Is there a Republican death wish? Check out this link.

In the social sciences it's  rare to see a simple, clear, unequivocal relationship between two variables. People are complex, issues are multi-faceted, categories are often fuzzy, good data hard to come by.

That's what makes the graph in this article from The Daily Kos, "A Simple Actuarial Analysis" so mind-blowing.

The x-axis is the county-by-county percentage of Trump voters in the 2020 election.

The y-axis is the number of Covid deaths per 100,000 residents in those counties between 7/10/21 and 9/7/21.

Please take a look and come to your own conclusion.

US Capitol, January 6, 2021

Credit: Brett Davis/Flickr

MUST-READ ESSAY BY TIMOTHY SNYDER ON AMERICA'S NEW "MEMORY LAWS"

 Six US states have recently passed laws or guidelines limiting what can be taught about race and racism in US history and in the US today. Twelve more states are considering similar legislation.

                                                 Credit: Patrick Hoesley/Creative Commons

This isn't just a slippery slope; it's a slime-coated declivity that tramples vital facts underfoot and elevates an official narrative and the feelings of discomfort that facts may cause into the arbiters of what can and cannot be taught.

In the June 29th edition of the New York Times Magazine, Yale professor and author Timothy Snyder has gifted us a compelling essay about this dangerous movement, entitled The War on History is a War on Democracy.

I'd add that this isn't just a war on democracy, it's a war on reason and reality. 

If you haven't done so already, please take the time to read it.

---

REA 7/13/21

HOW IS THE US DOING VS COVID-19 COMPARED TO THE REST OF THE WORLD?

 Just a quick note as of Sunday, October 11, 2020.

Credit: geralt/pixabay

The US has 4.25% of the world's population.

To date we've suffered 21.17% of the total recorded cases of Covid-19. That's 7,958,612 documented cases in the US.

But we have a great medical system, so our death rate is much lower, right?

Sorry, but our death rate is almost identical, 20.03% of the total deaths. That's 219,343 Americans who have died from the coronavirus in the nine months since the first documented case, January 20, 2020. That represents an average of 828 covid-19 deaths per day, or almost 5800 per week.

For another comparison, so far documented cases for the whole world equal 4,833 cases per million people. In the US we've chalked up 24,005 cases per million. We've had just under 5 times as many cases per million.

The world as a whole has incurred 139 documented covid-19 deaths per million. The US 662. The US has suffered 4.76 times as many deaths per million.

You can draw your own conclusions as to how we're doing and who's responsible.

Here's my nominee:

FIRST THEY CAME

Trump Hugging the Flag

Credit: nymag.com

First, they came for the news media, crying "fake news," promoting "alternative facts" and denying the reality of any unfavorable reports or evidence, and we did nothing.

Then they came for the "aliens" and immigrants, and though concerned, we did nothing.

Then they came for judges whose legal rulings prevented the separation and caging of migrant children at the border, and, though protesting, we did nothing.

Then they came for Homeland Security officials whose warnings of Russian election interference they rejected, and though surprised, we did nothing.

Then they came for the FBI Director who would not pledge complete loyalty, but it was 'complicated', and other concerns were cited, and we did nothing.

Then they came for the Attorney General whose required recusal opened the door for the Mueller Investigation, and who was no Roy Cohn, and, we did nothing.

Then they came for the Investigators themselves, accusing them of being "deep state"agents and labeling the investigation a "total hoax," and we did nothing.

Then they came for the "whistleblowers" who revealed corrupt dealings with a foreign power to undermine a potential political rival, and we, ultimately, did nothing.

Then they came for the Inspectors General in every Federal agency where questions were raised about administrative corruption, and we grumbled, but did nothing.

Then they came for the Public Health experts and officials, charging a "cabal" of scientists with undermining the President by promoting the "hoax" of a pandemic and the wearing of masks, and we've done nothing.

Then they came for peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors, smearing them as "subversives" and "anarchists" bent only on destruction, deserving of "retribution," and threatening to charge them with sedition, and we've done nothing.

Finally, they came for the Electoral System, claiming it to be "rigged," against them, suppressing voting, cutting short the census, shrinking the Postal Service, and undermining public faith in the integrity of the most basic mechanism of a functioning democracy, and so far, we've done..... 

-----

Les Adler

-----

This piece was inspired by Martin Niemöller, a prominent Lutheran minister and courageous opponent of Adolf Hitler. Niemöller survived seven years in Nazi concentration camps.

WHERE ARE YOU ON THE BLUE WHALE SCALE?

I just read a report about the 12 richest Americans, whose combined wealth now totals more than $ 1 trillion.

Now I'm trying to get a feeling for what $1,000,000,000,000 means in terms not just of wealth but of power and influence. Here's one approach, my blue-whale-scale.

The median American household is currently worth around $97,300. That means half of US households are worth more and half are worth less. For convenience, let's round that $97,300 up to $100,000. Remember, this is net worth, not income.

The ratio between $1,000,000,000,000 and $100,000 is a factor of 10,000,000.

That means that the twelve richest Americans are worth ten million times as much as the median US household. Or that it would take the combined worth of ten million median households to equal the  wealth of the 12 richest Americans.

Blue Whales can reach a length of 100 feet and weigh up to 330,000 pounds. Why am I bringing this up?

Credit: pikrepo.com

Let's represent the dozen people whose combined worth is a trillion dollars by a blue whale, earth's largest and heaviest animal. A blue whale might weigh in at 100 metric tonnes or 100,000 kg.

Now, picture a table that matches up wealth with weight. That's our blue-whale-scale. At the top is $1,000,000,000,000, the blue whale and 100,000 kg.  We'll keep dividing by ten as the sea creatures get smaller and lighter along with the wealth they represent.

For example, the next step down would be $100,000,000,000. Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are worth more than $100 billion each. On the whale scale, they would weigh in at 10 metric tonnes each and might be represented by one of the smaller whales, say a Minke, "just" 10 meters long.

It takes four divisions by ten to get down to the wealthiest one percent of US households, those worth $10,000,000 and up. On our whale scale they would weigh in at a measly one kilogram, or 2.2 pounds. That's way below whales now; closer, say, to a decent-sized trout.

We need to divide by another 100 to get to the median US household's roughly $100,000 net worth. On our blue-whale-scale, that family would weigh in at just 10 grams, about the same as two nickels. In the fish world, that might be represented by a sardine; you know, the kind you buy packed into a tin, or that swarm by the thousands as shown below.

A school of sardines near Costa Rica

Credit: Wikimedia

As blue whales make their majestic way through the oceans, I doubt that they worry much about, or perhaps even notice, the millions or billions of tiny fish who happen to share the ocean with them. I'm guessing it's the same with the multi-billionaires with whom we happen to share the economic, financial and political systems that we--like fish in the sea--live within.

Of course, if you're below the wealth median--for example in the 25 percent of US families whose net worth is $10,000 or less-you're not represented by a sardine on the whale scale, but by a guppy or a minnow.

And if you're in the 20 percent of American families whose net worth is close to (or below) zero--the best you can hope for is to be represented by krill--the swarms of minute sea creatures on whom--go figure--those huge blue whales feed.

Krill

Credit: wikimedia commons

---
For Robert Reich's take on this issue, click here.

REA

A SOURCE FOR ACCURATE AND UP-TO-THE-MINUTE CORONAVIRUS/COVID-19 STATISTICS

 If you want to keep track of how many Covid-19 cases and deaths have occurred worldwide, country-by-country or state-by-state in the US, the best source I've found is https://ncov2019.live/.

Credit: Avi Schiffmann

The site was created and is maintained by a remarkable high-school student named Avi Schiffmann. It's updated in real time, and provides an accurate, detailed basis for understanding how the pandemic is progressing and changing worldwide.

-----

REA

COVID-19 IN THE US--WHEN CAN WE STOP BEING EXCEPTIONAL?

The following statistics come from ncov2019.live/,  a great source for up-to-the-minute covid-19 data.

I'm just going to present some of the numbers as of September 4, 2020. You can come to your own conclusions.

The US represents 4.3 percent of the world population.

We've had 24 percent of the recorded Covid-19 cases in the world. 

We've had 2.2 million more cases than India, the next most impacted country, India's population is more than four times that of the US.

We've suffered 22 percent of the world's Covid-19 deaths; 191,221 as of 9/4/20.

Credit: Pixabay

Covid-19 deaths per million population as of 9/4/20


Peru                                            890
Belgium                                      853
Spain                                          629
United Kingdom                        611
Chile                                            600
Italy                                             588
Brazil                                           587

UNITED STATES                      578     

Sweden                                        577
...      
                                    
Japan                                           471
France                                         470
...

Netherlands                                364
Ireland                                         359
...

Norway                                        264
Canada                                        243
South Africa                                245
Switzerland                                 232
Argentina                                    209
...

Russia                                           121
Germany                                      112
Denmark                                      108


WORLD                                        113

...

India                                                 50
Norway                                             49
Australia                                           29
Hong Kong                                       13
Singapore                                           5
China                                                  3
Iceland                                                0

To save you the calculations, the US has suffered 5.12 times as many deaths per million than the world as a whole.

Given that we've lost 191,388 people to Covid-19 as of today, if we had managed to just be mediocre, to keep our death rate down to the global average, we would have saved nearly 150,000 lives. Wouldn't it be great just to be average?

In comparison, here are some statistics about US war casualties:

Persian Gulf War       2,586

Korean War               36,574

Vietnam                      58,220

World War I             116,516

World War II           405,399

--------

And I'll add 9/11         2,977     
-----

REA

100,000 COVID-19 DEATHS IN US--MORE THAN HALF COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED

The United States just suffered its 100,000th documented death from the coronavirus.

The true number of coronavirus caused or related deaths in the US is probably closer to 130,000.

As more states and localities "open up," this toll of loss and grief will keep rising, and almost certainly will speed up.

". . . while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
(from The Second Coming by W. B.Yeats)Photo credit: Michael Vadon

As reported in the New York Times, researchers at Columbia University modeled the dynamics of the pandemic and calculated that if the United States had taken decisive action to limit the spread of the virus by March 1, just two weeks earlier than we belatedly did, 54,000 lives would have been spared.

To start to understand what this means, look at the front page of the New York Times listing the names of 1000 people from across the nation who have died from COVID-19. Then picture 53 more pages like that, memorializing 53,000 Americans who didn't need to die in this pandemic.

Then remember that as late as March 10, the deluded narcissist who promised to Make America Great Again was still blathering, "It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."

Unfortunately, even amplified by Fox News and echoed by right-wing true believers, his magic words had no effect on this virulent, deadly virus. Reality inevitably trumps politics, polemics and magical thinking.

Please remember come November--54,000 needless deaths, and counting . . .

REA

Note: The US has 4.3% of the world's population. We've manged to produce 28.6% of COVID-19 deaths. This isn't the fault of China, the World Health Organization, Barack Obama or Joe Biden. The buck stops squarely on the desk in the oval office, no matter what the current resident of the White House would like us to believe.

Much more on how Trump made this pandemic far worse than it needed to be--Dan Benbow details 370 ways that Trump turned this into a man-made catastrophe. Read his piece here.

SPEEDING PAST ANOTHER TRAGIC COVID-19 MILESTONE

On April 27, just 11 days ago,  I posted a piece noting that the world had just passed the grim milestone of three million COVID-19 cases and 210,000 deaths. It took this highly contagious and dangerous virus just 11 more days to infect another million people and kill another 65,000.  In the US during those same 11 days, 320,000 more people caught the virus and more than 22,000 died. 

To try to remind ourselves that these are people, not statistics, that means that every minute of those 11 days four husbands, wives, fathers, mothers and children died miserable deaths from this pandemic disease.

Anti-quarantine demonstrators in Colombus, Ohio, 4/18/20

Credit: M/Creative Commons

Nonetheless, countries, states and cities around the world are "re-opening," loosening the restrictions that have, when applied with determination and followed in good faith, slowed and in a few places even stopped the virus. This is said to be necessary to get the economy moving again. 

What is not said nearly as loudly if at all is that this promised economic recovery will be purchased at the price of tens or hundreds of thousands of human lives. Nor should we forget that the majority of those lives cut short will not be those of the rich, nor or the well-educated, highly skilled occupants of the kinds of jobs that can be managed largely online. No. Most of those who die will be ordinary people whose jobs require face-to-face contact or working close to others, and who have no choice but to go back to work when they're told to. 

The boosters shout, "Liberate out state,"  or "Let's get the economy going again." Trump eggs them on, and so it is happening now. That despite the fact that few places in the US are in a condition to do so safely. 

Let's at least be honest about the price, and who will pay it. 

REA

Rhyme or Reason: Responses to the Pandemic

• 
  

Daniel Defoe's classic novel "Journal of the Plague Year" based on the experience of London in 1665 details the understandable but often irrational behavior of both leaders and citizens coming to terms with the deadly epidemic sweeping the City during that year in which London lost between 14 and 21 percent of its population.

Image from the Great London Plague of 1665

Credit: Science Source

First came the very human response of denial: surely this will pass swiftly; perhaps it is limited to very few people or certain regions of the city; perhaps it can be contained; perhaps when the weather warms it will magically vanish; perhaps prayer will help.


Then distortion of the data soon followed to support these theories. As bodies piled up or were carted away, records were altered to attribute the deaths to other, more usual, acceptable, or even invented causes. Naturally, those responsible for affected districts sought to avoid the blame or opprobrium of being associated with the disease, and thus reported these false accounts to their superiors.

As in every case we know of from ancient Rome, to Europe in the Middle Ages, to modern-day China, actual facts about a growing epidemic, no matter how tightly controlled by the authorities, will be leaked to the general public, with predictable responses. Spreading like wildfire, often blowing limited or incomplete bits of information completely out of context, rumors themselves contribute to the impact of the contagion.

One all-too-human tendency inevitably leads down the path of stigmatizing easy-to-identify 'others' as the source. Another is the search for quick cures: rituals, signs or amulets to ward off the illness; or in other cases the promotion of folk-medicines or sometimes dangerous potions claimed by others to heal the sick.

From the perspective of authorities anxious to avoid challenges to their power, the next step is often to portray the disease and disaster as emanating from foreign sources, both external and internal. During the Antonine smallpox plague in ancient Rome, Christians were portrayed as the disease's source since they refused to serve the Roman Gods. During the Middle Ages in Europe, popular fear and anger during the scourge of the Black Death was directed against the Jews who were charged with and often murdered for poisoning the wells regardless of the fact that they drank the same water and often suffered from the same diseases.

If all this sounds familiar in the age of Covid-19, it should. But in this twenty-first century, we all should know better. Plagues and pandemics, despite President Trump's declarations, do not "magically go away by April;" nor are they "hoaxes" concocted by political enemies; or malicious evils carried by immigrants or sent by rival powers; nor can they be cured by untested potions, wishes or by "injecting disinfectants."


"History does not repeat itself, But it does rhyme," Mark Twain is alleged to have said.

In an age defined by science and deep medical knowledge, not myth, mystery and ignorance, isn't it time for us to finally bring the rhyme scheme up to date? A few nations, including Australia, New Zealand and South Korea are applying science and expertise to defeat our current plague. Can we do the same?

-----

Les Adler

WHAT DIDN'T HE KNOW AND WHEN DIDN'T HE KNOW IT?

What didn't Trump know and when didn't he know it?

Concerning Trump in general and his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in particular, the simple answer is that he knows nothing, always. Despite being "a very stable genius," perennial ignorance is his stock in trade. It lets him avoid responsibility across the board. Unlike President Truman, the buck never stops at Trump's desk (or if it does, like Macavity, Trump wasn't there. He never got the memo.)

Harry Truman, 1959--the buck stops here

Credit: Levan Ramishvili/flickr

Unfortunately for America, sometimes ignorance, especially arrogantly willful ignorance, has costs, real-world impacts that can't be erased by shifting blame to someone else (right now WHO's on first), smearing someone with a smarmy nickname, or filing a lawsuit.

MACAVITY'S NOT THERE

Credit: Pixabay

As I write this, 565,835 Americans have been sickened by the coronovirus, and 22,850 have died. That's more cases than the next three worst-hit countries combined, and more deaths than any other country. So much for MAGA and "we're number one."

Tragically, neither those deaths nor those yet to come will make a difference to Trump's core supporters; his approval ratings have ranged from 41 to 49 percent as the pandemic has raged.  Still, for those of us who at least try to live in the real world, it might be interesting to figure out what Trump could have known, and ought to have known, and when he chose to ignore it and go with his--also brilliant--gut.

We now know that multiple agencies were trying to alert Trump to the approaching tsunami starting in January. These included the National Security Council, Health and Human Services, the CDC, Homeland Security, the VA and the Pentagon--at least 10 high-level warnings between January 18 and February 25. Clearly enough of these early warnings got through to him to stimulate him to do what comes naturally to him--closing borders. On January 31 he banned most travelers coming from China. 

Domestically, however, Trump presented a very different face to the U.S. public. From January 20th through mid-March, Trump blatantly downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic. His consistent message was "no worries," "under control," and "it will disappear." Finally, in mid-March, and some six weeks too late, he began to take the pandemic seriously in terms of what should be done within the U.S.

What he could have known if he were capable of and willing to listen to experts, was that viruses like SARS-CoV-2 have the capacity to go viral--duh--for the number of people sickened or killed to increase exponentially.  If he had digested that bit of information, his native genius could have led him to the conclusion that days count. In a country the size of the US, putting effective control measures into place a week or two sooner could mean the difference between a few thousand deaths and a few hundred thousand deaths .

We can see this clearly if we compare New York and California. New York dithered while California took quick and serious steps to slow the spread of the virus.  As of 4/13/20, New York has registered 195,031 cases and suffered 10,056 deaths. California has just one-eighth as many cases, 23,428 and one-fifteenth as many deaths, 675. The contrast becomes even starker when you consider that California has twice the population of New York. So, per population, California has just one-sixteenth the number of cases and one-thirtieth he number of deaths. If California had failed to act as quickly and decisively as it did, 20,000 more people might have died.

What the experts tried to get across to Trump starting in January is that when you're dealing with the potentially exponential explosion of a fatal disease, there isn't room for half measures nor time for delay. Trump only heard what he wanted to hear, and reality steamrolled over all his magical thinking, political positioning and base-soothing blather to remind us that ignorance can be fatal. That makes Trump even more dangerous than we thought just a few months ago.

-----

REA

-----
6/28/20:  Just to add one more data point to the ongoing drama of what Trump didn't know and when didn't he know it, we now have the scandal of Russian intelligence paying a bounty to the Taliban for the murder of US soldiers. As usual, Trump missed the briefing, and the next briefing, and the one after that . . .

ONE MILLION CASES AND GROWING FAST

The official count of coronavirus or COVID-19 cases passed one million worldwide early today (4/2/20).** But that number is already out of date, since the count is growing by at least 70,000 per day. As I write this in the late afternoon, 20,000 more people have been diagnosed, and 6,000 have died. That's just today.

Wall Street in lockdown

(along with Main Street)

Credit: Dan Nguyen/Flickr

Tragically, the US is number one among the nations on this statistic.  Despite having less than 5 percent of the world's population, we've incurred nearly 25 percent of the COVID-19 cases, and 11 percent of the deaths. (One day after this posting, the US sped past a grim milestone--1000 COVID-19 deaths in a day).

Many factors are contributing to our unfortunate leadership in this area. Our healthcare system is focused on providing top-quality care to people who are well off or well insured, but lacks a comparable commitment to public health, In response to a problem that requires a  quick, coordinated, disciplined response, and a response that requires personal sacrifice, our national love of individualism and our more recent Ayn Randian valuation of putting oneself first certainly contributed.

Still, if we're going to assign responsibility for where we are today, an awful lot needs to go to our tweeter-in-chief, Donald Trump. As anyone whose memory has not been wiped clean by the Ministry of Truth knows. Trump treated the looming pandemic as--take your choice--a hoax, a Democrat scheme to discredit him, just like impeachment; as a threat to his re-election; as something totally under control; as an ordinary, relatively trivial event, like the flu; as another reason to close borders; as something that could be cleared away by Easter, and, even if it risked thousands of deaths, should not be allowed to upset the economy. With his narcissistic, impulsive and erratic leadership, the US was ill prepared, slow to respond, and still extremely spotty in dealing with this grave crisis.

By the way, the fact that even as thousands of Americans die every day--deaths that could have been prevented by prompt and well-informed leadership, Trump's approval ratings are approaching 50 percent suggests that the Ministry of Truth* is doing a bang-up job.

The big question is how we proceed from here. The US is still at the beginning of the epidemic. Nothing that we've done so far in the US has "flattened the curve." Instead, COVID-19 cases in the US are on a steeply rising exponential trajectory.  Experts tell us that social distancing--staying at home and avoiding as many contacts with other people as possible-- is crucial. So is hand washing. If everyone, sick, possibly sick or well, wears a face mask in public, that may help.

A separate, perhaps more crucial factor is testing as many people as possible in order to isolate people who are shedding the virus, along with tracking and isolating their contacts. Where this has been done, for example in South Korea, it has controlled the spread of the virus without shutting down the country, businesses and the economy. Again, unfortunately, the US lags far, far behind on testing.

What lies ahead is in our hands. A swift, strong, coordinated, nationwide attack on the virus can still save thousands or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of live. The two key questions are:

Will enough Americans wake up and do what's needed, or will half of them remain in the dark and asleep even as the plague surges towards them?

Will government, starting with Trump, get its act together, and in time?

-----

* For another example of Trump's Ministry of Truth revising history as we speak, click here.

-----

** The number of cases worldwide passed two million on 4/15/20. In other words, the global doubling time for the virus is around 13 days. We'll see if the enormous sacrifices that nations and individuals are making are making a difference. When will we suffer 4,000,000 cases?

REA

HOW MANY WILL DIE FROM THE CORONAVIRUS IN THE US? TWO INTERACTIVE CALCULATORS TO SEE FOR YOURSELF

The math is simple. Plug in what percentage of US citizens will eventually catch the virus and what percent of those will die. The New York Times provides a convenient--and very sobering--calculator so you you can see for yourself. Just click here.

This is the enemy--Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2

Credit: NIAID//RML

If 40 percent get the disease and just 1 percent or them die, the coronavirus will kill more Americans this year than heart disease and cancer--the two leading causes of death--combined.

At least to some extent both variables are under our control. The number of people who contract the disease can be limited by our personal behavior and by mandated closures and quarantines. Having tests available to quickly identify carriers of the disease and their contacts is crucial. Unfortunately, the US lags far behind other countries on this critical factor. The percentage of infected people who die depends on the availability and quality of health care for them, and, in particular, keeping the number of cases at any given time within the capacity of the health care system.

We can only hope that we, as individuals and through our local, state and federal governments, will rise to this enormous challenge. If not, many of us will fall.

A sobering and urgent note: In the extremely important article here, you'll find a more detailed interactive calculator. You can see that in the United States, the difference between doing nothing to stop the pandemic and a strict and effective nationwide intervention NOW could mean the difference between 10,000,000 deaths and 4,000 deaths! Before you decide that that sounds crazy, read the article.

REA

Note 3/30/20:  In this comparison of coronavirus cases in New York vs California, you can see what difference even a few days lag in imposing strict stay-at-home orders makes. California--population 39.5 million, first state to impose strict controls: current # of cases 6358, deaths 132. New York--population 19.5 million, delayed a week before imposing controls: current # of cases 60,679, deaths 1063. The number of cases per population in NY is 19 times greater than in California, and the number of deaths per population 17 times greater. What a tragic difference a week's delay makes.

A SOBERING STATISTIC: ALCOHOL-RELATED DEATHS IN US HAVE DOUBLED SINCE 1999

By analyzing death certificates, researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) in Bethesda, Maryland, found that the rate of alcohol-related deaths in the US increased by 50 percent between 1999 and 2017 and the number of alcohol-related deaths per year doubled. This new research adds to the growing body of evidence that the mental, physical and social well-being of Americans is deteriorating.

 Alcohol-related deaths in US have doubled since 1999

Photo credit: Pixabay

Neuroscientist Aaron White and colleagues at the NIAAA analyzed data taken from all death certificates filed in the US between 1999 and 2017. Using listed causes of death and contributing factors they found that the rate of alcohol-related deaths of Americans 16 years old or older rose from 16.9 to 25.5 per 100,000 and the number of deaths per year doubled, from 35,914 to 72,558. Alcohol caused or contributed to the death of 944,880 Americans during that 18-year span. Their findings were published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

"Rates increased for all age-groups except 160 to 20 and 75+," the researchers write, "and for all racial and ethnic groups except for initial decreases among Hispanic males and [Non-Hispanic] Blacks followed by increases."

Almost every group was impacted. The sharpest increase was among Non-Hispanic White women. Rates of acute alcohol-related deaths rose most among people aged 55 to 64, while death rates from chronic alcohol use surged most in younger people, aged 25 to 34, and accounted for the majority of alcohol-related deaths.

As worrisome as these documented trends are, the authors point out that previous research has shown that death certificates understate what's really happening; the actual number of alcohol-related deaths is likely significantly higher than they were able to document.

The authors of this paper don't speculate about the causes of this trend. We know that they are part of the growing number of "deaths from despair" that have characterized the US for the past decades. Other researchers cite both economic and social disparities and declines  as at least part of the cause. Needless to say, it's a multifaceted problem and requires an equally multifaceted set of solutions. However, until the current political balance shifts in Washington, the dislocations and inequities that underline this tragic slide are not likely to be acknowledged or addressed.

RENEWABLES BEAT COAL IN US FOR THE FIRST TIME

Every so often there's a bit of good news about the race to replace fossil fuels with renewables before time runs out for a habitable planet Earth. Today's ray of light is the news that renewable energy capacity--the amount of power that can be generated from solar, wind and water--beat out the combined capacity of all the coal-fired power plants in the US for the first time.

We need more windmills and less CO2!

This milestone appears in the latest Energy Infrastructure Update from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. It was a photo finish, with renewable generating capacity now 21.56 percent of the total while coal dropped to 21.55 percent. Not a huge difference, but with renewables rapidly growing and coal shrinking, it's a moment worth noting.

Of course, if we are to maintain a livable climate, we need a lot more of such wins, and soon, and not just in the US, but worldwide.

WHAT'S RIGHT WITH THIS PICTURE? NEW ZEALAND RESPONDS TO GUN VIOLENCE

Here in the US, whenever there's a mass shooting we re-enter a futile, paralytic cycle. Gun-control advocates use the tragedy to argue once again for stricter laws. Second-Amendment advocates launch a counter attack, saying "now is not the time." Their supporters in Congress offer "thoughts and prayers." Their critics point out their hypocrisy. Gun-lovers rush to buy more guns. Nothing changes. And, within a few days we endure yet another massacre.

 "This is not New Zealand"

Credit: AP/Vincent Yu

As we know, a week ago New Zealand was shocked when a white racist gunman murdered 50 people at their prayers. The nation united in revulsion. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke movingly about the victims, vowed never to mention the shooter's name in order to deprive him of the notoriety he sought, and promised to enact stricter gun-control laws and ban semi-automatic weapons entirely as soon as April 11.

Most remarkably, at least some New Zealanders are voluntarily turning their weapons over to the police to be destroyed.

There's a problem. The government responds. People respond. It sounds so sensible. It must feel very good to be part of a functional society and government.

Why not here?

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Click here for a more in-depth commentary on this subject.

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GUNS, YOUNG PEOPLE AND SUICIDE

Last year, nearly 40,000 people died in the U.S. from the use of firearms. Among those deaths, roughly 60 percent were suicides. And among those were more than 1000 young people between the ages of 10 and 19; nearly three children or teenagers every day.

As a quick internet search will show you, there's a lot of information available to parents, teachers and other concerned people about how to reduce the risk that a child will commit suicide. Unfortunately, many of these well-meaning and supposedly authoritative sources gloss over or fail even to mention the single biggest step to take to reduce the number of suicides by young people.

That step is--get guns out of their homes.

Young people and guns--a lethal combination

Credit: publicdomainpictures.net

New research from the Boston School of Public Health (BUSPH) shows that on a state-by-state basis, every ten percent increase in gun ownership increases the youth suicide rate by 27 percent. That means that young people in states like Alaska, with the highest rate of gun ownership, were five times more likely to kill themselves than young people in states like New Jersey with the lowest percentage of guns in homes.

The rate of gun ownership varies greatly from state to state. The 10 states with the highest rates averaged more than one gun for every two households (52.5%), while the 10 states with the lowest gun ownership averaged just one gun per every five households.

Remarkably, gun ownership outweighed every other factor--poverty, race, educational levels, family structure, mental illness, drug and alcohol use, you name it--contributing to youth suicide. "This study demonstrates that the strongest single predictor of a state's youth suicide rate is the prevalence of household gun ownership in that state," says Michael Siegel, a community health researcher at BUSPH and the study's co-author.

The bottom line is clear. If you want to reduce the number of children and teenagers who kill themselves, the first and most significant thing to do is to get guns out of their homes.

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You can find the full study here.

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Young people in the U.S. are far more at risk from gun-related violence of all kinds than youth in other countries. You can read a zerospinzone post about that here.

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THE BIG PICTURE-THE HISTORY, SIZE, SHAPE AND IMPACT OF RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION

If you're like me, every so often you come across something--an idea, a talk, an event--that ties all kinds of things together and makes them perfectly clear. This 47-minute video from the New York Times entitled Operation InfeKtion did that for me, putting the drip-by-drip revelations about Russian intervention to divide the US and help elect Trump into the context of Russia's, and before that the Soviet Union's multi-decade practice and perfection of the art of disinformation.

 

Remember Pizzagate?

Just one of many disruptive interventions. 

Photo credit: Blink O'fanay

 

I don't usually take the time to watch videos, but this very clear, well researched and well made piece from the Times was worth every minute. If you want to understand the origin, goals, scope and sophistication of Russia's disinformation apparatus, and how that all came together to stir up confusion and division among Amerians, denigrate Hillary Clinton and boost Trump, click here and watch the video. As I post this piece, the video has been watched by just 145,000 people. It needs to be seen by 145,000,000.

As many commentators have pointed out, the US is far from innocent when it comes to intervening in other nation's elections and internal affairs. Just note the 800 military bases that the US maintains in some 70 countries. However, that fact doesn't relieve us of the responsibility to understand what has been and is still being done to us by a very skillful, practiced and determined adversary, or to at least start to learn how to counter it.

The report reverse-engineers seven key ingredients to a successful disinformation campaign. Once you've seen the list, you'll start to see them everywhere, contributing to the miasma of misinformation and disinformation that we are immersed in. Here they are:

1. Find the cracks in the targeted society.
2. Create a big, dramatic, emotionally charged lie.
3. Wrap that lie around a kernel of truth.
4. Conceal your hand.
5. Find some "useful idiots" to back it up or propagate it.
6. If you're exposed, deny, deny, deny.
7. Play the long game.

To which I would add, in this era of social media, "Repeat, repeat, repeat on as many platforms as possible."

Russia's "meddling" in our 2016 elections may have been their most successful disinformation program, but this documentary shows that it was far from their first, and will not be the last.

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GUNS AND KIDS IN THE US

We all know that guns are a hot-button issue here in the United States. The Constitution grants and the Supreme Court affirms Americans' right to bear arms, and we do that to a fault. According to the Independent, US citizens own 40 percent of all the privately owned arms in the world, more than the next 25 most heavily armed countries combined. That's a remarkable 12 guns for every 10 of us, men, woman and children.

Many of those 393 million guns don't just sit unloaded, securely stored and unavailable to children. While millions of responsible gun owners do keep their weapons safely away from children, millions do not. Here's one sad result whose magnitude shocked me: According to Stephanie Chao, a pediatric surgeon and professor of surgery at Stanford University, children aged 15-19 in the US are 82 times more likely to die from gun homicide than in any other developed country.

Nearly 3000 US children die from firearm injuries every year

Photo credit: Mediapart

Please excuse my emphasis here: American teenagers are not twice as likely to die from a deliberate gunshot, not 10 times more likely, not 50 times more likely, but 82 times more likely. Than in any other developed country.

The statistics for younger children, and for suicide and accidental deaths from guns are not quite so horrendous, but the US is a consistent and clear outlier on every measure relating to gun deaths.

As a pediatric surgeon dealing with trauma every day, Chao would very much like to find ways to reduce or prevent these tragic deaths. Here's a clue that she found. State by state, laws make a difference.

"Firearm-related injuries are the second leading cause of death among children in the United States," she says, "but we found a clear discrepancy in where those deaths happen that corresponds with the strength of states' firearm legislation. In states with lenient laws, children die at alarmingly greater rates."

How much difference can gun laws make? Chao and her colleagues found that in states with the most relaxed gun laws 5 children out of every 100,000 die from gun-related injuries every year. States with the strictest gun-control laws cut that death rate nearly in half, down to 2.6 children out of every 100,000.

Saving half of children at risk from gun-related death would be a very good thing. Saving all of them would be even better. "Each and every one of these deaths is preventable," says Chao. "Our study demonstrates that state-level legislation prevents children from dying from guns."

When it comes to our children, perhaps we can get away from slogans and fiery rhetoric, and work towards sensible gun-safety laws in more states. Three thousand US children don't need to die from gunshots next year.

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As I write this, the 2018 midterm elections are just a day away. If you would like to find out about gun-control legislation and pro-gun-control candidates in your state, here's an excellent resource. Your vote could save young lives.

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There's a strong relationship between gun ownership and youth suicide. You can read a zerospinzone post about that here.

  

US AT ESPECIALLY HIGH RISK FROM UNCHECKED CARBON EMISSIONS

How much economic damage does a ton of carbon pumped into the atmosphere really do? That's the question an international team of climate scientists and economists set out to answer on a country-by-country basis. While previous studies have suggested that poor countries are more vulnerable to climate change, these new results reveal the opposite--a large and complex economy like that of the US magnifies the impacts of a destabilized climate. It turns out that the US is especially vulnerable.

Some of the most obvious impacts to the US of a changing climate 

Credit: Union of Concerned Scientists/NOAA

"It makes a lot of sense because the larger your economy is, the more you have to lose," says Kate Ricke, the study's lead author of the recent Nature Climate Change article. "Still, it's surprising just how consistently the U.S. is one of the biggest losers, even when compared to other large economies." 

Other countries who will take major hits due to climate change include India, China and Saudi Arabia.

Ricke and her colleagues estimate that current levels of carbon emissions are already costing the US economy around $250 billion per year. That's nearly $2000 per US household. Even more worrisome, they point out, climate change doesn't just hit us on a year-by-year basis, it's likely to take an increasing  chunk out of America's economic rate of growth. Like a ballooning interest rate on a mortgage, the costs don't just add up, they multiply.

When the researchers take this cumulative economic erosion into account, their estimates of the long-term impact of unchecked global warming and resulting climate change are up to ten times greater than current mainstream estimates, for example those of the US government.

The authors emphasize that these higher estimates of the economic costs of "business as usual" make it clear that it's in the selfish best interest of countries like the US with highly developed economies to take steps--such as a carbon tax--that would actually match the real-world costs and help rein in global warming and climate destabilization.

In an invited commentary,  Frances Moore, an environmental economist at the University of California, Davis, writes: 

"In other words, based on just their own self-interest, these countries should be acting unilaterally to dramatically cut GHG emissions. The fact that we do not see this yet suggests that damages are overestimated or costs are underestimated, that countries have not yet recognized the risk posed by climate change, or that sub-national political constituencies have been able to effectively block ambitious mitigation policies that would otherwise be in their national interest."

To those obstructionist political constituencies including, it appears, the entire Republican Party and our current president, this should be a clarion call to do what Kevin Conrad, representing Papua New Guinea, told the United States delegation to the Bali climate conference in 2008--"lead, follow, or get out of the way."