It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, December 24, 2021
1 in 3 Americans say they’re open to abolishing or limiting the Supreme Court
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. — A surprisingly significant portion of Americans would like to see the Supreme Court become the “Subordinate Court,” according to new research. A recent poll conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania finds over a third of Americans “might be willing” to abolish the Supreme Court altogether or at least permit Congress to limit its power if it were to issue rulings either they or Congress disagree with.
Consisting of 1,008 participants, this research indicates a notable increase in the number of Americans are willing to consider doing away with or at least reducing the power of the nation’s highest court.
More specifically, the survey finds 34 percent of respondents told researchers “it might be better to do away with the court altogether” if it “started making a lot of rulings that most Americans disagreed with.” Another 38 percent believe that if Congress disagrees with the Supreme Court’s decisions, “Congress should pass legislation saying the Supreme Court can no longer rule on that issue or topic.”
“Respect for judicial independence appears to be eroding,” says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC), in a university release. “The willingness of more than 1 in 3 Americans to entertain the idea of abolishing the court or stripping jurisdiction from it is alarming.”
Faith in the courts falling?
These findings, while no doubt surprising, are indicative of a larger trend appearing in other recent surveys. Gallup reports the Supreme Court’s approval rating in September 2021 dipped to a new low of 40 percent after coming in at 49 percent in July 2021.
These findings of course come on the heels of a tumultuous year in U.S. politics. Between the ongoing pandemic, the 2020 election and its aftermath, and a number of controversial Supreme Court rulings, it’s been a year like no other. For example, just before researchers conducted this survey in September, the Supreme Court opted not to block a Texas law restricting abortion access.
For reference on how far sentiments toward the Supreme Court have fallen over the past year, only 20 percent of respondents shared similar views on “abolishing or weakening” the Supreme Court in the 2019 version of this poll. Moreover, between 2005 and 2018, those who agreed with the idea of removing the Supreme Court if it were to start making unpopular decisions stayed largely consistent, only varying between 17 and 23 percent.
Respondents were also asked about individual Supreme Court justices. Most (59%) say that the justices work in an impartial manner, setting aside their personal and political views to make rulings based on the law, Constitution, etc. Meanwhile, however, 37 percent think that most justices will fall in line with the beliefs of the President who appointed them. For example, a justice nominated by a Democratic president would be more likely to make a liberal ruling while justices nominated by Republicans may be more likely to make conservative rulings.
AMERICAN DUOPOLY
More competition between political parties leads to prosperity for Americans
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The battle between Republicans and Democrats typically gets most of the blame for anything that goes wrong in American society today. Although politics may be more polarizing than ever before, a new study finds when the two major parties are in close competition with each other, the American people benefit the most.
Researchers Gerald Gamm, from the University of Rochester, and Thad Kousser of UC San Diego say states that see tight competition between Democrats and Republicans for political control often end up passing measures which improve the quality of life for the people living there. Their study looked at the history of the two-party system from 1880 to 2010 and discovered two main trends.
The first is that there appears to be a link between party competition and increased spending on human capital and infrastructure. The second is that this spending often leads to improvements in the public’s welfare. These links include the political balance in Congress, state legislatures, urban politics, and modern party politics.
“Competition between parties is not just healthy for a political system but for the life prospects of the population,” says Gamm in a university release.
Living in a ‘red state’ or ‘blue state’ is bad for your health
For staunch Democrats, liberals, Republicans, and conservatives, living in a deep “blue” or “red” state may seem better for their well-being — and lead to less arguments too! However, the study finds states where one party typically has overwhelming control (such as New York, California, or Texas) actually do a worse job of providing a good life for its residents.
Researchers say residents in deep blue or red states have a lower life expectancy, lower levels of education, and less income in comparison to so-called “swing states.” Heavy Democrat and Republican states also saw a higher rate of infant mortality throughout the years.
“We find that states that spend more—and spend more because of party competition—become places where children are more likely to survive infancy, where they learn to read and where they graduate from high school, where adults live longer lives, and, at least in the pre-New Deal era, where people earn higher incomes,” says Kousser.
One-party rule leads to poor policies
So, what’s causing this downturn in social well-being in certain states? The study finds that when one party holds too much power and holds it for too long, politicians end up pushing through more “pork-barrel” projects which only benefit a small number of residents in an area.
Conversely, when the two parties regularly battle for control, those in power find ways to improve the reputation of their party by pursuing statewide programs that help many people. Researchers add that both Democrats and Republicans get the chance to show the public how they differ from their political opponents.
“Party competition creates bonds between copartisans from across the state and between the executive and legislative branches, leading both parties to work for programs that benefit a broad set of constituents,” the team says.
Is modern political polarization changing this?
“In the contemporary environment, we recognize that the historic importance of party competition may be attenuated, negated, or even reversed,” the team writes.
Gamm notes that in the past, voters and elites likely agreed on many political policies. Now, however, the researcher says politics is becoming a “zero-sum game,” with both parties completely opposed to the other’s philosophy. With that in mind, the team says it’s hard to know if this trend will continue in the post-2010 era of politics.
“What we show here, drawing on a full century of data on party competition and spending, as well as data on health, literacy, and prosperity through 2010, is the central importance of two-party competition to the rise of the American state and the flourishing of the American people,” the study authors conclude.
Political scientists from the University of Rochester and the University of California, San Diego, found that party competition at the state level is linked to increased spending on human capital and infrastructure and measurable improvements in public welfare. Credit: University of Rochester / Julia Joshpe
Today, the two major political parties are often blamed for a plethora of problems in American governance. But for most of the last century and a half, political party competition has had positive effects on the welfare of Americans.
That's according to new research by Gerald Gamm, a professor of political science and history at the University of Rochester, and Thad Kousser, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego.
The pair conducted a historical analysis spanning all 50 states for the period 1880–2010. In the study—"Life, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Prosperity: Party Competition and Policy Outcomes in 50 States," published in the American Political Science Review—they present two related findings:
A direct link between party competition and increased spending on human capital and infrastructure
A direct link between this spending and measurable improvements in public welfare
"Competition between parties is not just healthy for a political system but for the life prospects of the population," says Gamm, whose research focuses on Congress, state legislatures, urban politics, and modern party politics.
How does party competition lead to better social outcomes?
The data show that states in which the same party won most elections and held an overwhelming majority of seats in the state legislature were likely to have populations with lower life expectancy, levels of education, and income—coupled with higher infant mortality. But as soon as competition among parties within a state increased and a second party started winning seats and more elections, state spending on infrastructure and human capital went up—and with it, literacy, earnings, and longevity.
"We find that states that spend more—and spend more because of party competition—become places where children are more likely to survive infancy, where they learn to read and where they graduate from high school, where adults live longer lives, and at least in the pre-New Deal era, where people earn higher incomes," says Kousser, an expert on term limits, governors, and state politics.
How do the researchers explain the data?
According to Gamm and Kousser, when one party holds overwhelming power, it tends to divide into factions. Moreover, legislators have an incentive to push for pork-barrel projects that narrowly target groups of constituents.
By contrast, when two parties closely compete for control of a statehouse, lawmakers find they can improve their individual reputations by helping their parties pursue a statewide program. Democrats have an incentive to show how they differ from Republicans and vice versa. Demonstrating what their party stands for, not through district bills or pork-barrel spending but through statewide policy making, provides a route to electoral success.
In turn, the authors write, "Party competition creates bonds between copartisans from across the state and between the executive and legislative branches, leading both parties to work for programs that benefit a broad set of constituents."
Do the findings still hold true today as political polarization has dramatically increased?
That question has, indeed, hovered over their latest work. Arguably, American politics began changing profoundly in the 1980s. Gamm notes that the last four decades have been a time of "unremitting and closely fought party competition in national politics, new social and cultural cleavages, historically high levels of partisan polarization, a collapse in mediating institutions, shifting norms and rules in Congress, geographic sorting, and the growth of social media." Whereas in the past, voters and elites alike agreed on many policy goals, politics nowadays has increasingly become a zero-sum game, with the two major parties in fundamental conflict on most important issues.
"In the contemporary environment, we recognize that the historic importance of party competition may be attenuated, negated, or even reversed," the team writes. They caution that the rise of the Democratic Party in this era as a distinctively liberal party may also mean that the party in control matters more now than it did in the past.
With often a lag of decades between cause and effect, Gamm and Kousser posit that readers in a generation or two may conclude that party competition—a "hallmark of American politics since the days of Madison, Hamilton, and Jackson and perhaps the nation's greatest contribution to modern democracy"—ceased to be beneficial in the 1980s. But it's too early to know whether the contemporary shift toward party polarization will prove permanent.
That means our generation can't (yet) render the verdict.
"What we show here," they conclude, "drawing on a full century of data on party competition and spending, as well as data on health, literacy, and prosperity through 2010, is the central importance of two-party competition to the rise of the American state and the flourishing of the American people."'Affective polarization' increasingly leaks into social situations, says new study
More information:Gerald Gamm et al, Life, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Prosperity: Party Competition and Policy Outcomes in 50 States,American Political Science Review(2021).DOI: 10.1017/S0003055421000617
Polarization is dangerous for democracy. Though the U.S. Constitution was designed to harness rivalry with a diverse, redundant, and modular set of institutions, if that rivalry curdles into the belief that your competitors are your enemies, those institutions may not be strong enough to hold a nation together.
In a Perspective piece in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, SFI External Professor Jenna Bednar (University of Michigan) argues that polarization poses three perils in particular.
The first problem is that people tend to gather with those who think similarly and avoid those who think differently, accentuating a distaste for those who differ. Second, elites can manipulate the public through fear, persuading their followers that others pose an existential threat—and then that fear can feed on itself, beyond all control. And third—and most dangerous, Bednar argues—is that the positions of the population become simplified, with less room for individual variation in beliefs. This can happen, for example, when each group polices the beliefs of its members and punishes those who don't conform with the established party line. This creates a loss of diversity in opinions that imperils democracy just as species diversity loss imperils ecosystems.
More information:Jenna Bednar, Polarization, diversity, and democratic robustness,Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(2021).DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2113843118
We can't understand polarization unless we analyze it as a complex system, argue SFI External Professor Scott Page (University of Michigan) and co-author Delia Baldassarri in a commentary for a special feature on the dynamics of political polarization in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Polarization occurs both in ideology (beliefs about the world and appropriate policies) and emotion (distrust and disconnection between the groups), and it is the feedback loops between these two types of polarization that make it such a difficult problem to solve. Positive feedback loops—where divergence creates more divergence—build polarization in the first place; negative feedback loops stifle attempts to build bridges across groups.
Different models of polarization highlighted in the special feature shed light on particular aspects driving it. One model assumes that people become more like those who agree and diverge from those who disagree. That simple force transforms an ordinary array of varying opinions into two camps. A second model highlights the role that technology plays in enabling this movement, making it easier to link with those with similar views and to avoid those who disagree. And a third views polarization as a result of the overwhelming complexity and multidimensionality of the issues voters face: Incapable of deciding issue by issue, citizens look to elites and political leaders to simplify, and party leaders have incentives to build loyal, ideologically clustered networks of supporters.
Getting out of our polarized state, which according to some models will demand more effort than was required to get into it, will hinge on a deep understanding of the multiple forces that got us where we are now. The different theoretical explanations these models provide offer a start on that.
More information:Delia Baldassarri et al, The emergence and perils of polarization,Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(2021).DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2116863118
Jessica Roy Thu, December 23, 2021 Volunteer nurses from the American Red Cross tend to influenza patients in the Oakland Municipal Auditorium in 1918. (Library of Congress via Associated Press)
This started as a story about what happens after a pandemic ends.
I pitched my editor on the idea in early May. Every adult in America could get a vaccine. COVID numbers started to fall. If the Roaring '20s came after the Spanish flu a century ago, did that mean we were on track for another Roaring '20s now? Would "Hot Vax Summer" give way to Decadent Gatsby Party Autumn?
I started to dig in. A number of compelling parallels emerged: America 100 years ago had staggering income inequality. A booming stock market. Racial uprisings. Anti-immigrant sentiment. A one-term president plagued by scandals after he left office. Plenty of material for a story.
I called a meeting with my editor. I said I didn't think it was a good time to write a story in which the premise was "this pandemic is over, now what?"
The pandemic wasn't ending. Would it ever?
This is not humanity's first time staring down a seemingly unstoppable disease. Pandemics (a disease affecting a large number of people in multiple countries or regions around the world, per the World Health Organization), epidemics (a disease affecting people in a country or region) and outbreaks (a sudden occurrence of an infectious disease) have plagued us throughout history. Just in the past century, we've survived a few.
How did those end? And how might we get ourselves out of this one?
Spanish flu This photo made available by the Library of Congress shows a demonstration at the Red Cross Emergency Ambulance Station in Washington during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. (Library of Congress via Associated Press)
How it started: Unclear, but probably not in Spain. It was a particularly deadly strain of H1N1 influenza and first took root in the U.S. in Kansas.
The disease was so virulent and killed so many young people that if you heard, "'This is just ordinary influenza by another name,' you knew that was a lie," said John Barry, the author of "The Great Influenza."
There was "zero partisanship" over the virus, Barry said.
If the flu did hit your town, it hit hard: A young person could wake up in the morning feeling well and be dead 24 hours later. Half the people who died of the flu in 1918 were in their 20s and 30s.
"It was a spooky time," said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Assn.
So how did we, as a species, beat the Spanish flu? We didn't. We survived it. It torched through individual communities until it ran out of people to infect. A third of the world's population was believed to have contracted the Spanish flu during that pandemic, and it had a case-fatality rate of as high as 10-20% globally and 2.5% in the United States. (Johns Hopkins University reports the COVID-19 case fatality rate in the U.S. is 1.6% as of Dec. 2021.) Roughly 675,000 people in America died out of a population of 103.2 million, a number recently surpassed by COVID-19 victims of a 2020 U.S. population of 329.5 million. Flu vaccines wouldn't be developed until the 1930s and wouldn't become widely available for another decade.
Ultimately, the virus went through a process called attenuation. Basically, it got less bad. We still have descendent strains of the Spanish flu floating around today. It's endemic, not a pandemic.
As a society, we accept a certain amount of death from known diseases. The normal seasonal flu usually kills less than 0.1% of people who contract it. Deaths have been between 12,000 and 52,000 people in the U.S. annually for the past decade.
The regular seasonal flu is both less contagious and less deadly than COVID-19. That people were washing hands, working from home and socially distancing in the winter 2020 flu season likely contributed to the fact that it was a comparably light flu season. Though business and school closures weren't enough to stave off the devastating winter surge of COVID, the measures were sufficient to keep the flu at bay. One strain may have been completely extinguished.
As places reopen and people feel more confident about socializing and traveling again, the flu could make a calamitous comeback. (By the way, have you gotten your flu shot yet?)
How it ended: Endemic
Polio In this April 1955 file photo, first- and second-graders are inoculated against polio in Los Angeles. (Associated Press)
How it started: The first documented polio epidemic in the United States was in 1894. Outbreaks occurred throughout the first half of the 20th century, primarily killing children and leaving many more paralyzed.
Polio reached pandemic levels by the 1940s. There were more than 600,000 cases of polio in the United States in the 20th century, and nearly 60,000 deaths — a case fatality rate of 9.8%. In 1952 alone, there were 57,628 reported cases of polio resulting in 3,145 deaths.
"Polio was every mother's scourge," Benjamin said. "People were afraid to death of polio."
Polio was highly contagious: In a household with an infected adult or child, 90% to 100% of susceptible people would develop evidence in their blood of also having been infected. Polio is not spread through the air — transmission occurs from oral-oral infection (say, sharing a drinking glass), or by "what's nicely called hand-fecal," Paula Cannon, a virology professor at the USC Keck School of Medicine, told me. "People poop it out, and people get it on their hands and they make you a sandwich."
Polio, like COVID, could have devastating long-term effects even if you survived the initial infection. President Franklin Roosevelt was among the thousands of people who lived with permanent paralysis from polio. Others spent weeks, years, or the rest of their lives in iron lungs.
Precautions were taken during the polio pandemic. Schools and public pools closed. Then, in 1955, a miracle: a vaccine.
A two-dose course of the polio vaccine proved to be about 90% effective — similar to the effectiveness of our current COVID vaccines. Vaccine technology was still relatively new, and the polio vaccine was not without side effects. A small number of people who got that vaccine got polio from it. Another subset of recipients developed Guillain-Barre syndrome, a noncontagious autoimmune disorder that can cause paralysis or nerve damage. A botched batch killed some of the people who received it.
But there were no masses of polio anti-vaxxers. It was a "whole sense of the greater good, that this was the only way out of this terrible scourge," Cannon said. "You would have had to have been a psychopathic monster to not want to be part of the solution."
Benjamin said the polio vaccine campaign became a moment of national unity: "Jonas Salk and the folks that solved the polio problem were national heroes."
By 1979, polio was eradicated in the United States.
How it ended: Vaccination
Smallpox
How it started: The disease had been observed in the Eastern hemisphere dating to as early as 1157 BCE, and European colonizers first brought smallpox to North America's previously unexposed Native population in the early 1500s. A 2019 study suggested smallpox and other viruses introduced by colonizers killed as much as 90% of the indigenous population in some areas. Globally, smallpox is estimated to have killed more than 300 million people just in the 20th century. The case fatality rate of variola major, which caused the majority of smallpox infections, is around 30%.
Outbreaks continued in North America through the centuries after it arrived here, at one point infecting half the population of the city of Boston. We fought back by trying to infect people with a weakened version of it, long before vaccines existed. An enslaved man named Onesimus is believed to have introduced the concept of smallpox inoculation to North America in 1721 when he told slave owner Cotton Mather that he had undergone it in West Africa. Mather tried to convince Boston doctors to consider inoculating residents during that outbreak, to limited success. One doctor who inoculated 287 patients reported only 2% of them died of smallpox, compared to a 14.8% death rate among the general population.
In 1777, George Washington ordered troops who had not already had the disease to undergo a version of inoculation in which pus from a smallpox sore was introduced into an open cut. Most people who were inoculated developed a mild case of smallpox, then developed natural immunity. Some died, though at a far lower rate compared with other ways of contracting the disease. The practice of inoculation was controversial enough — some skeptics said it was not sufficiently tested, some argued it was doctors "playing God," others theorized that it was a conspiracy from slaves to trick white slave owners into killing themselves — that it was banned in several colonies.
Edward Jenner first demonstrated the effectiveness of his newly created smallpox vaccine in England in 1796. Vaccination spread throughout the world, and deaths from smallpox became rarer over time: In a century, smallpox went from being responsible for 1 in 13 deaths in London to about 1 in 100.
But while early vaccines reduced smallpox's power, it still existed: An outbreak hit New York City in 1947. It demonstrated that the vaccines were not 100% effective in everyone forever: 47-year-old Eugene Le Bar, the first fatality, had a smallpox vaccine scar. Israel Weinstein, the city's health commissioner, held a news conference urging all New Yorkers to get vaccinated against smallpox, whether for the first time or what we would now call a "booster shot."
The mayor and President Truman got vaccinated on camera. In less than one month, 6.35 million New Yorkers were vaccinated, in a city of 7.8 million. The final toll of the New York outbreak: 12 cases of smallpox, resulting in 2 deaths.
Our country's final outbreak affected 8 people in the Rio Grande Valley in 1949.
In 1959, the World Health Organization announced a plan to eradicate smallpox globally with vaccinations. The disease was declared eradicated in 1980.
Of all the diseases our species has tackled, "the only one we've ever been really successful to totally eradicating is smallpox," Benjamin said. The only remaining smallpox pathogens exist in laboratories.
How it ended: Vaccination
HIV/AIDS
How it started: In 1981, the CDC announced the first cases of what we would later call AIDS.
Roughly half of Americans who contracted HIV in the early 1980s died of an HIV/AIDS-related condition within two years. Deaths from HIV peaked in the 1990s, with roughly 50,000 in 1995, and have decreased steadily since then: As of 2019, roughly 1.2 million Americans are HIV-positive; there were 5,044 deaths attributed to HIV that year.
The Reagan administration did not take HIV seriously for years. Unlike COVID, which was quickly identified as a respiratory disease, HIV spread for years before scientists knew for sure how it was transmitted. Gay activists who encouraged their community to use condoms in the early 1980s were criticized as "sex-negative."
Today, we know how to prevent the spread of HIV, and treatments for it have progressed to the point where early intervention can make the virus completely undetectable.
"If you're HIV positive, the HIV pandemic never went away for you," said Cannon, who's spent much of her career studying the virus. She described it as a "great irony" that we identified the cause of COVID and developed a vaccine within a year, only to have people refuse it: "Anybody with HIV would tell you that the opposite is true for HIV, where despite decades now of research, we have not been able to come up with vaccines that work against this shapeshifter of a virus that is HIV, and people would be desperately pleased if there were vaccines."
Around 700,000 people in the U.S. have died of HIV-related illnesses in the 40 years since the disease appeared. In less than two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, we've surpassed 800,000 COVID deaths.
How it ended: Endemic
SARS
How it started: SARS first appeared in China in 2002 before making its way to the United States and 28 other countries.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome — quickly shortened to SARS in headlines and news coverage — is caused by a coronavirus named SARS-CoV, or SARS-associated coronavirus. COVID-19 is caused by a virus so similar that it's called SARS-CoV-2.
Globally, more than 8,000 people contracted SARS during the outbreak, and 916 died. (By comparison, there were 10 times more cases of COVID-19 than that registered globally by the end of February 2020.)
One hundred fifteen cases of SARS were suspected in the United States; only 8 people had laboratory-confirmed cases of the disease, and none of them died.
SARS and COVID-19 have a lot in common. But the diseases — and the way the government responded to them — weren't exactly the same, said Benjamin, who worked for the CDC during the SARS epidemic.
"There wasn't asymptomatic spread. Early on we had a functional test. We had a public health system that was in much better shape than it is today. All those things went wrong this time," he said. "And [COVID-19] turned out to be much more infectious, it turned out to have asymptomatic spread. ... [In 2020] you had a public health system which wasn't ready for prime time because it hadn't been invested in."
Conversely, he said, the response to SARS was robust and immediate. The WHO issued a global alert about an unknown and severe form of pneumonia in Asia on March 12, 2003. The CDC activated its Emergency Operations Center by March 14, and issued an alert for travelers entering the U.S. from Hong Kong and parts of China the next day. Pandemic planning and guidance went into effect by the end of that month.
"When [public health organizations] had the actual genetic sequence mapped out and then they made a test for it, they rapidly got that test out to state and local health departments, they began screening, doing surveillance, we contained it very quickly, we communicated effectively to the public, and it worked," he said.
In the case of SARS, the disease stopped spreading before a vaccine or cure could be created. Scientists knew another coronavirus could emerge that was more contagious. They laid the groundwork for developing the COVID-19 vaccines we have now.
How it ended: Died out after being controlled by public health measures
Swine flu
Passengers wait inside a subway station in Mexico City in 2009 after a government-ordered shutdown designed to contain the swine flu outbreak. (Brennan Linsley / Associated Press)
How it started: Both the Spanish flu and swine flu were caused by the same type of virus: influenza A H1N1.
Ultimately, according to the CDC, there were about 60.8 million cases of swine flu in the U.S. from April 2009 to April 2010, with 274,304 hospitalizations and 12,469 deaths — a case fatality rate of about 0.02%. So there were millions more cases of swine flu than there were of COVID-19 in the same time period, but a fraction of the fatalities. Eighty percent of swine flu deaths were in people younger than 65.
It was first detected in California on April 15, 2009, and the CDC and the Obama administration declared public health emergencies before the end of that month. As with COVID-19, hospital visits spiked. Hundreds of schools closed down temporarily. In Texas, a children's hospital set up tents in the parking lot to handle emergency room overflow; several hospitals in North Carolina banned children from visiting. Hospitals near Colorado Springs, Colo., reported a 30% increase in flu visits. Three-hundred-thousand doses of liquid Tamiflu for children were released from the national pandemic stockpile.
In the same month cases were first detected, the CDC started identifying the virus strain for a potential vaccine. The first flu shots with H1N1 protections went into arms in October 2009. WHO declared the swine flu pandemic over in August 2010. But like Spanish flu, swine flu never completely went away.
How it ended: Endemic
Ebola
How it started: From 2014 to 2016, 28,616 people in West Africa had Ebola, and 11,310 died — a 39.5% case fatality rate. Despite widespread fears about it spreading here — including close to 100 tweets from the man who would be president when the COVID-19 pandemic began — only two people contracted Ebola on U.S. soil, and neither died.
So how did we escape Ebola? Unlike COVID, Ebola isn't transmitted in the air, and there's no asymptomatic spread. It spreads through the bodily fluids of people actively experiencing symptoms, either directly or through bedding and other objects they've touched. If you haven't been within three feet of a person with Ebola, you have almost no risk of getting it.
Part of the problem in Africa, Benjamin said, was that families traditionally washed the bodies of the deceased, exposing themselves to infected fluids. And healthcare workers who treated patients without proper protective equipment or awareness of heightened safety procedures were at risk. Once adequate equipment was delivered to affected areas and precautions were taken by healthcare workers and families of the victims, the disease could be controlled. People needed to temporarily change their behavior to respond to the public health crisis, and they did.
While this particular outbreak ended in 2016, it's very possible we will see another Ebola event in the future. An Ebola vaccine was approved by the FDA in 2019.
How it ended: Subsided after being controlled by public health measures
How will COVID end? More than 27,000 people had died of COVID-19 in Los Angeles County, and nearly 800,000 in the U.S., as of mid-December. Here, flags at the Griffith Observatory memorialize L.A.'s dead. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
Big picture, "pandemics end because the disease is unable to transmit itself through people or other vectors that allow the transmission of the disease," Benjamin said.
The most likely outcome at this point is that COVID-19 is here to stay, he said: "I think most people now think that it will be endemic for a while." On Twitter, hiscolleagues in epidemiology and public health seem to agree.
COVID has a lot going for it, as far as viruses go: Unlike Ebola and SARS, it can be spread by people who don't realize they have it. Unlike smallpox, it can jump species, infecting animals and then potentially reinfecting us. Unlike polio, one person can unwittingly spread it to a room full of people, and not enough people are willing to get vaccinated at once to stop it in its tracks. It's less contagious than swine flu, and less deadly than Ebola, landing it in a sort of perverse sweet spot where it infects a lot of people but doesn't kill enough of them to run out of victims. For many people, it's mild enough that it convinces others they don't have to take the disease or precautions against it seriously. No one thought that about smallpox or Ebola.
In a conversation I had with Cannon for a different story in May 2020, she told me if someone were designing a virus with the maximum capacity to succeed, it would look a lot like this coronavirus.
"One of the really superpower things about this virus is its stealthiness," she told me then. "So you can feel fine, you can go hang out with friends and not obey the six-foot rule and the next morning you feel like death and you're like, 'oh crap.'" Back then, she contrasted it with the way we shut down SARS: "The reason we could stop it is everybody who had SARS, you were only infectious while you were sick. You woke up one day feeling like death and that was the day you were infectious. Infected people couldn't walk among us. ... With this coronavirus, they walk amongst us."
So what happens next? In some populations, enough people will get vaccinated to achieve something like herd immunity. In others, it will burn through the population until everyone's had it, and either achieves naturally gained immunity (which confers less long-term protection than vaccination) or dies. People still die from influenza and HIV in the United States; a disease becoming endemic isn't exactly a happy ending.
"We tolerate the tragedy a lot better when it's a disease that we've seen before," Benjamin said. "It is less scary to us."
Based on where we are now, "I don't think COVID-19 will ever go away," Cannon said.
We're still learning about the Omicron variant. Early reports out of South Africa suggest it may be a more contagious but milder version of the disease, though it's too early to say for sure. In a perfect world, COVID would go away entirely; with that possibility almost certainly off the table, an attenuated strain that displaces the Delta variant and turns COVID into an illness that rarely requires hospitalization is perhaps the best we can hope for at this point.
Greene holds stock in AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, each worth between $1,000 and $15,000, according to an August 13, 2020, filing from Greene with the clerk of the House of Representatives.
The project found that at least 13 senators and 35 US representatives held shares in Johnson & Johnson, 11 senators and 34 representatives held shares in Pfizer, and two representatives or their spouses held shares of Moderna.
In September, Greene told Insider: "I have an independent investment advisor that has full discretionary authority on my accounts. I do not direct any trades."
Despite her financial interest in vaccine stocks, Greene says she isn't vaccinated and has decried those trying to make her get the shot.
In an episode of Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast released November 2, Greene said "vaccine Nazis" were "ruining our country."
The issue of Greene's vaccine assets has been seized on by Jennifer Strahan, who is running against her for Congress in Georgia's 14th district.
Last week Strahan held a Twitter poll in which she asked, "Which of the following COVID vaccine manufacturers does @mtgreenee currently own stock in?"
She listed AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, or "all of the above" as choices.
"For those of you wondering, the correct answer is D! Our current representative rails against the vaccine, but owns stock in 3 of the 4 major vaccine manufacturers," Strahan wrote in a follow-up tweet.
"I'm not vaccinated, and they're going to have a hell of a time if they want to hold me down and give me a vaccine," she said.
Fringe factions of MAGA world are imploding after Trump publicly advocated for the COVID-19 jab by Tom Hagler 24.12.2021
Former President Donald Trump is facing significant backlash from the fringe factions of the right wing after he lauded the COVID-19 vaccines and encouraged people to take their booster shots. The fringe factions of the right wing erupted in anger after Trump lauded the COVID-19 vaccines.
Figures from Alex Jones to Ali Alexander swiftly rebuked Trump for his pro-vaccine stance.
Members of QAnon-linked Telegram channels said they felt betrayed after Trump encouraged more people to get the COVID-19 shot.
The fringe factions of the right-wing have erupted in anger and confusion at former President Donald Trump’s enthusiastic lauding of the COVID-19 vaccine this week.
On two separate occasions, Trump advocated for people to take the COVID-19 vaccine this past week. On Sunday, crowds booed the former president when he revealed to Bill O’Reilly that he had taken a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot and is pro-vaccination. Trump doubled down on his stance during an interview with conservative commentator Candace Owens on Wednesday, hailing the vaccine as “one of the greatest achievements of mankind.”
“No, the vaccine worked. But some people aren’t taking it. The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don’t take their vaccine,” Trump told Owens.
“If you take the vaccine, you’re protected. Look, the results of the vaccine are very good. And if you do get (COVID-19), it’s a very minor form. People aren’t dying when they take their vaccine,” he added.
On social media, right-wing figures from conspiracy theorist and talk show host Alex Jones to recently-subpoenaed “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander came out in force, rebuking Trump for his position.
“Remember when Trump said you would be playing right into the Democrat’s hands by mocking the rushed, ineffective shot? Yeah, Joe Biden praises him and his booster shot,” Alexander wrote on his Telegram channel on December 23.
“Trump, stop. Just stop. Have your position (backed by Fauci) and allow us to have ours (which is backed by science). This losing is getting boomer level annoying,” Alexander wrote.
InfoWars talk show host Alex Jones also lashed out at Trump after the former president announced on Sunday that he had received a COVID-19 booster shot and was in favor of the vaccine.
“Sign on to it. Take credit for it. Take this, sign on, believe it. Hell, we’re fighting Bill Gates and Fauci and Biden and the New World Order and Psaki and the Davos Group…and now we’ve got Trump on their team!” Jones said.
Pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood, however, tried to justify Trump’s pro-vaccine-stance, positing that Trump was employing “wartime strategy and the tactics designed to achieve victory” by recommending the COVID jab, though he did not elaborate on what he thought those tactics were.
Ron Watkins, a congressional candidate in Arizona known for his QAnon links, posted a message on his Telegram channel after the Trump interview with Owens aired, calling the vaccines “subscription suicide shots,” and calling on his followers to “choose life” and “never comply.”
Some members of Watkins’ Telegram channel, which functions as a chatroom for 40,167 members, also voiced their doubts about Trump.
“I guess God lead to me it and then I had my doubts about Trump. So I give up on him saving America,” wrote one member of Watkins’ chat with the ID David Deitrich. “My beliefs …. He came into presidency making America great … so that we could all trust him … and let our guards down … and then he leaves us and betrays us to Bidan [sic] and the CCP and all these evil SOBs.”
Israel Found a Way to Make Soldiers Invisible
Kyle Mizokami Fri, December 24, 2021 Photo credit: Polaris Solutions
Picture this: A special operations team has set up an observation post on a rocky hillside in enemy territory. The team’s mission: provide surveillance of the terrorists planning an attack from their camp below, and then target the commander once preparations have reached their peak.
Down in the camp, the commander is confident the valley above is free of danger. There’s little cover, and he’s outfitted his sentries with night-vision goggles that would light up with the heat signature of any threats. The special ops troops have covered themselves with camouflage that not only blends in with the rock-strewn hillside, but hides their telltale heat. The team is difficult to see during the daytime, but impossible to spot at night.
Before the attack is set to commence, the commander calls his fighters before him. As he begins to speak, a pair of crosshairs a half-mile away drifts over his silhouette. The sniper exhales and gently squeezes the trigger.
This scenario could become possible thanks to a new camouflage material, Kit 300, developed by Israeli defense contractor Polaris Solutions. Kit 300 is a “thermal visual concealment”—essentially a sheet that uses advanced materials to block a soldier’s body heat. This renders them invisible to night-vision sensors, which in recent decades have become available to terrorist groups.
The first American night-vision device, the M3 Infrared, debuted in the final days of World War II. Early gadgets typically paired an infrared spotlight with an image amplifier. The infrared light was invisible to the naked eye, but would illuminate a target for the image amplifier. Later scopes did away with the infrared light source entirely, instead amplifying ambient light, particularly moonlight.
In the 1980s, thermal imagers heralded a revolution in night-fighting capability. By detecting small differences in heat in their field of view, thermal imagers show a person as defined by their radiated body heat, with the hands, face, and other exposed body parts shining brightly. A tank fighting at night would be seen via its engine panels.
Through the 1990s, thermal imagers used to confer a huge edge on the armies of the countries who had the technology. But as the tech advanced, it became easier to acquire. After the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel complained that night vision sold by Britain and Italy to Iran to stem the flow of drugs was discovered in the possession of the terrorist group. By 2017, Iran was reportedly manufacturing thermal imagers of its own.
In 2018, when the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, accused Russia of giving aid to the Taliban, senior Afghan police officers and military figures said night- vision goggles were part of the gear that Russia supplied.
Kit 300 camouflage could give NATO and its allies their nighttime advantage back. Polaris is tight-lipped about exactly what goes into the Kit 300 sheet, stating only that it consists of “microfibres, metals, and polymers.” The foil-like material can be formed into rock-shaped structures for soldiers to hide behind. A large sheet of the material can hide vehicles as large as a Hummer.
Roughly the size of a twin bedsheet, a Kit 300 sheet weighs around one pound and compresses into a small roll. It’s also strong enough to be used as a litter to carry injured soldiers. Plus, the sheet is reportedly waterproof and has been tested in rain and high heat.
While armies with thermal-imaging devices once held a trump card over their enemies, they must continue to develop countermeasures of their own to survive. Devices like the Kit 300 will allow soldiers to once again disappear.
A Brief History of Solider Camo
Photo credit: Getty Images
Camouflage Uniforms: For centuries, armies used brightly colored uniforms to control troops, allowing leaders to organize their infantry into tightly packed columns that delivered volleys of firepower.
By World War I, as small arms improved, armies sought more subdued uniforms and began experimenting with darker patterns (brown, khaki) to blend in with the dirt of trench warfare. By WWII, U.S. troops in the Pacific wore camouflage patterns to blend in with jungle vegetation. Photo credit: Gary A. Witte
Operational Camouflage Pattern (OCP): In 2015, the U.S. Army abandoned the pixelated grays and whites of the Universal Camouflage Pattern in favor of a new scheme. Scorpion W2, developed by the Army’s Natick Soldier Systems Center, was a return to the dashes and flashes of subdued colors of previous army camouflage.
In 2021, Scorpion, or Operational Camouflage Pattern, became the official duty uniform of the Army, Air Force, and Space Force.
Photo credit: Stefan Heunis
Ghillie Suits: In the 19th century, Scottish gamekeepers constructed these loose suits of dyed strips of fabrics to blend in with their surroundings and catch poachers. Lovat Scouts, the first snipers employed by the British Army, adopted and used the suits during the Boer War.
The shaggy, dark suits break up the wearer’s profile to remain undetected. Today’s U.S. Army snipers use specialized suits called the Improved Ghillie System that consist of sleeves, leggings, veil, and a cape.
Major tech firms join Consumer Electronics Show exodus
The Consumer Electronics Show was banking on a grand return to in-person attendance of the popular gadget extravaganza in January 2022, but the Omicron variant of the coronavirus has prompted several major tech firms to cancel.
Big-name tech firms such as Google, Lenovo and Intel on Thursday cancelled plans to attend next month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, joining an exodus fueled by fear of Covid-19.The three are part of a growing list of companies opting not to put employees at risk by staffing events, exhibits or briefings at the annual gadget extravaganza.
"After careful consideration we have decided to withhold from having a presence on the show floor of CES 2022," a spokesperson with US internet giant Google said.
"We've been closely monitoring the development of the Omicron variant, and have decided that this is the best choice for the health and safety of our teams."
The Waymo self-driving car unit of Google-parent Alphabet also hit the brakes, saying it would take part virtually.
China-based computer colossus Lenovo said on Twitter it decided to "suspend all on-site activity" at the show.
And US chipmaker Intel told AFP that after consulting with health officials, it "will move to a digital-first, live experience, with minimal on-site staff" to reduce risk.
The news came on the heels of several other major companies cancelling or scaling back their plans due to Covid-19 variant Omicron's rapid spread.
The popular four-day conference, which had planned for a grand return, is still scheduled to start January 5.
But this week Facebook parent company Meta, Amazon, T-Mobile and Twitter canceled their appearances.
Key tech world publications including CNET, The Verge and TechCrunch said they will no longer send reporters to cover the event, adding to growing suspicions that CES might have to be delayed or canceled.
The show's organizer, the Consumer Technology Association, put out word last week that the number of exhibitors confirmed to attend had topped 2,100 and that it would offer free Covid-19 rapid testing kits to attendees as an added level of safety.
On its site, CES reminds all attendees that they must be fully vaccinated.
Another major conference planned for January, the World Economic Forum, announced Monday it would delay its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, due to Omicron.
The gathering of the world's political and business elite will go ahead in "early summer," according to organizers.
ETHIOPIA IS THE AGGRESSOR Ethiopia's warring sides locked in disinformation battle Experts warn disinformation campaigns on all sides have worsened into an already explosive situation (AFP/Amanuel Sileshi) James OKONG'O Wed, December 22, 2021, 7:22 AM·4 min read
Since clashes erupted between Ethiopian forces and northern rebels more than a year ago, another war has flared up online as the rivals spread false claims to control the conflict's narrative.
Digital activists have been engaged in a fierce battle to discredit their opponents, from pro-government sites claiming to promote independent fact-checking to opponents sharing doctored content of alleged attacks.
Experts warn that these online campaigns have fed into an already explosive situation in a country with a history of ethnic polarisation.
"Inflammatory messages have worsened the situation in Ethiopia by sowing fear and confusion and further igniting tensions," Ethiopian media and human rights law expert Yohannes Eneyew Ayalew told AFP Fact Check.
The war in the Tigray region, which spilt into two neighbouring states in July, has killed thousands of people and sparked a severe humanitarian crisis. Fighters on all sides stand accused of committing atrocities. Although the rebels announced their retreat back to Tigray on December 20, no official peace talks have been launched yet.
Communications remain cut in the conflict zone and access for journalists is restricted, making it difficult to verify battlefield claims.
"(It's been) difficult to know with confidence what is happening on the ground – a feature of this conflict from the beginning," Joseph Siegle of the African Centre for Strategic Studies told AFP Fact Check.
"The prevalence of false narratives is contributing to increased scepticism toward all claims of abuse. This, in turn, is impeding a more coordinated and uniform international response to the crisis."
- 'Complex case' -
AFP Fact Check has verified multiple claims since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray in November 2020 after accusing the region's dissident ruling party of attacks on federal army camps.
They included photos being shared in a false context, fake official statements and manipulated content.
A study by the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) found there were "two broad campaigns seeking to shape international policy around an active military conflict".
"It is a complex case that interacts with the geopolitics of the Horn of Africa, historical trauma, activism, hate speech, misinformation, platform manipulation, and propaganda, all in the midst of an ongoing civil conflict,” according to the August study.
On the one hand, pro-government supporters have sought to discredit anyone contradicting the official line, a move encouraged by the prime minister himself.
"My fellow Ethiopians, let us not forget that we are also engaged in a sophisticated narrative war waged against the nation with many using disinformation as a pathway for their sinister moves. Each Ethiopian must play a role in pushing back and reversing the distorted narrative," Abiy said in a Tweet posted in November.
- Atrocities denied -
One example is a Facebook page called Ethiopia Current Issues Fact Check, a self-declared "government website". Despite the name and blue tick, the account does not promote independent fact-checking but rather publishes pro-Abiy posts seeking to discredit coverage critical of the intervention in Tigray.
The leader's sympathisers also attacked an Amnesty International report released in February of Eritrean soldiers killing civilians in the Ethiopian city of Axum in November 2020. After initially denying the report, Ethiopian authorities eventually confirmed Eritrean troops had entered the country and carried out the massacre.
AFP Fact Check debunked a widely shared false story by the state-run Ethiopian Herald newspaper alleging that the US had conducted its own investigation into the incident and found no evidence of the atrocities.
Pro-rebel campaigners have also been engaged in spreading disinformation.
AFP Fact Check found that one online user altered an image of Ethiopian troops to make it look like rebels advancing on the capital Addis Ababa. Another alleged that an old photo taken during Ethiopia's 1980s droughts showed a starving woman in present-day Tigray.
AFP Fact Check also debunked a post first published on Twitter falsely claiming that the African Union had asked its staff to leave Ethiopia. The investigation revealed that the account appears to support the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).
- Role of diaspora -
Experts note that Ethiopia's diaspora has played a key role in promoting disinformation for both sides.
Social media accounts of groups like the pro-insurgent Omna Tigray and Stand With Tigray or the pro-government Global Ethiopia Advocacy Network and Geda Media Network all list their contacts and locations outside of Ethiopia.
Grassroots online activists have "impacted which narratives spread on Twitter about the crisis in Tigray, despite limited access to verifiable information about the actual situation on the ground", according to the US-run Digital Forensic Research Lab.
Western media have also become a target in the battle for information domination.
Abiy supporters are accusing foreign news outlets of publishing false narratives about the war in northern Ethiopia.
Alphonse Shiundu of fact-checking organisation Africa Check said this was partly due to some international media failing to "capture the correct context while reporting about the conflict thus ending up with misleading stories that anger locals".
"Ethiopians are reacting to what they see as unfair coverage in the international media where criticisms of Ethiopian government abuses are widely reported, but alleged human rights violations committed by the Tigrayan rebels do not generate the same level of attention," he said.
