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Why Is This Year’s Flu So Dangerous for Young Adults?

by DeanaMoeller Posted on January 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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You’ve probably heard by now that this year’s flu season is a bad one. Below is a guide to the viruses that are going around now, plus a refresher on flu basics.

Is the flu widespread where I live?
Probably:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

How many people have died so far this year?
Twenty-eight children have died so far. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not keep track of adult deaths. That’s because states are not required to report flu deaths to the CDC. Older adults often die of flu complications or secondary infections rather than the flu itself, so tracking flu deaths is not an exact science. That said, in California, the death toll is currently at 146, including 95 people under the age of 65. At this time last year, just 9 Californians under 65 had died of the flu, and by the end of the season, a total of 106 people had died.

How does this year’s season compare to last year’s?
As the chart below shows, so far, this season is milder in terms of number of cases. However, CDC spokesperson Jason McDonald notes that more people between the ages of 18 and 64 have been hospitalized for flulike symptoms this year than in previous years. This season’s predominant virus strain is H1N1—which, when it originated in 2009, also sent an unusually high number people in the 18-to-64 age range to the hospital. Epidemiologists don’t know why H1N1 hits younger people hard, but one theory, says McDonald, is that older adults have built up more immunity to it. H1N1 is similar to the virus that caused the Spanish Flu of 1918, and also to strains that circulated in the ’60s and ’70s. Another possible factor: Only about 30 percent of younger adults get flu shots, compared to about 40 percent of older adults.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Is there a cure for the flu?
Doctors sometimes use antiviral medications to treat the flu—but it’s worth noting that, according to McDonald, about 1 percent of the H1N1 strains that the CDC has tested are resistant to a common antiviral drug. Although over-the-counter medications can make flu symptoms less severe, a recent study found that fever reducers like ibuprofen and acetaminophen actually help spread the flu by making people feel well enough to leave the house before they’ve kicked the virus.

How do I even know I have the flu? How can my doctor tell?
To know for certain, you’d need to have a blood test. But most doctors won’t do that, since it won’t really change the treatment (rest, drink fluids). But there are some key differences between a bad cold and a flu, CDC spokesman Curtis Allen told me last flu season. “You will be running a high temperature for several days, and it will keep you in bed for a week or more,” he said. But the most distinctive feature of the flu is its sudden onset. “You could be feeling fine at 10 and very sick at noon.”

If the flu season has peaked, should I still get a flu shot?
Yes. A typical flu season is 10 to 12 weeks long—so if it just peaked, that means there’s still another 5 or 6 weeks left. The caveat: The shot takes about two weeks to kick in, so even if you got the shot today, you could still come down with the flu, said Allen. Even if you think you’ve already had the flu this year, you should get a shot; it’s possible (though unlikely) that you could still come down with a different strain.

Can you get the flu from the flu shot itself?
No. That’s impossible, since the virus in the shot is not alive. You might get soreness, irritation, or even a fever after the shot, but that’s your body reacting to the shot, not the flu.

Why is there a “season” for the flu?
Last flu season, Jeffrey Shaman, a flu researcher and assistant professor in the department of environmental health sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, told me that there are several reasons. Some have to do with us humans: In the winter, we spend more time indoors sneezing on each other. During this time of short days and long nights, we don’t get as much vitamin D or melatonin—both thought to be essential for healthy immune system function. Then there’s the virus itself: It seems to thrive when absolute humidity is low, a common condition in cold winter weather.

So that’s why the flu is so bad this year—the drought! So climate change actually made the flu worse, right?
Wouldn’t it be nice if epidemiology were that easy? Unfortunately, it’s not. If that were the case, you’d never see the flu in hot, humid places. Other variables make it impossible to predict flu seasons based on weather alone.

It’s worth noting, though, that in a 2012 paper, Shaman and his colleagues did document that each of the four flu pandemics of the 20th century were preceded by La Niña cycles, likely because birds mingled with each other differently during these unusual weather patterns. The flu strains that they were carrying probably hybridized and created a strain so new that humans had no immunity to it. Since, as we recently learned from this Climate Desk video, climate change does interact with El Niño/La Niña cycles, it’s not completely out of the question that global warming could affect flu transmission, at least indirectly.

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Why Is This Year’s Flu So Dangerous for Young Adults?

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T Bone Burnett on How He Chooses Music For "True Detective"

by RolandCCSwwfb Posted on January 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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True Detective, a dark new anthology series that premiered on HBO earlier this month, has been greeted with wide critical praise. “True Detective could be the next Breaking Bad,” gushed The New Republic. The philosophical drama (written by Nic Pizzolatto and directed by Cary Fukunaga) stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as Louisiana homicide detectives Rustin Cohle and Martin Hart, respectively. The show follows their hunt for a serial killer, as well as their struggles with inner demons and family.

The series’ brooding atmosphere is framed by an expertly crafted soundtrack—some of the songs are haunting, some are bluesy, some are both. The music is selected by none other than T Bone Burnett, the Oscar-winning producer and musician.

“I have a long history with detective movies—almost as long as I have with rock ‘n’ roll,” Burnett says. “I’ve always been interested in crime and true crime. If you listen to my records, like Criminal Under My Own Hat, you can feel it. I love Chandler and Hammett; I love detective movies.”

T Bone Burnett. Kulturvultur/Wikimedia Commons

Burnett’s musical accomplishments are wide-ranging: He was musical director for Roy Orbison’s fantastic 1988 black-and-white special and played guitar on the road with Bob Dylan, for instance. In recent years, Burnett has made an even bigger name for himself through his acclaimed work on movie soundtracks, from O Brother, Where Art Thou? to The Hunger Games.

When Burnett cracked open the 500-page script for True Detective‘s first season (each season tells a different story, with the initial one spanning eight episodes), he instantly fell in love with the characters and dialogue (which he calls “some of the best tough-guy dialogue I’ve ever heard”). More than that, he felt an artistic connection to the material.

“It was like reading a good novel,” Burnett says. “Right from the very beginning, when I read the description of a burnt-out field, I thought of the cover of my album Tooth of Crime, and said to myself, ‘This guy’s been tapping my phone!'”

Burnett’s affection for the series comes through in his song selection, which plays like a sinister blues and gospel party mix. When he began working on this project, he and Pizzolatto both agreed that there should be an unofficial policy to veer the soundtrack away from Louisiana swamp blues and Cajun music because “it’s already been done so much,” Burnett says. The soundtrack includes tracks like “Bring It to Jerome” by Bo Diddley, “Clear Spot” by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, “Stand By Me” by The Staple Singers, and “Honey Bee (Let’s Fly to Mars)” by Grinderman. “It’s like scoring an eight-hour movie,” Burnett says.

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T Bone Burnett on How He Chooses Music For "True Detective"

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JPMorgan Paid $20 Billion in Fines Last Year—So Its Board Is Giving Jamie Dimon a Raise

by TerryQnhtwe Posted on January 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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The New York Times reported Friday that Jamie Dimon, the silver-haired CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank by assets, is getting a raise. Dimon is poised to add a few million to the $11.5 million compensation package he took home in 2013.

If you so much as glanced at the news last year, this bit of news may puzzle you. JPMorgan, in many ways, had a miserable 2013. JPMorgan paid $1 billion in fines in the wake of the “London Whale” scandal, in which the bank lost $6 billion on a market-rattling blunder by a trader named Bruno Iksil. The bank also paid $13 billion to settle charges that it’d peddled risky mortgage-backed securities. And it forked over another $2 billion to settle charges for failing to spot Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme, which Madoff perpetrated largely using JPMorgan accounts. All told, the bank paid out roughly $20 billion in penalties to federal regulators over a slew of screw-ups and failures.

2013 was a rough year for JPMorgan. So why is Dimon getting a raise? The answer, in part, will make your blood boil. Here’s the money quote in the Times:

Mr. Dimon’s defenders point to his active role in negotiating a string of government settlements that helped JPMorgan move beyond some of its biggest legal problems. He has also solidified his support among board members, according to the people briefed on the matter, by acting as a chief negotiator as JPMorgan worked out a string of banner government settlements this year.

…

Mr. Dimon’s star has risen more recently as he took on a critical role in negotiating both the bank’s $13 billion settlement with government authorities over its sale of mortgage-backed securities in the years before the financial crisis and the $2 billion settlement over accusations that the bank turned a blind eye to signs of fraud surrounding Bernard L. Madoff.

Just hours before the Justice Department was planning to announce civil charges against JPMorgan over its sales of shaky mortgage investments in September, Mr. Dimon personally reached out to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.—a move that averted a lawsuit and ultimately resulted in the brokered deal. Just a few months later, Mr. Dimon acted as an emissary again, this time, meeting with Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan leading the investigation into the Madoff Ponzi scheme.

In other words, as big as those multibillion-dollar settlements were, JPMorgan board members believe the bank’s legal problems could’ve been worse. Blast-a-hole-in-our-balance-sheet worse. And so Dimon’s pay bump is a reward for locking horns with bank regulators and federal authorities and hashing out settlement deals that were favorable to the bank. He’s getting a raise because he beat the regulators, played them so well, JPMorgan board members seem to be saying, that he deserves to be rewarded for the deals he helped engineer.

There are other factors, too. Despite its legal headaches, JPMorgan’s stock price climbed 22 percent over the past year, and the bank recorded profits of $17.9 billion in 2013. But to read that Dimon’s savvy negotiating has won him a raise—and don’t forget that no top bank executives have gone to jail for actions related to the 2008 financial meltdown—brings to mind the old Dick Durbin quote about banks and Washington: “They frankly own the place.”

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JPMorgan Paid $20 Billion in Fines Last Year—So Its Board Is Giving Jamie Dimon a Raise

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Republicans Are Trying to Build a Better Primary

by KennethCovingto Posted on January 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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Jonathan Bernstein reports on Republican efforts to shorten the primary season:

If all goes according to plan, the result will be votes in the first four (“carve-out”) states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina — in February, followed by votes in rapid succession in March and April, with the primary season finishing up in May. That’s a lot more compressed than the January-to-June schedule of the past few cycles.

….The 2012 cycle, the theory goes, just went on too long, with eventual nominee Mitt Romney taking too many shots from other candidates. My feeling, however, is that the hits Romney took almost certainly didn’t matter for the fall campaign. The real lesson of 2012 that Republicans should worry about is that virtually any crank, no matter how little qualified for president, can have a very good two weeks….It’s essentially the stories of Michele Bachman, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum in 2012.

By compressing the calendar, you increase the danger that a mediocre or worse candidate could get hot at just the right time and wrap up the nomination before the party has time to stop it….The March crunch could get so momentous that it overwhelms the rest of the schedule. In other words, if crunch time in March takes on the air of a de facto national primary — even one spread out over two or three weeks — it could mean trouble.

I agree that compressing the actual voting might not matter much. These days, primary campaigns start early: we’ll almost certainly have several declared candidates by early 2015 and a full field by the middle of the year. Those guys are going to be out on the trail taking shots for a very long time no matter what. Besides, primary season is almost always effectively over by March or April anyway, even if there are a few Ron Paul-esque stragglers who refuse to concede for PR reasons. It rarely lasts more than 14 or 15 weeks.

So what about Bernstein’s theory that the real problem is beefing up the invisible primary so that fringe candidates are booted out early? I’m not so sure about that either. The clown show of 2012 was truly sui generis, something that’s never really happened before. And I’m not so convinced that any of the fringe folks would have had better odds in a compressed primary season, as he suggests. Sure, they each got hot for a week or two, but they typically got hot in one or two states. I don’t think they could have replicated that performance if they’d been competing in lots of different states at once.

But I could be wrong! Generally speaking, my advice to both parties is simple: Make your primaries as similar to a general election as possible. That would mean, for example, ditching the Iowa caucuses, since the kind of retail politics that win in Iowa are irrelevant to success in November. What you want is a candidate that can raise lots of money; appeal to lots of people; and has a good media presence. That’s what wins general elections these days, and a successful primary season is one that gives the advantage to those qualities. The quaint notion that New Hampshire is a great place to start because it’s a small state and gives everyone a chance is ridiculous. No modern political party should want a process that gives everyone a chance. They should want a process that brutally winnows out the vanity candidates and narrows the field to folks who know how to win on the big stage.

It won’t happen because it would require the parties to play massive hardball with the Iowas and New Hampshires of the world, something they won’t do. But they probably should.

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Republicans Are Trying to Build a Better Primary

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How the Christie and McDonnell Scandals Hurt the GOP, but Help the Tea Party

by JohnnieOlvera Posted on January 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Mother Jones DC Bureau Chief David Corn joined Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball to discuss the Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell scandals, how the Tea Party benefits when the public loses faith in government, and what happens to the Republic Party when it loses its rising stars.

David Corn is Mother Jones’ Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He’s also on Twitter.

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How the Christie and McDonnell Scandals Hurt the GOP, but Help the Tea Party

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Dinesh D’Souza Indicted for Campaign Finance Fraud

by Kailey A. Aitkin Posted on January 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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I see via TPM that conservative crackpot Dinesh D’Souza has been indicted for violating federal election laws. But is this real fraud, or the sort of picayune thing that anybody might get entangled in simply for not being an expert in the finicky details of campaign finance regs? Here’s the Reuters report:

According to an indictment made public on Thursday in federal court in Manhattan, D’Souza around August 2012 reimbursed people who he had directed to contribute $20,000 to the candidate’s campaign. The candidate was not named in the indictment.

Hmmm. This would be the real deal. Telling other people to make contributions and then reimbursing them is an obvious no-no, something that D’Souza could hardly plead ignorance about. If this turns out to be true, he’s in trouble.1

1Alternatively, it could be a godsend, something he can milk forever as proof that he’s being hounded by Obama administration thugs determined to shut down their conservative critics.

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Dinesh D’Souza Indicted for Campaign Finance Fraud

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My Glimpse Into the Zapatista Movement, Two Decades Later

by pela_elpol Posted on January 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Growing up in a well-heeled suburban community, I absorbed our society’s distaste for dissent long before I was old enough to grasp just what was being dismissed. My understanding of so many people and concepts was tainted by this environment and the education that went with it: Che Guevara and the Black Panthers and Oscar Wilde and Noam Chomsky and Venezuela and Malcolm X and the Service Employees International Union and so, so many more. All of this is why, until recently, I knew almost nothing about the Mexican Zapatista movement except that the excessive number of “a”s looked vaguely suspicious to me. It’s also why I felt compelled to travel thousands of miles to a Zapatista “organizing school” in the heart of the Lacandon jungle in southeastern Mexico to try to sort out just what I’d been missing all these years.

Hurtling South

The fog is so thick that the revelers arrive like ghosts. Out of the mist they appear: men sporting wide-brimmed Zapata hats, women encased in the shaggy sheepskin skirts that are still common in the remote villages of Mexico. And then there are the outsiders like myself with our North Face jackets and camera bags, eyes wide with adventure. (“It’s like the Mexican Woodstock!” exclaims a student from the northern city of Tijuana.) The hill is lined with little restaurants selling tamales and arroz con leche and pozol, a ground-corn drink that can rip a foreigner’s stomach to shreds. There is no alcohol in sight. Sipping coffee as sugary as Alabama sweet tea, I realize that tonight will be my first sober New Year’s Eve since December 31, 1999, when I climbed into bed with my parents to await the Y2K Millennium bug and mourned that the whole world was going to end before I had even kissed a boy.

Thousands are clustered in this muddy field to mark the 20-year anniversary of January 1, 1994, when an army of impoverished farmers surged out of the jungle and launched the first post-modern revolution. Those forces, known as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, were the armed wing of a much larger movement of indigenous peoples in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, who were demanding full autonomy from their government and global liberation for all people.

As the news swept across that emerging communication system known as the Internet, the world momentarily held its breath. A popular uprising against government-backed globalization led by an all but forgotten people: it was an event that seemed unthinkable. The Berlin Wall had fallen. The market had triumphed. The treaties had been signed. And yet surging out of the jungles came a movement of people with no market value and the audacity to refuse to disappear.

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My Glimpse Into the Zapatista Movement, Two Decades Later

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FBI Arrests "The Most Hated Man on the Internet," Revenge-Porn King Hunter Moore

by MariMockmrmwf Posted on January 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Thursday morning, the FBI arrested 27-year-old Hunter Moore, the founder of “Is Anyone Up,” a now defunct website dedicated to publishing revenge porn—softcore or hardcore amateur pornography supposedly submitted by scorned, anonymous exes and usually accompanied by the purported names and addresses of the people (usually women) depicted. Moore—dubbed “The Most Hated Man on the Internet” by Rolling Stone—was taken into custody along with Charles Evens, 25, for allegedly conspiring to hack into the email accounts of hundreds of victims in order to steal nude photos and post them online. Moore and Evens were indicted in federal court in California and charged with one count of conspiracy, seven counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer, and seven counts of aggravated identity theft.

According to the Village Voice, Moore’s website posted over two dozen nude photos a day, almost always of women, along with screenshots of the victims’ names, social media accounts, and location, which he added in order to maximize Google search traffic. Last year, he was fined $250,000 for defamation after accusing an anti-bullying activist of possessing child porn. The local US attorney’s office released a statement on the arrest. Here’s an excerpt:

To obtain more photos to populate the site, Moore allegedly instructed Evens to gain unauthorized access to – in other words, to hack into – victims’ e-mail accounts. Moore sent payments to Evens in exchange for nude photos obtained unlawfully from the victims’ accounts. Moore then posted the illegally obtained photos on his website, without the victims’ consent. The indictment alleges that Evens hacked into email accounts belonging to hundreds of victims.

Read the full indictment here:

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FBI Arrests "The Most Hated Man on the Internet," Revenge-Porn King Hunter Moore

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Is Ezra Klein the Next Roger Ailes?

by Shelby Morris Posted on January 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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Andrew Sullivan today:

I have to say it’s been amazing to see Washington get almost giddy about the Ezra Klein story. Well, maybe only Washington journalists … but, still….All the stories about these ventures rightly take a wait-and-see approach as to whether we are witnessing a realignment in which those old big media companies accelerate their decline by being unable to accommodate their new media stars … or whether these new ventures will eventually founder in a grim business climate for journalism. These new models may be evanescent or central to the future. We just don’t know yet.

This is true: we don’t know yet. At the same time, no one should feel like this is something new and unprecedented. It’s the same thing that’s been happening to popular media for over a century. When radio was invented, it attracted young entrepreneurs like William Paley (using family money) and Richard Sarnoff (working his way up the ranks at RCA). The burgeoning market for middle-class reading material attracted young entrepreneurs like Henry Luce (magazines), William Randolph Hearst (newspapers), and Simon & Schuster (books). The film industry attracted young entrepreneurs like Walt Disney and Howard Hughes. Cheap four-color printing prompted Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson to start up the company that would later become DC Comics. Car culture produced car magazines. Computers produced computer magazines. Gaming produced gaming magazines. The rise of cable TV brought us CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. When politics collided with the rise of the internet, we got websites like Drudge Report, Talking Points Memo, the Huffington Post, and Politico.

Will Ezra Klein’s new venture succeed? Who knows. But I think it’s safe to say that some of these ventures will succeed, and they will indeed produce a realignment in the political media universe. They already have, after all: Fox News and Politico are probably more influential already than the entire old-guard newspaper industry combined.

Young (and some not-so-young) entrepreneurs have been reshaping popular media forever. It’s no surprise that this is continuing. What else would you expect, after all?

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Is Ezra Klein the Next Roger Ailes?

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Medicaid Enrollment Has Soared Under Obamacare

by Bart Jameson Posted on January 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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The New York Times reports that Medicaid expansion has been a huge success in West Virginia:

Enrollment in private insurance plans has been sluggish, but sign-ups for Medicaid, the federal insurance program for the poor, have surged in many states. Here in West Virginia, which has some of the shortest life spans and highest poverty rates in the country, the strength of the demand has surprised officials, with more than 75,000 people enrolling in Medicaid….In West Virginia, where the Democratic governor agreed to expand Medicaid eligibility, the number of uninsured people in the state has been reduced by about a third.

It’s not just West Virginia, either. Probably not, anyway. Charles Gaba, who is basically the Nate Silver of Obamacare numbers, writes today that he’s now pretty sure the total number of enrollments in Medicaid since October 1st isn’t the 4 million or so that we previously thought, but more likely 6.2 million. We still don’t know for sure how many of these represent new enrollments vs. re-enrollments, but the higher number makes it pretty likely that a very large chunk of this 6.2 million are new enrollees. Anecdotal evidence backs this up, and preliminary figures from the states that break out new enrollees separately suggest that roughly two-thirds of total signups are new enrollees.

If that’s true, it means that about 4 million new people have signed up for Medicaid since October 1st. That’s 4 million people who feel like this:

Waitresses, fast food workers, security guards and cleaners described feeling intense relief that they are now protected from the punishing medical bills that have punched holes in their family budgets. They spoke in interviews of reclaiming the dignity they had lost over years of being turned away from doctors’ offices because they did not have insurance.

“You see it in their faces,” said Janie Hovatter, a patient advocate at Cabin Creek Health Systems, a health clinic in southern West Virginia. “They just kind of relax.”

We’re the richest country in the world. We can afford this.

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Medicaid Enrollment Has Soared Under Obamacare

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