The Dish

The Crime Of Ebola Transmission

Allahpundit considers Liberia’s plans to prosecute Thomas Eric Duncan:

Should Duncan be prosecuted? Ace worries that if you throw jail time into the mix, Liberians who fear they might have Ebola will panic and become more determined to conceal their symptoms, putting the people around them at risk. I can understand that as a matter of Liberian domestic policy; you want people to feel as comfortable as possible in reporting their symptoms so that you can treat them (and isolate them) ASAP. But you also don’t want them getting on planes, and the prospect of jail time if they decide to fly when they fear they might be infected would deter that. No? What am I missing here?

Oh, by the way, Duncan did tell the staff at the hospital in Dallas that he’d just come from Liberia when he first showed up sick to the ER last week. They sent him home with antibiotics.

Scott Neuman points out that Duncan may have actually been less than forthcoming:

Officials at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital now say Duncan wasn’t honest with them either. When asked if he had been around anyone who had been ill, Duncan told them he had not.

Adam Chandler puts the prosecution in context:

As West African countries battle the largest Ebola outbreak on record, the notion of pursing criminal charges against a man who claims he wasn’t exposed to the virus may come off as wasteful, if not extreme. Given that thousands of people continue to move between the borders of West African countries, Liberia’s intention to prosecute Duncan for traveling to the United States with Ebola—unwittingly or not—also rings a little hypocritical.

But as Jens David Ohlin of Cornell University Law School contends, the prosecution of Duncan may have less to do with what he did (or did not) do and more with the precedent his case could set.

“Liberia is probably anxious about maintaining travel connections to the United States and other countries,” Ohlin told me. “And countries have probably felt comfortable keeping air connections with Liberia so long as protocols for screening passengers are in place.” He added that were Liberia to ignore this potential breach of its screening process, it would ultimately convey that “these protocols are worthless.”

The Walrus Is The New Polar Bear

A lack of arctic ice has forced Alaskan walruses onto land:

Katie Valentine reports on the phenomenon:

Tony Fischbach is a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who’s a member of the Walrus Research Program in Anchorage, Alaska. He told ThinkProgress that when summer sea ice is at normal levels, only a small number of walrus will come to shore in Alaska — numbers typically in the tens or sometimes low hundreds of animals. This mass convergence of walrus — most of whom are females and calves — is a new phenomenon, he said.

Gwynn Guilford adds further context:

As it happens, the chunk of sea ice that caps the Arctic was, this year, the sixth-smallest on record.

“The walruses are telling us what the polar bears have told us and what many indigenous people have told us in the high Arctic,” Margaret Williams, managing director of the World Wildlife Fund’s Arctic program,told the AP, “and that is that the Arctic environment is changing extremely rapidly and it is time for the rest of the world to take notice and also to take action to address the root causes of climate change.”

Linda Qiu explains how living on land could hurt the walrus population:

For one, calves are particularly at risk of disease and from stampedes. Upon a disturbance, whether that’s a polar bear or a boat in the distance, walruses tend to rush to the water.

“The calves get trampled,” [Lori] Polasek [a marine biologist at the Alaska SeaLife Center] said.

In 2009, about a tenth of the walruses that hauled out died. This year, at least 36 walrus carcasses have been spotted, according to NOAA. That track record does not bode well for the species.

Extending Life By Accepting Death

The Economist reviews Atul Gawande’s forthcoming book on end-of-life care. A fascinating detail:

Many people fear that a doctor who does not try everything possible has abandoned his patients, and they will die earlier as a result. Surprisingly, however, the try-everything approach appears not even to offer a longer life. Multiple studies have shown that patients entering hospice care, which usually means abandoning attempts at a cure, live at least as long as those receiving traditional care. A startling study in 2010 found that patients with advanced lung cancer who saw a specialist in palliative care as well as receiving the usual oncological treatment stopped chemotherapy sooner, entered a hospice earlier, suffered less—and lived 25% longer than comparable patients who received only the standard care. “If end-of-life discussions were an experimental drug, the FDA [an American regulatory body] would approve it,” says Dr Gawande. In life, as in all stories, he writes, “endings matter”.

The Dish recently tackled related issues.

Did Vice “Support” Terrorism?

Andrew March suggests that the gutsy journalist Medyan Dairieh, who embedded with ISIS militants in Syria to get an inside look at the group’s operations and produced this stunning documentary (trailer above), may have violated the law against providing material support to terrorists, given how nebulously that support is defined:

In the test case that came before the Supreme Court in 2010, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the Court held that it was constitutional to prohibit a group of humanitarian legal professionals (including a retired U.S. judge) “from engaging in certain specified activities, including training PKK members to use international law to resolve disputes peacefully; teaching PKK members to petition the United Nations and other representative bodies for relief; and engaging in political advocacy on behalf of Kurds living in Turkey and Tamils living in Sri Lanka.” The Court rejected the claim that the statute “should be interpreted to require proof that a defendant intended to further a foreign terrorist organization’s illegal activities.” Instead it affirmed that the statute prohibits “‘knowingly’ providing material support” and that Congress was within its rights to choose “knowledge about the organization’s connection to terrorism, not specific intent to further its terrorist activities, as the necessary mental state for a violation.” In short, according to the Court: expert advice + coordination with a terrorist group = federal crime.

That decision means, for example, that Jimmy Carter and his Carter Center could be in violation of federal law for giving peacemaking advice to groups on the State Department’s FTO list. Any private individual who coordinates with a group on that list, or a group that the individual ought to know engages in terrorism, with the purposes of providing it advice or assistance—even on how to pursue an end to its campaign of violence—is guilty of a crime by the logic of the Roberts Court.

Giving Up Flying For Good

Eric Holthaus did so about a year ago:

Over the past year, I’ve had to make a few small sacrifices, sure. (My 28-hour bus ride from Wisconsin to Atlanta wasn’t the most relaxing travel experience I’ve ever taken. I’d have much preferred one of these.) But an amazing thing has also happened since I’ve embraced slow travel: My world has shrunk and become richer. (It’s also easier to escape those awkward family reunions.)

My wife and I canceled a frequent-flier trip we had planned to Hawaii and instead spent a weekend at the otherworldly ice caves on Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin. I sent our Civic into a 360-degree spin on an ice road to Madeline Island in a moment of pure joy. It was the coldest I had ever been. What initially felt like one of the biggest sacrifices of our decision to stop flying (enjoying the polar vortex instead of Hawaii in February) turned into a moment I’ll never forget.

A Weak Recovery For Wages

Bill McBride analyzes today’s jobs report:

This was a solid report with 248,000 jobs added and combined upward revisions to July and August of 69,000. As always we shouldn’t read too much into one month of data, but at the current pace (through September), the economy will add 2.72 million jobs this year (2.64 million private sector jobs). Right now 2014 is on pace to be the best year for both total and private sector job growth since 1999.

Vinik recommends looking at the three month moving average (above), which shows that “the economy certainly has strengthened over the past six months and is in better shape.” But he also spotlights the “one glaring sign that there is still slack in the labor market: wages are stagnant”:

In September, wages grew 0.0 percent, below expectations of 0.2 percent. Over the past year, wages have grown just 2.0 percent, barely keeping up with inflation. Wages will rise when employers have to compete for scarce labor—i.e. when the economy is at or near full employment. That clearly isn’t the case right now, meaning the 5.9 percent unemployment rate doesn’t represent the current state of the labor market. If the Fed were to raise interest rates, it would choke off the recovery and prevent any wage growth.

Annie Lowrey finds that “Jobs Day has become less and less of a tentpole event in the economic data calendar”:

In part, that is because the story of the recovery has become static: It just keeps chugging along at the same decent-enough pace. It is also because the unemployment rate — the headline number in the jobs report — has started telling us less and less about the state of the economy.

She adds that a “broader set of indicators generally gives a dimmer view of the economy — and that remains true this month, good headline number aside”:

So applaud this jobs report. It’s a legitimately good one. But do not let it change your view of the economy too much. Growth might be accelerating, but the underlying story of the recovery is not changing. For tens of millions of families, that unemployment rate is nothing but a number.

Jared Bernstein focuses on the participation rate:

The labor force participation rate (LFPR)—the share of the 16 and up population either working or looking for work—is a key variable to watch these days. It ticked down slight last month, as noted, but as shown in the chart, has generally stabilized over the past year. This has two important implications.

Source: BLS

First, it suggests a strengthening job market as part of the decline in the LFPR over the recession and weak recovery was due to discouraged job seekers giving up hope. Second, as noted above, it means that recent declines in the jobless rate are due to more people getting jobs versus giving up the search.

Ben Leubsdorf plucks out other key numbers from today’s report. One that shouldn’t be overlooked:

The number of workers who have been unemployed for more than six months has declined over the last year by 1.2 million. But 3 million strong in September, they still made up 31.9% of all unemployed Americans.

And Kilgore asks, “will it matter politically?”

It’s unlikely. As Dave Weigel points out, at this point in 2006, just prior to a Democratic midterm landslide, the unemployment rate was under 5% and net job growth was steady if not spectacular.

Truth Be Told

Virginia Hughes looks at the methods for detecting lies:

[T]here’s a huge problem with the polygraph: it’s all-too-frequently wrong. Truth-tellers may show a strong physiological response to being questioned if they’re nervous or fearful, which they often are — particularly if the target of a hostile interrogation. … Because of these considerable flaws, polygraph evidence is almost never allowed in court. But it’s still used routinely by federal law enforcement agencies, not only for screening accused criminals but potential new employees.

It turns out there’s a much more accurate way to root out deception: a 55-year-old method called the ‘concealed information test’. The CIT doesn’t try to compare biological responses to truth versus lies. Instead, it shows whether a person simply recognizes information that only the culprit (or the police) could know.

She considers why the CIT, employed frequently in Japan, hasn’t caught on in the US:

One reason, according to [John] Meixner, is that the CIT only works if it’s given at the very beginning of an interrogation. Otherwise, through the process of questioning, the suspect may gain knowledge about the crime that he or she didn’t have before. Investigators are “not especially keen on that.”

The CIT is also a bit less versatile than the traditional polygraph, because investigators have to know some hard facts about the crime before testing the suspect. In a real-world terrorism plot, for example, investigators wouldn’t necessarily know what city or month or weapon to ask about.

But the biggest reason we don’t use the CIT, according to Meixner and Rosenfeld, is probably cultural. As they wrote in a review paper last year: “The members of the practicing polygraph community simply do not like giving up [that] which they are used to.”

Our Pharmacist Glut

Katie Zavadski covers it:

The pharmacy boom began in 2000. That year, a report from the Department of Health and Human Services suggested that 98 percent of Americans lived in an area adversely affected by a pharmacist shortage. Almost 6,000 pharmacist jobs stood empty, and the shortage was only predicted to grow worse. The following year, a group now known as the Pharmacy Workforce Center predicted a shortfall of 157,000 pharmacists nationally within two decades as demand and responsibilities increased while the number of pharmacists stood still. As Baby Boomers aged, the thought went, pharmacists would be able to fill some roles traditionally held by doctors, and would be able to counsel them on how to take the medications prescribed to them.

Quickly, the free market kicked in.

Over the last 20-odd years, the number of pharmacy schools in the United States has almost doubled. There were just 72 such schools in 1987; today, there are more than 130.

At first, graduates found work easily. No matter where in the country a young pharmacist wanted to settle, the number of jobs available far exceeded the number of people qualified to fill them. Slowly, the numbers began to even out, and 2009 marked a turning point: The number of jobs available was roughly on par with the number of pharmacists searching for work. The days of signing bonuses and vast job choices were over.

How this compares to the quickly deflating law school bubble:

What makes the situation in pharmacy slightly more sinister than a comparable crisis in law is that students commit to many of these six-year programs straight out of high school. (About half of graduating pharmacists each year are aged 25 or under.) Not only do they have little understanding of what such a debt load may mean for them, but they also tend to rely more heavily on the suggestions of parents and friends. And, even if they made the decision to pursue pharmacy through their own research, the rapid growth in the number of pharmacists means many are gambling on a job market six years into the future. Further, while a law degree can be useful in a wide range of professions, including business and consulting, pharmacy degrees have relatively narrow purposes: PharmDs are equipped to oversee the dispensation of medication and counsel patients on how to take it and its effects.

The Dissident We Didn’t Understand

Reviewing Daniel J. Mahoney’s The Other Solzhenitsyn: Telling the Truth about a Misunderstood Writer and Thinker, Lee Congdon appreciates the effort to push back against the famed Soviet dissident’s most vehement Western detractors – but isn’t quite convinced when Mahoney “insists that Solzhenitsyn was a proponent of democracy”:

[Solzhenitsyn] was skeptical of democracy at the higher reaches of power. One need not, he recognized, hold a degree in political science in order to arrive at informed judgments about local matters, but only those qualified by education and experience were competent to guide policy, domestic and foreign, at the national level. It is true, as Mahoney points out, that Solzhenitsyn was more or less resigned to some form of democratic order in post-communist Russia, but like Tocqueville he was far from welcoming it. In Rebuilding Russia, written a year before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Solzhenitsyn observed that “Tocqueville viewed the concepts of democracy and liberty as polar opposites. He was an ardent proponent of liberty but not at all of democracy.”

One of the reasons for Mahoney’s insistence upon his subject’s commitment to democracy is his fear that the Russian might be classed as an authoritarian. In his Letter to the Soviet Leaders, Solzhenitsyn had, after all, written that “it is not authoritarianism itself that is intolerable, but the ideological lies that are daily foisted upon us.” Mahoney insists, however, that “Solzhenitsyn nowhere endorsed authoritarianism as choice-worthy in itself.”

Praising Mahoney’s book, Carl Scott advises those unfamiliar with Solzhenitsyn’s work where to start:

Had I to start over again, I’m not sure the order I’d go in, but certainly the GULAG Archipelago first, in the abridged edition, perhaps some of the key essays and speeches next, available in the Solzhenitysn Reader, edited by Ericson and Mahoney, and then onto either In the First Circle, or the first two first “knots” of the super-novel The Red Wheel, namely, the just reissued–in the superior/complete Willetts translations–August 1914 and November 1916. The third of these is one of my very favorite novels, despite the criticism it gets for providing too much history and political commentary alongside its main sections. For In the First Circle and August 1914, make sure you get the newer versions. And somewhere in there, you need to delve into a number of the short stories and poems.

For more, you can listen to an absorbing podcast Mahoney did about the book here.

(Image: Solzhenitsyn in Cologne, West Germany, in 1974, via Wikimedia Commons)

Is Marriage Equality Losing Support?

Last week, Pew’s polling suggested so. Rover Jones and Daniel Cox don’t buy it:

Even in the few polls that do show a dip in support for same-sex marriage, there is no corresponding bump in opposition. In the 2014 surveys that show a dip in support for same-sex marriage, including the Pew survey and the two PRRI surveys, the dip is not mirrored by an equivalent increase in opposition, but there is a rise in non-response. The Pew survey, for example, showed a five-point drop in support between February 2014 and September 2014, but only a two-point increase in opposition of same-sex marriage. The portion of respondents who offered no opinion, however, increased by three percentage points to 10 percent. …

We don’t have to wait for new polling to say that the few polls showing a dip in support for same-sex marriage are outliers in a larger trend. The incoming tide of support for same-sex marriage may ebb and flow, but it is unlikely to recede as the youngest generation replaces the eldest and as American attitudes across the board continue to shift.