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Scientists May Have Finally Found a Way to Stop Ebola

by BrigidaPrevost0 Posted on December 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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Scientists have developed a vaccine that could successfully prevent the spread of Ebola, according to a study published Thursday in The Lancet. The study was conducted in response to the West African Ebola crisis—the largest and deadliest recorded Ebola outbreak to date—and is the first to report a promising solution for the deadly virus.

Since December 2013, Ebola—a highly infectious virus that causes severe hemorrhagic fevers and has a 50 percent fatality rate—has killed over 11,300 people in West Africa. Considered a global health crisis, the outbreak took nearly two years to control and was complicated by a lack of international funding and widespread fear and mistrust of doctors among African locals. Though the virus was discovered in 1976, early attempts to develop vaccines stalled in the absence of financial incentives for pharmaceutical companies. Until 2014, Ebola outbreaks were rare and controlled relatively quickly.

“While these compelling results come too late for those who lost their lives during West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, they show that when the next Ebola outbreak hits, we will not be defenseless,” said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, the World Health Organization’s assistant director-general for health systems and innovation, and a lead author of the study, in a press release accompanying the study.

Amid the Ebola crisis, researchers from the WHO and more than a dozen other international partners, tested the new vaccine on 5,937 at-risk individuals in Guinea and found it was 100 percent effective when administered soon after exposure. None of the roughly 3,900 people vaccinated within three weeks of Ebola exposure ended up catching the virus 10 or more days after the vaccination. (Researchers discounted any individuals who got Ebola within 10 days—the typical incubation period for the virus—under the assumption that they had already contracted it prior to vaccination.) The vaccine appears to be less effective the longer the researches waited after an exposure: Of the roughly 2,000 people vaccinated more than three weeks after an exposure, 16 got Ebola.

To find people at risk of getting Ebola, researchers used a unique method, “ring vaccination,” inspired by the strategy used to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. Each time a new Ebola case was confirmed, researchers traced all the people the patient had come in direct contact with, as well as the people who had come in contact with those people within the previous three weeks. The clusters, or “rings,” were then randomly assigned to either immediate or delayed vaccinations. After noticing positive results in the first few months, the researchers stopped the delayed vaccinations altogether. Eventually, the researchers began vaccinating children, which was also 100 percent effective.

The “ring vaccination” technique additionally had a positive impact on public health: Communities of those who were vaccinated were also less likely to get sick. That proved crucial not only in studying the vaccine, but also in quashing the outbreak itself.

The team still needs to do more research on the safety of the vaccine in children and other vulnerable populations, such as people with HIV. Other questions also remain about how long the protective effects of a single vaccination can last and whether it can be modified to reduce side effects without compromising efficacy.

In the meantime, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, a global health partnership that includes the WHO, gave $5 million to pharmaceutical giant Merck in January to procure the vaccine after its approval. Merck also committed to making 300,000 doses of the vaccine available, should an emergency arise in the interim.

“Ebola left a devastating legacy in our country,” Dr KeÏta Sakoba, coordinator of the Ebola response in Guinea, said in the press release. “We are proud that we have been able to contribute to developing a vaccine that will prevent other nations from enduring what we endured.”

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Scientists May Have Finally Found a Way to Stop Ebola

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Reuters: 3,000 Neighborhoods Have Higher Lead Levels Than Flint

by Hermine1266 Posted on December 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Reuters reports on lead poisoning:

ST. JOSEPH, Missouri — On a sunny November afternoon in this historic city, birthplace of the Pony Express and death spot of Jesse James, Lauranda Mignery watched her son Kadin, 2, dig in their front yard. As he played, she scolded him for putting his fingers in his mouth.

In explanation, she pointed to the peeling paint on her old house. Kadin, she said, has been diagnosed with lead poisoning. He has lots of company: Within 15 blocks of his house, at least 120 small children have been poisoned since 2010, making the neighborhood among the most toxic in Missouri.

Of course, it’s not just St. Joseph. Reuters got hold of neighborhood-level lead testing records and found thousands of high-lead communities across the country:

Reuters found nearly 3,000 areas with recently recorded lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint during the peak of that city’s contamination crisis. And more than 1,100 of these communities had a rate of elevated blood tests at least four times higher.

The poisoned places on this map stretch from Warren, Pennsylvania, a town on the Allegheny River where 36 percent of children tested had high lead levels, to a zip code on Goat Island, Texas, where a quarter of tests showed poisoning. In some pockets of Baltimore, Cleveland and Philadelphia, where lead poisoning has spanned generations, the rate of elevated tests over the last decade was 40 to 50 percent.

Here’s a map of the worst hotspots in the country:

The whole piece is worth reading. My only disappointment is that the authors spent most of the article talking about the dangers of lead paint. That’s worth talking about, but lead-saturated soil is even more worth talking about. That’s why Lauranda Mignery doesn’t want her son digging in their front yard: there may not be any paint there, but there’s probably lots of old lead that settled in the soil decades ago when we were all burning leaded gasoline.

Sadly, there’s barely any money in the federal budget these days for testing, let alone remediation. It would cost tens of billions of dollars to clean up all the old lead, which is mostly a problem in poor communities populated by people of color. And though it’s not polite to say this, nobody cares enough about them to spend tens of billions of dollars.

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Reuters: 3,000 Neighborhoods Have Higher Lead Levels Than Flint

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Is Trump’s EPA pick or State nominee the riper target for Democrats?

by MilagroSchwing5 Posted on December 15, 2016

Oregon’s largest city became the first in the nation to ban the building of major fossil fuel terminals and the expansion of existing ones after a unanimous city council vote on Wednesday.

The city council used zoning codes to enact the ban, which will go into effect in January, and will prevent the construction of any new terminals for transporting or storing coal, methanol, natural gas, and oil. Other West Coast cities made similar moves earlier this year: Vancouver, Washington, banned new oil terminals and Oakland, California, banned coal terminals.

In the wake of the Trump election, it’s clear that the federal government won’t be taking climate action, so environmentalists are increasingly looking to cities to adopt climate change–fighting policies — and those cities might want to follow Portland’s lead.

“What we’ve done in Portland is replicable now in other cities,” Portland Mayor Charlie Hales told InsideClimate News. “Everybody has a zoning code.”

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also encouraging cities to take action. “Mayors and local leaders around the country are determined to keep pushing ahead on climate change,” he wrote recently, “because it is in their interest to do so.” It’s also in all of ours.

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Is Trump’s EPA pick or State nominee the riper target for Democrats?

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Here Is Rex Tillerson’s Awesome Record at ExxonMobil

by JoleneBolick73 Posted on December 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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Was Rex Tillerson a good CEO at Exxon? Over at Bloomberg, Vincent Piazza says Tillerson has two big claims to fame:

Number one, it’s the relationship with Russia and the expanding relationship there as well. But also the recent acquisition of XTO back in 2010. That was a major bet on natural gas that did not pan out—a $35 billion bet on natural gas that seemed to turn the other way on them.

So…a lousy acquisition and, um, Russia. The Wall Street Journal goes into more detail on that:

“I have a very close relationship with Mr. Putin,” Mr. Tillerson told students at the University of Texas, his alma mater, in February….He was successful, in part because he negotiated with Mr. Putin, who became Russian prime minister in 1999 and has run the country, either as president or prime minister, ever since. Mr. Tillerson’s ties helped him catapult past other executives to lead the company in 2006.

….At a June 2012 meeting with Mr. Putin, Mr. Tillerson said Exxon’s Arctic deal enhanced U.S.-Russian ties. “I agree, as you point out, that nothing strengthens relationships between countries better than business enterprise,” a Kremlin transcript quoted him as saying. The next year, Mr. Putin awarded him Russia’s Order of Friendship for his work.

Well, OK then. He’s chummy with Vladimir Putin and he blew $35 billion on a bad acquisition. But at least he’s a great businessman, right? Here is ExxonMobil’s performance over the past decade:

But at least they paid dividends regularly! Sounds like Secretary of State material to me.

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Here Is Rex Tillerson’s Awesome Record at ExxonMobil

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Why Are Children Less Likely to Earn More Than Their Parents These Day?

by JimIrons2455760 Posted on December 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Even by my standards, the blog has been pretty chart heavy lately. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s to take my mind off the unfolding disaster of Donald Trump. Muddling around in Excel seems pretty soothing by contrast.

(I mean, Trump just told us he’s not going to bother with intelligence briefings at all because “I’m, like, a smart guy.” And as near as I can tell, the entire political class of the country hasn’t exploded en masse. WTF is going on here?)

Ahem. You see the problem? So let’s go back to charts. Recently a team of economists led by Raj Chetty finished a groundbreaking bit of census research that compared incomes of parents at age 30 to their children at age 30. What they found was that children who reached age 30 in 1970 were 91 percent likely to have higher incomes than their parents. However, children who reached age 30 in 2010 were only 50 percent more likely to have higher incomes than their parents.

Why the decline? To demonstrate the answer, I have two charts for you. Here they are, with explanations below:

The chart on the left shows mean real incomes over the past eight decades. The orange lines indicate a guesstimate of standard deviation as a proxy for income inequality. If I keep that standard deviation constant through the years (at about one-third of income), the number of children we’d statistically project to have higher incomes than their parents goes down from 91 percent to 74 percent. The decline is due to the fact that incomes are growing more slowly than they used to.

The chart on the right is identical, except it uses the figures that Chetty’s team came up with based on real-life parents and children. The number of children who actually have higher incomes than their parents declined from 91 percent to 50 percent.

In other words, although some of the effect is due to slow income growth, much more of it is due to something else. And that something else is growing income inequality. Here is Chetty’s chart (note that he uses birth years rather than age-30 years):

The dotted green line shows what reality would be like if income inequality hadn’t gone up. The dotted pink line shows what reality would be like if incomes had continued to grow at their postwar rate. They both make a difference, but income inequality makes a bigger difference.

Now then, since Chetty has a perfectly good chart, why did I bother producing a different one? And not just different, but arguably more confusing than Chetty’s. It’s because I was a little skeptical of Chetty’s results and wanted to work out some things for myself. Gotta do something to keep from thinking about Donald Trump, after all.

But when I was done, my statistical guesses matched Chetty’s empirical figures pretty closely. So I shrugged, and then, having done all this work, I figured I might as well share it. Maybe it just makes things more confusing or maybe it helps. Who knows? But I have to do something to keep from jumping off a ledge, don’t I?

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Why Are Children Less Likely to Earn More Than Their Parents These Day?

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Just what our crumbling, aging infrastructure doesn’t need: Trump’s plan

by LHSCortez7612 Posted on December 9, 2016

Donald Trump has made rebuilding America’s decrepit infrastructure a centerpiece of his political pitch. And it seems many top Democrats are optimistic about it.

The problem is that what Trump has actually proposed isn’t what our infrastructure needs.

“If you want a plan that is going to be economically transformational and deal with the fact of climate change, this is not your plan,” says Nell Abernathy, vice president of research and policy at the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank in New York City. “It’s good for corporations and private interests. It’s bad for the average American and long-term economic performance.”

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Many progressives who have examined Trump’s infrastructure scheme are appalled by it. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who made a big infrastructure spending proposal part of his presidential campaign platform, said he would work with Trump on policies that “improve the lives of working families.” After later looking at Trump’s infrastructure plan, Sanders described it as “a scam that gives massive tax breaks to large companies and billionaires on Wall Street.”

Our bridges, roads, and rails are in desperate shape. The gasoline tax hasn’t been raised since 1993, even to keep pace with inflation, so federal transportation investment has steadily fallen. As a result, the country has too many structurally deficient bridges at risk of collapse, roads pockmarked with potholes, and trains that move slower than they did a century ago because the tracks are so old. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives U.S. infrastructure a D+ on its report card and estimates that the country needs $3.6 trillion in infrastructure investment by 2020.

But as it’s laid out now, Trump’s $137 billion proposal would not address any of those needs. Here are the six main reasons why:

1. It’s a tax cut, not government spending for public investment. Trump’s plan would not direct money to fix roads, sewers, airports, and train lines. Instead, the government would grant tax credits to corporations and private equity firms that finance construction projects. It’s a much less efficient and less effective way of getting things done, but taxpayers still pick up the bill.

When government actually spends the money, it gets to decide what to spend it on. But when it subsidizes private investment, investors can pick the projects and keep a profit for themselves.

2. It will leave behind the most disadvantaged communities. Private investors’ chief concern is getting the best return on their investment, not what’s best for the public. Depend on them to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, and you’re sure to wind up with plenty of new toll roads in affluent suburbs, where people will pay for the privilege of avoiding traffic. Analysts say that Trump’s proposal suggests pipelines and other private projects would also get tax credits.

What about the investments we really need, like repairing inner-city cracked streets and sidewalks, creaky train tunnels, and decaying water pipes in impoverished inner-cities? They’re likely to get worse. Sure, there are long-term economic benefits for the country if the government ensures the children of Flint have clean drinking water. But there’s no easy way for an investor to turn a profit on it.

3. Trump’s proposal fails to address a key reason private investors often balk at big infrastructure projects: They often run way over budget.

Consider New York City’s the planned Long Island Rail Road terminal attached to Grand Central station. It’s expected to cost at least $10 billion, more than double the $4.3 billion that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority originally estimated. Projects that require digging tunnels through bedrock alongside to skyscraper foundations are almost guaranteed to encounter setbacks that lead to delays and cost overruns.

“There’s a lot of risk involved because mega-projects end up costing a lot more than initially projected,” says Deron Lovaas, a senior urban policy advisor at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “These are risky projects, a lot of them fail. The private sector tends to be pretty picky about them.”

4. It gives tax breaks to projects that don’t need tax breaks. The tax credits don’t have to be used for new projects or ones that wouldn’t be financed without the subsidy, as Ron Klain, who oversaw the infrastructure investments of the American Recovery Act in the Obama White House, explains in The Washington Post. Its design could simply pad investors’ profit margins in existing or already planned projects.

5. It will not spend money efficiently. Trump is an expert at putting his name on flashy new developments. But what the country needs most, and what would bring the most benefit per dollar, is an overhaul of its existing infrastructure.

“What we need in transportation is money to take care of deferred maintenance to roads and rail,” says Lovaas.

A better plan would help pay for the adoption of new technologies. Installing automated monitoring systems on a bridge to scan for structural degradation could avert a collapse. Installing “smart traffic signals” that coordinate traffic lights with current conditions could save time and reduce air pollution.

“That’s not sexy but it’s the most cost-effective,” Lovaas says. “You get a lot more bang for the buck if you replace all the traffic signals nationwide with smart traffic signals than building a shiny new toll road.”

6. It ignores one of the biggest threats of all: the Chinese hoax known as climate change. A smart infrastructure program would favor projects that reduce carbon emissions over ones that increase them. That means favoring mass transit, sidewalks, and bike lanes instead of building new highways. It means improving the electrical grid instead of planning new fossil-fuel pipelines, and supporting projects that will hold up better in a future of higher temperatures and sea levels.

In short, Trump’s plan would suck up political energy, media attention, and tax revenue that would be better spent on a genuine effort to rebuild our crumbling, aging infrastructure. That’s worse than no plan at all.

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Just what our crumbling, aging infrastructure doesn’t need: Trump’s plan

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Army Halts Construction of Dakota Access Pipeline

by MaybellMullens Posted on December 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will not grant a permit for the controversial Dakota Access pipeline to cross under Lake Oahu in South Dakota, a decision that could halt construction of the last link of the controversial pipeline that has been the subject of protests for the better part of this year. The water protectors, as they refer to themselves, have set up camps in the path of the pipeline in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, which opposes the project. This weekend, veterans from around the country converged on the region to show their support.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe issued a statement commending “the courage that it took for Barack Obama, the Army Corps, the Department of Justice and the Department of Interior to take steps to correct the course of history and do the right thing.” Tribal chairman David Archambault also expressed hope that the incoming Trump administration would “respect this decision.”

In its statement, the Army said it believes the pipeline route should be subject to a full environmental impact statement “with full public input and analysis.” That process typically takes multiple months, often years.

Mother Jones’ Wes Enzinna is currently enroute to the area and will continue covering this developing story.

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Army Halts Construction of Dakota Access Pipeline

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The World According to Trump

by AnibalBiddle921 Posted on November 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Here is the version of reality that Donald Trump and the Trump team have been spreading around since the election:

Trump’s victory was one of the biggest in recent history.
Trump kept a Ford plant from moving to Mexico.
Snobby New York theater elites were rude to VP-elect Mike Pence on Friday.
The demonstrations and marches following the election were the work of “professional protesters.”
The New York Times apologized for its anti-Trump coverage during the campaign.
Trump won the debates handily.
He totally could have won the Trump University lawsuit, but chose to settle for the good of the country.

It’s only been ten days so far. Can he keep this up for four years?

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The World According to Trump

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North Carolina has been hit by rare late-season wildfires.

by DBNTimothy Posted on November 15, 2016

If you’ve ever followed a climate conference — no? just me? — you know that they involve a lot of different coalitions coming together to push climate action. But the partnership announced Tuesday at COP22 is an especially notable example.

The partnership, named for the Nationally Determined Contributions that countries have pledged to meet Paris Agreement goals, features 23 countries — including Morocco, the U.K., and the Marshall Islands — and four international institutions.

The plan involves a three-pronged approach: creating and sharing tools and technology, providing policy and technical expertise, and working on raising money for implementation of country programs. Basically, it’s a central collaboration space for private investors, technical experts, international institutions, and countries. Anyone is welcome to join.

The launch of the partnership coincides with the release of an essential tool that allows countries to search for funds available to implement the individual country plans that form the backbone of the Paris Agreement.

“The intention behind the NDC Partnership is that we can best tackle climate change and support climate adaptation by pooling our strengths and our knowledge,” says Dr. Gerd Müller, German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development. “If we try to go it alone in limiting global warming, we will fail.”

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North Carolina has been hit by rare late-season wildfires.

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Obama Urges Americans to Give Trump a Chance

by CharaGentry Posted on November 14, 2016

Mother Jones

In his first news conference since Donald Trump’s election victory last week, President Barack Obama expressed hope that the new president-elect would “send some signals of unity” to groups around the country, especially minorities and women who remain fearful after Trump’s extreme campaign promises. Such anxieties were heightened on Sunday, after Trump announced that Stephen Bannon, who has propagated white nationalist sentiment as head of Breitbart News, would become his chief strategist and senior counsel.

“It would not be appropriate for me to comment on every appointment that the president-elect starts making,” Obama said on Monday when asked about Bannon’s appointment. “The people have spoken.”

Although he was given a number of opportunities to criticize Trump, Obama avoided any negative remarks and repeated his commitment to ensuring a smooth transition of power. “Do I have concerns?” he said. “Absolutely.” But he added that he believed the former reality television star and real estate mogul would be “pragmatic” moving forward.

“Campaigning is different from governing,” Obama said. “I think he recognizes that. I think he’s sincere in wanting to be a successful president.”

On the eve of his final trip abroad as president, Obama also called on Democrats to reflect on the party’s loss and prepare to be better organized for future elections.

“I believe we have better ideas, but good ideas don’t matter if people don’t hear them,” Obama said. “Given population distribution across the country, we have to compete everywhere, we have to show up everywhere, we have to work at a grassroots level.”

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Obama Urges Americans to Give Trump a Chance

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