LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 71 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

New Varient is Spreading! Vaccines are receiving a boost! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss these topics and more, including new terrorism threats have begun to spring, FBI warning for domestic attacks, fake COVID vaccine cards continue to sell, and US retail sales are going down. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 71 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we 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. Take advantage of the advanced video capabilities offered by Bosch to help reduce your shrink risk. Integrate video recordings with point-of-s sale data for visual verification of transactions and exception reporting. Use video analytics for immediate notification of important AP related events and leverage analytics metadata for fast forensic searches for evidence and to

improve merchandising and operations. Learn more about extending your video system beyond simple surveillance 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 in our weekly update series. I'm joined by cohorts Tom Meehan and Tony D'Onofrio and our producer Diego Rodriguez. And we're here just to spend a few minutes with each other and you all talking about the world at large and what's going on and how it affects us, of course, while we're still engulfed in this pandemic and hoping it doesn't become an endemic. In other words, it's here forever. Some of the latest, of course, the WHO tracks variants of interest, and I guess they continue to sequence anytime people are sick in certain locations where that technology is available, readily available.

And that's rapidly shared, as everybody knows, via the Internet between medical centers and agencies. You know, the Delta, the Delta Plus have become particularly just regular Delta, the most dominant across the globe, well over 100 plus countries. The Lambda variant, I think, has been sequenced in at least 29 countries. We know that the University of or that Houston Medical Center in Texas, as well as several dozen cases in California have been sequenced. It doesn't seem to be quite, it seems much more transmissible evidently according to the research than the original wild variant alpha and some of those variants that are out there, but not more transmissible than Delta so far. But some of the concerns with some early research by some agencies or labs seem to show that it may be better and more capable of overcoming some of the protective mechanisms of the vaccines,

different vaccines. Not so much, just like the Delta variant of breaking through the three in the United States, the J&J, Janssen, the Pfizer, BioNTech, and the Moderna one as well. So there seems to be more recent research showing that particularly the mRNA, but also the J&J can be very effective, get 91 plus percent effective against hospitalization. If someone does get a breakthrough infection of actually an individual, in other words, it's got the single dose or the double dose, depending on the vaccine, but drop down to the high 30s, low 40% against spread, but still showing that it's reducing the likelihood of spread, even though we're all reading the reports, albeit actually somewhat rare. I know,

though, at least three people that have had breakthrough infections in each case, they didn't like it. It didn't feel good. They were sick or are currently sick, but just none of them had to be hospitalized. There's no hospitalization involved. So, you know, stay tuned on that. But again, you know, the vaccine in this case is localized because the infection is localized and it's designed, it's not a systemic virus like, you know, some of these other ones you see, smallpox or measles and so forth that just attack our overall body. And so when something like that happens, the vaccine or the natural infection even can become a lifetime protection. But when it attacks one system, in this case, the respiratory system, it's more difficult. And that's why you see that the flu, influenza, RSV, and these other coronaviruses and so forth just never seem to go away. Rhinoviruses,

like different types of colds, those viruses are more localized and much more difficult to get sterilizing immunity evidently against them. And so vaccines in this case for respiratory viruses like the COVID-19 disease, it comes from SARS-CoV-2. Yeah. The vaccines are not a force field. They don't stop any infection. What they do, of course, is simply prepare our immune systems. And you hear, I've seen some of the narrative out there, well, do you not trust your own immune system? Why would you get a vaccine? Well, that's not the same thing. Because we do trust our immune system, we're trying to give it a heads up and a pre-warning and familiarize it

with the different protein, the proteins that are unique to the coronavirus, particularly the spike, and that there are different aiming points on these spikes and so on. And we talked about before why something like the Delta virus might have a breakthrough because there are X, multiple X more viral particles that are developed that go through our bodies, but also that more rapidly potentially, but also that are available. So when we talk, sneeze, cough, and so on, that we're even sometimes breathe, we're expelling a lot more. And that's again, why masking can work. It can, depending on the levels and amount of layers that it can block the transmission because the particles are embedded in different size arealized or even droplets that come out of a fluid. So the mask

is designed to block that going out and block it coming in if the person, the other person, the receiver is wearing a mask. And again, none of us like masks. We hate masks. They're uncomfortable and so on. They preclude bonding and good communication, even, you know, as we have muffled speech and all the things we know about, we need to change them, wash them, clean them, not touch them. And everything that we hear about, it's obviously pretty, pretty difficult to drink or eat when you've got a mask on. So,

but they do block that. So that's our mini force field, if you will, rather than the vaccine, you know, still continuing 99 vaccines and some kind of clinical or human trials, 54 in phase one, we've got 41 and two, and we've got 33 or 32, depending on what source you look at in phase 3, large-scale, randomized, double-blind human trials, right? And double-blind, again, means the researchers, as well as the research participant or subject, does not know whether they got the vaccine or a placebo, or if they got the vaccine, what version or dosing level they might have received. And so the phase two and three

trials involve that randomization. You don't know which one you're going to end up in. Nobody does. You're randomly assigned. And then secondly, it's double blind in that nobody knows which one you got and so on. So it's pretty extensive. There are another 75 vaccine candidates, as we've talked about before, in preclinical assessment or 77, depending on who you talk to or what source you refer to. But the point is there are dozens and dozens and dozens of vaccine candidates coming out. And the reason is because the number one protection since vaccines were created, and I read an article the other day with Benjamin Franklin's number one regret was that he did not have his son vaccinated against smallpox back in the 1700s. But George Washington had Martha and

his soldiers vaccinated in the crude fashion that they did back then. So their bodies were, again, their immune systems were alerted or amplified or both. Their adjuvants are designed to not just alert and get the launch of your immune response, but to even bolster that response. And that's why you're seeing multiple doses being suggested, researched, and now even assigned in places like Israel and places like the United States for those that are immunocompromised to continue to boost or enhance the immune response. We know now that there may be time limits for all of us or some of us or a few of us as far as how robust the immune response is. And remember, so all of us are so different from each other and all of us or a few of us as far as how robust the immune response is. And remember, so all of us are

so different from each other and all of us are different even in different time periods, depending on how stressed we are, our diet, our sleep level, and all these things, hydration affect us individually in differences within ourselves, much less the differences between each other and so on. So it just, it gets complicated, but that's what's going on out there. As far as the variants, what the effect that they're having, you know, we're now at, you know, 2 billion humans being vaccinated. You know, we're closing in on, you know, 60 plus percent of adult Americans, and we continue to move closer to over 50 percent all Americans and things like that that are vaccinated. So it's just our number one boost and reduces the severity here in Gainesville.

Our emergency departments are rather, excuse me, our critical care and intensive care units at the major hospitals are pretty much full. But overwhelmingly, I understand it's, I have a nephew who is a new physician going through internship and then into residency, and who was reassigned from trauma rotation into critical care. And so he also, you know, doesn't share individual patient information, but the data they've got are showing that these are non-vaccinated people by and large with just a, you know, single digit percent that are not, and those that are not, that are vaccinated, that are in the hospital, that are hospitalized from COVID-19 have serious comorbidities. So the vaccine's working in that respect. It's just,

again, not a force field. It doesn't provide 100%. So moving over to the LPRC and research, we were just talking before recording today with the LPRC labs, the five labs. Again, I'll remind everybody, we've got the ideation lab, we've got the simulation or sim lab, we've got the engagement lab, we've got the activation lab, and we've got the SOC lab. So we have five physical labs. We've got the VR lab as well, the virtual environment. lab as well, the virtual environment. And then finally, we've got the parking lot lab, if you will, that's not only have a small component inside, it looks like a parking lot and has a lot of technologies and capability, but outside in the UF Innovate Hub, that innovation square, that square block that we're on has a series of technologies that are rapidly being enhanced.

a series of technologies that are rapidly being enhanced. And so look forward to more of that. We've got next week a handful of technology companies coming in to enhance the mobile platforms we've got placed out there that are provided by LiveView Technologies. So we're going to enhance even more sensors that are on there, ad sensors. We're going to enhance even more sensors that are on there, add sensors. So look forward to having LIDAR, another radar, different types of gunshot detection, gunshot location, and different movements, different types of pan, tilt, zoom, so that you can diagnose, you can lock on to targets that might be creating a problem for somebody. Again, all designed for the place manager to inform her in real time quicker that there's something going on out there. We've got a smart lighting technology company coming in. They're going to be replacing some of the lights in our parking lot lab area as part of University of Florida Safe for Places Lab with smart lighting

that are amazing ecosystems in themselves. So we're excited here at LPRC about all this technology. We've had Bosch in here for almost a week, access it in here every month. Sensorimatic Technologies is in here constantly helping us stand everything up, integrate. constantly helping us stand everything up, integrate. And the LPRC tech team is right now three members. We're looking to add maybe three more, but we've got people that are highly skilled, knowledgeable, and love to have fun integrating and installing technologies for us and helping us solve those problems.

Also help us kind of maintain some compliance to make sure that people don't put their technology where somebody else's is or reduce conflicts and enhance the integration for effectiveness. So it's just a very exciting place to be and time to be there. LPRC is adding a lot of new members not just retailers which are critical for us we have an aspirational goal of going from 70 to 100 retail chains but with 70 plus all their divisions it's a robust community right now we're adding a lot of technology guys

that are deploying and employing different types of artificial intelligence, particularly computer vision or camera vision in a whole lot of different ways. So stay tuned on all that. We've got the LPRC Supply Chain Protection Summit coming up. That'll be our third virtual summit from our working groups that we've got this year. Normally, again, these events are physical. The LPRC Impact Conference still planned full go

October 4th through 6th. But as we mentioned before, we're planning this conference to be fully physical, fully virtual or a hybrid, but open if we need to switch rapidly and that may well end up being the final decision to virtual with maybe some smaller contingent to make a virtual experience. We're there. As long as travel is open and as long as the UF Innovate Hub allows us, we're going to also be open for business for retailers, for our solution partner members and prospects of both to come into Gainesville, spend some quality time with us. So we want to encourage

you to come in. We've got a lot of VIP tours today. We're getting ready this morning. We're going to be hosting some people from the Florida Senate, some legislators. We've also got the University of Florida's chief operating officer coming over. We've had, as I mentioned before, congressmen and women. We've had the Florida legislature's speaker of the house and our UF governmental affairs curating some federal policy makers, decision makers, and other legislators in the U.S. House and Senate coming in. But the idea is to rally support for all of us to work together left of bang right before the events. There's so much funding and activity right of bang, you know,

criminal justice system and support services and all this, literally hundreds of millions of dollars in funding there. But just, it's pretty scant to find any kind of support left of bang to prevent people from launching their victimization plans or attacks. And so that's a big part of what we're trying to do with all of you all. All right, with no further ado, I'm going to go over and turn it over to my friend and colleague, Tom Meehan. Tom, if you can launch and let us know what's going on. Yeah, we'll cover a couple things, and I mean, we'll kind of change it up a little bit, because there's a couple of things occurring globally, as I'm sure everybody's aware, and we'll start with, you know, the first time in four years that there's an English version of the Al Qaeda-backed magazine Inspire that was released, which was released a little bit ago and is now circulating throughout the Internet.

And that prompted an FBI warning on a potential terrorist threat. This has a little bit to do with the COVID, probably more to do with the anniversary of September 11th coming up. And it's a pretty broad, you know, it's a pretty broad assessment from the FBI. And what it basically says is that there's a potential for small cell offshoot activity. It could be domestic. They really spent a lot of time talking about domestic terror and that people have a heightened aggravated state because of some of the things that are occurring related to COVID. And then there was some talk about some of the things sounding around September 11th. And obviously this magazine was prior to what's occurring right now in Afghanistan. So there is some chatter as late as yesterday of, you know, the potential threat that could occur because of that.

This is all really broad. The magazine itself, in addition to that, they also kind of released its first video in several years. And then the title was America Burns. And it frames out the campaign to show an attack on a U.S. aircraft. So again, a lot of this has to do with September 11th. While the FBI has said that the threat is real, they have not really specifically talked about it. There's no specific threat at this point. And really, you know, there are two takes here. One is around the September 11th, and the other is domestic terror. So we're going to

continue to watch it. I actually have not really read in these forums or in several years because they've been quiet for two to three years related to America. But I do think that on the podcast here, we'll appropriately update weekly. You probably heard the Al-Qaeda launched its first publication because it hit global news. And it was basically in the last 48 hours on the AP had it. And it went to, I think, just about every news organization it could. So that FBI warning is probably not new to you. The magazine specifically talks about, you know, lone wolf attacks and some ghost guns. And then the video is really up as as with a lot of these videos professionally done, if you will, really to segment around the September 11th

P anniversary that is approaching. So we'll keep our eyes on that. From COVID-19 front, and again, this did make national news, the AP put it out, I think last week around COVID I think last week around COVID vaccine cards. And there were several actually AP reports out of the California area and the Louisiana area. And basically the fake COVID vaccine card sales are ramping up on social media throughout the national lines. I think we actually even had some examples that we cited. But today, because some colleges are requiring COVID vaccine cards, there's been a significant spike and college officials are concerned in this. And there are just, I took a look at Telegram, WhatsApp, and Instagram, and it took me a few seconds to find options. And the interesting part here is that the range is anywhere from $20 to $250 for a card. And some of them are digitized where they're telling you to print them on cardstocks and other ones are actually physical cards that they're mailing out. I think the social media

networks are doing a good job of pushing this out. There was one Instagram user and post that had 11,000 views before Instagram pulled it down. The link was also subsequently pulled down to buy it. On Telegram and WhatsApp, as we've talked about so many times before, these are encrypted channels. So there's not a heck of a lot that can be done on those until

the actor is actually identified. Additionally, and this was also, while I don't think it was as large in the news, sometime around August 13th, there was a report and then another one on the 16th that made the wire of the U.S. custom seizing shipments of fake vaccine cards that were being sent to Louisiana. And they actually went ahead and showed pictures. And what they said is they've just, they've seen thousands of shipments all originating from China. And these are actual physical reproduced cards. So just another thing to, you know, we all have to work through throughout this challenging time. And there are some folks, and, you know, Reid talked about this just a minute ago, about vaccinations that, you know, are not necessarily for it or against it and trying to figure it out. And then there are some folks that are just against it. And interestingly enough, when I

looked at this in detail, there was actually chatter in one of the WhatsApp groups where there were college students, you know, buying fake IDs from the same people that they were buying fake vaccination cards. So it was actually kind of, this was a person who was selling ideas and said, hey, for $25 more, I'll throw in a fake vaccination card. And the college students were going back and forth. And even this was on, I think it was on Telegram. I can't recall if it was Telegram or WhatsApp chat.

But the interesting part here was people were saying, oh, I'll buy them. I am vaccinated, but I'll buy it and I'll hold it for my friend if they need it. So this was a very kind of new phenomenon around the college side of it. And I know, Reid, you probably know a lot more about the college side and some of the testing, but this really poses a significant risk because now you take away some of the validity around the vaccine. And then you also, there was some talk about how this will throw numbers off at college campuses, if this actually does turn into a phenomenon. At this point, I think it's very much like we've talked about in the past, where it's something that's occurring. And while 11,000 views on social media sounds a lot like a lot. It really in relative nature isn't.

And that doesn't imply that 11,000 people did anything. It just implies that they actually looked at it. So I think that that's something we'll keep a pulse on as well. And then just turning over, which I know we also talk about all the time, is kind of the geopolitical climate when it comes to cyber attacks. And there have really been a significant amount of chatter in the intelligence channels that North Korea, China, and Russia, there is, you know, a lot of belief and based on what's occurring that there will be a ramp up in

ransomware attacks on the United States infrastructure. And this is the interesting part here is both private and public. So this isn't necessarily, you know, a targeted attacks on a public administration, the private and public sectors are going to, according to the latest report, have the same kind of target or vulnerability in the sense that the broad brush attacks are easier to infiltrate. Target attacks usually have more financial upside for these actors, but when you do a broad brush attack, it just causes disruption. So we'll continue to keep an eye on that and watch that. And then just lastly, from a civil disturbance standpoint, there is some rumblings of potential civil disturbance

in certain cities in the United States related to what's occurring in Afghanistan. At this point, I would say they're all unfounded. Most of the groups are relatively small. And these are, interestingly interesting enough these aren't necessarily anti-government it's um more of a rallying call of you know the us not taking the appropriate action um i saw four or five forms last night go up around you know protests around that but again very very small scale less than 100 people on each forum So we'll also keep an eye on that and, if necessary, spin up the FusionNet.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Tony. Thank you, Reid and Tom. Let me start this week by commenting on the report that were all over the media last week on USA retail sales being down. sales being down. The Wall Street Journal said that USA retail sales fell 1.1% in July as spending fell across categories. In their analysis, USA retail sales fell sharply amid cooling purchases of goods and some signs of pullback in consumer demand as COVID-19 cases tied to the Delta variant rose. But to me, what was more interesting is some analysis done by the IHL groups who tracks retail very closely,

who pointed out in a social media post that you really need to look behind the data that's published to understand what is really happening to the retail industry. Their analysis in core retail sectors, which excludes auto, but includes food, drug, mass merchandise, warehouse clubs, department stores, specially soft goods, specially hard goods,

convenience and gas, restaurants, and pure play online, has retail sales grown in July 15.9%. Slowest growth in July, comparing it to June, was in food, which is leavening off from its pandemic spikes, and surprisingly, pure play non-store sales. and surprisingly, pure play non-store sales. Food grew just 2.9% and non-store pure play online grew 3.7%. Fastest growth for July versus June was in specialty soft goods, which was up 45.8% and restaurants, which was up 40.7%. Looking at the July year to date data for retail sales,

which to me is more important, the news is even better for US retail with an especially for sectors that struggle through the pandemic, especially soft goods which includes apparel, grew 70 percent. Convenience and gas grew 31.6 percent. Restaurants grew 30.5 percent. Even struggling department stores through the first nine months of the year grew sales 21 percent. Year-to-date through July 2021, Year to date, through July 2021, overall USA retail sales in the key sectors I mentioned are up 18.8% and excluding pure play online, retail sales are up 19.2%.

So think of that as major physical stores. Above data to me is reaffirmation on the importance of the physical store in the mix of omni-channel retail strategies as we go forward. then looked no further than an additional interesting headline that was actually in the journal and actually was republished by The Guardian that talked about Amazon and what Amazon is planning to do, which is, of all things, open department stores. The company's latest move to bricks and mortar, first reported in the Wall Street Journal, comes after Amazon earlier this week eclipsed even Walmart in overall sales to become the world's largest retail seller outside China. sales of Amazon private label clothing, household items, and electronics, as well as independent brands. According to Wells Fargo, Amazon is already the largest seller of clothing in the U.S., but clothing is notoriously a difficult business to succeed online, with customers only able to guess at a fit and quality and plagued by high rates of return. At the same time, many fashion brands have resisted Amazon approaches, preferring to maintain their own pricing, distribution, and image management. According to the Journal, as published in The

Guardian, some of the first Amazon department stores are expected to be located in Ohio and California. The retail space will be a relatively modest in terms of size at 30,000 square feet, matching equally scaled down formats that existing department store chains, Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom, have developed. So again, even department stores are coming back and they're coming back from a pure online player in Amazon, not opening, planning to open department stores. This past week, IHL also released a webinar that summarized where we're at on the store and openings and closing in USA. And again, a very, very interesting webinar because, again, it reinforces the importance of physical stores. So summarizing their key finding, retail as an industry continues to evolve, but chain retail continues to be strong.

In the last five years, the number of net stores decreased by just over 6,000, but the number of restaurants increased by increased 16.1%, and that's a Kegel combined annual growth rate of 3.8%. The number of chains adding stores increased 66% this year in 2021. The number of chains closing stores this year decreased 67% and very enlightening, for every chain closing stores in 2021, 4.3 chains are opening stores. The key retail sectors that I mentioned earlier in this recording, for 2021, U.S. retailers open a net positive 4,361 stores. And again, that'sisers, which opened a net 1,727 stores more than they closed, and restaurants, which opened a net 1,572 stores more than were closed. Negative openings were in specialty soft goods, which had a minus 652 stores, and department stores, which had a minus of 120 stores.

Every other sector, and I mentioned quite a few earlier, had more open, more stores than it closed. The study, what was important is how it was summarized, which basically said that retail store growth is accelerating. We do have some challenges in labor, in product and chip shortage, chips. So all those computer chip shortages, and they remain constraints for the industry. Smaller retailers and restaurants are recovering. Chain store retailing is mostly right size. IHL reports that really the two sectors that still need to be right size are department stores and especially soft goods as they are over stores. Their study concludes that the wild ride that retail is on is not over because the shortages will continue.

I can personally attest to that because I actually ordered furniture earlier this year and it will not arrive until the end of the year, some of it coming into next year. So what does all the things that I've said today tell you? year. So what does all the things that I've said today tell you? It tells you that physical stores are here. They're an important part of the mix. Even Amazon is jumping into all sectors. They're already opening aggressively into supermarkets to get a better handle at buy online, pick up in stores. Now they're looking at department stores because of their growing apparel line. If you really want to understand what's happening in the second half of 2021, I would encourage this audience to check out my latest article, which appears on all my social media feeds, which summarizes the key economic and retail forecasts for the second half of 2021 and summarizes the four key retail trends to watch for success into the holidays. Welcome back to a growing, bright future of retail. Back to you guys.

All right. Well, thanks so much, Tom, for that excellent information. Thank you, Tony, as well. Good stuff. So, again, to everybody out there, please stay in touch, lpresearch.org, operations at lpresearch.org. It's the best way to get a hold of us. But we invite you to share, please, your comments, your questions, your suggestions, your interest in having a call and doing virtual tours or coming into Gainesville, Florida to do a physical tour. Get involved and engaged as a member of the LPRC. Get involved in our six events that occur

throughout the year, our seven working groups that meet throughout the year. We'd love to get you guys involved in all the research and development. We all have that common goal of better safeguarding the vulnerable. So stay safe, stay connected, and signing off from Gainesville. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast, presented by the Loss 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 Loss Prevention Research Council.