Parademic Notes Week Ending 171126

Read This First 170423, Heuristics 170928, Glossary Updated 171008, Mini Lessons 170827

1. Money Vector, 2. ¿1918?, 3. Research Paucity, 4. Smoking Ads, 5. Expertise, 6. Efficient Light Pollution, 7. The Microbe Resistance, 8. Quarantining Passengers. <ADDED> 1. Trump Science, 2. Elephants, 3. Radiation Clouds, 4. Mugabe, 5. Hepatitis, 6. Flint Water, 7. Oregon Trail, 8. Mosquito.

Other Topics: BioTrumpism, BioPolitics, Vaccine, Biosphere, Disaster, Humor, Climate Change, Anthropocene, Anthropogenic, Communication, Book, J Value, Shortages, Poverty, Homeless, Human Vector, Mobility, Language and Cognition, Famine, Tobacco, Sugar, Yemen, Malaria, Bangledesh, Forced Migration, Assumptions, Constraints, Wikipedia, Flat Earth.

-1. Bacterial Art Starts a Debate on Money and International Borders. The Dirty Money Project revealed in 2014 the presence of 3,000 different types of bacteria living on 80 $1 banknotes circulating in New York. These bacteria came from human skin, mouths and genitalia, and, like money, they could be freely transported and exchanged across the world. An artist explores the many consequences of bacteria living on money in Borderless Bacteria; Colonialist Cash to spark the debate on bacteria, money and borders. -8↓. [Photo].

-2. Why Did the Spanish Influenza of 1918 Become Known as the Forgotten Flu, is a combination of four main concepts that have led American society to not remember (different concept than forget. One implies it was not distinctive or otherwise memorable, the other that overtime the ability to reconstruct the memory faded): Lack of Immediate Documentation, Society’s Familiarity with Epidemics, Medical Advances Versus Medical Failures, The Disease and World War I, Lack of Physical, Lasting Evidence. In one year, roughly the same disease felled approximately 50 million people worldwide, was one of the most horrific epidemics to strike not just a country, but also the entire world. The reason why goes back to a lack of primary accounts from prominent doctors, authors, and the general society of 1918. These people chose not to record the effects of the disease for a variety of reasons. The disease arrived at a time when America and the rest of the world were accustomed to epidemics. The familiarity of the large scale diseases made the Spanish Influenza nothing extraordinary; just another disease to face and move on from. At the same time, numerous medical advancements had been made just before the Spanish Influenza struck. The Spanish Influenza, however, was a disease that doctors could not treat or cure in any way and doctors chose to focus on their scientific progress in regards to other diseases rather than their failure with the Spanish Influenza. The Spanish Influenza also occurred simultaneously with World War I. Death wasn’t unfamiliar to Americans during 1918 and deaths from disease and deaths from the war blended together. The disease died down just as the War was ending and Americans may have taken these endings as opportunities to start over and forget about all the bad events that happened in 1918. The rapid pace of the Spanish Influenza may have led to the rapid forgetfulness of the public. Those who survived it had no permanent physical damage to remember it by and, because of the W shaped age groups (newborn, late teen young adult, and expectant old) [Diagram that the experience was like going to a different culture] of those most fatally affected, the public was left with no one of significant importance to remember the disease by. Historically by in large biodisasters appear to be part of the general background noise of daily life*, for the most part are passively barely noticed. There are a large number of synonyms for active forgetting. The lack of remembrance is characteristic of bio disaster rather than an anomaly. Why We Forget, the benefits of not remembering. Your Hidden Censor: What Your Mind Will Not Let You See. 171119-3.4, 170917-10. Gorilla in the room [Photos, Cartoon]. *Biodisaster tend to be discontinuous and diffused over large time periods and geographical area. Though the casualties and fatalities, by not being concentrated sudden events of large number these become a norm that one learns to live with, so mundane that it is unnoticed and unspoken of.

            -2.1. 171119-3.4. The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic in Washington. The Elusive 1918 Flu Virus: Bracing for the Return of Another Pandemic. The recent up tick in attention about the 1918 flu may be the recent convergence of the 100^th anniversary of the end of WWI with Armistice Day (Veteran’s Day) and the 100^th anniversary of the 1918 Flu.

-3. Scientific Research on Disasters Represents 0.22 Percent of Global Scholarly Output. Despite loss of life and economic devastation worldwide due to increasingly frequent natural and human made disasters, scientific research on disasters represents a small percentage of scholarly output. #Document A Global Outlook on Disaster Science. This is only descriptive which is useful, but does not delve into why the situation is this way.

            -3.1. Homes Should Not Be Abandoned after a Big Nuclear Accident. Few people, if any, should be asked to leave their homes after a big nuclear accident, which is what happened in March 2011 following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Using the Judgement or J Value to balance the cost of a safety measure against the increase in life expectancy it achieves. The J Value is a method that assesses how much should be spent to protect human life and the environment. This method found that it was difficult to justify relocating anyone from Fukushima Daiichi, where four and a half years after the accident around 85,000 of the 111,000 people who were moved out by the Japanese government had still not returned. Mass relocation is expensive and disruptive. However; it could become established as the prime policy choice after a big nuclear accident. It should not be. Remediation should be the watchword for the decision maker, not relocation. For comparison, the average Londoner loses four and a half months to air pollution -171008-5↓, while the average resident of Manchester lives 3.3 years less than his/her counterpart in Harrow, North London. Meanwhile, boys born in Blackpool lose 8.6 years of life on average compared with those born in London's borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

            -A. The J Value Framework for Determining Best Use of Resources to Protect Humans and the Environment page 165. The philosophy of the ALARP principle (as low as reasonably practicable) will be discussed, which has been adopted as the basis for UK law on health and safety. It will be shown how ALARP leads naturally to a need for cost-benefit analysis but how there are particular difficulties in the valuation of human life. The problems with the VPF concept (value of a prevented fatality) will be explained, and the advance brought about by the Life Quality Index highlighted. The J Value will be introduced as a single metric for deciding whether the money being spent to reduce a risk to human life is rational or not. Expenditure up to a J Value of unity is reasonable. Then a second Judgement Value, the J20 Value, will be described, which may be combined with the J Value to give the Total Judgement value or JT Value. Spending up to a JT Value of unity is reasonable to safeguard humans and the environment. ¶ One of the most profound problems facing every human being as he or she steers a course through life is how to deal with random events. For while one's situation may alter only gradually and by small amounts over long periods, every so often an abrupt change will occur and break up the continuity of one's existence. Some of the most significant changes are those that affect the health and welfare of an individual or damage the environment in which people live. Such events may be short term and repairable, but sometimes the ill health or injury may persist, at worst resulting in the early death of the individual. Likewise, environmental contamination may cause people only short term disruption, but it is possible that the local environment will be rendered unsuitable for occupation for a very prolonged period. If used wisely this could be a good tool. However; there is the possibility of abuse by justifying inaction as only decreasing ones life by just a few months. Moreover telling someone that they and their family are having a few months of life taken away may not sit well with them. It would take considerable trust to convince people who are faced with something that they believe is lethal, invoking flight response.

            -B. ∩ This comes down to finite resources, otherwise known as shortages. The Psychology of the Black Friday Shopping Mob is a close analogy of desperate people trying to get something they “need” immediately that is now highly competitive controlled access environment. What turns ordinary shoppers into dangerous mobs, physically fighting, trampling to death, taking things from others, trashing the area or yelling at employees. Feelings of unfairness drove many to behave the way they did. Strong feelings of inequality are evoked when the location failed to properly stock the item, and when prices weren’t honored. Those who felt others were being unpleasant were more likely to feel the situation was unfair, and were more likely to become uncivil themselves. Examples of unpleasant behavior included line cutting, arguing with police or security officers, or acting rudely toward others. Perceptions of scarcity are also a driving factor in consumer misbehavior. When it is felt a product is scarce, its valued more. Competitive arousal can be ignited by a perception that a specific good is in limited supply and available for only a short period of time. ¶ No special deal is worth getting hurt over or hurting someone else, except when life depends on it. The Vaccine Riots and the Difficulty of Modernization in Rio de Janeirolain , Favelas_(Search) -170924-3A↓.

            -‡. Venezuelans Suffer Deadly Scarcity of Food and Medicine. UK's Rising Use of Food Banks Reveals Unfolding Public Health Crisis. 2.5 Million Yemenis Now Lack Access to Clean Water: Red Cross, Famine Survey Warns of Thousands Dying Daily in Yemen If Ports Stay Closed, Three Dead as Diphtheria Spreads in Yemen, to control the spread aid will need to be rushed in, otherwise infected people escape. Humanitarian Aid Arrives in Yemen . ¶ Bangladesh Refugee Crisis Poised for Massive Health Epidemic stemming from a forced migration from ethnic clensing in Myanmar [Map]. 5 Genocides That Are Still Going on Today. Myanmar, Bangladesh Announce Tentative Deal to Repatriate Rohingya Refugees, Human Rights Group Says Repatriating Rohingya to Myanmar Is Unthinkable While Rohingya Remain Unsafe, Refoulement. Winter Death Threat for Asylum Seekers Stranded on Greek Islands. PNG Police Evict Asylum Seekers from Australian Run Camp, UNHCR Decries Force Used.

            -C. #Linguistics. One of the foundation assumptions of Parademic Weekly Notes is that practicing the abilities to think tangentially, creatively, globally, dealing with complexity and complications, can be done via reading material that has these characteristics. It has been some time since I last pointed out that Language and Cognition studies, though they imply this, do not definitively support this thesis. A second parademic assumption is that there is insufficient motivation (impending death) to make the required effort to change paradigms and apply advanced cognition, and sustained research funding. Though behavior seems to indicate this is so, again there is no easy to identify supporting evidence. The last yet to be proven assumption is that when faced with situations that require changes the human tendency is to deny the problem, then use techniques that worked in the past (even if clearly failing now), and then resort to magical thinking. After those indisputably fail then cognitive effort is applied, usually at greater cost this if it had been done earlier. Even so the tendency is after the crisis to return to previous ways and dismantle what was learned. There is more evidence for this, largely a long history of a repeating this pattern.

            -D. This then brings us to constraints. Often times when presenting the problem of a biodisaster the constraints are considered too hard to overcome be they unknowns, physical, economic, cultural, political, technical, et cetera. Parademic likewise is impeded by constraints. Lack of interest by others, undefined problems it represents, language, funding (the usual reason for others to be interested), time, information. This has been changing over time and frankly it is unlikely that the concepts of Parademic will be ever adopted. Still constraints are a part of any biodisaster effort and plan. Issues to solved, information needed and learned, logistics, identification of restraints (and unidentified assumptions, reframing problems in terms of solutions that are possible now, and prioritizing what are actual problems and not one thinks is a problem. [Strip].

-4. Big Tobacco’s Anti-Smoking Ads Begin after Decade of Delay. But years of legal pushback by the industry over every detail means the ads will be less hard hitting than what was proposed. Tobacco control experts say the campaign — built around network TV and newspapers — will not reach people when they are young and most likely to start smoking. Their legal strategy is always obstruct, delay, create confusion and buy more time. So by the time this was finally settled, newspapers have a much smaller readership, and nowadays, who watches network TV.

            -‡. Big Tobacco Won’t Let the FDA Cut Nicotine Without a Fight. Tobacco Companies Tighten Hold on Washington under Trump. It Was Big Tobacco, Not Trump, That Wrote the Post Truth Rule Book, Trump's 'Fake News' Declarations May Have Borrowed Cues from the Tobacco Industry. Trump’s FDA Chief Charts a Policy Shift Beyond Tobacco Products. The Elephant in the Living Room, [Poster], -171119-7.1↓. Nearly Half of U.S. Cancer Deaths Blamed on Unhealthy Behavior. Almost 50 Years Ago, Industry Put Kibosh on Study Linking Sugar with Heart Disease, Cancer, Study Finds Humans Crave Sweet Foods Because They’re Weak. They’re Weak and They’re Small.

-5. #Book The Death of Expertise [Cover], explains how a misguided intellectual egalitarianism is harming our ability to assess the truth and solve problems, and discusses some of the responsible factors and possible long term consequences. Review. The rise of the internet and other technology has made information more easily accessible than ever before. While this has had the positive effect of equalizing access to knowledge, it also has lowered the bar on what depth of knowledge is required to consider oneself an expert. A cult of anti-expertise sentiment has coincided with anti-intellectualism, resulting in massively viral yet poorly informed debates ranging from the anti-vaccination movement* to attacks on GMOs. This surge in intellectual egalitarianism has altered the landscape of debates – all voices are equal, and fact is a subjective term. Browsing WebMD (not to be confused with PubMD) puts one on equal footing with doctors, and Wikipedia* allows all to be foreign policy experts, scientists, and more. There are a number of reasons why this has occurred – ranging from easy access to Internet search engines to a customer satisfaction model within higher education. The product of these interrelated trends is a pervasive distrust of expertise among the public coinciding with an unfounded belief among non experts that their opinions should have equal standing with those of the experts. Of course the experts are not always right, Surge in ObamaCare Signups Surprises Experts. The crucial point is that bad decisions by experts can and have been effectively challenged by other well informed experts. The issue now is that the democratization of information dissemination has created an army of ill informed citizens who denounce expertise. ¶ When challenged, non experts resort to the false argument that the experts are often wrong. Though it may be true, the solution is not to jettison expertise as an ideal; it is to improve our expertise. This view is certainly not opposed to information democratization, but rather the enlightenment people believe they achieve after superficial internet research. This shows in vivid detail the ways in which this impulse is coursing through our culture and body politic, but the larger goal is to explain the benefits that expertise and rigorous learning regimes bestow upon all societies. *This is not true. It was at one time but with expert criticisms the review and approval validation of changes and articles this has improved, to the point there are fewer new material being added and corrections. Parademic notes uses Wikipedia in part because it notes when there are citations needed, notes about improvements, statements of bias, that there is not a consensus, and has the possibility of being updated to more current and or valid information. In addition the purpose of the weekly notes is not to provide the answer but develop the skills to discern the appropriate answer. 171119-3, 171022-3, 170910-4.1*, 170430-1, 170409-10, 170326-1.2 (Flat Earth), 161113-5. How Wikipedia Tackles Fringe Nonsense. Wikipedia is an interesting experiment in amateur crowd sourcing of information. I think it is a massively successful experiment, but it faces specific challenges. This page on Wikipedia discusses their approach to what information they allow to remain in their pages. They have a number of policies and practices that are meant to act as a quality control filter. We Can’t Ignore Science Any Longer: The Climate of Our Flat Earth Is Changing. [Meme]. Flat Dearth. Flat Earth Researcher Told He Can't Blast Himself Into the Sky at 500 MPH on Public Lands. What Is Sociopathy or Antisocial Personality Disorder.

            -*5.1‡. VCP News Archive: Alarm over Whooping Cough Vaccine Take up. Australia: Parents in Court after Refusing to Immunise Kids. Peter Hotez vs. Measles and the Anti-Vaccination Movement. Turns out How Much Pain Your Child Feels During Shots Has a Lot to Do with You. Measles Outbreak – Should We Pay Doctors to Track down Unvaccinated Children. Journal Replaces Anti-Vaccine Paper it Retracted for Missing Conflicts, Number of Errors. Medical Exemptions Triple after California Vaccine Law Goes into Effect. This has been happening before SB227 was enacted – Anti-Vaxxers Have Found a Way Around California's Strict New Immunization Law. They Need to Be Stopped. Medical Exemption Rates Hint Parents May Have Found Workaround to California Vaccination Law, Eliminating Personal Belief Exemptions for Vaccines, 170820-7 -‡; however, it also gives a legal basis for suspending licences if someone decides to pursue it. Targets would be those who do an unusually high number of exemptions that are not medically supported. City of Sydney Sparks Anger after Publicising Anti-Vaccination Event.

            -5.2. The Anti Vaccine Movement's Influence May Be Waning. But there are still pockets of alarmingly high vaccine refusal rates. Health researchers have been convinced the anti-vaccine movement is gaining traction in America. Earlier this year, Minnesota battled its largest measles outbreak in nearly 30 years 171105-8.2B. Now there’s early evidence that the number of parents refusing vaccines for their kids has actually plateaued, at least in recent years. This however is countered that medical exemptions have increased. -*5.1‡↑.

-6. By Saving Cost and Energy, the Lighting Revolution May Increase Light Pollution. [Photo]. Municipalities, enterprises, and households are switching to LED lights in order to save energy. But these savings might be lost if their neighbors install new or brighter lamps. Scientists fear that this rebound effect might partially or totally cancel out the savings of individual lighting retrofit projects, and make skies over cities considerably brighter. Losing Darkness: Satellite Data Shows Global Light Pollution on the Rise. 170806-6.2.

-7. Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR): An Underrated Biological Threat. Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, predicted an age when the efficacy of antibiotics would diminish and wither away, 160529-11. Within the United States alone, at least 2 million people become infected with drug resistant bacteria and at least 23,000 die every year as a result of such infections. A report released in 2016, the report estimates that, without policies to stop the spread of AMR, there will be 10 million deaths annually by 2050, and a cumulative $100 trillion economic impact. Although drug resistance is already wreaking havoc, it receives less attention and funding than threats such as emerging natural diseases, biological weapons, and synthetic biology. By any definition, antimicrobial resistance should qualify as a global catastrophic biological risk that rivals these other threats. ¶ The process of discovering, developing, and bringing to market a new drug is astoundingly expensive and challenging. One of the biggest impediments to developing effective treatments is the normalization of AMR. All of this should put AMR in the category of an ongoing global catastrophic biological event. The cost of the Ebola outbreak is well below the annual burden of AMR in the United States alone. Global catastrophic biological risks (biodisasters) are likely to be sudden (accelerated and finally noticed) developments that are unresponsive to medical countermeasures. Antibiotic Resistance _(Search), is already on the list of existing biodisasters, the associated parademic is the delay in action before the economic consequences become dire. Potential Role of Social Media in Combatting Antimicrobial Resistance. [Cartoon]. Managing Antibiotics Not Enough to Reverse Resistance. We Are Hatching an Antibiotics Apocalypse Because We Love Cheap Chicken. Much of what characterizes parademic is speculation of cause, effect, solutions, foreseen problem, usually without supporting information but opinion, unrelated expertise, and sometimes opportunists seeing a situation that can be exploited.

-8. Flight Risk. Quarantining an entire plane would be a huge deal. A quarantine order goes beyond separating people with a contagious disease from those who are disease free; it means restricting the movements of anyone who has been exposed to the disease. By presidential order, the measure is only authorized for a dozen or so diseases including yellow fever, cholera, plague, smallpox and Ebola. If the word “quarantine” didn’t scare people, the list of diseases surely would. ¶ Feb. 7, 2011, the day after the Green Bay Packers had won Super Bowl XLV, a pilot on Southwest Flight 703 from Tampa called in a public health emergency to the tower in Milwaukee. Three of the 115 passengers on board were sick with flu like symptoms – fever, cough, difficulty breathing. All three had been put on oxygen. By the time the plane landed, a dozen passengers were said to be sick. The plane included at least 12 people who had returned from Cozumel, Mexico, on a cruise in which many of the passengers had fallen ill with flu like symptoms. The jet was ordered to the airport’s international terminal. Everyone remained on board; some passengers began posting comments about the situation on Twitter and Facebook. ¶ When emergency medical technicians went through the plane, they found only two passengers asking for a medical evaluation; both had chronic underlying illnesses, such as respiratory infections, that could have caused their symptoms. While airport called the 2011 incident an appropriate response, given the report of 12 passengers sick. There however were been a number of serious mistakes. Officials should never have been frightening people with the word quarantine. The local health department should have been alerted of a possible emergency right away; it never was. Most importantly, the health department was never able to conduct a full investigation into the possible presence of a communicable disease – a process that would have involved delving into the flight manifest, interviewing the sick and determining whether any of the healthy may have been exposed to a disease. This was a big screw up, and caused a lot of panic and alarm. Almost two years later, there is still no plan to deal with a communicable disease for a full blown epidemic that could involve dozens of planes flying to airports across the U.S., according to the Federal Aviation Administration. ¶ Unfortunately; the history of diseases is that things that should be done aren’t done until there’s an outbreak. The first major global health threat in which modern transportation played a large role was the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918. In that pandemic, travel by steamship and rail, not air, accelerated the spread of disease. A series of outbreaks over the last 15 years, however, have hammered home the link between air travel and communicable diseases: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, swine flu in 2009 and Ebola in 2014 – actually there was fear of this happening, but not what is implied here of global spread aided by air transportation, electronic spread of panic yet, but of the disease no. This article makes pertinent points, raises good questions points to solutions; but is framed in a way to cause dread, which will raise panic with the next outbreak. The same news source contributed to Ebola phobia in 2015 while concurrently having useful information, Ebola: Persistent, and No Visa Required -1↑.

<ADDED 171126>

-171119-3.1>1. Donald Trump's Science Office Is a Ghost Town. The staff has dropped to 45 staffers, down from Obama's staff of 135 people, and the majority of Trump's staffers do not have a background in science. | In previous administrations, the science office was central to disaster mitigation efforts, including hurricanes – but when Hurricane Irma, Harvey and Maria struck the U.S., it lacked key leaders. | Scientific and technical input would also have contributed to decisions around climate change*‡ the Iran nuclear deal and North Korea's nuclear program (all potential accelerating biodisasters), areas where key decisions have been made over the past nine months in absence of a science adviser and other officials. | Even the White House science fair seems to be falling by the wayside. | Its assistance with the budget writing process, to recommend research and development priorities for federal agencies. The 2018 budget saw a 20 percent decrease in research and development funding. It's difficult to discern malevolence from incompetence. | There are also concerns that national security will suffer Why We Should Save DHS' Biodefense, Chemical Threat Centers from Proposed Trump Budget Cuts, Trump's HIV Aid Cuts Could Cost 9 Mln Life Years Lost in S. Africa, Ivory Coast. One source of anxiety is China's aggressive investments in artificial intelligence, with a development plan to be a leader in the field by 2030. There has been no mention of the issue, except by the Treasury Secretary who dismissed the threat of robots displacing humans as "50 to 100" years out** 170220-8.4T. ¶ There has also been moves to keep out foreign science and not funding global science and health. Why America Needs Foreign Medical Graduates, The Trump Administration Rejects its Own Study Finding Refugees Help the Economy, Cutting H-1B Visas Endangers Scientific Progress for Everyone. Proposed Cuts to US Malaria Initiative Could Mean Millions More Malaria Cases, Proposed Cuts in Foreign Aid Could Cause Malaria Resurgence, acerbated by As Malaria Resists Treatment, Experts Warn of Global Crisis. Southern Africa Is Slipping Again after Coming Close to Eliminating Malaria. Venezuelans Suffer as Malaria Outbreak Spreads in Drug Short Nation.

            -*‡. Climate Talks Close with Trump Administration on One Track, World on Another, Ex Trump Campaign Aide with Little Environmental Policy Experience Makes Final Call on EPA’s Grants, The Republican in Charge of the House Science Committee Is Now Arguing Global Warming Has 'Benefits', American Schools Teach Climate Change Differently in Every State – Except These 19 [Cartoon], Rising Seas Could Result in 2 Billion Refugees by 2100, Half the World's Population Will Experience Deadly Heat by the End of the Century, Making Ignorance Great Again. Perhaps ironically Climate Changes Triggered Immigration to America in the 19^th Century. From Trump to Heinz, some of America's most famous family names and brands trace their origins back to Germans who emigrated to the country in the 19^th century. Climate was a major factor in driving migration from Southwest Germany to North America during the end of the little ice age. Headline and tagline are biasing, but still an example of migration due to changing environment and climate. Donald Trump Doesn't Think Much of Climate Change, in 20 Quotes. Is Trump's NASA Nominee Ready to Tackle Climate Change. Science and the people who study it have taken a pretty big beating during the first year of the Trump administration. Trump has appointed climate science skeptics and outright deniers to head the Environmental Protection Agency (Scott Pruitt), the Department of Energy (Rick Perry), and the Council on Environmental Quality (Kathleen Hartnett). Trump's nominee to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – the nation's lead agency on both short term weather and long term climate forecasting – is a businessman who hasn't uttered a single public statement on climate change. ldinst    HYPERLINK "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/watch-2017s-hurricanes-swirl-across-globe-nasa-visualization-180967284/" Watch This Year’s Hurricanes Swirl Across the Globe in New NASA Visualization. How Bold Corporate Climate Change Goals Deteriorate over Time. Global Warming Might Be Especially Dangerous for Pregnant Women. this Family Is Already Being Hurt by Climate Change. They Might Also Be Hurt by a Solution.

            -**. My speculation here is that there is a mistaken belief one can catch up on 30 to 80 years of research and development in an instance, possibly by buying it. Very much like the situation that lead to the Battle of Manila Bay, when wooden sailing ships were faced with steel steam ships. Government must Take Action to Protect Americans from 21^st Century Health Threats. Ready for a Global Pandemic. The Trump Administration May Be Woefully Underprepared.

-171119-7.1>2. Five Things to Know about the Elephant Trophies Controversy. The policies must be based on improving conservation. Obama banned elephant trophy imports in 2014, available data indicated a significant decline in the elephant population. A diverse coalition opposes easing the trophy ban. The Trump administration wants to promote hunting. Green groups are filing suit as officials review the policy. Elephant Trophy Hunting, and Trump's Reversal on it. -4‡↑. The evolution of this is a consistent pattern, one that appears random. Uninformed decision, unrelated to previous precedent and later decisions and positions (and legal process), wavering, doubling down or shifting blame to others. Hunters Are Livid over Trump’s Elephant Trophy Decision.

-171008-5>3. <ADDED 171112>3*. A Mysterious Radiation Cloud Spread over Europe in September. Russia Finally Acknowledged It. The issue is both the potential biodisaster of high radiation, and parademic of trying to hide it, not provide warning. A Radiation Cloud, and a Mystery, from Russia. Living in London Is like Living in a Nuclear Zone 3.1↑, and though people may be willing to live in smog because of other benefits, they are unlikely to be willing to live in a radiation zone. The UK Just Missed a Big Chance to Cut Harmful Diesel Pollution. Maybe they will grab onto this as a possible explanation, Confirmed: Lightning Causes Nuclear Reactions in the Sky, [Photo]. 170101-7.1.

-171008-5>4. <ADDED 171022>3*. Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe Finally Resigns, Sparking Wild Jubilation on the Streets of Harare. Mugabe Leaves Legacy of Economic Ruin, Upheaval in Zimbabwe. Why Robert Mugabe Is like the Horned Owl in a Folktale from Zimbabwe, the owl ruled over all the other birds with absolute power, until a skeptical fork tailed drongo decided to test the power of its horns.

-170924-3>5. <ADDED 171119> 6. California's Hepatitis A Outbreak Is the Future Poking Us in the Face. In the early 1970s, nearly 10,000 people a year got it. By the mid 1980s, the number was half that. In 1996, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started recommending vaccination, and from there it was a fast, bracing plunge to just tens of cases a year. Then, this past summer, people started getting sick in San Diego. Just a handful at first, among those most at risk. Like HIV, Hep A gets transmitted through sex and sharing needles. You can also get it through fecal oral contact, as can happen when people don’t have access to bathrooms. In San Diego, the infected were primarily homeless, illicit drug users, and men who have sex with men. The initial handful became two handfuls, and then the curve headed upward. Now, a few months later, the toll stands at 546 cases and 20 deaths, with a confirmed spread of another several dozen in Los Angeles and Santa Cruz. Homeless people present a particular challenge for health—but for reasons as much political as medical. When the urban infrastructure shows signs of weakness, as it has with these Hep A outbreaks, it’s not just a medical tragedy. It’s a signal of a failure yet to come. If social policy doesn’t deal with America’s ongoing social and political homelessness crisis, it’s going to be an even worse public health problem later – for everyone. Hepatitis A Outbreak Continues to Add Cases but Not Deaths.

            -A. In a homeless encampment, for every one of the individuals willing to vaccinate, two or three others are turning it down. 58,000 highly mobile people without basic services is a catastrophe in waiting. Homelessness in terms of the threat of communicable diseases; 171112-2.2. How Much Hotter Is it in the Slums. New Human Mobility Prediction Model Offers Scalability, Requires less Data, which can be used to chart the potential spread of disease or determine rush hour bottlenecks. Utah County Homeless a Part of Large Hepatitis A Outbreak. Delhi’s Homeless Most Affected by City’s Severe Air Pollution, <ADDED 171119-170618-2.3>9. Trump Budget Cuts Could Jeopardise Efforts to End Homelessness among War Veterans. Poverty is quite the quandary. Eliminating it is expensive. Not eliminating it is even more expensive especially with disasters, depressing values (both economic and moral), and costs related to keeping the poor and rich separated. The in between measure is probably worst of all. With barely enough to live on people have to resort to crime for survival, have limited means for birth control, not to mention that a biodisaster and its aftermath can fester unnoticed in such areas. -3.1B↑. Storms Hit Poorer People Harder, from Superstorm Sandy to Hurricane Maria. In the Woods and the Shadows, Street Medicine Treats the Nation’s Homeless. Poor Health Outcomes Associated with Low SES Status; How Poverty Can Be a Determinant of Health. Volunteering Abroad. Read this Before You Post That Selfie, using satire and humor to tackle poverty porn, voluntourism and the white savior complex.

-170205-5.1>6. <ADDED 170702>. Miles from Flint, Residents Turn off Taps in Water Crisis. They found pollutants in the water in June. Then contractors showed up to test nearby residents’ wells, many of which were tainted. Soon, people from several miles around were turning off their taps and brushing their teeth with bottled water. Panic over the water in this part of western Michigan seems to grow by the day. The Rogue River, which runs through, tested high for contaminants this month. The source of much of the tumult is a local shoemaking company, the maker of popular footwear brands. Decades ago the company dumped sludge and leather from its tannery in the woods. For years, the company and the government stayed mostly silent about the trash piles, even as developers built houses and a golf course near them and as researchers documented serious health risks from chemicals in the sludge. Residents say they sense grim echoes of the ongoing crisis in a different part of this state, Flint: the bottled water, the finger pointing, the hard to decipher test results. And indeed, some of the same government agencies that botched the initial response to lead tainted water in Flint three years ago are on the case here, trying to avoid past mistakes and reassure residents. It’s almost like once you break people’s truth they won’t trust you again when a similar situation occurs. Moreover people will look to find if there are other ways they had been lied too. Likely they will find it whether or not the proof of other wrong doing is true or not. <ADDED 170625>, <ADDED 170618>, Thousands of Flint Residents Could Lose Homes Because of Unpaid Water Bills, Michigan Health Chief Charged in Flint Water Probe, Five People Are Facing Manslaughter Charges Because of Flint’s Water Crisis, No One Has the Data to Prevent the Next Flint. Michigan Sues Flint after Council Refuses to OK Water Deal. Can the Private Sector Save America's Aging Water Systems.

            -A. #Document. Entrenched Time Delays Versus Accelerating Opinion Dynamics: Are Advanced Democracies Inherently Unstable. Modern societies face the challenge that the time scale of opinion formation is continuously accelerating in contrast to the time scale of political decision making. With the latter remaining of the order of the election cycle we examine here the case that the political state of a society is determined by the continuously evolving values of the electorate. Given this assumption we show that the time lags inherent in the election cycle will inevitable lead to political instabilities for advanced democracies characterized both by an accelerating pace of opinion dynamics and by high sensibilities to deviations from values (that is likely to be increasingly different between elected and electors). Our result is based on the observation that dynamical systems become generically unstable whenever time delays become comparable to the time it takes to adapt to the steady state. The time needed to recover from external shocks grows in addition dramatically close to the transition. Our estimates for the order of magnitude of the involved time scales indicate that socio/political instabilities may develop once the aggregate time scale for the evolution of the political values of the electorate falls below 7–15 months. Framed in a different way by the time someone is elected on a given platform it is likely dated. Add to this that the mechanisms of democracy designed to keep any one person of body gaining too much power there are further delays in enactment. By the time something is implemented, if ever as the politician may update platform to get elected again, the electoral desires may be the opposite. In addition many people don’t understand that once implemented it is difficult to change decisions. The probability curves presented in this document appear correct and are the same as the instability of an acceleration curve that is climbing too steeply and exceeding carry capacity to a breaking point, a predictable accumulation effect. This document doesn’t cover the instability of deceleration, with its cascades into other systems, too many changes too quickly (even if singly the changes are minor and small). These oscillations (spiraling out of control) after a certain plateau are beyond recovery until the whole interconnected systems break.

-160612-1>7. Medical Student Dies of Dysentery on Interview Trail. After several weeks of traveling the Interview Trail at a grueling pace, Eunice Justice contracted dysentery and eventually passed away. Eunice was a MS4 who was applying for an OB/GYN interview spot. MS4 Justice started her journey in Independence, Missouri in June. She lost the trail for several days in August before finding an abandoned Honda Civic with several First Aid study books near Chimney Rock. In between interviews, Eunice caulked her Dodge Neon and made it across the Kansas river before taking some time to look around at Independence Rock and found 20lbs worth of berries before continuing on the Interview Trail. Her contracting dysentery was likely due to her meager meal plan which consisted of mostly Ramen and Chipotle although her grueling travel pace did not allow for time for her or her oxen to rest. How You Wound Up Playing The Oregon Trail in Computer Class. Quiz: How Much Do You Know about Diseases of the Oregon Trail. [Screen Grab].

-160515-↕4>8. Before You Swat That Mosquito, Record It on Your Cell Phone. That’s the strategy behind Abuzz, a crowdsourcing project designed to track mosquito activity around the world.