Republican Governors Gamble On Reopening Early

The pandemic has become somewhat of a partisan issue. Many Republican states are reopening early while Democratic states are playing it cautious. The resulting differences in both the impact of the Coronavirus and the local economies are likely to play into this year’s elections.

Several weeks ago, the White House put forth a proposed plan for reopening the country. Triggers for the plan included a 14-day downward trajectory of cases reporting influenza and COVID-like symptoms, a 14-day downward trajectory of confirmed COVID cases or positive tests, the ability of hospitals to treat all patients with crisis care, and having a robust testing program in place. I’m not sure that any state meets these benchmarks, particularly the call for robust testing.

There are fundamental, nonpolitical differences between the majority of red and blue states. Blue states, which are congregated along the coasts, have higher population densities and more urban. This may be why, as Axios points out, blue states have so far had higher rates of both infection and death from COVID-19.

That doesn’t mean that red states are out of the woods yet, however. In the last half of April red states saw higher percentage increases. Statistically this makes sense because an increase of the same number of cases will yield a higher percentage increase where the total number of cases was lower. For example, the addition of 10 cases would be a 10 percent increase in a state that had 100 cases previously, but it would be a one percent increase where there were 1,000 old cases.

Red states, which tend to be more rural and sparsely populated, are more difficult territory for Coronavirus to spread through. That doesn’t mean that it can’t happen. When rural people congregate, the virus can spread rapidly if it is present. Here in Georgia, some of the worst outbreaks outside of Atlanta were spread through religious services.

Where COVID-19 takes hold in red states, it can be deadly. Residents of nonmetro areas tend to be both older and have more underlying health problems than city dwellers. Often age and health problems go hand-in-hand. Both categories are high-risk for COVID-19. Further, demographic data from many southern states show that blacks are far more at-risk for negative outcomes from COVID-19 than whites.

When it comes to reopening, new cases are a more useful metric than deaths. Because COVID-19 takes about three weeks to kill on average, deaths are more of a form of historical data, hinting at the number of infections several weeks ago. New confirmed cases are more useful in determining how fast the virus is currently spreading.

Despite the bad press regarding Georgia’s reopening, Gov. Brian Kemp has handled the situation relatively well. Although the state did not meet the recommended 14-days of decreasing numbers when it reopened, Georgia’s seven-day moving average of Coronavirus cases has now been sharply trending down since April 22. On May 4, Georgia reported only 44 new cases. This is a positive sign that the state has seen the worst of the first wave of cases.

The downside is that many Georgians seem to be no longer following social distancing guidelines. Gov. Kemp lifted the general shelter-in-place order but encouraged Georgians to stay home when possible, but social distancing guidelines and shelter-in-place for “medically fragile” and elderly Georgia residents are still the order of the day. However, many residents seem to think that social distancing and mask recommendations are yesterday’s news. On my recent trips to town, I’ve noted that people congregating more closely and fewer are wearing masks.

In Florida, another hot-button state, cases peaked in late March but have trended down slowly. Per the Florida Department of Health, the Sunshine State is still recording 4,512 new cases per week, more than 600 per day. Yet, Florida began its phase one of reopening on Monday, as it recorded 819 new cases in one day.

The difference between the two states likely reflects a different strategy on reopening. There are at least two schools of thought on when to reopen. One is to move the IHME trend line down to the point where hospitals can cope with the surge of cases. The second is to move the trend line down even further to the point where transmission of the virus is drastically reduced and a secondary flareup is unlikely, at least in the short term. In Florida’s case, the state has achieved the first goal per the current IHME modeling for the state. It is possible that Georgia has achieved the second.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas is also taking an aggressive approach. Texas State Health Services reports a stable level of new cases, which increased slightly in late April and early May. Unsurprisingly, the highest levels of Texas cases are in Houston’s Harris County and Dallas County. KHOU reported that there were hundreds of complaints in the days following reopening that Houston businesses were not following the social distancing guidelines established by the governor’s office.

At least two other red states have taken a more conservative approach. In Mississippi, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves delayed the state’s reopening last week after a spike in new cases. The state’s Department of Health website shows a downward trend but notes that recent data may not be complete. Yesterday, Gov. Reeves amended his emergency order to allow some restaurants and businesses to reopen on May 7 if they follow strict social distancing and sanitary guidelines.

In Ohio, the Department of Health reports a 21-day average which has been declining since May 1. At 560 on May 4, the state is far off of its April 19 peak of 1,380 new cases. As a result, Gov. Mike Dewine, a Republican, plans to open about 90 percent of the state by next week.

Governors of both parties are walking a tightrope between rekindling the pandemic and mitigating economic damage. The situation is made all the more difficult by a vocal minority of citizens who are demanding that states be reopened immediately. Recent polling shows that a large majority of Americans, including most Republicans, support social distancing, however, and are more concerned about reopening too quickly than too late.

The rush to reopen states paired with a growing abandonment of social distancing measures at the grassroots level has led to an uptick in projected Coronavirus deaths. In early April, forecasted deaths were revised down to 60,000 following the implementation of the mitigation strategy. The US hit the 60,000 mark last week, however, and, as mitigation strategies are jettisoned, death estimates have more than doubled to 134,000.

To put that number in perspective, it would be more than the number of American soldiers killed in World War I, a number which incidentally included a large number of casualties from the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. This year the US has had to relearn many lessons of past pandemics such as the Spanish flu. One of those lessons is that reopening too early leads to more loss of life.

“One clear lesson of the 1918 pandemic is to be wary of that kind of thinking,” said James Leloudis, a history professor at the University of North Carolina. “Letting down the guard, in that case, turned out to be disastrous. It’s the same situation we are in now.”

In the midst of the emergency, it is difficult to see what the correct moves are because we don’t have all the information. We don’t know how many people are infected and not tested. We don’t know if there will be additional waves of infections. We don’t know if or when effective treatments and vaccines will be discovered. We don’t even know how many asymptomatic carriers are spreading the disease. What we do know is that reopening earlier will cost an unknown number of lives.

Republican governors are gambling that the disease has largely run its course and that the loss of life from reopening will be minimal enough to be acceptable to the majority of their state’s voters. We won’t know for some time, possibly years, whether these gambles were correct. In November, voters will begin to rule on whether those gambles a good bet.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Is The CDC Really Inflating Coronavirus Death Statistics?

Conspiracy theories about the Coronavirus epidemic are being generated faster than people can pull toiler paper off the shelves and that’s pretty dang fast these days. One claim making the rounds in recent days is that the CDC is “cooking the books” on COVID-19 by including deaths that were not caused by the virus. This is a pretty astounding claim, but is it true?

I’ve seen many versions of the claim that the Coronavirus death count is inflated, but many seem to originate with Fox News’ Brit Hume, who retweeted a tweet thread that showed that many COVID-19 deaths had underlying medical conditions. The Twitter user, Adam Townsend, who is a self-described “investor,” and “extreme salesman” claims in the thread that “NYC numbers are cooked so that ‘if it died, and it tested positive for COVID-19, book it.’"

https://twitter.com/brithume/status/1245465723591364616?s=20

To determine whether Hume and Townsend’s claim is true, I looked up the CDC guidelines for reporting Coronavirus deaths. The document, “Guidance for Certifying Deaths Due to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID–19)” from the National Vital Statistics System is not a secret. It is openly available on the internet and describes the procedure for classifying pandemic deaths.

Per the guidelines, Coronavirus deaths are subject to a two-part classification system. Part one of the reporting is where the “immediate cause of death, which is the disease or condition that directly preceded death,” is reported. “Other significant conditions that contributed to the death” are reported in part two.

“If COVID–19 played a role in the death, this condition should be specified on the death certificate,” the CDC guidelines instruct. “In many cases, it is likely that it will be the UCOD [underlying cause of death], as it can lead to various lifethreatening conditions, such as pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). In these cases, COVID–19 should be reported on the lowest line used in Part I with the other conditions to which it gave rise listed on the lines above it.”

The instructions continue, “In some cases, survival from COVID–19 can be complicated by pre-existing chronic conditions, especially those that result in diminished lung capacity, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or asthma. These medical conditions do not cause COVID–19, but can increase the risk of contracting a respiratory infection and death, so these conditions should be reported in Part II and not in Part I.”

There has been a chronic shortage of testing kits to confirm Coronavirus infections and the CDC guidelines take this into account as well. The CDC states that “testing for COVID–19 should be conducted whenever possible” if Coronavirus is suspected but allows certifiers to “use their best clinical judgment” if tests are unavailable.

“In cases where a definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID-19 on a death certificate as “probable” or “presumed,” the guidelines note.

In other words, if a Coronavirus infection leads to death, then “COVID-19” is listed as the primary cause of death. Other ailments are not ignored, however, as Hume and others allege. Pre-existing conditions are also listed as contributing factors. Physicians can use their judgment if testing is not available to confirm Coronavirus but those certifications would be identified as unconfirmed “probable” cases.

The CDC guidelines are clearly intended to present both Coronavirus and other secondary causes of death. But what about other infectious diseases? Are they treated similarly? A 2009 paper in the library of the National Institutes of Health, “Estimating Influenza-Associated Deaths in the United States,” sheds some light on that question.

“For several reasons, the number of influenza-related deaths cannot be determined solely by reports of influenza-coded deaths,” the authors say. “First, most adult patients with symptoms consistent with influenza infection are not tested for influenza. Those who are generally receive rapid tests of only modest sensitivity. In addition, many influenza-associated deaths occur one or two weeks after the initial infection (when viral shedding has ended), either because of secondary bacterial infections or because the influenza has exacerbated chronic illnesses (e.g., congestive heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Even when influenza infection is confirmed by laboratory testing, those results are rarely reported on death certificates.”

So, flu deaths are much harder to identify than COVID-19 deaths because most patients aren’t tested for the flu and, even when they are, flu tests are not especially reliable. Further, most flu deaths are due to secondary causes such as bacterial infections that lead to pneumonia or chronic illnesses. Identifying flu deaths sounds a lot like identifying COVID-19 deaths except that there is an added difficulty in that the flu is rarely listed as a cause of death.

Speaking to Laura Ingraham on Fox News, Dr. Scott Jensen, a Republican state senator in Minnesota, called the CDC guidelines “ridiculous” and compared them to flu reporting.

“I’ve never been encouraged to [notate 'influenza']," he said. "I would probably write 'respiratory arrest' to be the top line, and the underlying cause of this disease would be pneumonia... I might well put emphysema or congestive heart failure, but I would never put influenza down as the underlying cause of death and yet that’s what we are being asked to do here."

But, as we have seen, computing influenza deaths requires a substantial amount of assumptions and statistical modeling. It makes more sense and is likely more accurate to have doctors at the point of care classify the death as COVID-19 rather than trying to reverse-engineer the statistics months or years later.

Jensen also repeats the argument that a person who tests positive for COVID-19 and dies after a traffic accident could be classified as a Coronavirus death. However, this is false for anyone following the CDC guidelines because the virus would not be the “immediate cause of death.” Even with a positive test, it would be obvious that the virus did not “play a role” in an auto accident death. Any first-year medical student should be able to tell the difference between trauma from an auto accident and a respiratory illness.

Flu death statistics seem much more difficult to calculate than Coronavirus deaths, yet few people have any problem accepting the CDC data for flu deaths. The reason is that flu epidemics are not political hot potatoes. No flu epidemic since the 1918-20 Spanish flu has been serious enough to warrant shutting down the economy and pandemics don’t usually happen to fall on election years. Especially considering the president’s early missteps and the economic upheaval that resulted from the shelter-in-place orders, the Trump campaign and its surrogates have a vested interest in minimizing the death toll both to distance the president from as much of the loss of life as possible as well as to justify reopening businesses as quickly as possible.

What the Coronavirus “truthers” seem to be pushing for is to only count COVID-19 victims with no pre-existing conditions, arguing that those with underlying health problems probably would have died anyway. The truth is that people with underlying health problems are at higher risk for Coronavirus. That isn’t a new or unexpected finding. It’s something that has been known since the beginning (and it also applies to flu patients). Nevertheless, if someone has a heart problem and is living with it but contracts COVID-19 and dies a few weeks later, it can be reasonably said that Coronavirus shortened the person’s life, even if it was not the sole cause of death. If the person had not contracted Coronavirus, they would still be alive.

Not counting deaths that involved pre-existing conditions cooks the books in the other direction. If those deaths are excluded, then the COVID-19 death toll will be artificially low. After all, an underlying health problem doesn’t mean that the person is going to die within a few months. People can live for years with heart disease, lung problems, or cancer.

As a Harvard epidemiologist told FactCheck.org, “There are going to be some people who die of something else, happen to have COVID and get tested, and get counted as COVID deaths but would die anyway. It would be wrong to say that number is zero. However, given current testing shortages and protocols, the number of such cases will be small.”

In fact, the shortage of testing probably means that COVID-19 deaths are undercounted rather than inflated. Per the Washington Post, a large number of deaths due to respiratory illnesses in the early weeks of the pandemic were not counted as Coronavirus deaths because of the lack of testing. Even now, many people who die at home or in nursing homes are not being tested or categorized as victims of COVID-19. In some cases, medical authorities don’t want to waste a test on someone who is already dead. In other cases, tests can return a false negative.

Drs. Birx and Fauci, who lead the Coronavirus Task Force, agree that the death toll is not inflated. “Those individuals will have an underlying condition, but that underlying condition did not cause their acute death when it’s related to a COVID infection,” Dr. Birx said at a briefing last week. “In fact, it’s the opposite.”

Dr. Fauci went even further, saying, “You will always have conspiracy theories when you have a very challenging public health crisis. They are nothing but distractions. Let somebody write a book about it later on. But not now.”

It is important to note that even though most of the death count conspiracy theorists seem to be Trump partisans, President Trump does not dispute the official record.

“When you say death counts, I think they’re pretty accurate on the death counts. Somebody dies, I think the states have been pretty accurate,” Trump said.

As a final proof, it would be too much of a coincidence that there was such a spontaneous increase in non-Coronavirus deaths that New York had to reopen a mass burial site to cope with a sudden influx of corpses that were totally unrelated to the pandemic. The logical answer is that the increased number of deaths are related to the pandemic.

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1248367716114796546?s=20

Despite the claims, there seems to be no evidence that the government is inflating Coronavirus death statistics. The CDC guidance is very specific that COVID-19 should be listed only if it is the “immediate cause” of the death. Even then, guidelines call for contributing causes of death to be listed as well. If the COVID-19 infection cannot be confirmed with testing, the death is noted as a “presumed” Coronavirus death. In reality, Coronavirus deaths are probably undercounted due to lack of testing and the fact that the large number of deaths is overwhelming medical officials.

We’ll consider this myth busted.

Originally published on The Resurgent

US Coronavirus Cases Blow Past 100,000

The number of Coronavirus cases in the United States surged past 100,000 on Friday afternoon. The US is now the world leader in acknowledged cases of the disease after having passed China and Italy earlier in the week. Globally, there are currently 606,000 confirmed cases.

Many have questioned whether the US has actually surpassed China, questioning official Chinese statistics that show the virus leveling off at about 80,000 cases in mid-February. The discussion of which country is worse off misses the point, however.

The buried lede is that the United States has added more than 100,000 cases in a single month since the CDC announced “community spread” of the disease in this country on February 26. There were 60 known cases then. As I write this, the current count is either 102,636 or 105,019 depending on which site you look at. (The official CDC count lags behind because it only reports between Monday and Friday and the numbers close out on the previous day.)

In reality, the spread of the infection is probably much worse than even the 105,000 estimate. Inan Dogan, research director of Insider Monkey, worked backward from the 205 deaths reported in the US on March 19. Assuming a 0.8 percent death rate and armed with the fact that a COVID-19 infection takes about 24 days to resolve, Dogan calculated that there must have been about 25,625 infected Americans on February 25 (205 divided by 0.8 percent). That implies a far greater spread than the 60 confirmed cases that the government acknowledged at the time.

Dogan’s mathematic model, which appeared on Yahoo News on March 20, estimates that the number of infected people doubles every three days. From the 25,000 infected on February 25, the contagion would have grown to 100,000 on February 28. He used his model to predict 800 US deaths 26 days later on March 26. Historical statistics show that the death toll was actually 1,295 on that day.

Under Dogan’s model, by March 14, the day after President Trump declared a national emergency, there were already 1.6 million infected Americans. The cat was already well out of the bag at that point.

The good news is that on March 14, many state and local governments began instituting defensive measures such as social distancing, closing schools, and stay-at-home orders. Dogan notes that these tactics have slowed the spread of the disease so that it is no longer doubling every three days.

The bad news is that the disease is running its course on the 1.6 million Americans who were already infected. Using the model, Dogan predicts that the US death toll will reach 12,800 within 24 days of March 14. That day would be April 7.

In three weeks, Dogan warns, we could be seeing 1,000 deaths per day unless we take “strict measures,” similar to the lockdowns that were able to slow the spread of Coronavirus in China and Italy.

“The attacks on 9/11 killed around 3,000 people. We will be reporting a 9/11 every three days,” Dogan says. “This is a mathematical certainty.”

Whether one wants to quibble with Dogan’s assumptions or not, it seems obvious that the number of American infections has been drastically undercounted. The shortage of test kits, which is still a problem, means that only likely Coronavirus cases have been tested. That also means that hundreds of thousands of people with mild symptoms have not been tested.

On my social media timelines, I’ve noticed an increasing number of people reporting fevers and coughs in recent days. Most of these people have not tested positive for COVID-19 because they have not been tested at all. Several have posted that they were advised to self-quarantine and not seek treatment unless they had trouble breathing.

The development of a new 5-minute test kit by Abbott may help to illuminate how far through American society COVID-19 has spread, but it is too late to stop the disease from running its course through those who have already been infected. With no approved treatments and shortages of ventilators, the waves of infections and deaths are far from cresting. We are in for several bad weeks.

In the meantime, if you don’t have symptoms, protect yourself by staying home when possible, maintaining your distance from others, and washing your hands frequently. There is now evidence that the virus can survive outside the body for considerable lengths of time. Just how long varies by the material, but you should clean and disinfect high-touch surfaces such as countertops and doorknobs. In my house, we have also instituted a quarantine area for incoming groceries and other items. If we need the item quickly, we disinfect and discard the outer packaging.

If you are experiencing Coronavirus symptoms, quarantine yourself and notify anyone you have come into contact with so that they can also isolate themselves. If you are experiencing breathing problems, get help immediately, but call ahead before visiting a doctor’s office or hospital. The CDC has a list of other recommendations for the sick that you can read here. Remember that your country is praying for you.

But for the country as a whole, things are going to get worse before they get better.

Originally published on The Resurgent.

Family Arrests At Border Hit Record High For Fourth Straight Month

Arrests of families of illegal immigrants at the Mexican border in December reached a record high for the fourth month in a row. Per data from Customs and Border Protection, arrests of families along the southern border have set new records for the past four consecutive months.

CNN reports that the CBP arrested 27,518 family members in December 2018. This represents an increase of nearly 240% from December 2017, which had 8,120 arrests. CBP statistics show an increase in family arrests on the border since August 2018. Arrest statistics are considered to be a measure of illegal border crossings under the assumption that more arrests will be made if more crossings are attempted.

The CBP website contains a prominent notice saying, “ Due to the lapse in federal funding, this website will not be actively managed,” and “This website was last updated on December 21, 2018, and will not be updated until after funding is enacted.” The statistics presented by CNN apparently reflect numbers that are not yet available on the CBP website due to the government shutdown.

While arrests of Family Unit Aliens (FMUA) have increased in recent months, total arrests have decreased slightly. Total arrests on the southwest border were 50,753 in December, slightly fewer than the 51,856 in November. Border traffic often decreases in December due to holidays and colder weather.

The shift seems to represent a changing pattern of illegal immigration across the Mexican border. Illegal border crossings reached a 46-year low in 2017 and have not increased appreciably since. While the total number of illegal border crossings is low by historical standards, families are making up a larger share of those who do cross the border.

The larger number of families and children at the border is overwhelming the ability of CBP to house and care for them. Yet out of the thousands of arrests at the southern border, only six were suspected terrorists compared with 41 at the Canadian border. The crisis at the border is a humanitarian crisis rather than a national security crisis.

CBP Commissioner Kevin McAlleenan agrees that the big problem at the border is dealing with the volume of families and minors. McAlleenan told ABC News in December 2018, “The -- the humanitarian crisis we’re facing -- that means there are 60,000 people crossing the border each month -- each of the last three months. That’s 30,000 families, 5,000 kids per month. That means we’re going to have 22,000 children come through our system, a system built for adults who are violators of the law. Now they’re coming in to border patrol stations as young children. So that -- that’s a huge crisis.”

“The breaking point at the border is because of the volume,” McAlleenan added, noting that a 2015 case upheld by the 9th Circuit in 2016 led to the current problem of being unable to complete immigration proceedings for immigrants that arrived with children. The decision created an incentive for illegal immigrants to bring their children across the border.

“So basically, that sent a signal, if you arrive with a child, you’ll be able to stay in the United States,” McAlleenan said. “And that’s why we’ve seen continued growth month after month of people coming with children.”

One of the big questions of the hour is whether the humanitarian crisis provides sufficient grounds for President Trump to use his executive authority to declare a national emergency and bypass Congress to fund construction for the wall. The answer is almost certainly no.

Illegal immigration across the southwest border is currently very low by historical standards. The CBP website, which may have incomplete data, puts total arrests along the Mexican border at 396,579 for 2018. That’s more than the 2017 total of 310,531 but far less than the 1.6 million arrests from 2000 or the 723,825 who were arrested 10 years ago in 2008 (CBP data going back to 2000 can be viewed here).

The illegal immigration problem that we face today is very different from the one that we faced 20 years ago. In 2015, Pew Research reported that the Mexican immigration wave was ending as more Mexicans left the US than entered. Today, the CBP statistics note that arrests of Mexican families along the border are far fewer than those from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras. This reduction in immigration from Mexico is partly due to the creation of more economic opportunity in Mexico by NAFTA as well as the deterioration of conditions in Central America.

Although he acknowledges that more capacity to house detainees is needed, CBP’s McAlleenan has an idea on how to solve the problem. Actually, he has several of them.

“So, I think this is a multifaceted problem that requires a multifaceted solution,” he said. “You mentioned the legal framework, based on that Flores settlement and the court decision families are going to be released. So that’s inviting families into this dangerous journey. We need a sober-minded, nonpartisan look at our immigration laws to really confront and grapple with the fact that children and families are coming into this cycle, that’s first and foremost.”

“We also need to invest in Central America,” he added. He advocates working with Central American nations and Mexico to help fix the problems, such as violence, food shortages, and malnutrition, that make people want to leave those countries to come to the US.

He also favors physical barriers for certain parts of the border, particularly those that “have a dense metropolitan area on both sides of the border, where people can disappear quickly into a neighborhood in the U.S. side if we can’t slow them down.”

McAlleenan’s idea of a barrier includes much more than just a wall. “And what we’re talking about is not just a dumb barrier,” he says, “We’re talking about sensors, cameras, lighting, access roads for our agents, a system that helps us secure that area of the border.”

The $5 billion that President Trump has requested would pay for about 215 miles of McAlleenan’s requested improvements to the border. The entire border is almost 2,000 miles long. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

Pilot suicides

Yesterday’s revelation that the recent crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 was caused by an apparent pilot suicide shocked the world. First Officer Andreus Lubitz reportedly locked the captain out of the cockpit and calmly flew the airplane with its 150 passengers into the side of a French mountain, killing everyone on board.

The act of suicide by an airline pilot while flying is not common, but has happened more than most people think. The most well-known suicide pilots, the Japanese kamikazes of World War II, carried no passengers, although the September 11 suicide hijackers did. The Aviation Safety Network lists nine crashes dating back to 1976 that were confirmed to be suicides. Additionally, ABC News notes that a Japan Air Lines pilot crashed his DC-8 in 1982, killing 24 people, but surviving the crash himself. Last year’s disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 is widely believed to have been due to a pilot suicide as well.

Airline suicide crashes are usually not well known because they have primarily occurred in the third world. The sole suicide crash before Germanwings that affected a Western country was EgyptAir 990, which crashed off the island of Nantucket, Mass. in 1999. The American NTSB determined that a relief first officer crashed the plane into the ocean, killing all 217 people on board, but Egypt disputed the conclusion.

For most people, there are strong psychological barriers against killing oneself or others. A pilot who intentionally crashes his plane has obviously overcome these strong taboos against killing and suicide. While pilots are normal people with normal problems, few people who commit suicide do so while taking hundreds of other lives at the same time. Nevertheless, one study cited by Air & Space Magazine found that suicide was suspected in .33 percent of fatal crashes over 20 years. This is slightly more than one crash per year, mostly involving small airplanes.

Flying is a high stress occupation. Being an airline pilot involves long periods of time away from home and family, which leads to a high divorce rate. The airline industry is often unstable and furloughs (layoffs) or demotions can come suddenly and last years, leading to financial problems. Add to that a grueling schedule with irregular work hours, regular flight tests and medical exams that can quickly end a career, and the knowledge that a momentary lapse can kill or lead to a violation by regulatory authorities and it is easy to understand how a pilot could suffer from depression or substance abuse. In spite of the stress, suicide is not demonstrably higher for pilots according to most studies.

“It's a special job. You are working at irregular times; if you have a family, you are often not there [or] may be at home when everyone is at work,” said Dr. Andre Droog, president of the European Association for Aviation Psychology on Voice of America. “If you are flying intercontinental flights, you may build up jet lag and fatigue and of course you have to manage your life very well.”

In spite of policies at many airlines that encourage pilots to self-report addiction or mental health issues, many pilots are fearful that doing so will cost them their jobs. In 2010, the FAA changed its policy to allow pilots to take antidepressants for mild to moderate depression, but the current policy stipulates that approval is on a case-by-case basis and requires successful treatment for six months, during which time they would not be legal to fly. This effectively means that pilots have to either forgo treatment, fly illegally, or take a six month leave of absence.

In Asia, where several suicide crashes have taken place, many airlines now subject their pilots to psychological testing. “They ask about your mental health, about events that could affect you psychologically,” one captain from an Asian airline told CNBC. “But who willingly admits to anything that could lead to a suspension of their license? I won't. I need my job.”

Since airline crewmembers know each other best, flight crews are encouraged to report any potential problems that they observe. In the United States, many pilot unions have professional standards committees to help resolve interpersonal conflicts. Concerned crewmembers can talk to representatives on these committees without involving company representatives and threatening jobs.

“Never leave a person alone - that's probably the most effective suicide prevention technique there is," said Tony Catanese, a clinical psychologist at Glen Iris Psychology in Melbourne on CNBC.

Federal aviation regulations already require that both pilots remain in the cockpit, but contains an exception for “physiological needs.” For flights lasting from six to eight hours, it is unrealistic to assume that neither pilot would ever have to visit the lavatory. On most flights, there are no relief crews to fill the empty seat for a few minutes. Cockpit doors have been strengthened since the September 11 attacks to resist forcible entry, making it difficult for the second pilot to break back in.

One solution might be for a flight attendant enter the cockpit when one pilot leaves. The Flight Attendant would probably not be able to wrestle the controls from a suicidal pilot, but might be able to at least prevent him from locking the other pilot out.

Ultimately, there is no way to effectively prevent any possibility of future airline pilot suicides. At present, even though the shock of the Germanwings crash is still fresh, the problem of suicides by pilots is a tiny statistical blip. The vast majority of airline pilots around the world are professionals who have learned to cope with life’s problems and keep them out of the cockpit.

 

Read the full article on Aviation Examiner

Gun control and mass killings

When Aaron Alexis used several guns to commit mass murder at the Washington, D.C. Navy yard yesterday, it was only the most recent in a string of mass shootings in areas where strict gun control is in force. In fact, statistics from past rampage killings show that mass shootings and killings are more likely to take place in states with rigorous gun laws.

The Citizens Crime Commission of New York City lists 27 mass shootings (defined by the FBI as four or more victims killed) in the United States from 1984 through August 2012. When geographical location is considered, the majority of these shootings took place in states with strict gun control laws. Two of the states with the most restrictive gun control laws, Wisconsin and Illinois, were both the site of mass shootings. Two mass shootings occurred in Wisconsin. Four mass shootings took place in California, despite its gun control initiatives. Connecticut was the site of two previous mass killings before last year’s Newtown massacre, even though the state’s gun laws are considered some of the toughest in the nation according to a Washington Post article that cites studies by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and Brown University.

Likewise, the District of Columbia’s gun laws are also tough. For years, the District had an outright ban of private weapons until it was struck down in the Supreme Court’s landmark Heller decision. Crime rates began to drop after the ban was ruled unconstitutional according to the Wall Street Journal. Because the District is not a state, it does not rank on the Brady Campaign’s list of state gun control laws, but “Guns and Ammo” magazine ranked it dead last among the “Best States for Gun Owners for 2013.”

A common argument is that gun control fails because criminals buy weapons in states with lax gun laws. If this is true, then mass shootings should be more common in states that allow freer access to guns. In reality, many states with unrestrictive gun laws saw no mass shootings. When shootings did occur in these states, they often happened in places such as schools where guns were not allowed. In the Aurora, Co. movie theater shooting, the theater did not permit guns. In Fort Hood, Tx., like the Washington Navy yard, military personnel were not permitted to carry weapons on base.

There is a striking similarity to the map showing locations of mass shootings and blue states from past elections. Although the comparison is not perfect, the red states across the south from Louisiana to North Carolina had no mass shootings. Likewise, the Midwest experienced few mass shootings while liberal meccas like California, Illinois, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and New York all made the list.

The failure of gun control to prevent mass shootings is even more stark when other countries are considered. This is true even though the United States is one of the few countries in the world where the ownership of firearms is legal and common for civilians. In fact, of the top ten rampage killings listed on Listverse.com, only two occurred in the U.S.

Lists compiled by Wikipedia concur that mass shootings are not an American phenomenon. The worst mass shooting in the world occurred in Norway in 2011 when 68 people were murdered and 110 were injured by Anders Behring Breivik. Breivik also killed another eight people with a car bomb. The second worst shooting occurred in South Korea in 1982 when a man killed 62 people and wounded another 37 before committing suicide. The worst mass shooting in the Americas occurred in Bogota, Colombia in 1986 when a man used a variety of weapons to kill 30 people and injure another 15.

In one interesting case, the same man perpetrated two mass killings in Africa. William Unek murdered 21 people with an axe in the Belgian Congo in 1954. He escaped to Tanganyika where he went on another rampage three years later, this time using a rifle as well as an axe to kill 36 people.

In Europe there have been a surprising number of mass shootings in the past few decades in spite of onerous laws against the private ownership of guns. According to the Associated Press, in addition to Norway’s Anders Breivik, there were mass shootings in the United Kingdom in 2010 and 1987, Switzerland in 2001, France in 1989 and 1995, Russia in 1999, Finland in 2007 and 2008, Germany in 2009 and 2002, and Spain in 1990. In 1996, sixteen kindergarteners were murdered in Scotland by a gunman who then committed suicide.

Even communist China, a literal police state, is not immune to mass shootings. A man killed 23 people and wounded as many as 80 in Beijing before being shot by police in 1994. Other mass murders in China used other weapons. In 2001, two Chinese men killed 14 people in China with guns and knives. In 2006 in Gongyi, China, 12 kindergarteners and four adults were killed with knives and a gasoline fire. A man killed seven children and two women with a meat cleaver in Xian in 2010. In Hebei in 2010, a man ran over 17 people with a shovel loader tractor.

Knives and explosives have been used to kill large numbers of people on many occasions. In 1950, a man killed 22 people in India with a knife. The worst school massacre in American history used explosives, not guns. According to Listverse.com, in 1927 a former school board member in Bath Township, Mich. set off three bombs that killed 45 people and wounded 58.

Conversely, legal guns in the hands of citizens have prevented several massacres. Days before the Sandy Hook shooting, Portland’s News Channel 8 reported that a concealed carry holder confronted a man who had already killed two people in a mall in Clackamas, Wash. When he saw that he was confronted by an armed civilian, the murderer then killed himself before he could take any more lives.

It wasn’t the first time that citizens had prevented such a tragedy. In 1997, an assistant principal retrieved a pistol from his car to stop a shooting spree at Pearl High School in Mississippi. In 2002, two students used their personal guns to help end a shooting spree at the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia. In 2007, a churchgoer shot a man who had killed four people in a Colorado Springs church. A Salt Lake City gun owner stopped a man who suddenly began stabbing shoppers in a grocery store. There are many other reports of armed citizens saving lives as well.

In spite of the perception that mass shootings are becoming more frequent, criminologists say that random shootings are not happening as often as in the past according to the Associated Press. Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections and the author of a book on mass murders in America, says that mass shootings increased between the 1960s and 1990s, but that mass killings have decreased since 2000. Duwe says mass killings in the U.S. peaked in 1929. In spite of the emotional impact of random killings, the majority of murder victims know their killer.

Portions of this article were originally published by Examiner on Dec. 19, 2012

Published on Atlanta Conservative Examiner

July jobs report not rosy in spite of unemployment decline

The July Jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics unveiled a headline unemployment number that edged down slightly to 7.4 percent as the economy added 162,000 jobs. In spite of the decrease in the overall unemployment estimate, the report does not paint a bright picture for the jobs market. A forecast of economists by Bloomberg had predicted an increase of 185,000 new jobs.

Buried in the report, the Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate actually fell from 63.5 to 63.4 percent as job creation did not keep pace with population growth. According to BLS historical statistics, the rate reached a recent high in January 2007 at 66.4 percent before the onset of the recession. The rate has continued to decline during Barack Obama’s presidency from 65.7 percent in January 2009.

It might seem inconsistent that the labor participate rate declined at the same time that the unemployment rate fell. The answer can be found in the report’s measure of discouraged workers, people who are “not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.” The number of discouraged workers rose sharply to a total of 416,000. The 136,000 increase in discouraged workers who dropped out of the workforce is almost equal to the number of workers who found jobs. The U-4 unemployment rate which adds discouraged workers to the headline unemployment rate is at 8.0 percent.

More bad news is that the number of workers who hold part-time jobs increased as well. This includes workers who work part-time for economic reasons such as the inability to find full-time work or declines in demand as well as those who work part-time because of noneconomic commitments such as family or school. These workers are considered “marginally attached” to the workforce. The U-6 unemployment rate which includes both discouraged and marginally attached workers is 14 percent.

As more part-time workers entered the work force, the average work week shortened to 34.4 hours, 0.1 hours shorter than June. The average work week for production employees was even shorter at 33.6 hours. Similarly, earnings for all employees fell by $3.09 and for production employees by $2.02.

Overall, the Yahoo News noted that 65 percent of the new jobs were part time. The industries with the largest numbers of new jobs were in low-paying sectors such as retail (47,000) and restaurants and bars (38,000). Professional and business services also added 36,000 new jobs.

One reason for the increase in the rate of part-time jobs created is the Affordable Care Act. New employment taxes in Obamacare encourage companies to avoid hiring full-time workers that will be subject to the provisions of the health care law that is scheduled to go into full effect in 2014.

Fifty-two percent of the unemployed have been out of work for more than 15 weeks. Thirty-seven percent have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks.

A final item in the report notes that employment figures for May and June were lower than previously estimated. These numbers were revised down by a total of 26,000 jobs.

Originally published on Atlanta Conservative Examiner.

Who killed Trayvon Martin? An honest discussion of race and crime

Earlier this week on July 16, Attorney General Eric Holder addressed the NAACP convention in Orlando in the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict. In the speech, Holder said that the “tragedy provides yet another opportunity for our nation to speak honestly – and openly – about the complicated and emotionally-charged issues that this case has raised.” In truth, the national conversation about the killing of Trayvon Martin has been anything but honest. 

George Zimmerman admits that he shot and killed Trayvon Martin. Even though Zimmerman pulled the trigger to fire the shot that ultimately killed Martin, he was not the only cause of Martin’s death. There seems to be plenty of blame to go around.

As noted in Examiner, Zimmerman, a registered Democrat, lived in a racially mixed neighborhood. In fact, Martin’s father’s girlfriend lived in the same neighborhood. It is unlikely that Zimmerman would have thought the mere presence of a black teenager would be alarming unless he was acting suspiciously. The Daily Caller reported in April 2012 that Zimmerman was one of few people in Sanford who pushed for justice in 2010 when the son of a white police officer beat a black man.

It seems likely that there is more to the case than the media narrative of a racist neighborhood watch captain killing an innocent black teenager. In many accidents, investigators point to a chain of events that lead up to the final incident. If any of the events that link together to cause the accident had not occurred the accident chain might have been broken. In the case of Trayvon Martin, there are several links in the chain.

The most obvious link in the chain is the string of burglaries that occurred in George Zimmerman’s neighborhood prior to his encounter with Trayvon Martin. According to CNN, there were at least eight burglaries within the previous 14 months. CNN notes that witnesses reported black males were responsible in three to four of the incidents while the other four had no witnesses or suspects. One resident said that George Zimmerman had called to alert police to a burglary in progress at his home on Feb. 2. Zimmerman’s call noted that the burglar in this case was also a black man.

According to the FBI, blacks represent 28 percent of arrests in the United States even though they make up only 13 percent of the population according to the Census Bureau. This means that they commit a disproportionate number of crimes compared to other demographic groups. Half of all murder arrests and more than half of robbery arrests are blacks. Thirty-one percent of burglary arrests are blacks. The statistics are even higher for juvenile arrests. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks are “disproportionately represented among both homicide victims and offenders.”

None of this means that every black person should be automatically suspected of criminal behavior. However, it does show that if a black teenager is acting strangely and looking into houses as Zimmerman alleges, investigating further is not unreasonable. The very purpose for the existence of a neighborhood watch is to be alert for suspicious activity regardless of race.

The question is why crime and incarceration rates among blacks are so much higher than their share of the total population. The answer can likely be found in the destruction of the black family. Data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows that 67 percent of black children live in single-parent households. This is a far greater rate than for other races. Seventy-two percent of black children are born to unwed mothers according to NBC News.

The link between single-parent families and risky behaviors of children is well established. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, especially when the absent parent is the father, children are much more likely to become sexually active, use drugs, and have increased risk of juvenile delinquency.

The underlying truths represented by these statistics may have shaped Trayvon Martin’s young life. Martin’s step-mother, Alicia Stanley, raised him for 14 years until she and Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, divorced. Trayvon apparently changed after the divorce. In a CNN interview, Stanley said that he wasn’t a “thug” and that language like “creepy-ass cracker” was not used their home. Stanley said that she did not believe that race was a factor in the shooting.

Nevertheless, New York Times reported that, after the shooting, pictures and text messages found on Trayvon’s cell phone included guns, drugs, fighting and the fact that he had been kicked out of his mother’s house. One picture apparently shows Martin smoking marijuana, which has been shown to cause aggression, anxiety and paranoia. The Daily Mail reports that Trayvon was suspended from school three times in the months before his death. Reasons for the suspensions were possession of a burglary tool and jewelry, truancy, and possession of marijuana paraphernalia. Twitter messages refer to Trayvon hitting a bus driver. (Martin’s complete tweets can be viewed here.) ABC News also reported that Martin’s autopsy showed THC, the drug found in marijuana, in his blood.

In one eerily prescient exchange of text messages, reported in the Miami Herald, a friend asked Trayvon “so you just turning into a lil hoodlum [?]” and then warned “Boy don’t get one planted in ya chest.” Three months later, Trayvon was dead.

There were many links in the chain that led to Trayvon Martin’s death. George Zimmerman’s ill-considered decision to follow the teen is only the most obvious. Directly related to Zimmerman’s paranoia was the spate of burglaries that local police either could not or would not solve. The “broken windows” theory of policing holds that prosecution of small crimes can prevent larger, more violent crimes. In this case, if the police had solved the string of burglaries, they might have prevented an assault and killing. Likewise, if Trayvon’s parents and school administrators had reacted more strongly to the warning signs in his academic career, he might have been “scared straight.”

The biggest and most difficult link to break is the destruction of the black family. Trayvon Martin’s problems may have stemmed from the divorce of his father and step-mother. Like many children of divorce, Martin seems to have begun having trouble at school, become involved with drugs, and finally graduated to violence. Eyewitness testimony, reported by ABC News, supports Zimmerman’s story that he was pinned by Martin and screamed for help. If Martin had returned to his father’s girlfriend’s home rather than turning to confront Zimmerman, regardless of who threw the first punch, he would be alive today. His anger, resulting from anger at his parents’ divorce and compounded by drug use, may have played a role in his decision not to walk away.

Bill Cosby is one of the few black leaders who is willing to speak frankly about the problems facing the black community. In a 2011 interview with the Christian Post, Cosby decried the rise in single-parent families and the “media that romanticizes criminal behavior, things that a person will say against women, profanity, being gangster, having multiple children with multiple men and women and not wanting to is prevalent.”

The way to prevent more Trayvon Martins is not banning stand-your-ground laws, guns or hoodies. Preventing the deaths of more young black men and women starts with repairing the damage to the black family, a much more difficult task than demonizing George Zimmerman. Perhaps that is why so many choose to ignore the problem.

Originally published as Atlanta Conservative Examiner