Neil A. Carousso produces NewsNation original “Kurt’s Country” – a celebration of country music and a slice of Americana with host Kurt Bardella.
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WCBS 880 Weekly Rewind: Dr. Fauci Says Schools Can Safely Reopen with Specific Resources, Opines on J&J’s Less Effective COVID Vaccine
By Neil A. Carousso and WCBS Newsradio 880
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, has been at the forefront of the country’s battle against COVID-19 since the virus emerged in the U.S. last year.
Fauci turned 80 years old on Christmas Eve.
He’s been on the job a long time, going through SARS, Ebola, Zika, HIV, to name a few and is now President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor.
During a conversation Friday afternoon with the New York Press Club, moderated by WCBS 880 morning anchor Steve Scott, Fauci was asked, “How much longer will you keep doing this?”
“You know, Steve, I don’t know,” Fauci replied. “I don’t focus on a number. Age number is irrelevant, it’s how you feel. Your functional capability. Are you still able to give it 100% or 110%? Are you still up to the task? As long as that is what I have, namely, the energy, the capability and giving 110%, there’s no limit… I’m pretty honest with myself, I have a real good reality-testing wife who doesn’t hesitate for a second to give me constructive criticism about things. I’ll know when to step down, but I don’t see that in the future right now.”
During the nearly 40-minute long discussion, Fauci reiterated Biden’s plan to try to get K-8 grade students back in school in the first 100 days, but he admits that there are teachers and others who don’t think it’s safe just yet.
He said part of his job is to try to convince those who have questions about it that it is safe to go back but, only if the rules are followed, such as mask wearing and social distancing.
He stressed the recommendation is for K-8 and that it’s a little bit of a different ball game when it comes to middle, high school and college.
Vaccines are also a key part of the discussion, especially given Johnson & Johnson’s promising news about its one-shot vaccine.
It proved to be 72% effective against moderate to severe COVID-19, which isn’t as impressive as 95%, which Pfizer and Moderna got.
“So although it was not as good as a couple of the others in preventing early symptomatic disease, what it did do very well was prevent severe disease, including hospitalization, death,” Fauci said.
He predicts it could get an emergency use authorization within a week or two, with doses possibly being administered in the U.S. in February.
Fauci was also pressed about working in the Trump administration and his frustration level during that time.
“I don’t want to go back and rehash things, I really want to look forward,” Fauci said. “That’s in the past, let’s take a look at the things we can do to end this outbreak.”
But Fauci did say that he never thought about quitting.
“The enormity of the task and the responsibility that I had was such that it never even entered my mind to step down and quit,” Fauci said. “It was just too important a problem that we were facing.”
Neil A. Carousso produces The 880 Weekly Rewind with Lynda Lopez Friday nights at 7 PM on WCBS Newsradio 880.
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Small Business Spotlight: Making the Right Hire for Your Job Opening
By Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Hiring workers can be challenging, especially for business owners with limited resources in the pandemic.
Companies that are fortunate to be in the position of hiring have a vast talent pool to choose from as remote work has become commonplace.
“Emphasize what’s most important,” WCBS 880 “Your Next Job” host Steven Greenberg told Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso on the Small Business Spotlight.
Greenberg’s career highlights include leading a human resources team for a major toy manufacturer, founding a staffing firm and operating a job board for jobseekers over 40 years old. He stresses owners must refine and focus their job descriptions to get the most qualified applicants.
“You want to send up a flag: ‘We’re seeking the person who’s the best at making outbound sales calls for our company. We want a killer person who could sit at home and make 100 calls all day and has a close rate of 20 percent,'” he said. “Everything else is sort of gravy.”
Greenberg told Connolly and Carousso that employers should look for résumés that are specifically tailored to that job description. He noted people with generic résumés are often sending applications for numerous open jobs, and likely, will not be a good fit for a company’s specific needs.
“A generic résumé tells the company, really, if you’re really looking at it carefully, I’m not that interested in working for you. I’m just sending out this résumé to 20 companies and I’m just hoping to get lucky,” he explained, adding it’s like “playing the lottery.”
The “Your Next Job” host suggested employers implement a practical test in the hiring process to gage if a candidate is right for the position. An example he gave on the Small Business Spotlight is having a sales applicant make some calls to see how much they know about the company during their pitch.
Candidates who do not face a practical test that would allow them to demonstrate their skills and qualifications, Greenberg said, should take the initiative to prove themselves.
“Why don’t you say… ‘I did some more research on it and I saw that you’re working on these three potential clients and let me tell you about how I can add value to that effort,'” he advised. “That’s an email that gets read, that gets noticed and I think should generate more interviews.”
Greenberg suspects his pet peeve about follow-up emails is shared among employers; he strongly encourages applicants to avoid using the phrase “I’m just following up” because it diminishes one’s application.
The HR consultant told WCBS 880 it sometimes takes creativity to stand out from the pack of applicants, especially with high unemployment due to the coronavirus pandemic. He shared one of his favorite stories from an unnamed, well-known college basketball coach who gets flooded with emails from people who write it’s their dream job to work for him.
“He said, ‘Steven, you know what happens after those emails? Nothing. I’m not going to hire somebody then who doesn’t want to act on their dreams. I make my dreams come true. I don’t wait for other people to come true for me,'” Greenberg recalled. “One day, somebody sent him that email, and then, when he came home from a road trip at midnight, that person was waiting for them with their resume printed on a basketball.”
The coach hired him for backing up his words with actions.
Greenberg also told Connolly and Carousso about an unemployed chef he advised to write part of his resume in icing on top of a cake. That person got the job.
See more examples and hiring advice on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight video above.
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WCBS 880 Weekly Rewind: The Biden Battle Plan
President Joseph R. Biden signed a flurry of executive orders in his first three days in office on combating the pandemic and taking steps to reverse and reform the nation’s immigration policies.
You’ll get a deeper understanding of President Biden’s policies and his vaccine battle plan on The 880 Weekly Rewind with Lynda Lopez, including an audio file on Mr. Biden’s first 56 hours in office. Plus, a curtain call to the late baseball Hall of Famer and one-time home run king Henry “Hank” Aaron.
The 880 Weekly Rewind with Lynda Lopez airs Friday nights at 7 PM ET on WCBS Newsradio 880 in New York. Featuring interviews with newsmakers on the top local, national and international news of the week, it is produced by Neil A. Carousso.
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Small Business Spotlight: Business Opportunities Up for Grabs
By Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Many businesses are facing the grim reality of closing operations this winter as COVID-19 and its new variants surge, but there may be opportunities to pursue before termination.
The new round of small business loans cannot be obtained by large companies unlike in the spring when some corporations were able to take advantage of loopholes in the first coronavirus relief package.
There is an additional five months of support for restaurants and businesses in industries hit hard in the pandemic, namely, tourism, transpiration, retail and performance arts. And, 40 percent of those loans can be used for new services as well as rent and utilities; that’s contrary to the first installment of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan which was instituted to make sure employees are paid as part of the loan agreement.
Ian M. Weinberg is a Certified Financial Planner in Woodbury, Long Island. At his firm Family Wealth & Pension Management, LLC, he is advising business owners to manage risk by pivoting into similar services. An example he points to on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight is a clothing company that starts making uniforms for essential workers.
“I know the shipping business is getting huge. How can I take my business that’s in the clothing business and help that evolve and get integrated into this new economy?” Weinberg hypothesizes. “If you’re surviving in what you’re doing but you see that there’s an opportunity to launch elsewhere, you can use these PPP funds to do some of that.”
Sixty percent of each PPP loan must be spent on payroll or the loan would no longer qualify for forgiveness.
He acknowledged many business owners will not survive, but he told Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso many of his clients that are in trouble did not adjust their operations.
“A restaurant that didn’t have curbside takeout, didn’t have a digital ordering system, you couldn’t order online and pickup, they don’t take credit cards,” Weinberg said of businesses that closed in the pandemic.
He asserted business owners cannot fall behind the times, but they must keep costs down.
“You can commit technology, you can leverage technology, you can outsource technology, you could outsource your staffing,” Weinberg explained. “We could be running a business that’s an investment banking firm right now, handling billions of dollars just like this: sitting in three Zoom calls. We don’t need any more overhead.”
He told WCBS 880 that he has seen non-profit organizations have much success with virtual fundraisers.
“They were still able to raise a million dollars and their overhead for the event was less than $200,000 because they didn’t have to do the banquet hall, the catering, the staff on site, the liabilities and they’re finding that going digital really helped them leverage their resources and the charity made $800,000 instead of half a million on the same event that people would have showed up to in black tie and tux,” said Weinberg of one charity that he advises.
The financial advisor emphasized there are opportunities right now, but owners have to be flexible and consider options outside the box.
Weinberg told Connolly and Carousso about a large catering business that made one of the most successful pivots he has seen: They applied for a New York City government contract to feed the homeless. That has kept his client’s business afloat.
“They focused their efforts from catering to for-profit organizations and parties and events to identifying a need where the city had to feed people, the city had to pay for that food and the vendor service to do it and they were fortunate enough to find out about it and they went after it,” he said.
See more local examples of successful business pivots and how to use your skills to fill pandemic needs on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight video above.
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WCBS 880 Special Report: Chaos in the Capitol – A Nation Divided
By Neil. A. Carousso and the WCBS 880 News Team
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — The nation and the world watched in horror Wednesday as a pro-Trump insurrectionist mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in a deadly occupation that claimed the lives of five people, including a police officer.
Lawmakers, who had gathered for a joint session of Congress to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory, and their staff feared for their lives as the violent mob invaded the Senate and House chambers.
Members of Congress were forced into hiding, scrambled to hide under desks, were told to don gas masks and evacuated to undisclosed safe rooms.
Anchor Lynda Lopez hosts an hour-long special, “Chaos in the Capitol – A Nation Divided,” that looks back at this week’s historic events and how they unfolded.
“Chaos at the Capitol – A Nation Divided“ will feature firsthand accounts from lawmakers and reporters who were in the nation’s Capitol when it descended into chaos, as well as analysis on how we got here, what it will take to move forward as a nation, and more.
The broadcast includes interviews with freshman Congressman Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, CBS News correspondent Steve Dorsey, former Long Island Congressman Steve Israel, Princeton University professor Julian Zelizer, CBS News election law expert David Becker, child psychiatrist and professor Dr. Llinda Drozdowicz and more.
Below is our segment featuring Becker, as interviewed by producer Neil A. Carousso.
Becker explains Wednesday’s riots are the culmination of a years-long disinformation campaign and discusses what it will take to restore confidence in future elections.
Neil A. Carousso contributed reporting and produced the WCBS 880 Special: Chaos in the Capitol – A Nation Divided, hosted by Lynda Lopez, on Friday, January 8, 2021, which was nationally syndicated on Entercom stations.
