Category: reason

Ramping Up Manufacturing of Ventilators and Other Medical Supplies

In a previous post, I described a simple mechanism by which the government can encourage private spending toward some goal, such as reducing the spread of COVID-19. That mechanism is detailed in my recently completed paper, currently under submission to law reviews, Random Selection for Scaling Standards, with Applications to Climate Change. I received excellent comments and will return in a later post to answer some of the questions and objections raised by commentators. But I now want to make the previous post more narrow, by focusing on a subset of the COVID-19 spending problem, specifically the challenge of ramping up the manufacturing of medical supplies. Tyler Cowen’s Emergent Venture Prizes generously announced $1 million for rewards to be given ex post for COVID-19 work.  My suggestion here is that the government should spend far more than this to ramp up manufacturing, relying primarily on ex post evaluations rather than ex ante contracts.

It is now clear that there will be a massive shortage of certain medical products. Let’s just focus on one particularly important product category: ventilators. If we had enough ventilators, many more future critical patients could be saved than with current capacity. Along with many other improvements, this might increase the production capacity of the healthcare system, eventually reducing the extent to which the curve must be flattened. If we no longer needed to worry about “flattening” the curve, global economic activity could resume, reducing the devastation of the inevitable recession. Thus, increasing ventilator production ought to be one (of many) important public policy goals.

So, what is happening? Well, the U.K. (whose government has resisted the urge to flatten the curve on the theory that it is better to generate herd immunity by allowing the virus to spread rapidly in low-vulnerability populations) has urged industry to switch to making ventilators. The U.S. hasn’t done much of anything at all as a policy matter. According to Forbes, ventilator firms themselves seem to think that they could increase production within a few months, but hospitals may not place orders that far into the future, given the risk that the machines will not be necessary. One imagines that ventilator firms and hospitals will increase production and orders considerably, because they want to do the right thing and be perceived as doing the right thing, but the overall level of ramping up might be considerably less than the social optimum. Rules and norms against price gouging limit the incentive to expand new production.

Vox reports that if the situation were similar to the Spanish flu pandemic, approximately 750,000 people would need ventilation. Even under worst-case scenarios, they would not need them all at once. Suppose that we need one-third of that capacity at any given time and that we accept Vox’s estimate that we currently have about 160,000 altogether. That suggests that an order of 100,000 ventilators would greatly increase our ability to meet this challenge (though still possibly fall short, given non-COVID-19 patients needing ventilation). Hospital-grade ventilators typically cost around $25,000, so if we were willing to wait indefinitely for ventilators, the total bill for this country would be around $2.5 billion. But we need these ventilators to be made very quickly, and that would presumably be a lot more expensive. Not only would ventilator makers need to increase their production capacity dramatically, but so too would their parts makers (and the makers of parts for those parts, and so on to not-quite-infinite regress). Even if the government were to spend $25 billion on 100,000 ventilators, that would easily pass cost-benefit analysis if just 5,000 lives could be saved, with a valuation of life of $5,000,000. It seems plausible that the investment could save many more lives than that, especially if the private sector is able to produce a larger number of ventilators.

I don’t have the knowledge to speculate how much one would need to spend to persuade ventilator makers and parts makers to greatly increase their production capacity quickly. Perhaps industry or government could study the question, but that would involve a fair amount of guesswork, requiring speculation about which parts of the supply chain will turn out to be bottlenecks and how expensive it would be to develop alternatives. The Hayekian claim would be that no one has the relevant knowledge, some of which doesn’t exist yet and some of which is diffused through markets. In any event, while even preliminary estimates would help, we don’t have time for a detailed study.

The conventional approach to this problem would be for the government (presumably the federal government, though one could also imagine states acting independently) to engage in procurement, letting private firms bid on price and perhaps some other variables. A benefit of this approach is that our legal institutions for conducting such procurements are greatly developed. There are even rules that relax other rules for emergencies, including “when the President has made a declaration under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act,” as the President has now done. For example under FAR 18.125, “agency protest override procedures allow the head of the contracting activity to determine that the contracting process may continue after GAO has received a protest.”

Still, there are reasons to wonder about the government’s ability to execute effectively. The absence of any call for proposals even today is not encouraging. Consider also at the government’s procurement of surgical masks. There was a two-week solicitation period ending March 18—very fast by government standards, but still, a long time by the time scale of a pandemic where cases are doubling every few days. Perhaps of greater concern is that the solicitation asks for “a proposed schedule for items that can be delivered quickly without overwhelming the supply chain, with additional items delivered over a period not to exceed 18 months.” Presumably, proposals that offer a greater proportion of masks sooner will be favored, but the solicitation gives no indication of how much of a bonus earlier delivery would be, and there is no statement that the goal is to greatly expand maximum supply capacity. It seems unlikely that anyone will perform even a back-of-the-envelope estimate of how much more valuable a mask would be if that mask could be produced next month than six months from now, let alone include performance incentives based on such a calculation.

Similarly, with ventilators, the ultimate question is how many QALYs will be saved by the production of a particular new ventilator using a particular technology at a particular time. I am skeptical that the government has the foresight to assess this for all types of ventilators, free from political considerations, let alone the ability to modify the contracting process over time. Yet it seems plausible that a few years from now, the government might be able to produce reasonable retrospective estimates of the utility provided by different ventilators at different times, based on statistical evidence about when patients needed ventilators and when they performed best. A system that relies more on ex post governmental assessments than on ex ante governmental projections allows the market to respond more quickly and with greater agility, changing plans and making adjustments as necessary. This is especially important in an emergency, where uncertainty is great and time is critical, but it matters at other times too.

So, how might an ex post decisionmaking approach work? The government commits to allocating $25 billion for ventilators. (Perhaps that could be limited to increased production over previous capacity, but it also sets a good precedent to reward producers for the production capacity they offered as of the beginning of a crisis.) The reason for the government to commit to payment is that the government might otherwise have incentives to lowball after the fact. Given the Winstar case, the government probably could not easily escape a commitment of this sort. An alternative approach would be for the government to set a range (say $15 billion to $60 billion), with the total amount to be based on the total number of QALYs estimated to have been saved in the country, perhaps at $100,000 per QALY, but constrained to this range.

Place aside for now the challenges involved in the ex post adjudication of QALYs, and consider the incentives of ventilator companies and providers of capital on the assumption that even if the decisionmaking process is imperfect, one’s best guess of the government’s evaluation of the contribution of a particular ventilator produced will be roughly proportional to the number of QALYs that it saves. What would a governmental commitment of this sort achieve? Ventilator companies will seek to make production decisions that maximize QALYs saved per dollar spent. That may affect which models they invest in. For example, some might decide that it’s worth producing many simpler ventilators, on the assumption that many imperfect ventilators (perhaps even models similar to DIY designs, if they believe that regulations could be changed to allow their use) are better than a small number of perfect ones. Moreover, ventilator companies could adjust to changing information, about both the disease and parts supplier capabilities, in making decisions, without the need for cumbersome procurement change orders.

The most obvious objection to this approach is the claim that ventilator companies would not be able to handle the risk. But capital markets are vehicles for eliminating risk through diversification. Pharmaceutical companies and others take massive risks all the time. Moreover, ventilator companies could raise money specifically for this purpose. The rights to eventual governmental payments could be tradeable, so the ventilator companies could exchange some of these tradable rights for funders, or they could do the more conventional thing of creating subsidiaries and selling stock in the subsidiaries. Even if any particular ventilator investment is risky, these investments can be part of a diversified portfolio. With interest rates exceptionally low, the claim that ventilator companies would not invest is absurd. Sure, government contractors may be accustomed to greater certainty, but there is no reason that they cannot function in such an environment. The risk might be reduced by requirements that companies can only receive reimbursement for efforts that they disclose in advance or shortly after beginning, so that each company can assess what others are doing and gauge how much total investment is chasing the government’s reward money.

Another objection is that the focus solely on ventilators is arbitrary. If the government procures ventilators but not other necessary life-saving equipment, the ventilators might not be used. Moreover, just as the government may not be well positioned to determine in advance exactly what type of ventilators maximized QALYs per dollar, so too might the government not be so well positioned to choose how to distribute total available government funds among alternative life-saving investments. In my original proposal, I suggested that perhaps the government might spend a trillion dollars to reward all investments, including medical supplies like protective gear and R&D on new drugs. That would give the private sector to assess what type of investments are most appropriate.

One might object that some level of generality will be too much. After all, even those who applaud ex post decisionmaking for a specific application will likely not want a government fund to be used for private contributions of any sort, whether or not they relate to COVID-19. There is some value to political accountability. Perhaps a fund for “hospital equipment and supplies” is the right level of generality, or perhaps “ventilators” is. Yet few would say that political accountability demands that members of Congress or the President choose ventilator specifications. Thus, it seems reasonable to me to have a ventilator fund, as well as maybe other funds.

Another argument for a relatively narrow level of generality in construction of a fund is that it may make it easier to create an ex post decisionmaking process. It seems more plausible that a group of experts could compare the success of different ventilator producers than that they could compare ventilators against many other products, let alone make apples-to-oranges comparisons across many different types of responses to the COVID-19 epidemic. It might seem that a decisive argument against ex post decisionmaking, especially if the fund is at a relatively high level of generality, is that there will be a large number of complicated decisions to make. This can lead to one of two results. First, enormous sums might be spent on the adjudication process, and these anticipated transactions costs are moneys that otherwise could be spent on medical equipment. Second, decisionmakers might make relatively superficial decisions. Anticipation of that might distort private decisionmaking. Why make a slight improvement to a ventilator if one does not think that the eventual decisionmakers will notice it?

These concerns help explain the most unusual aspect of my proposal, the use of random selection. This aspect is not necessary if the level of generality is ventilator production, however, because there may be a relatively small number of claimants on the fund. At a broad level, my goal is to argue for distribution of government funds based on ex post evaluations, particularly in circumstances of emergency, and this argument suffices for my proposal here to spur production of ventilators (and perhaps a few other key products). It should not be difficult to craft legislation accomplishing this proposal, especially since the details of ex post adjudication can be worked out by an administrative agency later. It requires much less governmental advance planning than traditional approaches to government spending, including congressional authorizations and procurement. The government can do this, and it seems much more valuable than most of what the government is doing instead.

I recognize that the idea of using random selection may be too new to be considered for any legislation to be passed in the short term. Still, it’s worth explaining when random selection would be useful in an ex post decisionmaking system, as well as how and why it would work. The case for random selection increases in importance, the greater the level of generality and the greater the number of heterogeneous claims that might be filed. The beauty of random selection is that we could use ex post decisionmaking even if the government expected literally millions of different claims for many different types of contributions. That would be more likely for the climate change applications that I address in my paper, but could apply as well to a COVID-19 fund at a level of generality considerably higher than ventilator production.

How does random selection work? The government chooses only a small number of claims, say 100, and it distributes the entire fund to the owners of these claims in proportion to the measurement of social value (whether QALYs or broader). Everyone else gets nothing. (If the fund is variable in size, instead of fixed at a number like $25 billion, the total size of the fund would be extrapolated based on social value estimates extrapolated from the cases randomly adjudicated.) The advantage of this approach is pretty simple: Many fewer cases can be adjudicated, and so there will be sufficient resources to adjudicate each case with some care.

The disadvantage is that the proposal seems like a lottery. The project of my article is to argue that this is not a problem, that capital markets can absorb the risk. I will not repeat all of the relevant points here, but I will sketch out the general argument: Intermediary companies would be expected to buy up diversified portfolios of claims based on their assessments of how the government might value them if randomly selected. All producers need concern themselves with is how much these intermediaries will pay. (Some large producers might not need intermediaries, relying instead on other capital market tools.) Assuming there is sufficient competition among intermediaries, the amount the intermediaries pay should be equal to the amount they expect to receive minus the costs incurred by the intermediaries themselves. The intermediaries provide a socially useful service of evaluating producers’ plans (if the purchase is before production) and achievements (if the purchase is after production), as well as in prosecuting the few claims randomly selected for ex post evaluation.

To an intermediary or other diversified firm, it doesn’t matter that 1/n claims will be worth n times socially assessed value, because the expected value of a claim remains the same. Moreover, diversification does not need to be perfect. Random selection of claims by the government is a risk that can be precisely mathematically evaluated, and thus it is insurable. Indeed, the government itself could and should offer insurance at actuarially fair rates. Thus, an intermediary should be able to largely eliminate the risk attributable to uncertainty about which claims will be randomly selected. The intermediary will still face risk associated with randomness or arbitrariness by governmental decisionmakers in their evaluations. But because relatively few claims are adjudicated, these adjudications can be performed with care by multi-member panels, using expert testimony where necessary, thus reducing this form of uncertainty as well. The knowledge that any eventual adjudication will be careful will have ex ante benefits, as intermediaries will expect that the decisionmakers will notice subtle advantages of their products.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2QkkYdP
via IFTTT

Ramping Up Manufacturing of Ventilators and Other Medical Supplies

In a previous post, I described a simple mechanism by which the government can encourage private spending toward some goal, such as reducing the spread of COVID-19. That mechanism is detailed in my recently completed paper, currently under submission to law reviews, Random Selection for Scaling Standards, with Applications to Climate Change. I received excellent comments and will return in a later post to answer some of the questions and objections raised by commentators. But I now want to make the previous post more narrow, by focusing on a subset of the COVID-19 spending problem, specifically the challenge of ramping up the manufacturing of medical supplies. Tyler Cowen’s Emergent Venture Prizes generously announced $1 million for rewards to be given ex post for COVID-19 work.  My suggestion here is that the government should spend far more than this to ramp up manufacturing, relying primarily on ex post evaluations rather than ex ante contracts.

It is now clear that there will be a massive shortage of certain medical products. Let’s just focus on one particularly important product category: ventilators. If we had enough ventilators, many more future critical patients could be saved than with current capacity. Along with many other improvements, this might increase the production capacity of the healthcare system, eventually reducing the extent to which the curve must be flattened. If we no longer needed to worry about “flattening” the curve, global economic activity could resume, reducing the devastation of the inevitable recession. Thus, increasing ventilator production ought to be one (of many) important public policy goals.

So, what is happening? Well, the U.K. (whose government has resisted the urge to flatten the curve on the theory that it is better to generate herd immunity by allowing the virus to spread rapidly in low-vulnerability populations) has urged industry to switch to making ventilators. The U.S. hasn’t done much of anything at all as a policy matter. According to Forbes, ventilator firms themselves seem to think that they could increase production within a few months, but hospitals may not place orders that far into the future, given the risk that the machines will not be necessary. One imagines that ventilator firms and hospitals will increase production and orders considerably, because they want to do the right thing and be perceived as doing the right thing, but the overall level of ramping up might be considerably less than the social optimum. Rules and norms against price gouging limit the incentive to expand new production.

Vox reports that if the situation were similar to the Spanish flu pandemic, approximately 750,000 people would need ventilation. Even under worst-case scenarios, they would not need them all at once. Suppose that we need one-third of that capacity at any given time and that we accept Vox’s estimate that we currently have about 160,000 altogether. That suggests that an order of 100,000 ventilators would greatly increase our ability to meet this challenge (though still possibly fall short, given non-COVID-19 patients needing ventilation). Hospital-grade ventilators typically cost around $25,000, so if we were willing to wait indefinitely for ventilators, the total bill for this country would be around $2.5 billion. But we need these ventilators to be made very quickly, and that would presumably be a lot more expensive. Not only would ventilator makers need to increase their production capacity dramatically, but so too would their parts makers (and the makers of parts for those parts, and so on to not-quite-infinite regress). Even if the government were to spend $25 billion on 100,000 ventilators, that would easily pass cost-benefit analysis if just 5,000 lives could be saved, with a valuation of life of $5,000,000. It seems plausible that the investment could save many more lives than that, especially if the private sector is able to produce a larger number of ventilators.

I don’t have the knowledge to speculate how much one would need to spend to persuade ventilator makers and parts makers to greatly increase their production capacity quickly. Perhaps industry or government could study the question, but that would involve a fair amount of guesswork, requiring speculation about which parts of the supply chain will turn out to be bottlenecks and how expensive it would be to develop alternatives. The Hayekian claim would be that no one has the relevant knowledge, some of which doesn’t exist yet and some of which is diffused through markets. In any event, while even preliminary estimates would help, we don’t have time for a detailed study.

The conventional approach to this problem would be for the government (presumably the federal government, though one could also imagine states acting independently) to engage in procurement, letting private firms bid on price and perhaps some other variables. A benefit of this approach is that our legal institutions for conducting such procurements are greatly developed. There are even rules that relax other rules for emergencies, including “when the President has made a declaration under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act,” as the President has now done. For example under FAR 18.125, “agency protest override procedures allow the head of the contracting activity to determine that the contracting process may continue after GAO has received a protest.”

Still, there are reasons to wonder about the government’s ability to execute effectively. The absence of any call for proposals even today is not encouraging. Consider also at the government’s procurement of surgical masks. There was a two-week solicitation period ending March 18—very fast by government standards, but still, a long time by the time scale of a pandemic where cases are doubling every few days. Perhaps of greater concern is that the solicitation asks for “a proposed schedule for items that can be delivered quickly without overwhelming the supply chain, with additional items delivered over a period not to exceed 18 months.” Presumably, proposals that offer a greater proportion of masks sooner will be favored, but the solicitation gives no indication of how much of a bonus earlier delivery would be, and there is no statement that the goal is to greatly expand maximum supply capacity. It seems unlikely that anyone will perform even a back-of-the-envelope estimate of how much more valuable a mask would be if that mask could be produced next month than six months from now, let alone include performance incentives based on such a calculation.

Similarly, with ventilators, the ultimate question is how many QALYs will be saved by the production of a particular new ventilator using a particular technology at a particular time. I am skeptical that the government has the foresight to assess this for all types of ventilators, free from political considerations, let alone the ability to modify the contracting process over time. Yet it seems plausible that a few years from now, the government might be able to produce reasonable retrospective estimates of the utility provided by different ventilators at different times, based on statistical evidence about when patients needed ventilators and when they performed best. A system that relies more on ex post governmental assessments than on ex ante governmental projections allows the market to respond more quickly and with greater agility, changing plans and making adjustments as necessary. This is especially important in an emergency, where uncertainty is great and time is critical, but it matters at other times too.

So, how might an ex post decisionmaking approach work? The government commits to allocating $25 billion for ventilators. (Perhaps that could be limited to increased production over previous capacity, but it also sets a good precedent to reward producers for the production capacity they offered as of the beginning of a crisis.) The reason for the government to commit to payment is that the government might otherwise have incentives to lowball after the fact. Given the Winstar case, the government probably could not easily escape a commitment of this sort. An alternative approach would be for the government to set a range (say $15 billion to $60 billion), with the total amount to be based on the total number of QALYs estimated to have been saved in the country, perhaps at $100,000 per QALY, but constrained to this range.

Place aside for now the challenges involved in the ex post adjudication of QALYs, and consider the incentives of ventilator companies and providers of capital on the assumption that even if the decisionmaking process is imperfect, one’s best guess of the government’s evaluation of the contribution of a particular ventilator produced will be roughly proportional to the number of QALYs that it saves. What would a governmental commitment of this sort achieve? Ventilator companies will seek to make production decisions that maximize QALYs saved per dollar spent. That may affect which models they invest in. For example, some might decide that it’s worth producing many simpler ventilators, on the assumption that many imperfect ventilators (perhaps even models similar to DIY designs, if they believe that regulations could be changed to allow their use) are better than a small number of perfect ones. Moreover, ventilator companies could adjust to changing information, about both the disease and parts supplier capabilities, in making decisions, without the need for cumbersome procurement change orders.

The most obvious objection to this approach is the claim that ventilator companies would not be able to handle the risk. But capital markets are vehicles for eliminating risk through diversification. Pharmaceutical companies and others take massive risks all the time. Moreover, ventilator companies could raise money specifically for this purpose. The rights to eventual governmental payments could be tradeable, so the ventilator companies could exchange some of these tradable rights for funders, or they could do the more conventional thing of creating subsidiaries and selling stock in the subsidiaries. Even if any particular ventilator investment is risky, these investments can be part of a diversified portfolio. With interest rates exceptionally low, the claim that ventilator companies would not invest is absurd. Sure, government contractors may be accustomed to greater certainty, but there is no reason that they cannot function in such an environment. The risk might be reduced by requirements that companies can only receive reimbursement for efforts that they disclose in advance or shortly after beginning, so that each company can assess what others are doing and gauge how much total investment is chasing the government’s reward money.

Another objection is that the focus solely on ventilators is arbitrary. If the government procures ventilators but not other necessary life-saving equipment, the ventilators might not be used. Moreover, just as the government may not be well positioned to determine in advance exactly what type of ventilators maximized QALYs per dollar, so too might the government not be so well positioned to choose how to distribute total available government funds among alternative life-saving investments. In my original proposal, I suggested that perhaps the government might spend a trillion dollars to reward all investments, including medical supplies like protective gear and R&D on new drugs. That would give the private sector to assess what type of investments are most appropriate.

One might object that some level of generality will be too much. After all, even those who applaud ex post decisionmaking for a specific application will likely not want a government fund to be used for private contributions of any sort, whether or not they relate to COVID-19. There is some value to political accountability. Perhaps a fund for “hospital equipment and supplies” is the right level of generality, or perhaps “ventilators” is. Yet few would say that political accountability demands that members of Congress or the President choose ventilator specifications. Thus, it seems reasonable to me to have a ventilator fund, as well as maybe other funds.

Another argument for a relatively narrow level of generality in construction of a fund is that it may make it easier to create an ex post decisionmaking process. It seems more plausible that a group of experts could compare the success of different ventilator producers than that they could compare ventilators against many other products, let alone make apples-to-oranges comparisons across many different types of responses to the COVID-19 epidemic. It might seem that a decisive argument against ex post decisionmaking, especially if the fund is at a relatively high level of generality, is that there will be a large number of complicated decisions to make. This can lead to one of two results. First, enormous sums might be spent on the adjudication process, and these anticipated transactions costs are moneys that otherwise could be spent on medical equipment. Second, decisionmakers might make relatively superficial decisions. Anticipation of that might distort private decisionmaking. Why make a slight improvement to a ventilator if one does not think that the eventual decisionmakers will notice it?

These concerns help explain the most unusual aspect of my proposal, the use of random selection. This aspect is not necessary if the level of generality is ventilator production, however, because there may be a relatively small number of claimants on the fund. At a broad level, my goal is to argue for distribution of government funds based on ex post evaluations, particularly in circumstances of emergency, and this argument suffices for my proposal here to spur production of ventilators (and perhaps a few other key products). It should not be difficult to craft legislation accomplishing this proposal, especially since the details of ex post adjudication can be worked out by an administrative agency later. It requires much less governmental advance planning than traditional approaches to government spending, including congressional authorizations and procurement. The government can do this, and it seems much more valuable than most of what the government is doing instead.

I recognize that the idea of using random selection may be too new to be considered for any legislation to be passed in the short term. Still, it’s worth explaining when random selection would be useful in an ex post decisionmaking system, as well as how and why it would work. The case for random selection increases in importance, the greater the level of generality and the greater the number of heterogeneous claims that might be filed. The beauty of random selection is that we could use ex post decisionmaking even if the government expected literally millions of different claims for many different types of contributions. That would be more likely for the climate change applications that I address in my paper, but could apply as well to a COVID-19 fund at a level of generality considerably higher than ventilator production.

How does random selection work? The government chooses only a small number of claims, say 100, and it distributes the entire fund to the owners of these claims in proportion to the measurement of social value (whether QALYs or broader). Everyone else gets nothing. (If the fund is variable in size, instead of fixed at a number like $25 billion, the total size of the fund would be extrapolated based on social value estimates extrapolated from the cases randomly adjudicated.) The advantage of this approach is pretty simple: Many fewer cases can be adjudicated, and so there will be sufficient resources to adjudicate each case with some care.

The disadvantage is that the proposal seems like a lottery. The project of my article is to argue that this is not a problem, that capital markets can absorb the risk. I will not repeat all of the relevant points here, but I will sketch out the general argument: Intermediary companies would be expected to buy up diversified portfolios of claims based on their assessments of how the government might value them if randomly selected. All producers need concern themselves with is how much these intermediaries will pay. (Some large producers might not need intermediaries, relying instead on other capital market tools.) Assuming there is sufficient competition among intermediaries, the amount the intermediaries pay should be equal to the amount they expect to receive minus the costs incurred by the intermediaries themselves. The intermediaries provide a socially useful service of evaluating producers’ plans (if the purchase is before production) and achievements (if the purchase is after production), as well as in prosecuting the few claims randomly selected for ex post evaluation.

To an intermediary or other diversified firm, it doesn’t matter that 1/n claims will be worth n times socially assessed value, because the expected value of a claim remains the same. Moreover, diversification does not need to be perfect. Random selection of claims by the government is a risk that can be precisely mathematically evaluated, and thus it is insurable. Indeed, the government itself could and should offer insurance at actuarially fair rates. Thus, an intermediary should be able to largely eliminate the risk attributable to uncertainty about which claims will be randomly selected. The intermediary will still face risk associated with randomness or arbitrariness by governmental decisionmakers in their evaluations. But because relatively few claims are adjudicated, these adjudications can be performed with care by multi-member panels, using expert testimony where necessary, thus reducing this form of uncertainty as well. The knowledge that any eventual adjudication will be careful will have ex ante benefits, as intermediaries will expect that the decisionmakers will notice subtle advantages of their products.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2QkkYdP
via IFTTT

COVID-19 Reminds Us: Social Media Is Good, Actually

It’s almost hard to believe now, but there was time when Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of “participatory media” were widely heralded as great gifts to public perception and global democracy. For going on nearly half a decade now, the tone on tech companies and social media has shifted to one of suspicion, hostility, grievance, and moral panic. But as COVID-19 continues to spread around the world and as many governments continue to mishandle things, people are starting to remember why the platforms we love to hate are important after all.

“All through February and early March, the voices of doctors and nurses on social media provided a vital antidote to those of confused and complacent political leaders embodied by President Trump,” noted Ben Smith in The New York Times yesterday.

Social media have also been providing news from early outbreak zones across the globe, as users widely disseminate stories from foreign news outlets, statements from foreign leaders, and first-hand accounts from residents of affected areas abroad.

These snaphots helped give Americans a better sense of the scope of the threat posed by COVID-19 at a time when the messages coming from official channels were conflicting and confusing. They also illustrated the ways in which various social responses could play out—giving credence to calls here for “social distancing” and spurring measures to make room in medical facilities.

Around the U.S., communities still seem to be experiencing widely different reactions to the pandemic, with some areas seeing runs on grocery stores and empty streets while in others things look pretty normal. This will likely change rapidly, as more businesses close their doors voluntarily—and as more governments order them to close whether they want to or not. But for now, one thing that’s been noticeable is how quickly the mood on Twitter, Reddit, etc. embraced voluntary social distancing, especially in comparison to the mood in the “real world.”

Some will suggest that this has bred unnecessary fear, and perhaps time will bear that interpretation out. But the overall mood doesn’t seem to be one of sheer panic so much as people helping people by sharing their own experiences.

We’ve seen people’s frustrations about the futility of trying to get tested in early outbreak areas, spilling over into stories of how academics, philanthropists, and private companies are all pitching in to overcome bad federal planning with regard to not just tests but other crucial items. People sharing homemade hand sanitizer recipes, tips on where to find stocked store shelves, links to local places that needed donations, ways to help elderly loved ones or neighbors prepare, and guides on how to tell COVID-19 symptoms from common colds. People informed one another (albeit not always in the nicest terms) on how asymptomatic people can spread the coronavirus, why “flattening the curve” matters, and how to help America’s disease curve look more like South Korea’s than Italy’s.

We’ve also seen people shaming crowds still physically gathered at bars and social venues. Much of this has taken too stern or smug a tone for me; I think it’s important to remember that as of a few days ago, leaders were still widely advocating that those without symptoms keep patronizing local businesses (an idea officials in some communities are still pushing). Not everyone has been getting the same steady diet of escalating horrors that the extremely online are. Nonetheless, the social shaming is arguably serving an important function now too, as long as it stays away from singling out individuals.

Now that state and local governments are ordering businesses to close early or entirely, social media will fill another important function: documenting police attempts to enforce these rules. Unfortunately, curfew and quarantine enforcement inevitably mean new opportunities for police overreach, profiling, and violence. The best hope Americans have of lessening this is YouTube, Instagram, and other sites that make it easier to bear witness.

“After four years in which social media has been viewed as an antisocial force,” Smith suggests, “the crisis is revealing something surprising, and a bit retro: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others can actually deliver on their old promise to democratize information and organize communities.” He talked to leaders at these companies, plus Pinterest and Snapchap, about how they have been handling coronavirus misinformation.

Misinformation still abounds on these platforms, of course. But so do opportunities to correct it—at least in a relatively free society. The president himself may be among those downplaying the disease’s seriousness, but anyone with a Twitter account can publicly push back at him. In China, where government tightly regulates digital platforms, we’ve seen authorities use social media to spread damaging propaganda that citizens aren’t allowed to dispute.

Meanwhile, technology and digital media companies are playing another important, if somewhat less lofty, function: providing entertainment, diversion, and a non-disease-spreading social outlet to the increasing number of people electing or forced to stay in. It is, at least, the best of all times to be stuck at home.

No single social platform or user-generated content company will ever be perfect in terms of fighting the right battles and avoiding the wrong biases. Nonetheless, in times of crisis and change, they’re truly revolutionary and vital.

It’s probably naive to think any of this will affect the politically-driven efforts to impose controls on tech companies, clamp down on privacy technology, and suppress online speech. But the COVID-19 pandemic should remind us why it’s so important to fight those forces.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/38RNcmD
via IFTTT

COVID-19 Reminds Us: Social Media Is Good, Actually

It’s almost hard to believe now, but there was time when Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of “participatory media” were widely heralded as great gifts to public perception and global democracy. For going on nearly half a decade now, the tone on tech companies and social media has shifted to one of suspicion, hostility, grievance, and moral panic. But as COVID-19 continues to spread around the world and as many governments continue to mishandle things, people are starting to remember why the platforms we love to hate are important after all.

“All through February and early March, the voices of doctors and nurses on social media provided a vital antidote to those of confused and complacent political leaders embodied by President Trump,” noted Ben Smith in The New York Times yesterday.

Social media have also been providing news from early outbreak zones across the globe, as users widely disseminate stories from foreign news outlets, statements from foreign leaders, and first-hand accounts from residents of affected areas abroad.

These snaphots helped give Americans a better sense of the scope of the threat posed by COVID-19 at a time when the messages coming from official channels were conflicting and confusing. They also illustrated the ways in which various social responses could play out—giving credence to calls here for “social distancing” and spurring measures to make room in medical facilities.

Around the U.S., communities still seem to be experiencing widely different reactions to the pandemic, with some areas seeing runs on grocery stores and empty streets while in others things look pretty normal. This will likely change rapidly, as more businesses close their doors voluntarily—and as more governments order them to close whether they want to or not. But for now, one thing that’s been noticeable is how quickly the mood on Twitter, Reddit, etc. embraced voluntary social distancing, especially in comparison to the mood in the “real world.”

Some will suggest that this has bred unnecessary fear, and perhaps time will bear that interpretation out. But the overall mood doesn’t seem to be one of sheer panic so much as people helping people by sharing their own experiences.

We’ve seen people’s frustrations about the futility of trying to get tested in early outbreak areas, spilling over into stories of how academics, philanthropists, and private companies are all pitching in to overcome bad federal planning with regard to not just tests but other crucial items. People sharing homemade hand sanitizer recipes, tips on where to find stocked store shelves, links to local places that needed donations, ways to help elderly loved ones or neighbors prepare, and guides on how to tell COVID-19 symptoms from common colds. People informed one another (albeit not always in the nicest terms) on how asymptomatic people can spread the coronavirus, why “flattening the curve” matters, and how to help America’s disease curve look more like South Korea’s than Italy’s.

We’ve also seen people shaming crowds still physically gathered at bars and social venues. Much of this has taken too stern or smug a tone for me; I think it’s important to remember that as of a few days ago, leaders were still widely advocating that those without symptoms keep patronizing local businesses (an idea officials in some communities are still pushing). Not everyone has been getting the same steady diet of escalating horrors that the extremely online are. Nonetheless, the social shaming is arguably serving an important function now too, as long as it stays away from singling out individuals.

Now that state and local governments are ordering businesses to close early or entirely, social media will fill another important function: documenting police attempts to enforce these rules. Unfortunately, curfew and quarantine enforcement inevitably mean new opportunities for police overreach, profiling, and violence. The best hope Americans have of lessening this is YouTube, Instagram, and other sites that make it easier to bear witness.

“After four years in which social media has been viewed as an antisocial force,” Smith suggests, “the crisis is revealing something surprising, and a bit retro: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others can actually deliver on their old promise to democratize information and organize communities.” He talked to leaders at these companies, plus Pinterest and Snapchap, about how they have been handling coronavirus misinformation.

Misinformation still abounds on these platforms, of course. But so do opportunities to correct it—at least in a relatively free society. The president himself may be among those downplaying the disease’s seriousness, but anyone with a Twitter account can publicly push back at him. In China, where government tightly regulates digital platforms, we’ve seen authorities use social media to spread damaging propaganda that citizens aren’t allowed to dispute.

Meanwhile, technology and digital media companies are playing another important, if somewhat less lofty, function: providing entertainment, diversion, and a non-disease-spreading social outlet to the increasing number of people electing or forced to stay in. It is, at least, the best of all times to be stuck at home.

No single social platform or user-generated content company will ever be perfect in terms of fighting the right battles and avoiding the wrong biases. Nonetheless, in times of crisis and change, they’re truly revolutionary and vital.

It’s probably naive to think any of this will affect the politically-driven efforts to impose controls on tech companies, clamp down on privacy technology, and suppress online speech. But the COVID-19 pandemic should remind us why it’s so important to fight those forces.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/38RNcmD
via IFTTT

Coronavirus Epidemic May Be Slowed by Warm and Humid Weather

Will the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 recede as the weather warms up, as flu viruses often do? Maybe so, according to a preliminary study by Chinese researchers. That would be terrific news.

Basically, the researchers analyzed how the epidemic evolved in various Chinese cities taking into account the weather in each. They also compared how the virus proliferated in countries with relatively lower seasonal air temperature and lower humidity (e.g., Korea, Japan, and Iran), which experienced more severe outbreaks with its spread in warmer and more humid countries (e.g. Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand), where the outbreaks have been more limited.

In cold dry weather the basic reproduction number (R) of the new coronavirus is somewhere between 2 and 3—that is, each infected person passes along the virus to an average of 2 to 3 other people. Once they’ve crunched the data, the researchers find that a one degree Celsius increase in temperature and one percent increase in relative humidity lower the R value by 0.0383 and 0.0224, respectively.

Let’s take the average climate of a randomly chosen American city—say, Washington, D.C. In March, the average high temperature is 56 degrees Fahrenheit (13.3 degrees C), with a relative humidity of 58 percent. In August, the average high temperature is 87 degrees Fahrenheit (30.6 degrees C) and humidity averages 71 percent. Assuming optimistically an R of 2, that would yield an August R of 1.047. In this scenario, rising summer heat and humidity would cut the R in half and significantly slow down the course of the epidemic.

The beneficial effects of summer, combined with conscientiously practiced mitigation measures such as social distancing and case isolation that flatten the epidemic’s curve of infections, could drive R could below 1, causing the number of new cases to decline. If the new coronavirus turns out to be seasonal, the denizens of D.C. (and most folks living in the rest of the country) will get a respite from COVID-19 this summer.

If these findings prove happily true, expect our political leaders to take full credit for the relief that warmer weather will afford us. But don’t forget the House of Stark motto in The Game of Thrones: “Winter is coming.” The second winter wave of the 1918 Spanish flu was far more deadly than the original outbreak.

Nevertheless, a dog days lull in the epidemic would provide a breathing spell during which our health care system could substantially beef up treatment and mitigation efforts. It might even allow researchers enough time to discover and deploy effective pharmaceutical therapies for the disease.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2Wdo0oa
via IFTTT

Coronavirus Epidemic May Be Slowed by Warm and Humid Weather

Will the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 recede as the weather warms up, as flu viruses often do? Maybe so, according to a preliminary study by Chinese researchers. That would be terrific news.

Basically, the researchers analyzed how the epidemic evolved in various Chinese cities taking into account the weather in each. They also compared how the virus proliferated in countries with relatively lower seasonal air temperature and lower humidity (e.g., Korea, Japan, and Iran), which experienced more severe outbreaks with its spread in warmer and more humid countries (e.g. Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand), where the outbreaks have been more limited.

In cold dry weather the basic reproduction number (R) of the new coronavirus is somewhere between 2 and 3—that is, each infected person passes along the virus to an average of 2 to 3 other people. Once they’ve crunched the data, the researchers find that a one degree Celsius increase in temperature and one percent increase in relative humidity lower the R value by 0.0383 and 0.0224, respectively.

Let’s take the average climate of a randomly chosen American city—say, Washington, D.C. In March, the average high temperature is 56 degrees Fahrenheit (13.3 degrees C), with a relative humidity of 58 percent. In August, the average high temperature is 87 degrees Fahrenheit (30.6 degrees C) and humidity averages 71 percent. Assuming optimistically an R of 2, that would yield an August R of 1.047. In this scenario, rising summer heat and humidity would cut the R in half and significantly slow down the course of the epidemic.

The beneficial effects of summer, combined with conscientiously practiced mitigation measures such as social distancing and case isolation that flatten the epidemic’s curve of infections, could drive R could below 1, causing the number of new cases to decline. If the new coronavirus turns out to be seasonal, the denizens of D.C. (and most folks living in the rest of the country) will get a respite from COVID-19 this summer.

If these findings prove happily true, expect our political leaders to take full credit for the relief that warmer weather will afford us. But don’t forget the House of Stark motto in The Game of Thrones: “Winter is coming.” The second winter wave of the 1918 Spanish flu was far more deadly than the original outbreak.

Nevertheless, a dog days lull in the epidemic would provide a breathing spell during which our health care system could substantially beef up treatment and mitigation efforts. It might even allow researchers enough time to discover and deploy effective pharmaceutical therapies for the disease.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2Wdo0oa
via IFTTT

Maryland Man Killed in No-Knock SWAT Raid Was Shot While Asleep, Family Says

Lawyers for the family of a young Maryland man killed during an early morning police raid last week say officers opened fire on him while he was sleeping.

The Montgomery County Police Department said Friday that 21-year-old Duncan Socrates Lemp was shot after he “confronted” officers executing a search warrant on his family’s house in Potomac, Maryland, for alleged firearms offenses. But Lemp’s family says the young man was asleep in his bed when police opened fire from outside the house, killing Lemp and wounding his girlfriend.

“The facts as I understand them from eyewitnesses are incredibly concerning,” Rene Sandler, an attorney for Lemp’s family, told the Associated Press.

“Any attempt by the police to shift responsibility onto Duncan or his family who were sleeping when the police fired shots into their home is not supported by the facts,” Lamp’s family said in the statement released by Sandler.

The Montgomery County Police said in a press release that a tactical unit executed “a high-risk search warrant related to firearms offenses” at Lemp’s house at 4:30 a.m. last Thursday. “Detectives were following up on a complaint from the public that Lemp, though prohibited, was in possession of firearms,” the release continued.

The Montgomery County Police claim Lemp “confronted the officers.” The statement did not elaborate on the circumstances. Police said they recovered three rifles and two handguns from the house.

A friend of Lemp told ABC News that Lemp was a libertarian. Lemp’s social media accounts show an interest in cryptocurrency and guns. ABC News also reported that Lemp posted on militia forums, although Lemp’s attorneys denied he was a militia member.

“The family is grieving the unimaginable loss of their loved one,” Lemp’s family said in its statement. “We will be investigating Duncan’s death and will hold each and every person responsible for his death. We believe that the body camera footage and other forensic evidence from this event will support what Duncan’s family already knows that he was murdered.”

In a tweet Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland demanded that the Montgomery County Police Department release body camera footage of the incident.

Maryland has a long history of controversial SWAT raids. In 2008, a Prince George’s County Police Department SWAT team executed a botched narcotics raid on the house of the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, and shot his two black labrador retrievers.

Public outrage over the debacle led the state legislature to pass a law in 2009 requiring police departments to collect and report data on SWAT team deployments. That data showed Maryland law enforcement conducted more than 8,000 SWAT team raids between 2010 and 2014, resulting in nine deaths. But the law expired in 2014, and legislators have yet to renew it.

Reason has covered the disastrous consequences of unnecessary, hyper-militarized police raids for years. Last year an Illinois family filed a lawsuit after a SWAT team officer shot a 12-year-old boy in the kneecap while executing a narcotics search warrant.

In 2016, two Georgia counties paid a $3.6 million settlement to the family of a toddler who was maimed after officers on an anti-drug task force threw a flashbang grenade into his crib. A federal jury acquitted the only police officer who was prosecuted for the incident.  

In 2006, former Reason reporter Radley Balko covered the case of Cory Maye, a Mississippi man who was sentenced to death after shooting an officer during a no-knock raid. Maye was eventually released from prison in 2011.

In Lemp’s last tweet, he wrote, “The Constitution is dead.”

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2Wdk72y
via IFTTT

The Coronavirus Debate Was Bernie Sanders’ Last Chance. He Blew It.

Last night’s Democratic debate was possibly the last chance for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) to turn the tables against former Vice President Joe Biden, the frontrunner for the party’s presidential nomination. But his plan to wholly transform vast sections of the U.S. economy seems unlikely to be particularly attractive to the public right now, given the country’s current sense of dread.

The coronavirus pandemic loomed large over the proceedings: Biden and Sanders bumped elbows in lieu of shaking hands, stood at podiums that were several feet apart, and delivered their remarks to an empty audience (a dramatic improvement: thank you, social distancing). Moderators Jake Tapper, Dana Bash, and Ilia Calderon began by asking the candidates how they would deal with the crisis, and Biden attempted to reassure viewers that he would harness the full reach of the federal government to confront COVID-19.

“We need to act swiftly and very thoroughly, and in concert with all the forces we need to bring to bear to confront this crisis now,” said Biden.

Sanders vowed the same but tried to pivot to his usual talking points: transformational economic change, Medicare for All, etc.

“Let’s be honest and understand that this coronavirus pandemic exposes the incredible weakness and dysfunction of our current health care system,” said Sanders. “We are the only major country on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people. We’re spending so much money and yet we are not even prepared for this pandemic.”

Biden countered that Italy has a single-payer health care system and this hasn’t helped the country deal with coronavirus. “It doesn’t work there,” said Biden.

When asked how to address the economic impact of the crisis, Sanders brought up income inequality:

We have more income and wealth inequality in America today than any time in 100 years. And what that means that in the midst of this crisis, you know, if you’re a multimillionaire, no one is happy about this crisis, you’re going to get through it. You’re going to get everything you need. You’re not worried about health care. You’re not worried about income coming in.

Half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. We’ve got people who are struggling working two or three jobs to put food on the table. What is going to happen to them? So the lesson to be learned is we have got to move aggressively right now to address the economic crisis as a result of…the coronavirus, what we have got to do also is understand the fragility of the economy and how unjust and unfair it is that so few have so much and so many have so little.

Sanders also stated that the U.S. government’s job “is to tell every working person, no matter what your income is, you are not going to suffer as a result of this crisis.” This is of course an impossible promise—even if the government took strong action to bail out various sectors of the economy, forgive some debts, or pay people who can’t work right now, many Americans would still suffer adverse economic outcomes due to the virus.

When the debate finally turned to other matters, Sanders hammered Biden more successfully by bringing up the frontrunner’s long history of bad Senate votes: on the Defense of Marriage Act, the Iraq War, etc. He was definitely a bit sharper and more focused than Biden throughout. But at this time of national crisis, Biden’s comparatively comforting message seems like the better sell—or at least, more than adequate to maintain his decisive lead.

Read a full transcript of the debate here.

FREE MINDS

Economist Tyler Cowen highlights a list of proposals for funding coronavirus research on his Marginal Revolution blog:

This is (by far) the best document I have seen on what to do on the medical side.  It is about 3 pp. long and I believe it will be updated periodically.  Excerpt:

  • Consider guaranteeing top tier treatment and ICU beds for people directly working on treatments or vaccines. We need to keep relevant science labs open. (They’re likely to be closed as things stand.) No doubt logistically challenging but may be necessary. Can you get scientists to keep going without this?
  • Announce $10B prizes for first vaccine and for first cure. Think about mechanics. Should there be awards for second place, too? How should collaboration be factored in?
  • Issue $1B of research grants to all competent labs and organizations that could plausibly use them. They just have to report on progress every 30 days and require that they actively share all progress with other labs.
  • Proposed structure: $100M to each of 5 companies.

Check out the rest of the post here.

FREE MARKETS

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been a significant obstacle in slowing the spread of the coronavirus. Massachusetts General Hospital President Peter Slavin reminded Meet the Press viewers of this yesterday when host Chuck Todd thunderously demanded that Slavin explain why it had taken so long for “private facilities and university facilities” to provide COVID-19 testing.

“Well it was just the day before yesterday that we got regulatory relief from the FDA so that we didn’t need to jump through all sorts of hoops,” Slavin responded.

The best thing federal regulatory agencies can do to stop coronavirus right now is to speedily step out of the way. No libertarians in a pandemic? Nonsense.

QUICK HITS

  • More debate news: Biden promised to pick a woman to be his vice presidential candidate. Sanders said that he would “in all likelihood” pick a woman as well.
  • The Centers for Disease Control has recommended that all events including more than 50 people be canceled for at least eight weeks. This has plenty of people wondering whether Tuesday’s primaries should proceed as planned.
  • State and local governments are instructing restaurants to shut down. New York City has ordered all establishments to close, and D.C. is implementing strict occupancy limits.
  • Andrew Gillum, a former Democratic candidate for governor of Florida, announced he would enter rehab after being caught in an embarrassing incident over the weekend.
  • Missing sports? I’ve got you covered:

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/38YAsdX
via IFTTT

Adjudication Outside Article III (part one)

This has nothing to do with COVID-19, but maybe for some readers that will be a relief.

Last week I published an article, Adjudication Outside Article III, that attempts to solve a very longstanding constitutional puzzle. I posted about the paper here almost two years ago, but now that the final version is finally out I thought I’d spend a few posts laying out my solution to the puzzle.

The standard version of the puzzle is this: Article III of the Constitution says that the judicial power of the United States is vested in the federal courts, whose judges have tenure during good behavior and can’t have their salaries reduced. It also describes the kinds of cases (such as those involving parties from different states, or arising under federal law) that those federal courts can hear.

But from the Founding to today, we have always allowed other bodies to adjudicate those same kinds of cases too. The most obvious example is state courts, which can and do hear cases involving diverse parties or federal questions, even though most state judges lack life tenure. But putting those aside, we have had non-Article-III territorial courts, administrative bodies like land claims courts, military tribunals, and so on.

So what explains these exceptions, and what other exceptions can Congress make, if it wants to keep things away from those pesky life-tenured judges? This is the longstanding puzzle, which has generally produced three attempted solutions. Some people say “basically none,” and argue that even some of these exceptions (like territorial courts) are unconstitutional. Other people say “basically whatever Congress thinks is a good idea,” and argue that there. And a few people have tried to come up with some kind of middle positions (for instance, that there must be Article III review), but in my view these have not been successful.

My article proposes a different way of thinking about the problem. It argues that it is a mistake to focus on the act of adjudication itself; adversary presentation about the application of law to fact is simply a procedure, and not a procedure uniquely limited to Article III courts. Instead, the constitutional question is one of government power. What kind of power has the tribunal been vested with, and what is it trying to do with that power?

In particular, some tribunals exercise judicial power. The federal courts are an example, but they are not the only example. State courts and territorial courts are also examples, and I can explain why these are not exceptions to the text of Article III.

Some tribunals exercise executive power. They have nothing to do with Article III. But because of the principles reflected by the due process clause, they cannot authorize the deprivation of life, liberty, or property outside some very narrow circumstances.

Some tribunals exercise no power at all. They can act only where they have the consent of the litigants or act to advise another institution.

In a few more posts later this week, I’ll give examples of what I mean, and a few implications for all of the non-Article-III adjudicators out there, like administrative agencies, magistrate judges, and bankruptcy judges.

Or if you want 71 pages of this (with 481 footnotes), you can always read the whole article…

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/39XDXTA
via IFTTT

Maryland Man Killed in No-Knock SWAT Raid Was Shot While Asleep, Family Says

Lawyers for the family of a young Maryland man killed during an early morning police raid last week say officers opened fire on him while he was sleeping.

The Montgomery County Police Department said Friday that 21-year-old Duncan Socrates Lemp was shot after he “confronted” officers executing a search warrant on his family’s house in Potomac, Maryland, for alleged firearms offenses. But Lemp’s family says the young man was asleep in his bed when police opened fire from outside the house, killing Lemp and wounding his girlfriend.

“The facts as I understand them from eyewitnesses are incredibly concerning,” Rene Sandler, an attorney for Lemp’s family, told the Associated Press.

“Any attempt by the police to shift responsibility onto Duncan or his family who were sleeping when the police fired shots into their home is not supported by the facts,” Lamp’s family said in the statement released by Sandler.

The Montgomery County Police said in a press release that a tactical unit executed “a high-risk search warrant related to firearms offenses” at Lemp’s house at 4:30 a.m. last Thursday. “Detectives were following up on a complaint from the public that Lemp, though prohibited, was in possession of firearms,” the release continued.

The Montgomery County Police claim Lemp “confronted the officers.” The statement did not elaborate on the circumstances. Police said they recovered three rifles and two handguns from the house.

A friend of Lemp told ABC News that Lemp was a libertarian. Lemp’s social media accounts show an interest in cryptocurrency and guns. ABC News also reported that Lemp posted on militia forums, although Lemp’s attorneys denied he was a militia member.

“The family is grieving the unimaginable loss of their loved one,” Lemp’s family said in its statement. “We will be investigating Duncan’s death and will hold each and every person responsible for his death. We believe that the body camera footage and other forensic evidence from this event will support what Duncan’s family already knows that he was murdered.”

In a tweet Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland demanded that the Montgomery County Police Department release body camera footage of the incident.

Maryland has a long history of controversial SWAT raids. In 2008, a Prince George’s County Police Department SWAT team executed a botched narcotics raid on the house of the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, and shot his two black labrador retrievers.

Public outrage over the debacle led the state legislature to pass a law in 2009 requiring police departments to collect and report data on SWAT team deployments. That data showed Maryland law enforcement conducted more than 8,000 SWAT team raids between 2010 and 2014, resulting in nine deaths. But the law expired in 2014, and legislators have yet to renew it.

Reason has covered the disastrous consequences of unnecessary, hyper-militarized police raids for years. Last year an Illinois family filed a lawsuit after a SWAT team officer shot a 12-year-old boy in the kneecap while executing a narcotics search warrant.

In 2016, two Georgia counties paid a $3.6 million settlement to the family of a toddler who was maimed after officers on an anti-drug task force threw a flashbang grenade into his crib. A federal jury acquitted the only police officer who was prosecuted for the incident.  

In 2006, former Reason reporter Radley Balko covered the case of Cory Maye, a Mississippi man who was sentenced to death after shooting an officer during a no-knock raid. Maye was eventually released from prison in 2011.

In Lemp’s last tweet, he wrote, “The Constitution is dead.”

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2Wdk72y
via IFTTT