So why do politicians lie so often? Is it a shortcut to better ends, a cold utilitarian calculation they all make? Is it because fundamentally dishonest people are disproportionately drawn to politics? Or is it maybe because the single best way to get in real trouble in politics-- even more sure fire than say visiting your Argentine mistress on the state's dime or propositioning the House pages-- is by actually stating a glaringly obvious truth? Well I suppose it could be a combination of two options or all three, but the third definitely has to be part of the explanation.
Remember the huge trouble Hillary Clinton suggesting that while no one would deny his importance or heroism it was just possible that other people besides Martin Luther King Jr. may have played a role in ending segregation. You know like LB J who not only signed both the civil rights and voting rights bills into law, but used every ounce of his political skill and a good bit of his political capital to get those bills through congress. Or the scandal that erupted when Howard Dean dared to state the screamingly obvious fact that capturing Hussein, who had no links to Al Qaeda or any other terrorist group that had ever actually attacked us and who wasn't even in power, would do absolutely nothing to make us safer from terror? Or perhaps when the Kossacks drove that Stranahan fellow from their little village for saying that maybe there was something to those rumors that John Edwards was cheating on his wife?
Well Obama seems to have had just such an experience. Apparently he's felt enough heat from the controversy that he saw the need to call up Sgt. Crowley for having the utter temerity to state the obvious fact that the Crowley acted stupidly in arresting a man in his own home. And whatever you think about Gates getting arrested can you really deny, given all the trouble he's put himself through, that Crowley acted stupidly?
(Though I suppose in fairness to both Obama and Crowley maybe he thinks that the call is simply the best way to make this nonsense go away for all of them. Truth be told Crowley's probably done a fair penance for his stupidity and whenever Gates gets around to writing the inevitable book about all this he'll be laughing all the way to the bank. I do like Crowley's suggestion about having a beer to smooth it over. Note that I never said the man was stupid, just that he acted stupidly).
24 July 2009
Swine flu or Hogwash?
Whatever the characteristics of the illness, swine flu makes for virulent and highly resistant discourse. I hear a lot about how many people are infected and how many people are dying, but I haven't heard anything that indicates a different magnitude from what I would expect from garden variety winter influenza. So I checked the numbers:
Using numbers from globalsecurity.org, I come up with a mortality rate for seasonal influenza (normal flu) of about 0.13%. Of every 10 000 people who are infected with the flu, we can expect 13 to die.
Using numbers from a microbiologist and professor of clinical medicine at ANU, of 10 000 who get H1N1 swine flu, about 10 will die.
Since these sources didn't report their sample sizes, and I haven't seen any raw data, I can't calculate whether this difference is statistically significant. And I'm frankly not worried or keen enough to start writing emails to the CDC. However, it's a fair bet that swine flu is about as lethal as regular flu, if not a little gentler.
There are some worrying reports about much higher rates in Mexico and elsewhere. But really, when was the last time you heard about the mortality rate in Mexico during a normal bout of the flu? It doesn't really get reported, and I suspect there's a good reason why I'd rather be in a hospital north of the border, so the difference is likely just due to environmental differences like hygiene and healthcare provision. Again, it's a low-data conclusion, but it's reasonable.
I hope that the attention devoted to it is just a factor of a slow news season and light fearmongering by interested parties. I hope it's just that banal. Still, let's keep some perspective.
Boy, I guess I'm really getting my rant on.
Using numbers from globalsecurity.org, I come up with a mortality rate for seasonal influenza (normal flu) of about 0.13%. Of every 10 000 people who are infected with the flu, we can expect 13 to die.
Using numbers from a microbiologist and professor of clinical medicine at ANU, of 10 000 who get H1N1 swine flu, about 10 will die.
Since these sources didn't report their sample sizes, and I haven't seen any raw data, I can't calculate whether this difference is statistically significant. And I'm frankly not worried or keen enough to start writing emails to the CDC. However, it's a fair bet that swine flu is about as lethal as regular flu, if not a little gentler.
There are some worrying reports about much higher rates in Mexico and elsewhere. But really, when was the last time you heard about the mortality rate in Mexico during a normal bout of the flu? It doesn't really get reported, and I suspect there's a good reason why I'd rather be in a hospital north of the border, so the difference is likely just due to environmental differences like hygiene and healthcare provision. Again, it's a low-data conclusion, but it's reasonable.
I hope that the attention devoted to it is just a factor of a slow news season and light fearmongering by interested parties. I hope it's just that banal. Still, let's keep some perspective.
Boy, I guess I'm really getting my rant on.
To be or not to be ain't always a question
Having almost always lived in countries with impeccable healthcare, I have a hard time understanding American resistance to the universal success of well-managed universal systems and have a hard time caring about the pettiness of congressional pageantry. But there is a question hidden in the debate that does interest me.
At the risk of sounding older and curmudgeonlier than I already am, I remember that people still died of old age when I was a kid. My great-great-grandmother, Hilda, died at 106 or so (there's a picture of five generations in one shot - can't happen too often). I was young at the time, but I don't remember anyone mentioning a 'cause of death'. It seemed quite natural that a >100 year-old body was just done. Even when Hilda's daughter, Gladys, died at around 88, nobody felt compelled to demand an autopsy. She was old.
Then I read today that "According to virtually any commonly cited value of a year of life, the increased spending (on healthcare costs/year of life since the 1970s) has, on average, been worth it." The same article also said "...it costs far more to prolong the lives of the elderly ($145 000 per year gained) than the young ($31 600), and the rate of spending on the oldest Americans has grown the fastest". * This is mindbogglingly bad economics. This tells us that the marginal value of years of life decreases after a point with age (i.e. as you become older and more decrepit, you value each extra year less - at some point you're begging for the end, as some of us might have witnessed before), but the marginal cost increases (paying for each extra year becomes more expensive as time goes on). When did we acquire this principle that life should be extended at all costs, and where does it come from?
I have a few theories, none of them well-researched, but they're hopefully at least plausible.
Theory #1: Despite arguments to the contrary, I reckon the world is a much more secular place than it was a century, even a generation, ago. Religions tend to offer some hope for continued personality (can't really call it existence or consciousness) in some form after death. This might be a consolation prize people would generally be willing to accept in lieu of heroics for the preservation of life, but those without faith don't even have access to it. As a substitute for eternity, people are willing to fight for every last second of a limited period.
Theory #2: Olson's old fashioned collective action problem: in a world of diffuse costs and concentrated benefits, concentration wins. Every doctor gets a lot of benefit (her entire salary) from a healthcare system, whether public or private, and there are far fewer doctors than people paying for them. As a result, the doctors are willing to fight harder for their interests than patients will for their own, which means that the flow of resources is skewed in the doctors' favour. Doctors get a lot of resources for treating the elderly, so they make a strong case for doing so.
Theory #3: Diffuse reciprocity: since each generation depends on the subsequent one for care when we get old, whether in terms of pensions or medical care, we want to set the example for how our offspring are to take care of us, and hedge our bets by overproviding care for our predecessors. On the notion that it's better to have too much than too little, we end up doing the current elderly injustice so that no expense will be spared when it's our turn (though we have little comprehension of how miserable we might be when we get there).
Theory #4: Senseless overconsumption: there seems to be a common idea that we could conceivably want anything anybody else could sell. Echoing Mallory's sentiment about why anybody would want to climb Everest, about the best explanation I can find for anybody wanting to buy a number of consumer goods, like anything with a celebrity signature on it or useless stuff like Tamagotchis, tis "because it's for sale". I had considered the idea that it might be some sense of entitlement, but I don't think it's that deep. Do old people and their relatives even frequently question whether treatment is a good idea at all, let alone whether any particular treatment is?
I could probably come up with more, but I think the point's been made. You wanna really save money on healthcare? Have the wisdom to know when it's your time (hint: if you're over 80, you're due) and the gravitas to bow out without herculean measures and croesian costs.
At the risk of sounding older and curmudgeonlier than I already am, I remember that people still died of old age when I was a kid. My great-great-grandmother, Hilda, died at 106 or so (there's a picture of five generations in one shot - can't happen too often). I was young at the time, but I don't remember anyone mentioning a 'cause of death'. It seemed quite natural that a >100 year-old body was just done. Even when Hilda's daughter, Gladys, died at around 88, nobody felt compelled to demand an autopsy. She was old.
Then I read today that "According to virtually any commonly cited value of a year of life, the increased spending (on healthcare costs/year of life since the 1970s) has, on average, been worth it." The same article also said "...it costs far more to prolong the lives of the elderly ($145 000 per year gained) than the young ($31 600), and the rate of spending on the oldest Americans has grown the fastest". * This is mindbogglingly bad economics. This tells us that the marginal value of years of life decreases after a point with age (i.e. as you become older and more decrepit, you value each extra year less - at some point you're begging for the end, as some of us might have witnessed before), but the marginal cost increases (paying for each extra year becomes more expensive as time goes on). When did we acquire this principle that life should be extended at all costs, and where does it come from?
I have a few theories, none of them well-researched, but they're hopefully at least plausible.
Theory #1: Despite arguments to the contrary, I reckon the world is a much more secular place than it was a century, even a generation, ago. Religions tend to offer some hope for continued personality (can't really call it existence or consciousness) in some form after death. This might be a consolation prize people would generally be willing to accept in lieu of heroics for the preservation of life, but those without faith don't even have access to it. As a substitute for eternity, people are willing to fight for every last second of a limited period.
Theory #2: Olson's old fashioned collective action problem: in a world of diffuse costs and concentrated benefits, concentration wins. Every doctor gets a lot of benefit (her entire salary) from a healthcare system, whether public or private, and there are far fewer doctors than people paying for them. As a result, the doctors are willing to fight harder for their interests than patients will for their own, which means that the flow of resources is skewed in the doctors' favour. Doctors get a lot of resources for treating the elderly, so they make a strong case for doing so.
Theory #3: Diffuse reciprocity: since each generation depends on the subsequent one for care when we get old, whether in terms of pensions or medical care, we want to set the example for how our offspring are to take care of us, and hedge our bets by overproviding care for our predecessors. On the notion that it's better to have too much than too little, we end up doing the current elderly injustice so that no expense will be spared when it's our turn (though we have little comprehension of how miserable we might be when we get there).
Theory #4: Senseless overconsumption: there seems to be a common idea that we could conceivably want anything anybody else could sell. Echoing Mallory's sentiment about why anybody would want to climb Everest, about the best explanation I can find for anybody wanting to buy a number of consumer goods, like anything with a celebrity signature on it or useless stuff like Tamagotchis, tis "because it's for sale". I had considered the idea that it might be some sense of entitlement, but I don't think it's that deep. Do old people and their relatives even frequently question whether treatment is a good idea at all, let alone whether any particular treatment is?
I could probably come up with more, but I think the point's been made. You wanna really save money on healthcare? Have the wisdom to know when it's your time (hint: if you're over 80, you're due) and the gravitas to bow out without herculean measures and croesian costs.
*If we really believed this, wouldn't we compensate all of the sacrificed innocents in war on the same scale? If an extra year of an old woman's life in the US is worth $145 000, why do the families of killed civilians in Afghanistan get as little as $210?
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Law is For Protection of the People
I couldn't resist the Kristofferson refererence; it's a funny song if you've never heard itAnyway, the flap over the Gates arrest continues. Today the police are hitting back. The most remarkable thing in the article is this quote from David Holloway the President of the International Brotherhood of police officers, "What we don't need is public safety officials across the country second-guessing themselves." I imagine this sounded good to Holloway when he said it but it's one of the stupidest things I've ever read from someone who's the president of anything. Do we really not want men with guns giving a second thought to the matter before they decide to light us up? I would say that precisely what we do want and need is for "public safety officials" to at least think things through before acting.
This whole case has gotten extremely muddled. It seems that most people think it stands and falls on whether Sgt. James Crowley is a racist, and beyond that the whole question of whether the Cambridge Police Department is guilty of racial profiling hangs on this case. We ought to put both aside. I don't think Crowley is a racist, and I don't know enough about Cambridge to make any judgment about racial profiling there. Step back from that and just consider this: A man was arrested in his own home, and his offense was basically mouthing off to the officer in question. It's not like he was hanging off the hood of the cop car or even physically threatening the cop. Even if we believe every word Crowley says and nothing Gates says, Gates "crime" was basically being a jerk. And this is the best interpretation you can put on Crowley's actions. To arrest someone for being a jerk to you is simply outrageous. It's nothing more than a power trip on the part of the officer.
If policemen really are professionals they need to show some restraint. If someone were to show up to my office hours waving around a graded paper he or she wasn't happy with and accusing me of some kind of bias in grading, the last thing I would do would be to flip out. If I did, I'd be in deep trouble and I'd deserve it. Being a professional, heck being a grown up, means that sometimes people say nasty things to you and you have to sit there and take it. Most of us have to as part of our jobs and we know it. Most of us have to as part of our private lives unless we want to step outside. But of course we all know that if we annoy the police we can get arrested (What does disorderly conduct even mean? The translation is basically what Prez said in "The Wire" after cold cocking a kid: "He was pissing me off.") Calling Crowley a rogue cop is pure histrionics; we're not talking about the Bad Lieutenant here, and calling him a racist is unwarranted too. But that doesn't let him off the hook. He abused his power to get back at someone who was annoying him. Shouldn't we be outraged by that?
The funny thing is that I have a harder time seeing this happening in Germany than I do in the supposedly freedom loving U.S. I'm tired of this line that the police are somehow above criticism because they have dangerous jobs. Yes they are professionals and yes they do have important jobs, but that's exactly why they need to think things through and why we should hold them to a high standard. The cops really do work for us, and there's two sides to that. If they do a good job we should be grateful, but they also have a responsibility to us. We do pay their salaries after all. Whether as a matter of fact it is or not, the law should be for the protection of the people.
This whole case has gotten extremely muddled. It seems that most people think it stands and falls on whether Sgt. James Crowley is a racist, and beyond that the whole question of whether the Cambridge Police Department is guilty of racial profiling hangs on this case. We ought to put both aside. I don't think Crowley is a racist, and I don't know enough about Cambridge to make any judgment about racial profiling there. Step back from that and just consider this: A man was arrested in his own home, and his offense was basically mouthing off to the officer in question. It's not like he was hanging off the hood of the cop car or even physically threatening the cop. Even if we believe every word Crowley says and nothing Gates says, Gates "crime" was basically being a jerk. And this is the best interpretation you can put on Crowley's actions. To arrest someone for being a jerk to you is simply outrageous. It's nothing more than a power trip on the part of the officer.
If policemen really are professionals they need to show some restraint. If someone were to show up to my office hours waving around a graded paper he or she wasn't happy with and accusing me of some kind of bias in grading, the last thing I would do would be to flip out. If I did, I'd be in deep trouble and I'd deserve it. Being a professional, heck being a grown up, means that sometimes people say nasty things to you and you have to sit there and take it. Most of us have to as part of our jobs and we know it. Most of us have to as part of our private lives unless we want to step outside. But of course we all know that if we annoy the police we can get arrested (What does disorderly conduct even mean? The translation is basically what Prez said in "The Wire" after cold cocking a kid: "He was pissing me off.") Calling Crowley a rogue cop is pure histrionics; we're not talking about the Bad Lieutenant here, and calling him a racist is unwarranted too. But that doesn't let him off the hook. He abused his power to get back at someone who was annoying him. Shouldn't we be outraged by that?
The funny thing is that I have a harder time seeing this happening in Germany than I do in the supposedly freedom loving U.S. I'm tired of this line that the police are somehow above criticism because they have dangerous jobs. Yes they are professionals and yes they do have important jobs, but that's exactly why they need to think things through and why we should hold them to a high standard. The cops really do work for us, and there's two sides to that. If they do a good job we should be grateful, but they also have a responsibility to us. We do pay their salaries after all. Whether as a matter of fact it is or not, the law should be for the protection of the people.
Did you hear the one about the mayors and the rabbis?
No long post today - yet, but I did run across this news that seems to confirm a widely held stereotype.
As former Secretary of Labo(u)r, Raymond Donovan, once put it, "“If you're in the contracting business in this country, you're suspect. If you're in the contracting business in New Jersey, you're indictable. If you're in the contracting business in New Jersey and are Italian, you're convicted.”
As former Secretary of Labo(u)r, Raymond Donovan, once put it, "“If you're in the contracting business in this country, you're suspect. If you're in the contracting business in New Jersey, you're indictable. If you're in the contracting business in New Jersey and are Italian, you're convicted.”
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