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No, You Shouldn’t Let Fears of a Scary Nervous System Disease Stop You From Getting a Flu Shot

by LamontLeGrand Posted on January 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Despite abundant evidence that flu vaccines are safe and effective, only about a third of Americans get the shots each season. Public health experts believe that one reason for the low immunization rates is misinformation about side effects of the vaccine. One is the belief that the vaccine can actually give you the flu (false); another is that it can cause autism in children (also false, as we’ve said many times).

Add that to the worry that it will cause a rare but serious nervous-system disorder called Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS), an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the nervous system, resulting in muscle weakness, or even temporary paralysis. This fear is not completely unfounded—several studies, including a recent one by Italian researchers about the 2010-2011 vaccine—have found that getting a flu shot can indeed very slightly elevate one’s risk of contracting the disease, by about one additional case per million people.

But here’s where things get complicated: While it’s true that the flu vaccine can raise your GBS risk, so can the flu itself. So which is more likely to lead to GBS: Getting the vaccine or getting the flu?

That’s the question that Steven Hawken and Kumanan Wilson, epidemiologists from The Ottawa Hospital, set out to answer. The researchers developed a calculator that took into account baseline GBS risk (overall, it’s about 10 in a million, though it varies with age and sex—GBS affects more men than women and more elderly people than young adults and children), vaccine effectiveness, and overall incidence of flu. Their findings: For most people, in a flu season where the flu incidence is greater than 5 percent and the vaccine is more than 60 percent effective, says Wilson, “your risk of GBS actually goes down when you get the vaccine because it prevents the flu.”

That’s good news in most years, when the flu vaccine is well over 60 percent effective. Here’s the problem: This year’s flu vaccine is only about 23 percent effective. Still, according to Wilson, while this year’s total flu incidence isn’t yet known, it appears to be greater than that of an average year—much higher than 5 percent. That means that even with the reduced effectiveness of the vaccine, the overall GBS risk is likely still greater for people who contract the flu than for those who get immunized, says Wilson.

What’s more, he adds, it’s important to keep in mind that the risk of serious complications from the flu outweighs that of acquiring GBS. Last year, according to the CDC, 9,635 people were hospitalized with the flu in the United States. According to the CDC there are between 3,000-6,000 cases of GBS annually (though no hospitalization data is available). Most of those cases aren’t caused by flu vaccines or the flu itself; the most common cause of GBS is infection with the bacterium Campylobacter jejeuni, usually the result of eating contaminated food.

The takeaway: The GBS risk from the flu itself is most likely greater than that of the vaccine. And while GBS can be a scary disease, it’s much less common than scary complications FROM the flu.

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No, You Shouldn’t Let Fears of a Scary Nervous System Disease Stop You From Getting a Flu Shot

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Chart of the Day: Obamacare Just Keeps Working, and Working, and Working….

by KristopEdc Posted on January 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last year, as Obamacare finally went into full effect, the ranks of the uninsured began to drop sharply. Despite all the website problems and the repeated predictions of doom from conservatives, it turned out that Obamacare was working well. Then things stabilized as open enrollment ended. Today, Gallup released new results for the final quarter of 2014, which marked the start of Obamacare’s second year of enrollment, and guess what? The ranks of the uninsured are dropping yet again. The percentage of adults without health insurance dropped from 13.4 percent to 12.9 percent:

The Affordable Care Act has accomplished one of its goals: increasing the percentage of Americans who have health insurance coverage. The uninsured rate as measured by Gallup has dropped 4.2 points since the requirement to have health insurance or pay a fine went into effect. It will likely drop further as plans purchased during the current open enrollment period take effect. The Department of Health and Human Services reported that 6.5 million Americans either selected new plans or were automatically re-enrolled into a plan via HealthCare.gov as of Dec. 26, 2014.

….Other signs also point to the uninsured rate falling more after this open enrollment period ends. HHS continues to focus on the financial assistance available to enrollees and increasing the fine for not having health insurance….The uninsured rate could also fall further as more states expand Medicaid.

The uninsurance rate has dropped the most among blacks, Hispanics, the young, and the poor. It’s dropped by only a small amount among the middle classes, since they’re mostly insured already by their employers. But even right smack in the middle, uninsurance rates have dropped by three percentage points. Obamacare just keeps on working, and it’s working for everyone.

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Chart of the Day: Obamacare Just Keeps Working, and Working, and Working….

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Even Without Voter ID Laws, Minority Voters Face More Hurdles to Casting Ballots

by HuldaC56ykc Posted on November 3, 2014

Mother Jones

Over the past decade, Republican legislators have pushed a number of measures critics say are blatant attempts to suppress minority voting, including voter ID requirements, shortened early voting periods, and limits on same-day voter registration. But minority voters are often disenfranchised in another, more subtle way: Polling places without enough voting machines or poll workers.

Charts: How minority voters were blocked at the ballot box in 2012.

These polling places tend to have long lines to vote. Long lines force people to eventually give up and go home, depressing voter turnout. And that happens regularly all across the country in precincts with lots of minority voters, even without voter ID or other voting restrictions in place.

Nationally, African Americans waited about twice as long to vote in the 2012 election as white people, (23 minutes on average versus 12 minutes); Hispanics waited 19 minutes. White people who live in neighborhoods whose residents are less than 5 percent minority, had the shortest of all wait times, just 7 minutes. These averages obscure some of the unusually long lines in some areas. In South Carolina’s Richland County, which is 48 percent black and is home to 14 percent of the state’s African American registered voters, some people waited more than five hours to cast their ballots.

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Even Without Voter ID Laws, Minority Voters Face More Hurdles to Casting Ballots

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Krugman: Obama One of the Most Successful Presidents in American History

by RufusSandover Posted on October 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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President Barack Obama may be facing some of his lowest approval ratings to date, but that isn’t stopping Paul Krugman from defending the president’s overall track record. In fact, the Nobel Prize-winning economist is arguing Obama is one of the most “successful presidents in American history.”

Krugman, who was once among the president’s more notable skeptics, made his case in a new feature for Rolling Stone aptly titled “In Defense of Obama,” in which he dismissed persistent attacks from Republicans and mounting disappointment expressed by Democrats with an outline of the Obama administration’s key achievements in several areas including healthcare, the environment, national security, and the economy.

It’s a tough time to be making that case. Americans are increasingly frustrated by Obama’s handling of ISIS and continued unrest in Iraq. As for the economy, even Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) recently blamed Obama’s economic advisers for repeatedly failing ordinary Americans in favor of Wall Street.

But in a follow-up interview with ABC News, Krugman told Jonathan Karl the recent onslaught of criticism is unwarranted, noting Americans have experienced more “consequential” changes under Obama’s presidency than ever before.

“People who had this idea that Obama was going to bring a transformation of America, I thought were being naïve,” Krugman said in the interview. “But, by God, we got health reform, and we got a significant financial reform. We are getting the environmental action … it’s not everything you would have wanted, but it’s more than anyone else has done for decades.”

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is still out there claiming the president has accomplished nothing:

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Krugman: Obama One of the Most Successful Presidents in American History

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Chart: The Typical White Family Is 20 Times Wealthier Than the Typical Black Family

by MurrayMeredith Posted on October 2, 2014

Mother Jones

We’re still posting a new chart on the current state of income inequality every day over the next week. Yesterday’s looked at how top tax rates dropped as top incomes rose.

Today, a closer look at how income inequality splits along racial lines. Whites’ average household income is 56 percent larger than that of African Americans and 39 percent larger than that of Hispanics. But the discrepancy is even greater when it comes to wealth: The median white family holds nearly 20 times more assets than he median black family and 74 times more assets than the median Hispanic family.

Source: Income by race: US Census; wealth by race: Edward N. Wolff

Illustrations and infographic design by Mattias Macklerâ&#128;&#139;

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Chart: The Typical White Family Is 20 Times Wealthier Than the Typical Black Family

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Americans Are Refreshingly Realistic About the ISIS Threat

by MichellWhitesid Posted on September 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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Paul Waldman draws my attention to a new Pew poll with an interesting result. Hawkish Republicans have been running around for the past month insisting that ISIS terrorists are a direct threat to the United States, and therefore we have to fight them in Iraq so they don’t come over here and start killing helpless women and small children en masse.

But apparently hardly anyone is buying it. Only 18 percent of Americans think that fighting ISIS will reduce the odds of a terrorist attack on US soil. And there’s not a big difference between the parties. Even among Republicans, only 23 percent think a military campaign against ISIS will make us safer at home. That’s a refreshingly realistic appraisal.

But why? Is it because the Republican fear campaign is so transparently unhinged? Or is it because of President Obama’s unusually low-key approach to the ISIS campaign? I’d like to think it’s at least partly the latter. I’m not very excited about any kind of campaign against ISIS at the moment, but as a second-best alternative, it’s at least nice to see it being sold to the public as a case of having to eat our vegetables rather than as yet another exciting bomb-dropping adventure in defense of our national honor. It’s a step in the right direction, anyway.

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Americans Are Refreshingly Realistic About the ISIS Threat

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Why Gun Control Groups Have Moved Away From an Assault Weapons Ban

by MattDowning Posted on September 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared on ProPublica.

The morning after the Sandy Hook shootings, Shannon Watts, a mother of five and a former public relations executive, started a Facebook page called “One Million Moms for Gun Control.” It proved wildly popular and members quickly focused on renewing the federal ban on military style assault weapons.

“We all were outraged about the fact that this man could use an AR-15, which seemed like a military grade weapon, and go into an elementary school and wipe out 26 human beings in less than five minutes,” Watts said.

Read our profile of Moms Demand Action.

Nearly two years later, Watts works full-time as the head of the group, now named Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, is a significant player in a coalition financed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But while polls suggest a majority of Americans still support an assault weapons ban, it is no longer one of Watts’ top priorities.

“We’ve very much changed our strategy to focus on public safety measures that will save the most lives,” she told ProPublica.

It’s not just that the ban proved to be what Watts calls a “nonstarter” politically, gaining fewer votes in the Senate post-Sandy Hook than background check legislation. It was also that as Watts spoke to experts and learned more about gun violence in the United States, she realized that pushing for a ban isn’t the best way to prevent gun deaths.

A 2004 Justice Department-funded evaluation found no clear evidence that the decade-long ban saved any lives. The guns categorized as “assault weapons” had only been used in about 2 percent of gun crimes before the ban. “Should it be renewed,” the report concluded, “the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”

With more information, Watts decided that focusing on access to guns, not types of guns, was a smarter approach. She came to the same conclusion that other gun control groups had reached even before the Sandy Hook shootings: “Ultimately,” she said, “what’s going to save the most lives are background checks.”

While many gun control groups still officially support the assault weapons ban—”we haven’t abandoned the issue,” as Watts said—they’re no longer actively fighting for it.

“There’s certainly a lot of public sentiment around high capacity magazines and assault weapons,” Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said in an interview this summer. “It’s easy to understand why people feel so passionate about it.”

But, he said, “when you look at this issue in terms of the greatest opportunity to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people and prevent gun violence, background checks are a bigger opportunity to do that.”

Bloomberg’s umbrella group, Everytown for Gun Safety, has also deemphasized an assault weapons ban. A 10-question survey the group gave to federal candidates to measure their stances on gun policy did not even ask about a ban.

“We acknowledge that assault weapons put the ‘mass’ in mass shootings,” Erika Soto Lamb, the group’s communications director, said. But “we feel like it’s a more productive use of our time, effort, money, voices, and votes to focus on the policies that are going to save the most lives.”

The most common criticism of the weapons ban – which was signed into law Sept. 13, 1994 — was that it focused too much on the cosmetic “military-style” features of guns, like pistol grips or folding rifle stocks, which made it easy for manufacturers to turn banned guns into legal guns by tweaking a few features. During the ban, some manufacturers added “PCR” to the name of these redesigned guns, for ” politically correct rifle.”

But the more profound criticism of the ban is that “assault weapons,” a politically charged and imprecise term, have never been the weapons that contribute the most to American gun violence. Gun rights groups have pointed out for years that the campaign against assault weapons ignores the data. (The National Rifle Association did not respond to our requests for comment.)

While assault weapons do appear to be used more frequently in mass shootings, like the ones in Newtown and Aurora, Colorado, such shootings are themselves rare events that are only responsible for a tiny fraction of gun homicides each year. The category of guns that are used in the majority of gun murders are handguns.

Despite this data—and perhaps because many Americans do not have an accurate understanding of gun violence statistics—an assault weapons ban has continued to have broad public and political support.

In January 2014, a Rassmussen poll found that 59 percent of likely voters still favored an assault weapons ban, even after the measure failed in the Senate in April 2013, along with the rest of the White House’s push for tougher gun laws.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the author of the original ban, has repeatedly re-introduced it, most recently in 2013, after the Sandy Hook shootings. Obama made the policy part of his post-Sandy Hook platform for gun violence prevention, though the White House’s central focus was on passing universal background checks.

Experts say that a smarter way to approach the assault weapons ban might be to focus on the ammunition, not the design of the guns themselves. The 1994 gun ban included a ban on magazines with more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Unlike “assault weapons,” high-capacity magazines were used in as much as 26 percent of gun crimes before the ban. Limiting magazines to a smaller number of rounds might mean shooters, particularly in mass shooting situations, could not hit as many victims as quickly.

But even this focus on banning high-capacity magazines, rather than guns, suffers from a lack of data. “It is not clear how often the outcomes of gun attacks depend on the ability of offenders to fire more than 10 shots (the current magazine capacity limit) without reloading,” the 2004 evaluation concluded.

There is some evidence that the ban was preventing violence outside the US: Mexican politicians have long blamed the end of the assault weapons ban for contributing to drug-related violence in Mexico. In a 2013 study, three American academics found that the end of the ban brought about “at least 238 additional deaths annually” in areas of Mexico near the US border.

Meanwhile, as gun control groups have moved their focus away from gun bans, Americans are buying fewer assault weapons than they did when a ban seemed imminent, Bloomberg News reported last month.

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Why Gun Control Groups Have Moved Away From an Assault Weapons Ban

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A Quarter of Americans Think They or Their Families Will Get Ebola

by CarissaNnc Posted on August 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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No one has contracted Ebola in the United States, or is very likely to. And no one should be surprised that Donald Trump is tweeting this anyway:

What’s more surprising is that many Americans share fears like those that underlie Trump’s tweet. According to a Harvard School of Public Health/SSRS poll, 68 percent of the US population believes Ebola spreads “easily.” Four in 10 are worried there will be a large outbreak in the United States. And a quarter of Americans are afraid the virus will infect them or someone in their families.

That’s partly a consequence of media distortion, says Gillian SteelFisher, a member of the Harvard research team that conducted the poll. “Ebola’s a terrible disease, and the impact it’s having on West Africa is horrible to observe,” she says. “And the news here is going to capture parts of that but not all of it.” When news reports focus on the gruesome effects of Ebola without explaining why it’s been able to spread so fast in countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone, it’s easy for Americans to believe they’re in danger too. “They’re feeling a very personal and direct threat,” SteelFisher says.

SteelFisher wants the public to hear from health officials who can explain what disease containment resources the United States has and how they differ from West Africa’s. Simple factors like the availability of rubber gloves, which are scarce in Liberia, would make Ebola much easier to control here.

SteelFisher also thinks people might be confused about how Ebola is transmitted. Those who are more familiar with diseases like the flu, or who’ve seen virus disaster films like 2011’s Contagion, might assume Ebola can spread through the air. But in the case of this virus, you can’t get sick without exposure to an infected person’s bodily fluids.

Though some Americans may be overestimating the risk of an Ebola outbreak, more than a few also have a mistakenly rosy view of the treatment plan for people who are infected. A third of those polled said there was “an effective medicine to treat people who have gotten sick with Ebola.” In fact, no such drug has been approved for humans. The drug Zmapp, which was used to treat a pair of American missionaries who caught Ebola in West Africa, is still being tested.

“You don’t want them to be glib,” says SteelFisher. “At the same time, you don’t want people to be panicking here.”

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A Quarter of Americans Think They or Their Families Will Get Ebola

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Why BMI Is a Big Fat Scam

by ShannaQuintero Posted on August 25, 2014

Mother Jones

Sam Island

It wasn’t so long ago that fat people were considered healthy. Doctors were far more worried about underweight Americans, many of whom were too poor to afford enough calories. But as farms industrialized and food became cheaper, the tables began to turn. Shortly after World War II, it became clear that eating too much food led to just as many problems as not eating enough. Insurance companies noticed that their fattest policyholders were significantly more likely to die early than those of average weight. They searched for a way to measure excess fat and hit upon a simple formula developed in 1832 by a Belgian statistician, mathematician, and astronomer named Adolphe Quetelet: Simply divide a person’s weight by the square of his height. This formula, known as body mass index (BMI), spread from insurers to health researchers and finally, in the 1980s, entered the clinical realm.

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Why BMI Is a Big Fat Scam

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White Juries Are Not Kind to Black Defendants

by VXZTheodor Posted on August 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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Alex Tabarrok passes along the results of a new study about the racial composition of jury pools and the resulting juries:

What the authors discover is that all white juries are 16% more likely to convict black defendants than white defendants but the presence of just a single black person in the jury pool equalizes conviction rates by race. The effect is large and remarkably it occurs even when the black person is not picked for the jury. The latter may not seem possible but the authors develop an elegant model of voir dire that shows how using up a veto on a black member of the pool shifts the characteristics of remaining pool members from which the lawyers must pick; that is, a diverse jury pool can make for a more “ideologically” balanced jury even when the jury is not racially balanced.

There is, of course, no de jure discrimination at work here. The law treats every defendant and every jury member the same. But that still doesn’t mean everyone is treated the same. Far from it.

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White Juries Are Not Kind to Black Defendants

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