Majority of Americans now approve of Trump’s management of the coronavirus

According to a new poll released by ABC News/Ipsos on Friday, and posted by Politico today, 

"A majority of Americans now approve of President Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new survey, as the administration has issued stricter federal guidelines in recent days and the president has adopted a more public-facing role in combating the disease.

An ABC News/Ipsos poll released Friday reports that 55 percent of respondents approve of Trump's management of the public health crisis, while 43 percent disapprove. The latest figures represent a boost in the president's rating from the previous iteration of the survey, published one week ago, which showed only 43 percent approval for Trump and 54 percent disapproval." Full article here

In light of the limited supplies of critical medical equipment and PPE gear on hand, and with an ever-increasing demand, that’s quite a reversal of political fortune, I’d say.  So…

Question: Do you believe Donald Trump will be re-elected as POTUS?  Should he be?  Why/why not?  Let's discuss.

Thanks for recommending.

Book Review: Introduction to Legal Reasoning

Case law: the law as established by the outcome of former cases, sometimes called common law or judge made law.

Statutory law: written laws that express the will of the legislature, as distinguished from case law and constitutional law.

Constitutional law: the law as established by federal and state constitutions and intended to reflect the will of the drafters.

Context

This book explains the early origins of what has become the bitter modern liberal vs conservative dispute over what is constitutional and what isn't. The American legal tradition, “American realism” was that judges changed laws as society changed. The system worked very well, until conservatives began to understand in the 1950s and 1960s that American society was changing in ways they bitterly opposed.

Court decisions to require public school desegregation and to uphold civil liberties were seen as outright tyranny that had to be stopped at all costs. Those bitterly hated decisions were a reflection of the American realism legal tradition. In the 1970s and 1980s, the right invented terms like originalism and textualism to give their legal arguments (reflections of conservatism) and to begin to focus their attacks on the American realism tradition in the 1980s and 1990s. In essence, American realism is a direct threat to conservative political and social ideology. Conservative ideology is anti-democratic, authoritarian, hostile to civil liberties and the rule of law, except when it serves conservative ideological agendas.

Conservatives point to their invented originalism, textualism and so forth as accurately reflecting the will of the Founders to give gravitas to their arguments. The fundamental problem with that is that history makes very clear the Founders were locked in bitter disagreement over what is basically the same things that conservatives and liberals fight over today, e.g., big, strong vs small weak central government. The Founders never resolved their disagreements in their lifetimes. American realism reflected the social change of growing public acceptance of a big, strong central government. Conservatives now fight tooth, claw and fang to stop this social change. They rely heavily on dark free speech and anti-democratic tactics to wage this desperate war.

This book puts much of the modern left vs right fights in context. It is important to know something about this book or the subject matter it discusses.

Book review

In his 1949 book, An Introduction to Legal Reasoning, legal scholar and former US Attorney General, Edward H. Levy, describes his vision of the legal process, which is called American Legal Realism (ALR). His book begins with this opening paragraph:

“This is an attempt to describe generally the process of legal reasoning in the field of case law, and in the interpretation of statutes and of the Constitution. It is important that the mechanism of legal reasoning should not be concealed by its pretense. The pretense is that the law is a system of known rules applied by a judge; the pretense has long been under attack. In an important sense legal rules are never clear, and, if a rule had to be clear before it could be imposed, society would be impossible. The mechanism accepts the differences of view and ambiguities of words. It provides for the participation of the community in resolving the ambiguity by providing a forum for the discussion of policy in the gap of ambiguity. On serious controversial questions it makes it possible to take the first step in the direction of what otherwise would be forbidden ends. The mechanism is indispensable to peace in a community.”

Levy is making a point that (i) legal reasoning and decision-making is not a simple application of a law to the facts of a controversy, (ii) ambiguity in the language of laws and the US Constitution is unavoidable but necessary for civil society, and (iii) the law changes over time to accommodate social change. Those three points are central to ALR, which is a process of evolution of the law over time. Although there are differences among scholars about exactly what ALR is, it is generally sees legal reasoning as a process where judges usually, but not always, decide a case on nonlegal grounds and then justify or rationalize their decision by reference to legal doctrines and the language of the applicable law.

Realism vs. formalism: The ALR vision of legal reasoning stands in contrast to legal formalism. Formalism holds that the process is a judge first resorting to the law and then applying the facts of the case to arrive at a decision in a case. Formalism recognizes that many legal principles are needed to account for all the decisions judges make. The core belief is that despite the complexity, there is an underlying logic to the myriad legal principles. The principles are both logically straightforward and easily applied to each case. Clearly, the quoted paragraph rejects formalism as the mechanism that applies to how judges decide cases. Former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was a prominent proponent of the branch of formalism called textualism.

Based on this reviewer’s professional experience with the law, judges decide on whatever process or mechanism they want when circumstances permit. That is particularly true for judges who are political ideologues and the issues at stake are core constitutional principles. Sometimes a law is not significantly ambiguous and the facts of the case make it all but necessary to decide on the basis of formalism. Most of the time, those cases settle out of court before the parties start formal in-court proceedings. Winners and losers in those cases are usually easy to spot, and going to court expends time and money. But for cases that do wind up being formally litigated, the process that ALR envisions is probably the process by which judges usually decide a case.

Levi was the first to recognize that if one ignores the easy cases, the distinctions between case law, statutory and constitutional cases decrease dramatically. That insight offered a different way to envision how the legal reasoning process actually operates.

Of the two opposing views, ALR is far better than formalism at accounting for the incremental changes in how laws are interpreted overt time. The changes tend to (i) accord with changing social norms, technology and the realities of how commerce is conducted, and (ii) the social impacts of changing technology and commerce. Levi is justified in asserting that “the mechanism is indispensable to peace in a community.”

A three-step process in four steps: Levi describe a three-step process of “reasoning from case to case” or “reasoning by example” by which the law evolves:

“The steps are these. Similarity is seen between cases; next the rule of law inherent in the first case is announced; then the rule of law is made applicable to the second case.”

But after that, as society, technology and commerce change, the rule of law can become obsolete and lead to absurd or unintended results. In cases where a rule of law is made without considering larger principles or unforeseeable circumstances, things that are very easy to do, if not necessarily inherent, the rule usually winds up being short-sighted in some way. That raises the need to refine or change the rule, sometimes to the point of it no longer being discernable in cases that arise years or decades later. In some cases, a rule of law simply fades into oblivion. For Levi, reasoning by analogy is the main way that this sort of flexibility in the law evolves and adapts to new circumstances.

In essence, the rejection, change or refinement of a rule of law amounts to a fourth step that can constitute a new rule of law, a refinement of the first rule, or a complete rejection of the first rule.

Statutory and constitutional ambiguity: As is apparent from the foregoing, some or a great deal of ambiguity in statutory laws and the constitution is a necessary component for ALR to work as it does. Levi paints a picture of the legislative process as necessarily an ambiguity-creating machine and judges apply legal reasoning to try to specify what a law’s language actually means in a given situation:

“We [judges] mean to accomplish what the legislature intended. . . . . The difficulty is that what the legislature intended is ambiguous. In a significant sense there is only a general intent which preserves as much ambiguity in the concept used as though it had been created by case law. . . . . For a legislature perhaps the pressures are such that a bill has to be passed dealing with a certain subject. But the precise effect of the bill is not something upon which the members have to reach agreement. . . . . Despite much gospel to the contrary, the legislature is not a fact-finding body. There is no mechanism, as there is with a court, to require the legislature to sift facts and to make a decision about specific situations. There need be no agreement about what the situation is. The members of the legislative body will be talking about different things; they cannot force each other to accept even a hypothetical set of facts. . . . . Moreover, from the standpoint of the individual member of the legislature there is reason to be deceptive. He must escape from pressures at home. . . . And if all this were not sufficient, it cannot be forgotten that to speak of legislative intent is to talk of group action, where much of the group may be ignorant or misinformed.”[1]

Similarly, Levi paints a written constitution as another unending source of ambiguity:

“In addition to the power to hold legislative acts invalid, a written constitution confers another and perhaps as great a power. It is the power to disregard prior cases. . . . . The problem of stare decisis [legal precedent] where a constitution is involved is therefore an entirely different matter from that in case law or legislation. This is often overlooked when the court is condemned for its change of mind. A change of mind from time to time is inevitable when there is a written constitution. There can be no authoritative interpretation of the Constitution. The Constitution in its general provisions embodies the conflicting ideals of the community. Who is to say what these ideals mean in any definite way? Certainly not the framers, for they did their work when the words were put down. The words are ambiguous. Nor can it be the Court, for the Court cannot bind itself in this manner; an appeal can always be made back to the Constitution. Moreover if it is said that the intent of the framers ought to control, there is no mechanism for any final determination of their intent. . . . . The major words written in the document are too ambiguous; the ideals are too conflicting, and no interpretation can be decisive.”

Obviously, for formalists, this vision of the Constitution is completely wrong. For those people, the Founder’s intent can clearly be found by applying formalist analytical techniques, such as the textualism that Scalia and others advocate. Despite that, Levi is clearly correct to say that the US Constitution is often ambiguous and there is no mechanism to definitively decide. On this point, formalism gets it wrong. And therein lies one of the bases for difference of opinion that is tearing American society apart today.

If one looks at the disputes the Founders never resolved among themselves in their lifetimes, one can see the origins of both ALR and formalism, both of which still compete for supremacy in both the law and in politics. From this reviewer's point of view, ALR is much better suited to modern American society and the economic and technological challenges this country faces. Given the reality that the legislative process is too slow, too ambiguous and driven more by re-election than courageous governance, there seems to be no workable choice but to resort to some form of realism.

Footnote:
1. Commenting last September on the legislative process and why Supreme Court nominations are so bitterly contentious, radical right conservative Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) said this during the Senate confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh: “. . . . . the people don't have a way to fire the bureaucrats. What we mostly do around this body is not pass laws. What we mostly decide to do is to give permission to the secretary or the administrator of bureaucracy X, Y or Z to make law-like regulations. That’s mostly what we do here. We go home and we pretend we make laws. No we don’t. We write giant pieces of legislation, 1200 pages, 1500 pages long, that people haven’t read, filled with all these terms that are undefined, and say to secretary of such and such that he shall promulgate rules that do the rest of our dang jobs. That’s why there are so many fights about the executive branch and the judiciary, because this body rarely finishes its work. [joking] And, the House is even worse.”

This is part of Sasse's relentless anti-government rhetoric, but he has a good point about congress being incompetent when it comes to doing its job.

B&B orig: 12/26/18 DP: 8/17/19

“I think they’re blowing it way out of proportion…”

Please take a look at this short video:

https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1240371160078000128 

So, when you have a segment of the population in “denial mode” (hey, we’re politically used to that, aren’t we?!), how does the greater society get through to them?

Sure, I get it.  Youth gonna be youth… until they finally aren't.  I know how they think… I was there once.  You have this feeling of invincibility.  And while a very small fraction of the youth that contract the virus will actually succumb to its effects, they are the carriers and spreaders to the more vulnerable populations out there.  That’s a real, existential threat, among so many others with which we are having to cope.

A huge amount of people here in the U.S. are already on paid leave from their jobs.  Schools are considering, and are likely to end the school year early, while they are figuring out how to make up for it.  Small businesses, at least here in Ohio, are being ordered to, or are volunteering to close, since there is very little demand for their services.  Large businesses, such as Ford and GM, are on shutdown.

Question: Other than critical services (food, medical, Fire and Police) and planning-type preparations and meetings, should there be a nationwide ban on excessive gatherings, such as these recreational ones above?  Like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, is it finally a situation of personal freedoms versus (losing out to) sensibility?

Give us your thoughts.  And thanks for passing this OP along, via recommending.

Some Coronavirus Biology

The images below convey some information about how coronaviruses infect cells and reproduce. This is to try to demystify what is going on in an infected person and what some relevant biology considerations are.

Credit: By https://www.scientificanimations.com - https://www.scientificanimations.com/wiki-images/, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86436446

Credit: By Crenim at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26529404

Mutations tend to weaken viruses, not make them more virulent (lethal) & etc.

An explainer article that Nature published on Jan. 31, 2020 includes the following comments:

Is the virus here to stay? When a virus circulates continuously in a community, it is said to be endemic. The viruses that cause chicken pox and influenza are endemic in many countries, but outbreaks can be controlled through vaccination and keeping people at home when they are ill.

One big question is whether the coronavirus is also here to stay. If efforts to contain it fail, there’s a high chance that it will become endemic. As with influenza, this could mean that deaths occur every year as the virus circulates, until a vaccine is developed. If the virus can be spread by people who are infected but don’t have symptoms, it will be more difficult to control its spread, making it more likely that the virus will become endemic.

Is the virus likely to change? Kristian Andersen, an infectious-disease researcher at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, is not concerned about the virus becoming more virulent. He says that viruses constantly mutate as part of their life cycle, but those mutations don’t typically make the virus more virulent or cause more serious disease. “I can’t think of any examples of this having happened with an outbreak pathogen,” he says.

In situations where a virus jumps from one animal host to another species — which is probably how the new coronavirus began to infect humans — there might be a selection pressure to improve survival in the new host, but that rarely, if ever, has any effect on human disease or the virus’s transmissibility, says Andersen. Most mutations are detrimental to the virus or have no effect, he says. A 2018 study2 of SARS in primate cells found that a mutation the virus sustained during the 2003 outbreak probably reduced its virulence.

How many people will it kill? The fatality rate for a virus — the proportion of infected people who die — is difficult to calculate in the middle of an outbreak because records on new cases and deaths are constantly being updated. With 213 deaths so far out of nearly 10,000 infections, the new coronavirus has a death rate of 2–3%. This is significantly lower than SARS, which killed around 10% of the people it infected. The known death rate for the new coronavirus is likely to decrease as mild and asymptomatic cases are identified, virologist Mark Harris at the University of Leeds, UK, told the Science Media Centre in London.

If the virus spreads throughout the world, the number of deaths could be substantial. The current death rate of 2–3% — while not as high as for SARS — is still quite high for an infectious disease, says Adam Kamradt-Scott, a global health-security specialist at the University of Sydney, Australia. The 1918 influenza outbreak, known as the Spanish flu, infected around half a billion people, one-third of the world’s population at the time, and killed more than 2.5% of those infected; some have estimated that as many as 50 million people died.

The China coronavirus probably won’t trigger such an apocalyptic scenario, because it isn’t typically infecting or killing young, healthy people, says Kamradt-Scott.

Coronavirus Update 3: We Still Fly Blind, But at Least Trump Seems to be Awake Now

The president's press conference yesterday heralded a major, yuuuuge!, change in his demeanor and tone. It appears that the president has come to realize we have a bona fide public health emergency on our hands. Until yesterday, he was treating this as a public relations problem for himself, i.e., his fragile, endlessly needy ego, and his re-election. God only knows what brought this miracle about. Maybe it was God itself. Whatever it was, it sure wasn't the president on his own. He's not that self-aware.

We still fly blind because large scale coronavirus testing is still not in place or possible. Maybe by the end of this week testing will ramp up. Our eyes will begin to open a few days later so that we will probably start to see just how many people in America are infected. At present, we still have no idea.

An infectious disease expert, Ian Lipkin, on Rachael Maddow yesterday argued that total, nationwide social distancing is necessary at this point. He points to what 7 counties in the San Francisco bay area is doing as the model for what the nation needs to do. Maddow pointed out that America has no coordinated national response. That has left states and localities to act on their own in the information and leadership vacuum our inept president has created through his inaction.



Maddow played very persuasive comments by New York governor Andrew Cuomo asking for the president to deploy the Army corps of engineers to start building hospital overflow facilities right now. Cuomo points out that the federal government is the only government function in America with the authority and resources to act now to try to avoid a collapse of health care infrastructure in areas with high coronavirus infection rates.



Cuomo was pointed in arguing that America's for-profit business model does not allow for the building and maintaining of excess health care facilities. Unused hospital beds do not generate profits and thus there are no excess hospital beds for people who become critically ill. In other words, American capitalist for-profit health care does not care about public health emergencies. Capitalism cares only about profit, not the public interest.

So, the good news is that our president has probably risen above himself, at least for a day, and experts and governors are acutely aware of the situation and know what to do. Whether our stable genius president has the guts to act intelligently is an open question. Maybe we should be happy that he is simply awake, even if he is too inept to act on his awareness.