China, September retail sales were up 3.3%, which was a strong month, beating expectations of 1.6%. And China actually returned to pre-COVID-19 levels in August.

And the reason I mentioned China is they were first into the pandemic and they were one of the first coming out, and their retail economy is actually doing extremely well. U.S. also had a strong September, up 5.4% from last year's September. U.S. also had a strong September, up 5.4% from last year's September. And September was the month where the U.S. emerged to pre-COVID-19 levels. So, again, retail has gone in strong. According to Bain, non-store sales, grocery, and DIY are ending the holiday at the strongest level in terms of sectors. Through August, all three were above the 5.3% annual average in the U.S.

Through August, non-store sales or online sales were up 24%. Grocery was up 12% and DIY 11%. Apparel is the challenge sector as it's been since the pandemic. It's down 35% and electronics and appliances follows down 17%. 47% of consumers think they will do most of their shopping online. 23% say they will shift more of their spending to curbside and pickup. 52% have not been to a mall or department store since the pandemic started. That's an astounding stat. Over 50% really have not been to a mall or department store since the pandemic started. That's an astounding stat.

Over 50% really have not been to a mall. Salesforce.com reported that globally digital commerce will increase 30% this year, up from 8% in 2019. U.S. digital retail sales will be up 34% from 12% in 2019. The volume of packages are likely to exceed capacity by 5%. And as I think I said in one of the earlier podcasts, that means that about 700 million gifts around the world are not going to get there on time. Also, retailers have an additional challenge with FedEx and UPS and all the delivery services raising costs. So retailers face $40 billion in shipping surcharges between November 15 and January 15. The good news is that Bain for the U.S. is projecting a 2% growth in holiday sales.

in holiday sales. And if the new stimulus does get delivered before the holidays, which right now looks iffy, if that does happen, then Bain is projecting that retail sales for the holidays will go up to the 10-year average of 3.5%. Amazon Prime Day really kicked off an early holiday season in mid-October. The two-day shopping event was very successful. It generated $10.4 billion for Amazon, up from $7.16 billion in 2019. According to Digital Commerce 360, 18% of consumers are already shopping, and another 50% will have it fully underway by early November. Stores will be very, very important this holiday season as fulfillment centers and also as inspiration for present ideas. According to Deloitte, 64% of shoppers plan to use either stores or retailers' own websites

or mobile apps for inspiration. And the winners this holiday season will be those retailers with robust cross-channel capabilities. And that's really a key thing this year. If you had invested early in terms of cross-channel or omni-channel, you are going to have a strong holiday season going forward. And finally, let me close with some fun stats and predictions for the holiday season from Bacardi. So 66% plan on celebrating with friends and family via video chat. So we're not going to get together as much.

26% are staying home and going to bed early on New Year's Eve. 40% are secretly thrilled that there will be no office party this year. 53% are going to dress up for Halloween. The top three holiday cocktails this year are the Holiday Punch, the Espresso Martini, and the Old Fashioned. And finally, 67% are tired of all this stuff that's going on. So 67% are going to go buy something for ourselves this holiday season. So that's it for this week. Let me close by saying thank you to Tom and Reed for the great insights. My appreciation also to Kevin Trent, the producer,

and signing off this week from the LPRC Weekly Crime Series. Good day. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Laws Prevention Research Council and sponsored by Bosch Security. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more Crime Science episodes and valuable information at lpresearch.org.

The content provided in the Crime Science Podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science Podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the LPS Prevention Research Council.