Month: April 2022

Nearly three-fifths of Americans had been infected by the COVID-19 virus at least once as of February, according to new estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The results, which are based on seroprevalence research involving blood samples from all 50 states, indicate that infection prevalence varied widely across age groups: It was about 75 percent for children 11 and younger, 74 percent for 12-to-17-year-olds, 64 percent for 18-to-49-year-olds, 50 percent for 50-to-64-year-olds, and 33 percent for Americans 65 or older.

This study suggests that roughly 192 million Americans had been infected as of February, more than twice the number of cases that had been reported at the time. Based on the number of COVID-19 deaths recorded at the end of February, that estimate implies an overall U.S. infection fatality rate (IFR) of about 0.5 percent, which is substantially lower than the estimates used in early epidemiological models that projected as many as 2.2 million COVID-19 deaths in the United States, more than twice the current total. At the same time, the implied IFR is much higher than the estimates suggested by early seroprevalence studies in California and Florida.

Is 0.5 percent in the right ballpark? That depends on how well the CDC study measured the prevalence of infection. But it is also important to keep in mind that infection fatality rates can vary widely over time as the mix of patients changes, treatment improves, and vaccination becomes increasingly common; across age groups, since the risk for older people is vastly higher than the risk for younger people; and across locations with different demographics, patient characteristics, and health care capacities.

The blood samples for the CDC study were drawn for diagnostic purposes unrelated to COVID-19, and the researchers looked for anti-N antibodies, which are produced in response to infection but not in response to the vaccines approved for use in the United States. The New York Times reports that the study “used a test sensitive enough to identify previously infected people for at least one to two years after exposure.”

The researchers note four limitations: “First, convenience sampling might limit generalizability. Second, lack of race and ethnicity data precluded weighting for these variables. Third, all samples were obtained for clinical testing and might overrepresent persons with greater health care access or who more frequently seek care. Finally, these findings might underestimate the cumulative number of SARS-CoV-2 infections because infections after vaccination might result in lower anti-N titers, and anti-N seroprevalence cannot account for reinfections.”

Those limitations suggest that the total number of infections may be higher than the CDC’s estimate. The Times reports that “some scientists said they had expected the figures to be even higher, given the contagious variants that have marched through the nation over the past two years.” If the gap between reported cases and total infections is bigger than the CDC’s results suggest, that would imply a lower overall IFR.

In any case, a nationwide IFR estimate for a particular period of time obscures factors that have a big impact on the danger posed by COVID-19. In light of those factors, any single IFR estimate is apt to be misleading. Instead of trying to estimate the one “true” IFR, it makes more sense to recognize that there are many IFRs, contingent on time, location, and demographic variables.

In a January 2021 Bulletin of the World Health Organization article, Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis reported that the IFRs implied by seroprevalence studies “tended to be much lower than estimates made earlier in the pandemic.” But he also noted that “the infection fatality rate is not a fixed physical constant,” and “it can vary substantially across locations, depending on the population structure, the case-mix of infected and deceased individuals and other, local factors.”

Although it has long been clear that COVID-19 fatality rates are strongly correlated with age, the magnitude of the differences remains astonishing. According to the CDC’s “best estimate,” the IFR for people 65 or older is 9 percent, 4,500 times the IFR for children and teenagers (0.002 percent). A Lancet analysis published this month found that “age-specific IFR estimates form a J shape, with the lowest IFR [0.002 percent] occurring at age 7 years.” The estimated IFR “increas[es] exponentially” with age: from about 0.06 percent for a 30-year-old to 1 percent for a 60-year-old and 20 percent for a 90-year-old.

Parents of children who are not yet eligible for vaccination may be reassured by the CDC’s estimate that 75 percent of kids younger than 12 already had been infected by February. “That so many children are carrying antibodies may offer comfort to parents of those aged 5 and under,” the Times says, “since many may have acquired at least some immunity through infection.” But the most reassuring thing about the risk that COVID-19 poses to children in that age group is that it has always been tiny: According to the Lancet study, the IFR ranges from 0.002 percent for 5-year-olds to 0.005 percent for 1-year-olds.

That same study found that “all-age COVID-19 IFR varied by a factor of more than 30 across countries and territories during the pre-vaccine era.” The countries with the highest rates as of July 15, 2020, were Portugal (2.1 percent), Monaco (1.8 percent), Japan (1.8 percent), Spain (1.7 percent), and Greece (1.6 percent). When the researchers adjusted for age demographics, Portugal and Spain were still in the top five, but the other three countries were replaced by Peru, Oman, and Mexico.

“Because IFR is strongly related to age,” the authors report, “population age structure accounted for nearly three-quarters of variation in IFR estimates for in-sample countries on July 15, 2020.” But even when that factor was taken into account, “many North American and European countries continued to have high IFRs despite having greater access to health-care resources.” The researchers say possible explanations include “high SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates in the care home population of some locations” and “a higher prevalence of comorbidities that increase the severity of COVID-19 disease.”

The IFRs implied by CDC seroprevalence research conducted around the same time likewise varied widely across states, ranging from 0.1 percent in Utah to 1.4 percent in Connecticut. As with the international comparisons, age demographics probably explain much of the variation (the median age in Utah is substantially lower than the median age in Connecticut), but other factors (such as preexisting medical conditions) may also be important.

The Lancet study, which covered 190 countries and territories, also found that IFRs fell over time. Adjusted for age demographics, they ranged from 0.17 percent to 1.16 percent on April 15, 2020, and from 0.12 percent to 0.77 percent on January 1, 2021. The median IFR fell from 0.54 percent to 0.35 percent during that period. The age-standardized IFR for the United States, according to these estimates, fell from 0.73 percent to 0.43 percent.

IFRs were dropping well before vaccines were widely available, which may reflect a combination of shifting patient characteristics, improved treatment, and naturally acquired immunity. “The evidence suggests that a range of improvements in clinical management have contributed to substantive improvements in clinical outcomes that are likely to decrease the IFR over time,” the researchers say.

Vaccination, which dramatically reduces the risk of life-threatening symptoms, can be expected to push IFRs down further, although age still seems to be the most important predictor of infection outcomes. As Reason‘s Elizabeth Nolan Brown noted in September, “a Financial Times analysis found the COVID-19 mortality risk is about equal for vaccinated 80-year-olds and unvaccinated 50-year-olds, while an unvaccinated 30-year-old has less chance of dying than a vaccinated 45-year-old.”

The post A CDC Study Suggests Three-Fifths of Americans Have Been Infected by the Coronavirus appeared first on Reason.com.

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Earlier this month, a Santa Ana, California, police officer blasted Disney songs in an attempt to keep videos of himself off of the Internet. Now, the city government is demanding answers.

On April 4, officers responded to a report of a stolen car in a residential neighborhood late at night. As a local YouTuber approached the scene, one officer began playing Disney songs at a high volume through loudspeakers. The music continued until Johnathan Ryan Hernandez, a Santa Ana city councilman who happened to live nearby, identified himself and asked the officer to stop. The officer admitted that he was playing the music to create a “copyright infringement” headache for the person filming.

Last week, at a Santa Ana City Council meeting, council members excoriated the officer’s actions. Councilman David Penaloza called it “one of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever seen.” Hernandez said, “There’s no reason to ever behave this way with members of the public, especially if you’re an officer with a badge and a gun.” And Mayor Vicente Sarmiento lamented that such an event “chills” the city’s efforts to “build trust with the community.”

After the video initially went viral, Santa Ana Police Chief David Valentin indicated that the officer was under investigation. Hernandez submitted an ordinance seeking to ban the practice, but as Valentin pointed out at the council meeting, the officer’s actions were already against policy: According to the Santa Ana Police Policy Manual, the department “recognizes the right of persons to lawfully record members of this department who are performing their official duties. Members of this department will not prohibit or intentionally interfere with such lawful recordings.”

The post City Council Furious at Cop Who Played Disney Songs To Keep from Being Recorded appeared first on Reason.com.

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The Washington Post has accused billionaire Elon Musk, who is set to acquire Twitter for $44 billion, of “targeting” the company’s employees for harassment.

In actuality, all Musk did was offer some entirely valid criticisms of a specific, high-level employee: Vijaya Gadde, a top executive at Twitter and someone Politico once described as “the most important Silicon Valley executive you’ve never heard of.” And if criticizing someone on Twitter is equivalent to harassing them, has The Washington Post not committed the exact same crime?

The Post‘s confused and contradictory reporting on this issue notes that Saagar Enjeti, co-host of the podcast Breaking Points, named Gadde as Twitter’s “top censorship advocate” for her integral role in the company’s decisions to suspend former President Donald Trump’s account, and more infamously, to prevent users from sharing The New York Post‘s Hunter Biden story.

Musk replied to Enjeti’s tweet with this comment: “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.”

Not only is Musk absolutely correct that muzzling the Hunter Biden story was a bad decision: Twitter actually agrees that it was a bad decision. Former CEO Jack Dorsey has described that action as a “total mistake” and repeatedly apologized for it. He clearly regrets working to suppress the story.

There’s really no headline here. If there is a headline, it should probably be: Elon Musk Agrees With Twitter That Censoring the Hunter Biden Story Was Wrong.

Yet here’s how The Washington Post headlined this revelation: “Elon Musk boosts criticism of Twitter executives, prompting online attacks.”

The author of that article, Post tech writer Elizabeth Dwoskin, summarized her reporting thusly:

NEW: Two days into Musk buying Twitter, he’s using his megaphone to help target Twitter employees, prompting a barrage of attacks (including racist ones) from his fans.
Twitter workers have repeatedly asked management for protection from this scenario. https://t.co/zfTXhKSeVn

— Elizabeth Dwoskin (@lizzadwoskin) April 27, 2022

This is a very bizarre line of reasoning. Musk did not pen any racist attacks on Gadde; he echoed an accurate criticism of Twitter policies for which she is directly responsible. Obviously, he is not at fault for nastier comments that come her way.

Yet Dwoskin is very clearly placing blame on both Musk and Enjeti, the latter of whom shared the request for comment he received from her at 2:06 a.m. Dwoskin asked Enjeti’s producer whether Enjeti had any concern “that mentioning a specific Twitter executive could result in attacks on that executive”?

“For example, one of the commenters on the tweets made racist comments against Gadde, and others said she should be fired,” said Dwoskin.

But taken to its logical conclusion, isn’t Dwoskin’s article doing the same thing? After all, she is directing criticism—legitimate in her view, but criticism nonetheless—at Enjeti and Musk. She “mentioned” them, to use her own terminology. No doubt this will produce some angry denunciations; Musk is currently receiving both hearty praise and relentless demonization as a result of his Twitter purchase. If Musk is “targeting” Gadde for harassment, what is the best way to describe a Washington Post article that wrongly maligns him? Isn’t Dwoskin “targeting” Musk?

If Dwoskin and the Post reject that analogy, this is what they are saying: when the media industry holds people to account, it’s noble and justified; but when people outside media hold people to account, it’s an act of targeted harassment. The media then insist these acts of targeted harassment (as they define it) are newsworthy, and the cycle repeats itself.

This was the subtext of last week’s Washington Post expose on Libs of TikTok, which revealed the name of the woman behind the influential rightwing Twitter account. Libs of TikTok collects and republishes videos depicting progressive teachers and activists making comments that attract mockery from conservatives; by exposing the account, The Washington Post sought to shed light on the inner workings of the rightwing outrage machine. But the woman’s identity wasn’t particularly important to the story, and revealing it undoubtedly subjected her to considerable opprobrium.

In response, fans of Libs of TikTok relentlessly assailed the story’s author, Taylor Lorenz. Much of the anti-Lorenz campaign was itself creepy and vile. But it’s getting somewhat difficult to delineate legitimate reporting that serves the public interest from malicious spotlighting of political foes, unless one takes the clearly dubious position that exposes crafted by journalists are de facto legitimate.

At the very least, The Washington Post should ween itself from the idea that mentioning someone means targeting them for harassment, or make piece with the criticism of its self-dealing double standard.

The post If Elon Musk Is 'Targeting' Twitter Employees, Isn't <em>The Washington Post</em> 'Targeting' Elon Musk? appeared first on Reason.com.

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I blogged about this controversy Friday, and then quoted Prof. Michael Dorf’s and an experienced appellate lawyer’s take on Monday. Another lawyer, Dilan Esper, had a Twitter thread pointing to Kensington Volunteer Fire Department v. Montgomery County (4th Cir. 2012), which suggests that the legislature’s motivation for repealing the special government district run by Disney (which seems to be disapproval of Disney’s speech) is irrelevant:

A group of local volunteer fire and rescue departments (“LFRDs”) and several of their former administrative employees … brought suit … contending that Defendants eliminated part of Plaintiffs’ funding in retaliation for Plaintiffs’ opposition to legislation supported by Defendants.

The district court dismissed Plaintiffs’ complaint, declining to inquire into Defendants’ alleged illicit motive behind an otherwise facially valid budgetary enactment … We affirm.

The district court’s decision relied on U.S. v. O’Brien (1968), in which the Supreme Court declined to “strike down an otherwise constitutional statute on the basis of an alleged illicit legislative motive.”

O’Brien considered a First Amendment challenge to a federal statute that penalized the destruction of draft cards. Noting that the law did not facially abridge speech, the Court rejected an argument that the law was nonetheless unconstitutional because its purpose was to suppress free speech. The Court warned that it was a “hazardous matter” to inquire into legislative motives because “[w]hat motivates one legislator to make a speech about a statute is not necessarily what motivates scores of others to enact it, and the stakes are sufficiently high for us to eschew guesswork.” Accordingly, the Court “decline[d] to void [legislation] essentially on the ground that it is unwise legislation which Congress had the undoubted power to enact and which could be reenacted in its exact form if the same or another legislator made a ‘wiser’ speech about it.” …

As Plaintiffs concede, the budget is facially valid. And in alleging that Defendants retaliated against them by eliminating funding for the LFRD administrative positions, Plaintiffs challenge Defendants’ legislative action. Plaintiffs, however, rely for support on cases in which the alleged retaliation was accomplished via executive action….

In trying economic times, and in response to the loss of $14.1 million in projected revenue following the defeat of the ambulance fee legislation, the County passed a budget that called for difficult cuts felt by many. As the district court concluded “there is no doubt that Defendants had the authority to pass the budget savings plan, and it appears to be a thoroughly ordinary cost savings measure.” Confronted with such a facially constitutional budgetary enactment, O’Brien instructs that we not strike it down “on the basis of an alleged illicit legislative motive,”

I appreciate Mr. Esper’s argument (which goes into this in considerable detail, and also discusses some possible distinctions between this case and Kensington); but I’m just not sure that First Amendment law really does preclude inquiries into legislative intent. Consider this summary of the law from Reed v. Town of Gilbert (2015):

Although “a content-based purpose may be sufficient in certain circumstances to show that a regulation is content based, it is not necessary.” Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC (1994).

That is why we have repeatedly considered whether a law is content neutral on its face before turning to the law’s justification or purpose. See, e.g., Sorrell v. IMS Health, Inc. (2011) (statute was content based “on its face,” and there was also evidence of an impermissible legislative motive); U.S. v. Eichman (1990) (“Although the [statute] contains no explicit content-based limitation on the scope of prohibited conduct, it is nevertheless clear that the Government’s asserted interest is related to the suppression of free expression”); Members of City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent (1984) (“The text of the ordinance is neutral,” and “there is not even a hint of bias or censorship in the City’s enactment or enforcement of this ordinance”); Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence (1984) (requiring that a facially content-neutral ban on camping must be “justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech”); United States v. O’Brien (1968) (noting that the statute “on its face deals with conduct having no connection with speech,” but examining whether the “the governmental interest is unrelated to the suppression of free expression”). Because strict scrutiny applies either when a law is content based on its face or when the purpose and justification for the law are content based, a court must evaluate each question before it concludes that the law is content neutral and thus subject to a lower level of scrutiny….

Ward [v. Rock Against Racism] (1989) had nothing to say about facially content-based restrictions because it involved a facially content-neutral ban on the use, in a city-owned music venue, of sound amplification systems not provided by the city. In that context, we looked to governmental motive, including whether the government had regulated speech “because of disagreement” with its message, and whether the regulation was “‘justified without reference to the content of the speech.'”

This is one reason why I think the issue is difficult: One can indeed argue that the legislative action was unconstitutionally motivated by Disney’s past speech, though one can also argue (among other things) that denial of government power (rather than just, say, a tax exemption or a trash hauling contract) based on the powerholder’s speech is constitutional, whether the powerholder is (say) an appointed executive official or a corporation that is allowed to run a special government district.

Here is Mr. Esper’s response in our e-mail exchange; I don’t think it quite disposes of the issue, but I thought I’d pass it along:

My attempt to rationalize the cases, which are indeed all over the place, would be this—I think O’Brien involved a statute that on its face had nothing to do with speech at all. It was a prohibition on destroying or mutilating your draft card. And the government had an interest, however thin it was, in requiring people to keep their draft cards. So the only chance that the defendant really had to overturn the statute was if there’s a doctrine that says “even though this is, on its face, a prohibition on the mutilation of an important government form, if you can show that the real purpose of this wasn’t to administer the draft but rather to target a popular form of war protest, you win your case”. And SCOTUS said you can’t do that.

To put it another way, perhaps more clearly, O’Brien is an expressive conduct case. And one of the things that can happen in expressive conduct cases is that the government can ban or regulate the category of conduct for some non-speech related reason. For instance, if a county prohibits its citizens from burning anything or starting any fires in an area of the county with a lot of trees and kindling, we all understand that this prohibition could be enforced against flag burners or draft card burners. And what O’Brien adds is that even if the reason the county passed that ordinance was that people were burning flags out there to protest the government, it wouldn’t matter. It’s a law that doesn’t say anything about speech at all; it just prohibits starting fires. The government can do this, because it has a legitimate interest in the prohibition of fire-starting in a hazardous area, even if they really secretly or openly want to stop flag burning.

And the difference with Reed is Reed is a speech case, not an expressive conduct case. It is a sign regulation, and signs are speech. So now we have to determine whether the sign regulation is content based in how it differentiates some speech from other speech, and Reed says it was. Reagan National Advertising, which just came down, says that another sign regulation that differentiates some speech from other speech wasn’t content based. An interesting hypothetical would be what would happen if a municipality enacted an off premises sign ban (the type approved in Reagan National) to target a specific speaker who was dotting the community with off premises signs- would that be considered content based? I don’t know. But at the very least, the law seems to be that a speech-suppressive purpose can be considered in determining whether a speech regulation is content based.

This analysis at least fits with the other cases you cite. Sorrell involved the disclosure of medical records—speech.  Taxpayers for Vincent was a signage case. Hill was about abortion protest—and upheld the regulation anyway.

As for Ward and Clark, they upheld the regulations, both of which were facially directed at conduct rather than speech. Ward was about sound volume—didn’t matter what was playing at that volume and whether it had any expressive content at all. Clark was about sleeping in the park—again, didn’t matter why people were sleeping there, even though the government may have been targeting the homeless protesters.

The one case that you could argue is an outlier is Eichman, where the statute just prohibited the burning of a flag for any reason. Perhaps Eichman is a limitation on the O’Brien principle. But perhaps not, because unlike in O’Brien, there was no legitimate reason for the government to be concerned with flag burning anyway. The only reason for the government to worry specifically about burning flags was because they were a form of protest.

So what I think the cases really stand for is: (1) if a statute/ordinance specifically targets speech on its face, you can consider legislative intent when determining content neutrality (Reed); (2) if a statute/ordinance facially targets conduct but there is no legitimate governmental interest in regulating the specific conduct targeted, you can also consider legislative intent when determining content neutrality (Eichman); but (3) if a statute/ordinance facially targets conduct and there is a legitimate governmental interest in regulating the specific conduct targeted, O’Brien applies and legislative intent is irrelevant.

I’m sure that doesn’t fit every case out there. But it seems like a plausible way of putting the cases together.

The post A Bit More on the Florida Disney Special Government District Repeal Controversy appeared first on Reason.com.

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