Category Archives: Web Article Review

what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas

Axios has some interesting stats comparing the demographics of Nevada today to the projected future of the U.S. as a whole.

  • The U.S. is on track to become minority white by 2045. Nevada is one of just 4 states that are already there.
  • Hispanic people are expected to make up 25% of the American population by 2045. They’re 29% of Nevada’s population today.
  • Immigration will likely be the backbone of the U.S.’ future population growth, and will likely hit record levels by 2045. Today, immigrants’ share of the Nevada population is the 5th largest of any state.
  • The vast majority of Nevadans live in urban areas, just as 89% of Americans are projected to by 2050, according to UN data.
  • At 10% of the population, Nevada’s black voting bloc is also significant. The U.S. will be 13% black in 2045.

coronavirus 2020!

I try not to write a lot about fast-moving current events because anything I write will be instantly outdated (I’m writing this on the morning of March 1, 2020). But here are a few thoughts I have and things I am reading on the subject.

First, I plan to pay attention and do whatever the health authorities suggest I do. “Health authorities” means the CDC, my state health department, and my county health department. These sources aren’t infallible. Already, it appears the CDC could have used a test from the World Health Organization to monitor for the virus here, but they thought they knew better, dropped the ball completely, and there has been no monitoring. That means it could already be spreading undetected and the chance to contain it to just a few people could be lost. There is also concern about budget cuts to pandemic preparedness and public health in general by the Trump administration, and interference by political appointees and industry lobbyists. Despite all this, “the authorities” have the most expertise and are the most reliable source of information available. I have added these three sources (the CDC, my state and county health departments) to my Twitter feed. (I almost never use Twitter, but I do find it useful in a fast-moving situation like a snowstorm or oil refinery or power plant disaster – the first of which, there have been zero this winter and the second and third of which, there have been two, quite recently and quite close to my house.)

I have a decent backlog of food in my house and am trying to add a little extra. If “the authorities” tell me to keep my children home from school or myself home from work, I plan to do it. If they don’t I don’t plan to. I just hope the people who keep the water, power, gas, and communication systems running continue to go to work. An extended quarantine could be different from a fire, flood, or hurricane in this way, but of course it would be much longer. The CDC has not given any guidance on cabin fever, which can be an extraordinarily debilitating illness among children and their caregivers in confined spaces.

I wondered what powers the federal, state, and local authorities actually have and what the break down is between them. This Bloomberg article talks about that a little.

That’s in part because the president clearly has the power to declare a national health emergency and start ordering quarantines. This power comes from Congress, and is conferred on the president by the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. As the name suggests, this is the same law that lets the president declare disaster relief emergencies. President Donald Trump invoked this power in late January, when he declared a public health emergency and ordered the quarantine of Americans returning from areas of China where Covid-19 had already spread. Quarantines can also be authorized by the surgeon general, who is specifically given that power by federal law.

Bloomberg

The article says that local jurisdictions pretty much have to do what their state authorities tell them to do. The CDC can’t actually commandeer state officials, but that states can choose to place their officials under CDC direction, and they most likely would. So effectively, there really is a chain of command from top to bottom.

By definition, a quarantine limits the freedom of movement of people who are completely innocent of any wrongdoing to serve the overall good of avoiding more infections. Supreme Court doctrine directs that essentially all our individual liberties can be suspended if the government has a compelling interest to do so and if its measures are narrowly tailored to achieving that end. Slowing a pandemic is a textbook example of a compelling state interest; and quarantine is presumably the narrowest available method to do so in the middle of an outbreak.

Local police would seem to have the authority to enforce a quarantine, but how strictly they might do that and whether citizens would be able to challenge that on legal grounds has not been fully tested. I note that during “mandatory” hurricane evacuations, local police departments generally don’t drag people out of their homes against their will. Of course, in that situation they are just putting themselves and their families at risk, not others. If someone was walking down a busy street wearing a suicide vest, of course the police would shoot that person because they are a danger to others.

the stats on Bernie Sanders’s health risks

Slate has an interesting article on health risks for someone Bernie Sanders’s age with Bernie Sanders’s known health condition. The author points out that these estimates can be done for Bernie because he has released a fair amount of health information (although still not everything the author would like), while the other older candidates have not.

  • His 12-month risk of a heart attack, stroke, or death is about 6%.
  • His risk of being hospitalized for any reason between now and November is about 30-35%.
  • His odds of surviving a first presidential term are about 65%, and his odds of surviving a second about 40%.

solving the delivery problem

Wired has an article on solutions to the “last mile” delivery problem. A couple interesting stats are that 5% of deliveries don’t reach their destination on the first try (that sounds pretty good to me) and that this costs retailers about $18 each time. Most of the proposed solutions just have to do with better data on locations and delivery preferences.

This article repeats the claim that deliveries increase traffic congestion, although it admits this is “difficult to measure”. I am still a bit skeptical of this. I am willing to follow the evidence wherever it leaves, but logically I feel like these claims leave out all the trips individuals are not taking to the store. If a delivery truck brings 100 packages to 100 homes, that could mean 100 car trips that were not taken. And that was just one truck, although it is kind of a big obvious smelly one and it might be blocking the street, a crosswalk, or a fire hydrant for a few minutes. Those trucks might also be competing for city and suburban streets at times when people are coming and going from work trips, which could increase peak traffic congestion.

locust plagues

East Africa is dealing with a massive locust plague, according to Grist. And of course, they just couldn’t resist using the phrase “biblical proportions”.

East Africa had an unusually wet year in 2019 — warming waters in the Indian Ocean produced a high number of tropical cyclones, which doused the coast and created “exceptional” conditions for locust breeding, Nairobi-based climate scientist Abubakr Salih Babiker told the Associated Press. Now, swarms of hungry insects are feasting on crops in the Horn of Africa, where millions of people already lack reliable access to nutritious food.

Grist