Pandemics and History

The Week magazine recently published several articles about pandemics and Covid-19. Some of the information is quite interesting. Information from The Week and some other sources is summarized below.

History

One article discussed pandemics and history. The Black Death plague started in 1347. It was caused by a bacterium. It killed about 200 million people, which then was about 55-60% of the global human population. Health authorities in Europe responded by instituting public health measures that are still in use today, including quarantines, routine health inspections and hospitals.

Another effect of the Black Death was to end European feudalism and serfdom. The deaths caused a labor shortage that shifted the balance of power from feudal lords and nobility to workers. The labor shortage allowed serfs to break free from the lords that in essence owned them. They were free to look for work under better conditions. That economic system shift paved the way for modern capitalism.

In 1802, a Yellow Fever epidemic in the French colony of what is now Haiti caused the deaths of about 50,000 French troops who were controlling the island. Yellow Fever is a virus infection that is transmitted by mosquitoes. The death toll caused the troops to withdraw, causing massive economic losses to Napoleon. The losses forced Napoleon to sell 828,000 square miles of land to Thomas Jefferson for $15 million in what is now called the Louisiana Purchase.[1]

The Spanish flu, which probably originated on a Kansas poultry farm, brought widespread death to troops fighting in trenches in World War I. Spanish flu was an exceptionally virulent form of H1N1 influenza virus. About 50 million people worldwide died in the pandemic, which included about 675,000 Americans.

Among the Americans who were killed were members of the US delegation to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Many of those delegates were opposed to forcing Germany to pay reparations as part of the treaty of Versailles. With the American anti-reparation voice weakened, delegates approved harsh reparations against Germany. That both humiliated the Germans and economically crippled the country. Both factors are considered by some historians to be key factors in the rise of Hitler. Some consider the economic impact of Spanish flu to be a major factor in the rise of nationalism and authoritarianism.

In terms of public health, the Spanish flu epidemic provoked public health innovations, including spawning the field of virology and accelerating research in the field of epidemiology.

Covid-19

In terms of predictions about long-term effects of Covid-19, experts are beginning to speculate. Some evidence suggests that the pandemic is decreasing political polarization in the US, a trend that has been in progress for about 50 years. The thinking there is that Covid-19 constitutes a common enemy and such threats tend to unite societies. Of course, that socially unifying factor is opposed by the president's heavy and usually effective reliance on social polarization and division to maintain power. How the matter of social cohesion and improved functionality will play out is completely unclear to me.

Other experts suggest that nationalism, authoritarianism and xenophobia could increase in the US. Others project that telemedicine and other online activities will increase in acceptance and use. Not surprisingly, some experts who speak from political ideological points of view are projecting social and governmental changes that fall in line with their ideology, e.g., a libertarian sees more deregulation in our future.

Another short story in The Week asserted that the state of New York probably delayed its shutdown due to a years-long feud between governor Cuomo and NYC mayor Bill de Blasio. Epidemiologists estimated that if New York had shut down 1-2 weeks earlier, about half of the death toll could have been avoided. That was asserted in an article published by ProPublica. If that is true, then petty political bickering fueled by personal ambitions caused thousands of needless deaths.

In terms of personal political ambitions and big egos, another article The Week published mentioned congressional testimony by Dr. Rick Bright, the top US vaccine development official. Bright testified that the president ignored his urgent warnings in January about Covid-19. Because there was no master plan in place, he believed that lives were needlessly lost. The president had fired Bright, calling him a disgruntled employee. Bright had called for serious scientific vetting of hydroxhchloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19. He claimed that the administration had put “politics and cronyism ahead of science.” Not surprisingly, that angered the president.

Face masks

The Lancet published research about the effectiveness of wearing face masks. A meta analysis of multiple studies indicate that wearing a face mask does decrease the rate of viral infections from infected people compared to people who do not wear a face mask in the presence of other people. The data also indicated that staying 6 feet away from an infected person is appears to be more effective than staying 3 feet away. ABC News summarized the analysis like this: "Staying 3 feet away from another individual can lower the risk of transmission to less than 3% from an estimated 12%, the researchers found. A distance of 6 feet could lower that risk to 1.5%. And wearing a mask can reduce the risk to about 3% from roughly 17%."

Another source commented on The Lancet meta-analysis: "Keeping at least one metre from other people as well as wearing face coverings and eye protection, in and outside of health-care settings, could be the best way to reduce the chance of viral infection or transmission of COVID-19, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis synthesising all the available evidence from the scientific literature, published in The Lancet. ..... The study, conducted to inform WHO guidance documents, is the first time researchers have systematically examined the optimum use of these protective measures in both community and healthcare settings for COVID-19. The authors say it has immediate and important implications for curtailing the current COVID-19 pandemic and future waves by informing disease models, and standardising the definition of who has been 'potentially exposed' (ie, within 2 metres) for contact tracing."

Statistics: Why Groups of 10 or less

Finally, an NPR broadcast segment in the last day or two explained why groups of 10 people or less are often recommended as the size limit of social gatherings. Statistics dictates the number. If the community Covid-19 infection rate is say, about 2%, then on average, one would expect that in a group of 100, about 2 people would be infected. Also, as social gatherings increase in number of participants, there is a trend for people to be closer together in closed venues in buildings and in limited outdoors areas such as a small backyard. By limiting group gatherings to 10 or less, (1) the chance of anyone being infected drops drastically (about 100-fold if I recall the data right -- I can't find a link to that info), and (2) people are generally better able to stay physically separated. Due to the larger area that is usually present, gatherings outdoors are limited to 25 or less to reduce the possibility that an infected person is present.

Thoughts on Various Things

The volume of news at present is overwhelming, to me at least. Focusing on any one story seems usually inadequate. Among the mostly bad to awful news, a few things seem to stick in my mind.

From North Carolina to Florida

One item is the move of the republican convention from North Carolina to Florida. The president wants a packed house with people screaming their approval of all the lies and slanders the president plans to spew on them and the rest of us masochistic enough to listen to the spew. No face masks for the president and his screaming patriotic supporters. As we all know, the Covid-19 pandemic is now just a fading memory. The death toll has numbed us and the economic damage will take a year or two to assess. In the president's estimation, Covid-19 was just a bit of a nuisance for a while, mostly a democratic hoax and all Obama's and/or Pelosi's fault if it wasn't hoax. Regardless, now it is gone away because he personally fixed it. The president, in a fair and balanced way, gives himself a well-deserved grade of A+++.

Huh?? If that's the narrative, then why are the RNC and Trump campaign requiring attendees at the convention to sign a waiver of liability in the (almost impossible?) event that they pick up a Covid-19 bug from infected people scattered among the president's rabid screaming, unmasked, hoard? They will be spewing millions of little spitballs of approval for their wonderful president, but that's not anything to worry about. Making the president look good is the only concern.

Hm. Is something amiss here? Could it be that maybe the pandemic isn't over yet? Nah, that's not possible. Germaine is just delusional and irrational, as usual.

Speaking of liability waivers

The New York Times is reporting that the GOP's and president's tactic of shielding themselves from liability is something that seems to appeal to at least some businesses. In an article, Businesses Want Virus Legal Protection. Workers Are Worried., the NYT observes that businesses are (quietly, as usual) lobbying for protection against coronavirus-related lawsuits. The opposition suspects that a liability shield would encourage reckless behavior. Reckless behavior? Ya think? Nah, not possible.

Businesses are anything but reckless. For example, meat packers in Nebraska made the pandemic go away by refusing to disclose testing data. Easy peasy, pandemic squeazy. Poof! The pandemic is gone. Families of workers there have complained that they need to know if their family members are infected or not. The meat packers and Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts dismisses such complaints as just irrational sour grapes whining. In their endless pursuit of sacred profit, businesses are never reckless, much less malicious. 🤢

The hills are alive with the sound of music . . . . . and lies and bullshit . . . . .

But, one must keep in mind the wise words of our president (ALL RISE!). Paraphrasing: "What the hell use is it to do testing for Covid-19? All that does is reveal infections. If you don't test, then there are no infections to report. What the hell is wrong with you people? Are you all idiots?" Of course that's just Germaine recalling what president Bonespurs had to say about it. Vox quotes him directly: “Don’t forget, we have more cases than anybody in the world. But why? Because we do more testing. When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases. They [the media] don’t want to write that.”

Huh?

I'm confused (as usual)

Those pesky Antifa protesters

And, there's the ongoing protests over systemic racism. As we all know, the lawlessness is all due to Antifa. That's true because both the president and the attorney general said so. Darned Antifa.

Unfortunately, the failing New York Times is reporting fake news: "Federal Arrests Show No Sign That Antifa Plotted Protests -- Despite claims by President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr, there is scant evidence that loosely organized anti-fascists are a significant player in protests. ..... But despite cries from President Trump and others in his administration, none of those charged with serious federal crimes amid the unrest have been linked so far to the loose collective of anti-fascist activists known as antifa."

As we all know, the neither the president nor AG Barr ever lie to people. 🤣 Clearly the enemy of the people NYT is just making stuff up by analyzing and reporting on federal arrest data. Analyzing data is just a bat shit crazy way to do journalism. This is the right way to do patriotic, red-blooded professional journalism:

I could go on in this vein for quite some time. But it's best to let this sip of political nectar rest on the tongue. That gives it time to burn a hole in it.

Second guessing oneself…

Definition:

verb. Second guess is defined as to question a decision or action that has already been completed. An example of second guess is when you make a decision and then you start to think about it a little more and decide another decision might have been better.

• Do you ever second guess yourself?
• If no, why not?
• If yes, what percentage of the time?
• On what do you second guess yourself the most?
• Is second guessing a good or bad thing?

Thanks for posting and recommending. 

I GOT ONE WRONG??

WELL MY BRAGGING DAYS ARE OVER - THAT IS FOR SURE!

My Results:
You answered 23 of 24 CORRECT! Your score is in the 86th percentile.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/quiz/2015/feb/11/us-citizenship-test-could-you-pass/

Let's see how many of you can hit 100%

Need help with self analysis...

Why is it that I can get very upset about politics, but am more understanding about religions?
Help me figure that out.

Thanks for posting.

Things Get Interesting: Journalists are Debating the Definition of Objectivity

Advocacy journalism: a genre of journalism that intentionally and transparently adopts a non-objective viewpoint, usually for some social or political purpose. Because it is intended to be factual, it is distinguished from propaganda. It is also distinct from instances of media bias and failures of objectivity in media outlets, since the bias is intended. Some advocacy journalists reject that the traditional ideal of objectivity is possible in practice, either generally, or due to the presence of corporate sponsors in advertising. Some feel that the public interest is better served by a diversity of media outlets with a variety of transparent points of view, or that advocacy journalism serves a similar role to muckrakers or whistleblowers. -- Wikipedia on advocacy journalism

Maybe, just maybe, the murder of Floyd George has ripped off more than just one veil of self-deceit in American society. Black journalists are criticizing the concept of journalistic objectivity. Some question if it even exists. An NPR broadcast of The Takeaway asks what has prompted this outburst of criticism and whether journalistic objectivity is more myth than reality.

Black journalists rebel

Black journalists are raising the question of editorial and systemic racism in how the media forces them to conform to an allegedly objective narrative in their reporting that they often disagree with. One complaint that black journalists are often forced to convey a reality that they do not see or believe is real. They also complain of being forced to cover two sides of issues that they believe has only one real side to cover, the other apparently being seen as false reality or propaganda. Journalists call that kind of reporting false balancing.

Their fundamental complaint is that reporting in the name of objectivity reinforced the majority white point of view that has dominated American journalism. Some senior editors, apparently prompted by the combination of what happened to Floyd George, the larger public reaction to his murder and the complaints from their own black journalists, are beginning to question their own premises about objectivity in journalism. In essence, black reporters are arguing that objectivity is more myth than objective reality.

One of the guests on The Takeaway segment[1] comments that it is subjective to select what people and stories to cover and report on, how to report about what is chosen, what order of paragraphs the story will consist of, and what words are chosen to describe the story. When the definition of objectivity is questioned, it is seen as "very unfair" to many black journalists.

Although some senior level editors have resigned in recent weeks due to racial gaffes, the question is whether the people who replace them will act any differently. Unfortunately, the discussion becomes fuzzy about exactly what to do to fix the problem. One site, Axios, decided to let its reporters participate in demonstrations, allegedly so that they can somehow learn, maybe more or differently. That move was sharply criticized by some who believe that reporters should not be part of a story themselves. Arguably, when a reporter is a participant in an event, that is an objectivity killer.

In reviewing its own practices, NPR did not focus on the definition of objectivity, but instead focused on articulating clear standards for accuracy and fairness. NPR's review of its own reporting standards left objectivity alone because it was seen as too subjective a concept to try to define. Fairness and accuracy constitute the core elements of objectivity in NPR's view.

The confusion about what to do differently also came out in discussing what involvement, if any, reporters should have with social media. One guest asserted that reporters cannot call the president names and then turn around and call him the president and report fairly. Apparently, that commentator was arguing that dropping out of a restrained mode of professional neutrality, e.g., by insults or name calling, constitutes an irreparable act that cannot be recovered from. By that argument, the moment a reporter loses self-control, that person can no longer be professional about that issue or person.

The most concrete things discussed that can be done involves trying to deal with the usual complaints about institutional racism in journalism itself. That amounts to things like respecting, treating, training and paying white and non-white journalists the same and elevating more non-white journalists to senior positions. One complaint the segment aired was an allegation that journalism is dominated by whites and unequal treatment has caused loss of too many colored journalists from the profession.


Footnote:
1. The Takeaway broadcast segment:




A broadcast a couple of days ago in the NPR program 1A (short for 1st Amendment; the broadcast is below) asks what objectivity is, assuming it exists at all. Again, the discussion starts off criticizing the concept of objectivity as more myth than reality. The concepts of accuracy, transparency and fairness were raised as better standards to strive for than amorphous objectivity. But even there, one commentator confusingly asserted it is OK for reporters to take a side on a story, but the journalist has to make sure their position is "right." That is an important point.

At present, there are organizations like Fox News and the leviathan Sinclair Broadcast Group that routinely take the conservative side on most stories and issues. They do not show much concern for accuracy, transparency or fairness in their reporting. Their anti-liberal bias is clear and not subtle. They falsely claim to be accurate, transparent and fair, but the reality is arguably quite different. Can one call that professional advocacy journalism, or is it so unprofessional that most of the content is more accurately seen as dark free speech?

Discussions like these make it clear that dealing with race in America is amazingly complicated and subject to all sorts of subjective, usually unconscious, human impulses. One commentator called journalistic objectivity "white supremacist." Both broadcast segments mix concerns about institutional racism and what professional objectivity is and what it allows and does not allow reporters to be and do.




Here is a link to an essay on journalistic objectivity published by the American Press Institute. That essay includes these comments:

"The term [objectivity] began to appear as part of journalism after the turn of the 20th century, particularly in the 1920s, out of a growing recognition that journalists were full of bias, often unconsciously. Objectivity called for journalists to develop a consistent method of testing information – a transparent approach to evidence – precisely so that personal and cultural biases would not undermine the accuracy of their work. 

In the latter part of the 19th century, journalists talked about something called “realism” rather than objectivity. This was the idea that if reporters simply dug out the facts and ordered them together, truth would reveal itself rather naturally. 

Realism emerged at a time when journalism was separating from political party affiliations and becoming more accurate. It coincided with the invention of what journalists call the inverted pyramid, in which a journalist lines the facts up from the most important to the least important, thinking it helps audiences understand things naturally.

At the beginning of the 20th century, however, some journalists began to worry about the naïveté of realism. In part, reporters and editors were becoming more aware of the rise of propaganda and the role of press agents."