LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 46 with Dr. Read Hayes & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: February 25, 2021

Vaccinations are UP! Retail Sales are UP! According to the US Census Retail Bureau, January retail sales were up 3%. In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss these topics and more, including the... US vaccination expansion campaign, retail successes in January, ranking of best retail performers, and vaccine efforts worldwide. The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 46 with Dr. Read Hayes & Tony D’Onofrio appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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. We use Bosch Camera's onboard intelligent video analytics to quickly locate important recorded incidents or events. Bosch's forensic search saves you time and money by searching through hours or days of video within minutes to find and collect video evidence. Learn more about intelligent video analytics from Bosch in zones one through four of LPRC's zones of influence by visiting Bosch online at Boschsecurity.com. Welcome, everybody, to another episode of Crime Science Podcast. This is the latest episode in our weekly series update. series update. And we're going to talk a little bit about or start off as we have during this almost one year of being in the global pandemic with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19
Starting point is 00:00:55 disease that results. We see continued coverage and research and analyses around variants. And again, it's our understanding that, of course, viruses are going to do what they do. And in order to be more transmissible, in order to survive, in order to replicate even, they're going to have errors and they're going to, some are to their benefit, some to ours, and some are just benign. So look for more and more variants. Many researchers are saying that the variants coming with COVID-19, while completely understood, are really not as intense or numerous as other viruses tend to be like influenza. So there's a possibility of them being more stable. And again, because some of the vaccines and therapies either out or under
Starting point is 00:01:46 development are designed to affect multiple points on the spike protein itself, in other words, the immune system being generated either naturally or through a virus, excuse me, a vaccine or a therapy, that they will, those that are designed to affect that spike protein, they're affecting multiple parts. So even with some of the variation going on or adaptation on that spike protein through the replication errors and so forth, they still seem to be effective, even though we know that one or two of those, particularly South Africa and possibly Brazil, the vaccines aren't quite as effective, but still the research seem to be saying that they are still reducing
Starting point is 00:02:31 not as much low A or low symptomatic disease, but serious or even fatal disease. They seem to be very robust. So more time will tell here. We know too that there are some challenges with getting the vaccine into arms and a few things that are happening. One that I'm reading a lot about and that's that the components of vaccines are difficult to come by and some are very unique or new technology, not in mass production yet. And so it's not just the vaccines, but the components of the vaccines that are all that's having to gen up and be transported around the country and around the world.
Starting point is 00:03:09 And then the others is the vaccinators, that there are shortages there and trained, skilled and available people in different areas from rural to inner city to everybody in between to actually administer the vaccine. between to actually administer the vaccine. So getting the amount of vaccine, getting the vaccine to those distribution sites, and then finally have enough people, trained, skilled people to administer the vaccine and observe those that have been vaccinated for at least 15 minutes to an hour, depending on the location, evidently, those are being overcome. The initial retail pharmacy rollout continues to be underway and grow. Evidently, this was all planned out last year by the prior administration or team, but is now in full force. We know that in the state of Florida, Publix was already in the loop. The governor there had enlisted them in the initial rollout for the elderly or those 65 and older and so forth.
Starting point is 00:04:08 But it seems to be smooth in most places, Rocky and others. Again, part of it is having enough people to administer, the places to administer. And then we know the challenges of the weather have been there with floods and storms and forest fires. But, of course, we all know the massive, massive cold front that moved in with such devastation into the Midwest and West, especially Texas being one of the most severely hit. Good news again, Israel, that the Israelis and their rollout now well over a third heading into a half of the citizens have been vaccinated. The Palestinian administration evidently is now starting to vaccinate their
Starting point is 00:04:52 citizens as well. But in the Israeli population that we're having access or seeing data coming out, there are a couple of really powerful indications coming out. One, of course, powerful indications coming out. One, of course, is the strong protection after the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. That seems to confer or infer quite a bit of immunity, very robust immune response just after one dose and even within a couple of weeks. So very encouraging. And they're seeing too, it looks like right now the data are showing a 90% reduction in transmission. So that was something that was being hoped for, that not just that you would protect those. The vaccines, again, are primarily and overwhelmingly designed to just protect us from serious disease or even symptomatic disease, you know, where it's a clinical significance or observed symptoms by a physician or healthcare practitioner. And so they're seeing additional to that a big reduction in the transmission or new infections. So it may seem to have a lot of effectiveness there. In the meantime, Fauci and others here in the United States are still advising those even after the second dose
Starting point is 00:06:03 and even two or three weeks after the second dose to still just be mindful, consider wearing a mask and distancing in case there's still some viral particles in their system that might be expelled onto vulnerable people. Also though, Fauci's reporting native infections, those that are administered, those that have had the infection through native exposure, in other words, not through vaccination, the single dose, the first one dose if you've already had COVID-19, but they are saying that that first dose seems to be very, very effective, very fast. So more to come on as they research that. The biology is what they're working on through that. Also, other encouraging news, Pfizer, through a lot of research, is now, my understanding understanding getting ready to apply to the FDA for clearance on transport and storage of their vaccine, which we all know is right now for stability of the
Starting point is 00:07:14 vaccine itself, needing to be stored and transferred at minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit to minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit. But their data are showing that minus 13 degrees all the way up to, and all the way up to, but five degrees Fahrenheit might be sufficient to maintain adequate stability of the vaccines. If that ends up being the case, you can imagine that's going to allow more and more places to administer the Pfizer vaccine that don't have these high-speed freezer facilities and so forth, the technology to do so. The UK, excuse me, and this is triangulating some of the data coming out of Israel, for example, in the real-world experiment called vaccinations, UK showing with the Pfizer vaccine there that they believe they're reducing infection
Starting point is 00:08:07 85% within the first 15 to 28 days. In other words, two to four weeks, they're seeing dramatic reduction in infection, similar to what Israel's seeing with just the first dose. So again, nobody's advocating not having the first dose, but delaying the second dose may not be detrimental or maybe even detrimental at all. In fact, there are some data out there evidently showing that delaying the second dose administration might be even better and provide even more robust and longer term or more durable immunity by us. And some of you may have seen some of the reporting on those that were children that got the influenza back in 1918, the flu virus that created a global and very, very deadly pandemic in the late 1900s, early, excuse me, early 1900s, that even 70 years later still seem to have robust T cell memory. In other words, they were ready to go if they got exposed to that
Starting point is 00:09:14 similar virus. So it's just a lesson learned to think about the durability, particularly of T cell response and memory, as well as to the antibodies that come from B cells and so forth. So I think there's what we're looking at now is worldwide, probably around 215 or so million doses administered, probably, you know, we're heading into the quarter billion people that have been at least administered the first dose already. And again, bear in mind, we're not less than a year from when the virus was reported have widespread, starting to become widespread, which is just absolutely amazing. The United States, probably over 65, closing in on 70 million doses administered at this point. Probably well over 20 million Americans have been vaccinated with both doses.
Starting point is 00:10:09 And that's climbing constantly. As far as, again, in the vaccine mill, 37 other vaccines in phase one, 28 additional vaccines in phase two, and 20 more vaccines being trialed in phase three large-scale trials. And again, we've got six in emergency use authorization, two in the United States, the Moderna and the Pfizer. And then we've got four that are approved elsewhere in the world. Switching over here to a little bit of LPRC news. We're having our night meeting or conference today across LPRC, and this is our normal winter planning meeting that we have with the LPRC Board of Advisors, the BOA,
Starting point is 00:10:53 as they're affectionately referred to. We've got an amazing group of leaders in the Board of Advisors, Tony, who is on this call today, and Tom M me and as well, serve on that board of advisors as do over 25 other senior leaders. And we've got a really nice agenda laid out. There's been a lot of rehearsal. We had a vice chair and chair call yesterday to further discuss Ignite. And tomorrow, we're having our strategy at Ignite conference. I'm sorry, on, yes, tomorrow. It's kind of getting confusing. Today's here. Johnny V, John Voitella, who you all that listen to this podcast regularly heard him last week talking a little bit about, we're going to be
Starting point is 00:11:37 going through and heavily discussing with a lot of number ones and number twos, pyramid heads in our industry in the LPAP field around erosion of consequence. Again, we've talked about police staffing shortages, police reluctance due to some of the exposure with hand-borne cameras. There's reluctance by some prosecutors. There's been some statutory limitation on prosecution or even bail reform,
Starting point is 00:12:06 as it's called, and a myriad of other issues going on so that there may be fewer consequences for those that victimize others. That could be why we're hearing constantly now anecdotal reports of increased theft, fraud, and violence in the retail environment across chains. And it's pretty broadly reported. We're going to be talking about acute versus environment, across chains. And it's pretty broadly reported. We're going to be talking about acute versus chronic or persistent issues. And everybody's been set up for a long time to work on chronic issues, employee deviance or dishonesty, to work on inventory loss, shrinkage included, or other asset loss, but the idea of these acute issues where we've got snowstorms, earthquakes, floods, in other words, natural disasters and severe or dangerous weather,
Starting point is 00:12:53 in addition to acute issues like looting, burning, or even intimidation of customers or employees in marking their stores and things like that, as well as the acute situation created by the global pandemic and all of its after and side effects. So we're going to be talking about how are we budgeting for that? How do you work with senior leadership and partners in the business on both acute and chronic, particularly because acute issues seem to be more chronic and persistent than ever. So a big hot topic. Also collective action. How do we work more closely and robustly together in our research collectively as an industry, as retailers working with each other with powerful solution partners? How do we work with RELA, NRF, FMI, and other state and national level
Starting point is 00:13:47 lobbying groups to provide evidence-informed debates and arguments so that we can curtail some of the erosion of consequence? And how do we work together to protect not only ourselves, but each other on city blocks and strip centers and in malls against both acute and chronic issues. So a lot of good things going on. Diego Rodriguez is our producer here at Crime Science now, and Diego is working on and has rolled out some learning modules. Those will be continuing. We've also, again, our seven working groups at the LPRC continue good work.
Starting point is 00:14:25 Please, we encourage you, if you're a member of the LPRC, to get involved in one or more working groups that make sense to you, whether it's product protection or violent crime or retail fraud or supply chain protection, organized retail crime. There are many out of our seven that are just highly productive. All of them are productive, but they all, I think, offer a great experience and are working on some great research and provide every year some good outcomes. Plus, three of them have an annual summit that I think you'd find very useful. The Supply Chain Protection, Violent Crime Working Groups, and the Product Protection all have summits in addition to our LPRC impact summit. The 2021 research agenda is going to be released to the board of advisors today at Ignite. That will further be bolstered by recommendations by the board of advisors today.
Starting point is 00:15:20 So that will be coming out. We've got a nice graphic design as we fill in the blanks there, but there's already, I think, 15 research projects that have already been started in January and February. Operation Next Level, finally, the Lighthouse Consulting Team, LHC Team 5, are working long and hard and strong and smart to connect with you all out there. I think they're talking with about 300 prospective LPRC members, over 20 plus have already committed or already joining as we speak. So it's sort of a membership drive. Look for David Lunn, the VP at Dick's Sporting Goods and several other key leaders
Starting point is 00:15:57 are putting out video clips in support of Operation Next Level. Join the LPRC research and results community. We love it. We're growing and going, and we want to work together. We want to work smart. We want to leverage the scientific method wherever we can. So with no further ado, I'm going to go over to Tony D'Onofrio. And Tony, please enlighten us. Thank you very much, Reid. So lots of good data coming out this week that I will share this morning. Let me start with some really good news from the U.S. Census Bureau on January retail sales, which were up 5.3%. It was a surprise in terms of how high they were, but this is what they were by category so in terms of by category non-store retail or online was up 22 percent sporting goods hobby and books were up 22 percent building materials and gardening
Starting point is 00:16:53 were up 14 percent grocery were up 11 and motor vehicles and parts and dealers were up 10 so it looks like in Germany we're still buying online a lot. We were exercising and reading books. We were building stuff. We were eating, of course, and we were buying cars. So it was a good month for retail. The bottom three, the strugglers continue to be what you would think about in a pandemic. Food services and drinking places were down 16%. Clothing and accessories were down 11%. And the surprise to me was electronics and appliances, which were down 4% for the month. But overall, a solid January. We're well above the pandemic lows in terms of retail.
Starting point is 00:17:39 And we recover back and then some, which is good news for the industry. cover back and then some, which is good news for the industry. Let me build next on some of the things that Rick talked about in terms of the state of the vaccination and the pandemic. So this is data from Statista on COVID vaccination doses administered per 100 people as of February 13, 2021. So the world is being led by Israel, which has already vaccinated 72.58 out of 100 people in Israel. That's some amazing statistics. Number two country in the world is United Arab Emirates, 50.61 vaccinations per 100 people. And then UK, actually, again, coming up very quickly to number three at 22.23. USA is at 15.14 per 100 vaccinations. So those were some of the
Starting point is 00:18:38 key countries driving. So we are making progress, as we said earlier, in terms of getting people vaccinated around the world. Let me switch to some other data that I found in the stream this week. Brand Finance issued their latest most valuable brands in apparel in 2021. And here are the top 10 most valuable apparel brands of 2021. Number one is Nike. Number two is Gucci. Number three is Adidas. Four is Louis Vuitton. Five is Cartier. Six is Zara.
Starting point is 00:19:13 Seven is H&M. Eight is Chanel. Nine is Uniqlo. And 10 is Hermes. I always get the French ones wrong, but really a good representation from around the world, from the U.S. to Germany to Italy to Spain. So really good. And even Japan having representation in the top 10.
Starting point is 00:19:34 So good global brands represented in the top 10. RIS News this past week and Forbes also published the top 10 largest American retailers that their service on were the best places to work for. And some of these were surprising, but not surprising, actually, if you think about their performance. Number one was Costco. Number two was Trader Joe's. Number three was Bass Pro Shop, number four was eBay, number five was Columbia Sportswear, six Puma, seven IKEA, eight Sephora, nine Aldi, and ten Hobby Lobby. So interesting who are, where are the best retail places to work for for 2021. And then also very interesting to me is the amount of investment that's going into innovation and digitally disrupting.
Starting point is 00:20:27 If you really wanted an indicator of this, all you had to do was listen to the earnings call from Walmart, which announced as part of their Q4 results that they will invest an amazing $14 billion in the next year. We're focused on supply chain automation, customer-facing initiatives, and technology. So it tells you the amount of money that's being spent. And it's about equivalent. Actually, Amazon is spending more than that, $15 billion plus on innovation. It tells you the amount of technology that is going into retail. And
Starting point is 00:21:05 again, I bring that up because LP, for loss prevention point of view, is one of the perfect places to test it and figure out how the technology delivers results. Walmart, as part of their Q4, also announced very strong results. Their comp sales for Q4 2021 grew 8.6%, and their USA e-commerce sales grew an amazing 69%. So it gives you, again, the digital disruption and transformation. And again, one of the reasons Walmart continues to do well is that they were aggressively investing in digital transformation ahead of the pandemic. Let me now switch to the latest global GDP forecast from PwC. And the unfortunate thing about these forks, they're actually being lowered. So the world in 2021 was initially forecast to grow 5% in gross domestic products, now forecast to grow 4.2%. USA was forecast to grow 4%. It's now been revised down to 3.2%. The European Union was forecast to grow 5.1%. It's
Starting point is 00:22:19 been lower to 3.6%. But there is a star in all this, and the star is China. China is forecast to grow an amazing, again, 8% growth in gross domestic products. So China leads the world. And then finally, let me switch to a topic that I know to this audience they care about in terms of security and loss prevention. This is the latest from D&D on their 2020 summary retail report. So what was interesting to me is that even during the pandemic and all the
Starting point is 00:22:52 lockdowns, retail robbery remarkably remained stable after a 2016 high. For 2020, total retail robberies were 5,563 versus 5,576 in 2019. Not much of a change. The top three places by store type that are being robbed are C-stores at 25%, jewelry at 14%, and restaurants at 11%. 40% of the time a gun was used, and 35% was on alarm. The highest times for robberies during the week, again, was interesting to me, Sunday. We're robbing, we're not going to church.
Starting point is 00:23:37 Monday, 17%, and Tuesday, 15%. 49% of the incidents happen in the middle of the night night between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. The highest robbing states were California with 528 robberies, Texas, 424, and New York with 347. The top three cities with the highest robberies in 2020 were Chicago, San Antonio, and New York. And compared to 2019, where the top three cities were Houston, San Antonio, and Las Vegas. So only San Antonio made it to both lists in both 2020 and 2019. So that's a little bit data run around the world in terms of what's happening in both economy, retail, and also in general, COVID.
Starting point is 00:24:30 With that, I'm going to turn it over to Reed. Thanks so much, Tony, for so much good information. I did want to build, too, on what Tony was briefing us on from the D&D research on violence. And it's really a great service. And I know at the LPRC, we're appreciative of all the scanning that's going on by the D&D team is regarding crime news and specifically violent crime news in the media, and then compiling that information. It's giving us an unfortunate but powerful look at what's going on across the United States in particular. But also there's a lot going on in Canada, they report, and then even internationally beyond Canada.
Starting point is 00:25:13 Also that the LPRC, again, we had planned in 2020, well, let me see, it would have been our fifth violent crime summit to be hosted in Houston, Texas. Obviously delayed and postponed because of the global pandemic. But again, in 2021, if it's at all possible, we're going to be back in Houston, bringing everybody together with a focus on violent crime, clearly armed robbery, but also on burglary this time, as well as active shooter and then the looting writing and finally parking lot intimidation, intimidation of customers. So look forward to that. If you're again, a member of the LPRC, get involved in that violent crime, uh, working group or have somebody on your team, um, and they can help us plan and input that. And, and the summit,
Starting point is 00:26:02 if we can't have it in Houston physically, then we're going to have it virtually. Um, so again, thank you to the whole team. Thank you, Diego. On the production side, please check in lpresearch.org, lpresearch.org. And that's where you can get all the latest on LPRC, what we're up to. And again, join our community if you're not a member and the community is growing. Even during this podcast, I just got notice of yet another retailer that's committed and coming on board as a member. So signing off from Gainesville, Florida, please stay safe out there and have a safe one. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council and sponsored by Bosch Security.
Starting point is 00:26:47 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 Laws Prevention Research Council.

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