AI and Deliberative Democracy

 From Helene Landemore at the International Monetary Fund:

We now have the chance to scale and improve such deliberative processes exponentially so that citizens’ voices, in all their richness and diversity, can make a difference. Taiwan Province of China exemplifies this transition.

Following the 2014 Sunflower Revolution there, which brought tech-savvy politicians to power, an online open-source platform called pol.is was introduced. This platform allows people to express elaborate opinions about any topic, from Uber regulation to COVID policies, and vote on the opinions submitted by others. It also uses these votes to map the opinion landscape, helping contributors understand which proposals would garner consensus while clearly identifying minority and dissenting opinions and even groups of lobbyists with an obvious party line. This helps people understand each other better and reduces polarization. Politicians then use the resulting information to shape public policy responses that take into account all viewpoints.

Over the past few months pol.is has evolved to integrate machine learning with some of its functions to render the experience of the platform more deliberative. Contributors to the platform can now engage with a large language model, or LLM (a type of AI), that speaks on behalf of different opinion clusters and helps individuals figure out the position of their allies, opponents, and everyone in between. This makes the experience on the platform more truly deliberative and further helps depolarization. Today, this tool is frequently used to consult with residents, engaging 12 million people, or nearly half the population.

Corporations, which face their own governance challenges, also see the potential of large-scale AI-augmented consultations. After launching its more classically technocratic Oversight Board, staffed with lawyers and experts to make decisions on content, Meta (formerly Facebook) began experimenting in 2022 with Meta Community Forums—where randomly selected groups of users from several countries could deliberate on climate content regulation. An even more ambitious effort, in December 2022, involved 6,000 users from 32 countries in 19 languages to discuss cyberbullying in the metaverse over several days. Deliberations in the Meta experiment were facilitated on a proprietary Stanford University platform by (still basic) AI, which assigned speaking times, helped the group decide on topics, and advised on when to put them aside.

For now there is no evidence that AI facilitators do a better job than humans, but that may soon change. And when it does, the AI facilitators will have the distinct advantage of being much cheaper, which matters if we are ever to scale deep deliberative processes among humans (rather than between humans and LLM impersonators, as in the Taiwanese experience) from 6,000 to millions of people.

Nones

Many posts have discussed the role of religion in American life.   

 Erica Pandey at Axios:

There's a global, fast-growing population of people without a religion. That's according to a new AP-NORC Poll.

Why it matters: Religion has long been a powerful force in society, touching politics, art and daily life. The rise of nonbelievers and people with no religious affiliation is diminishing its influence.

By the numbers: 3 in 10 U.S. adults said they had no religious affiliation.About half of them identify as atheist or agnostic, and the other half say their religion is "nothing in particular."

The shift away from religion is even starker among younger adults, with 43% of 18- to 29-year-old Americans responding "none," when asked which religion they follow.But fewer than 20% of U.S. adults over 60 are "nones."

US Has Fallen Behind in Life Expectancy

American Journal of Public Health, "Falling Behind: The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy Between the United States and Other Countries, 1933–2021,"   by Steven H. Woolf MD, MPH.

Objectives. To document the evolution of the US life expectancy disadvantage and regional variation across the US states.

Methods. I obtained life expectancy estimates in 2022 from the United Nations, the Human Mortality Database, and the US Mortality Database, and calculated changes in growth rates, US global position (rank), and state-level trends.

Results. Increases in US life expectancy slowed from 1950 to 1954 (0.21 years/annum) and 1955 to 1973 (0.10 years/annum), accelerated from 1974 to 1982 (0.34 years/annum), and progressively deteriorated from 1983 to 2009 (0.15 years/annum), 2010 to 2019 (0.06 years/annum), and 2020 to 2021 (–0.97 years/annum). Other countries experienced faster growth in each phase except 1974 to 1982. During 1933 to 2021, 56 countries on 6 continents surpassed US life expectancy. Growth in US life expectancy was slowest in Midwest and South Central states.

Conclusions. The US life expectancy disadvantage began in the 1950s and has steadily worsened over the past 4 decades. Dozens of globally diverse countries have outperformed the United States. Causal factors appear to have been concentrated in the Midwest and South.

Public Health Implications. Policies that differentiate the United States from other countries and circumstances associated with the Midwest and South may have contributed. (Am J Public Health. 2023;113(9):970–980. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307310)

I consider this chart to be the clearest indictment of our country’s path over the last several decades: In 1980, the U.S. had a typical life expectancy for an affluent country. Today, the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy of any affluent country: pic.twitter.com/GhUIn9fzdb

— David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) August 22, 2023

Religion and Abortion

Many posts have discussed the role of religion in American life.   

From Pew:

Majorities in most of the 24 nations surveyed by Pew Research Center this spring say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But attitudes differ widely across countries – and often within them. Religiously unaffiliated adults, people on the ideological left and women are more likely to support legal abortion.

 

Religiosity in Europe and the United States

Many posts have discussed the role of religion in American life.  

Ryan Burge:

The purpose of this post is to give readers some data visualizations at just how the religiosity of Europe compares to the United States. The best data I can find about what’s going on across the pond is the European Social Survey. It’s a great resource, but it’s only been around for about twenty years, so it can’t be used for really long-term trends. For comparison the General Social Survey in the United States have been collecting data since 1972.

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Poland has a higher level of religious attendance than any state in the United States at 44% attending weekly. The closest state is Utah, where 41% attend weekly. Slovakia is as religious as Arkansas. Then there’s a big gap of just states in the U.S.

The closest comparison for Ireland, Italy, and Portugal is Virginia, Maryland, and Illinois. In each case, about a quarter are weekly attenders. But, at the end of the day, Europe is much less religious. There are two countries in Europe that have lower attendance rates than any state in the United States.

Overall, about a quarter of Americans indicate on surveys that they attend religious services weekly. That’s eleven percentage points higher than their European counterparts. There are only two states in the United States where attendance is lower than the European average: Maine at 13% and New Hampshire at 12%.

World Press Freedom

 A number of posts have dealt with press freedom.

From Reporters Without Borders:

According to the 2023 World Press Freedom Index – which evaluates the environment for journalism in 180 countries and territories and is published on World Press Freedom Day (3 May) – the situation is “very serious” in 31 countries, “difficult” in 42, “problematic” in 55, and “good” or “satisfactory” in 52 countries. In other words, the environment for journalism is “bad” in seven out of ten countries, and satisfactory in only three out of ten.

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The United States (45th) has fallen three places. The Index questionnaire’s US respondents were negative about the environment for journalists (especially the legal framework at the local level, and widespread violence) despite the Biden administration’s efforts. The murders of two journalists (the Las Vegas Review Journal’s Jeff German in September 2022, and Spectrum News 13’s Dylan Lyons in February  2023) had a negative impact on the country’s ranking. Brazil (92nd) rose 18 places as result of the departure of Jair Bolsonaro, whose presidential term was marked by extreme hostility towards journalists, and Lula da Silva’s election, heralding an improvement. In Asia, changes in governments also improved the environment for the media and accounted for such significant rises in the Index as Australia’s (up 12 at 27th) and Malaysia’s (up 40 at 73rd).

Indicting Political Leaders

Richard Pérez-Peña at NYT:

In just the past 15 years, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac of France, Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak of South Korea and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy have all been prosecuted for corruption and found guilty. The list of those criminally charged also includes former democratically elected leaders of Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Peru, South Africa and Taiwan.

In the 1980s, Kakuei Tanaka, a former prime minister of Japan, was convicted. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is currently on trial on corruption charges.

“It’s always a big deal when a former president or prime minister is indicted, but in most democracies, it is normal when they’re credibly accused of serious crimes,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard who has written about dozens of countries’ transition to democracy. The United States, he said, has been an outlier in its reluctance to charge a former leader.

“Political systems have to handle it,” he added. “They have to. Because the alternative — saying some people are above the law — is much worse.”

The essence of authoritarianism is getting away with crime. That's why this indictment is so important

— Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat) March 31, 2023

Life Expectancy Drops in 2021

Many posts have dealt with health policy, disease, mortality, and life expectancy.

Lenny Bernstein at WP:

U.S. life expectancy continued its steady, alarming decline in 2021, as covid-19 and illegal drugs took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, according to final government data released Thursday.

Even as some peer nations began to bounce back from the toll of the pandemic, life expectancy in the U.S. dropped to 76.4 years at birth, down from 77 in 2020, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. That means Americans can expect to live as long as they did in 1996 — a dismal benchmark for a reliable measure of health that should rise steadily in an affluent, developed nation. (In August, using preliminary data, the agency had pegged life expectancy in 2021 at 76.1 years.)

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The data reinforces a trend line of American longevity declining relative to that of its peer nations. A child born in the United States in 2019, for instance, could expect to live to 78.5, according to the World Health Organization, while a Japanese child born that year had a life expectancy of 84.5, Belgians lived to 81.4 and Swedes lived to 82.4.

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The 2021 decline was the second consecutive drop for the United States and the continuation of a trend that began in the middle of the last decade, when “deaths of despair” — those caused by drug oerdoses, suicide and alcoholism — rose markedly.

It also contrasted with rebounding life expectancy rates in some other nations as they brought the covid pandemic under greater control with vaccines and masking. A study of 29 countries published in August in the journal Nature Human Behavior found that eight experienced significant life expectancy “bounce backs” in 2021.

Mortality in the United States, 2021 NCHS Data Brief No. 456, December 2022 Jiaquan Xu, M.D., Sherry L. Murphy, B.S., Kenneth D. Kochanek, M.A., and Elizabeth Arias, Ph.D.

In 2021, a total of 3,464,231 resident deaths were registered in the United States—80,502 more deaths than in 2020. The number of deaths for which COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death increased 18.8% from 350,831 in 2020 to 416,893 in 2021. The age-adjusted death rate for the total population increased 5.3% in 2021 from 2020 after an increase of 16.8% from 2019 to 2020 (1). The decrease in life expectancy for the total population of 0.6 year from 2020 to 2021 was lower than the decline of 1.8 years from 2019 to 2020 (2). Age-specific death rates from 2020 to 2021 increased for each age group 1 year and over. Age-adjusted death rates decreased in 2021 from 2020 for Hispanic males and non-Hispanic Black males, remained unchanged statistically for non-Hispanic Asian males and non-Hispanic Asian females, and increased for all other race and ethnicity groups for both males and females.

Of the 10 leading causes of death in 2021, 9 remained the same as in 2020. Heart disease was the leading cause of death, followed by cancer and COVID-19. Age-adjusted death rates increased for 8 leading causes and decreased for 2. Life expectancy at birth decreased 0.6 year from 77.0 in 2020 to 76.4 in 2021, largely because of increases in mortality due to COVID-19, unintentional injuries, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, suicide, and homicide.

In 2021, 19,920 deaths occurred in children under age 1 year, which was 338 more infant deaths than in 2020. The change in the IMR from 2020 to 2021 was not statistically significant. Among the 10 leading causes of infant death, the decrease in IMR for one cause (low birth weight) was significant.

Data and findings in this report are based on final mortality data and may differ from provisional data and findings previously published.

Impact of Social Media: International Opinion

Richard Wike and colleagues at Pew:

As people across the globe have increasingly turned to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other platforms to get their news and express their opinions, the sphere of social media has become a new public space for discussing – and often arguing bitterly – about political and social issues. And in the mind of many analysts, social media is one of the major reasons for the declining health of democracy in nations around the world.

However, as a new Pew Research Center survey of 19 advanced economies shows, ordinary citizens see social media as both a constructive and destructive component of political life, and overall most believe it has actually had a positive impact on democracy. Across the countries polled, a median of 57% say social media has been more of a good thing for their democracy, with 35% saying it is has been a bad thing.

There are substantial cross-national differences on this question, however, and the United States is a clear outlier: Just 34% of U.S. adults think social media has been good for democracy, while 64% say it has had a bad impact. In fact, the U.S. is an outlier on a number of measures, with larger shares of Americans seeing social media as divisive.

Even in countries where assessments of social media’s impact are largely positive, most believe it has had some pernicious effects – in particular, it has led to manipulation and division within societies. A median of 84% across the 19 countries surveyed believe access to the internet and social media have made people easier to manipulate with false information and rumors. A recent analysis of the same survey shows that a median of 70% across the 19 nations consider the spread of false information online to be a major threat, second only to climate change on a list of global threats.

Deliberative Democracy and Citizen Assemblies

Claudia Chwalisz at Noema:

Since the 1980s, a wave of such citizens’ assemblies has been building, and it has been gaining momentum since 2010. Over the past four decades, hundreds of thousands of people around the world have received invitations from heads of state, ministers, mayors and other public authorities to serve as members of over 500 citizens’ assemblies and other deliberative processes to inform policy making. Important decisions have been shaped by everyday people about 10-year, $5 billion strategic plans, 30-year infrastructure investment strategies, tackling online hate speech and harassment, taking preventative action against increased flood risks, improving air quality, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and many other issues.

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While the Parisian Citizens’ Assembly stands out for the extent of its competencies, it is not the only example of citizen representation and deliberation being institutionalized. In my recent OECD policy paper, I have outlined eight models of institutionalization, with examples spanning the globe and levels of government, from Bogotá to Toronto, Oregon to Brussels, Vorarlberg to New South Wales, Victoria, and more. Reflections in more places are taking place.

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Other models including standing citizens’ advisory panels, such as the two-year Toronto Planning Review Panel, where residents are chosen by lot to provide input on planning issues after an initial series of learning sessions. In Brussels, the Austrian state of Vorarlberg and in numerous Polish cities, regulations give citizens the right to trigger the establishment of a citizens’ assembly if a petition collects enough signatures. The Australian state of Victoria has taken yet another path by embedding representative deliberative processes in local strategic planning through its Local Government Act 2020.

News Avoidance

Nic Newman at the Reuters Institute:

This eleventh edition of our Digital News Report, based on data from six continents and 46 markets, aims to cast light on the key issues that face the industry. Our more global sample, which since 2021 has included India, Indonesia, Thailand, Nigeria, Colombia, and Peru, provides some understanding of how differently the news environment operates outside the United States and Europe. 

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While the majority of people across countries remain engaged and use the news regularly, we find that many also increasingly choose to ration or limit their exposure to it – or at least to certain types of news. We call this behaviour selective news avoidance and the growth of this activity may help to explain why consumption levels have mostly not increased, despite the uncertain times in which we live. The proportion that says they avoid the news, sometimes or often, has doubled in Brazil (54%) and the UK (46%) since 2017 – and also increased in all other markets (see next chart). This type of selective avoidance seems to be less widespread in Northern European countries such as Germany (29%), Denmark, and Finland (20%), as well as in some Asian countries such as Japan (14%).

The chart shows the proportion of Americans who sometimes or often actively avoid the news went from 38% in 2017 to 41% in 2019 and 42% in 2022.

Selective news avoiders give a variety of reasons for their behaviour. Across markets, many respondents say they are put off by the repetitiveness of the news agenda – especially around politics and COVID-19 (43%), or that they often feel worn out by the news (29%). A significant proportion say they avoid news because they think it can’t be trusted (29%). Around a third (36%), particularly those who are under 35, say that the news brings down their mood. Others say the news leads to arguments they would rather avoid (17%), or leads to feelings of powerlessness (16%). A small proportion say they don’t have enough time for news (14%) or that it is too hard to understand (8%). Concerns about the news having a negative effect on their mood are higher amongst avoiders in the United Kingdom (55%) and United States (49%) than they are elsewhere.

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 Political allegiances can also make a striking difference to why people choose to avoid news. In the United States, those who self-identify on the right are far more likely to avoid news because they think it is untrustworthy or biased, but those on the left are more likely to feel overwhelmed, carry feelings of powerlessness, or worry that the news might create arguments.

Firearms and Death

IHME reports that mong high-income countries and territories with populations of 10 million or more, the US ranks first in firearm homicides.

From CDC:

Here's the Top 20 states in firearm mortality rate in 2020. https://t.co/VsDrRt399I https://t.co/bOYzRg42kM pic.twitter.com/p1kBIpGW7Y

— Adam Harstad (@AdamHarstad) May 25, 2022

One Million COVID Deaths in the US

 Carla K. Johnson at AP:

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 reached 1 million Monday, a once-unimaginable figure that only hints at the multitudes of loved ones and friends staggered by grief and frustration.

The number of dead, as tallied by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, is equivalent to that of a 9/11 attack every day for 336 days. It is roughly equal to how many Americans died in the Civil War and World War II combined. It’s as if Boston and Pittsburgh were wiped out.

“It is hard to imagine a million people plucked from this Earth,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, who leads a new pandemic center at the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, R.I. “It’s still happening and we are letting it happen.”

Three out of every four deaths were people 65 and older. More men died than women. White people made up most of the deaths overall, but Black, Latino and Native American people have been roughly twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as their white counterparts.

Australia's death rate is only one-tenth as great.  Damien Cave at NYT:

In global surveys, Australians were more likely than Americans to agree that “most people can be trusted” — a major factor, researchers found, in getting people to change their behavior for the common good to combat Covid, by reducing their movements, wearing masks and getting vaccinated. Partly because of that compliance, which kept the virus more in check, Australia’s economy has grown faster than America’s through the pandemic.

But of greater import, interpersonal trust — a belief that others would do what was right not just for the individual but for the community — saved lives. Trust mattered more than smoking prevalence, health spending or form of government, a study of 177 countries in The Lancet recently found. And in Australia, the process of turning trust into action began early.

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During the toughest of Covid times, Australians showed that the national trait of “mateship” — defined as the bond between equal partners or close friends — was still alive and well. They saw Covid spiral out of control in the United States and Britain, and chose a different path.

Compliance rates with social distancing guidelines, along with Covid testing, contact tracing and isolation, held steady at around 90 percent during the worst early outbreaks, according to modeling from the University of Sydney. In the United States, reductions in mobility — a key measure of social distancing — were less stark, shorter and more inconsistent, based in part on location, political identity or wealth.

In Australia, rule-following was the social norm. It was Mick Fanning, a surfing superstar, who did not question the need to stay with his American wife and infant in a small hotel room for 14 days of quarantine after a trip to California. It was border officials canceling the visa of Novak Djokovic, the top male tennis player in the world, for failing to follow a Covid vaccine mandate, leading to his eventual deportation.

It was also all the Australians who lined up to get tested, who wore masks without question, who turned their phones into virus trackers with check-in apps, who set up food services for the old, infirm or poor in lockdowns, or who offered a place to stay to women who had been trapped in their homes with abusive husbands.

Abortion in Comparative Context

Abortion is becoming a much more salient political isssue.

By Miriam Berger at WP:

The leaked document indicating that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade included a claim often repeated by antiabortion advocates: that abortion rules in the United States are among the world’s most permissive.

While that is technically the case, there is much more to the story in practice.

A Mississippi law banning most abortions beyond 15 weeks of pregnancy is before the court. At the time the state set that limit in 2018, only six countries besides the United States “permit[ted] nontherapeutic or elective abortion-on-demand after the twentieth week of gestation,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in his draft opinion, quoting findings by the Mississippi state legislature.

In a footnote, Alito cites research by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, which opposes abortion rights, and a 2017 Washington Post article. He notes that two more countries have since joined that group, citing the Center for Reproductive Rights, which advocates for expanded abortion access. The list: Canada, China, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, the Netherlands, North Korea, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam.

The Post article cited in the document, and other Post reporting published more recently, found that few countries allow abortion beyond 15 weeks without restriction — but that many, especially in Europe, permit abortions beyond that cutoff under a wide range of exceptions, including mental health and economic hardship. In the United States, on the other hand, many people do not have access to abortion at any stage, due to the absence of clinics under restrictive state laws.

The world map remains murky when it comes to how countries regulate abortions beyond the first trimester of pregnancy. Overall, the global trend is shifting toward the liberalization of abortion laws, rather than the addition of restrictions.

Life Expectancy Dropped in 2021

 A release from Virginia Commonwealth University:

Life expectancy in the United States decreased during 2020 as a result of the pandemic. Now, a new study shows for the first time that life expectancy continued to decline even further in 2021.

“We already knew that the U.S. experienced historic losses in life expectancy in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. What wasn’t clear is what happened in 2021. To our knowledge this is the first study to report data for 2021, and the news isn’t good,” said corresponding author Steven Woolf, M.D., director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University.

U.S. life expectancy decreased from 78.86 years in 2019 to 76.99 years in 2020 and 76.60 years in 2021, a net loss of 2.26 years, according to the study, “Changes in Life Expectancy Between 2019 and 2021: United States and 19 Peer Countries,” which was published online Thursday but has not yet been peer reviewed.

The decline in U.S. life expectancy between 2019 and 2021 reflects the biggest drop since 1943, the deadliest year for Americans in World War II, the researchers wrote.

The study investigated mortality data for not only the U.S., but also 19 other high-income countries. In contrast to the U.S., the 19 peer countries experienced a smaller decline in life expectancy between 2019 and 2021 (an average of 0.57 years) and an average 0.28-year increase between 2020 and 2021 — widening the gap in life expectancy between the United States and peer countries to more than five years.

“While other high-income countries saw their life expectancy increase in 2021, recovering about half of their losses, U.S. life expectancy continued to fall,” Woolf said. “This speaks volumes about the life consequences of how the U.S. handled the pandemic, and in a country where the U.S. Constitution and 10th Amendment grant public health authority to the states, I believe the U.S. catastrophe speaks volumes about the policies and behaviors of U.S. governors — at least some of them. A highly effective vaccine was available in 2021 that made COVID-19 deaths almost completely preventable.”

The enormous loss of life documented by the study was caused in part by COVID-19 variants, delta and omicron, but those same variants swept through other countries where life expectancy actually increased, Woolf said.

“Deaths from these variants occurred almost entirely among unvaccinated people,” said Woolf, a professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Population Health at the VCU School of Medicine. “What happened in the U.S. is less about the variants than the levels of resistance to vaccination and the public’s rejection of practices, such as masking and mandates, to reduce viral transmission.”

Lead author Ryan Masters, Ph.D., an assistant professor of sociology at University of Colorado Boulder and an affiliate with the CU Population Center, said high rates of obesity and heart disease, along with inequities in access to health care, were already leading the U.S. to lose ground with respect to health and survival before the pandemic.

“Those same factors made the US more vulnerable than other countries to the mortality consequences of COVID-19,” Masters said.

The decrease in U.S. life expectancy was highly racialized, with Hispanic and Black populations experiencing the largest losses in life expectancy between 2019 and 2021. The disproportionate impact on communities of color, the researchers wrote, reflect “the legacy of systemic racism and inadequacies in the U.S. handling of the pandemic.”

In 2020, the largest decreases in life expectancy occurred among Black and Hispanic populations. In 2021, however, life expectancy plateaued in the Hispanic population and increased among the Black population. Only the white population saw a decline in life expectancy, the study reported.

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In addition to Woolf and Masters, the study was co-authored by Laudan Y. Aron, a senior fellow in the Health 

Deaths: COVID and Overdose

The U.S. faces other steep disadvantages, ones that experts worry could cause additional problems. For example, many Americans have health problems like obesity and diabetes that increase the risk of severe Covid. https://t.co/Ie4YT3jLlI

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 2, 2022

Jon Kamp, Jennifer Levitz, Brianna Abbott and Paul Overberg at WSJ:

Two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, America’s death toll is closing in on one million.

Federal authorities estimate that 987,456 more people have died since early 2020 than would have otherwise been expected, based on long-term trends. People killed by coronavirus infections account for the overwhelming majority of cases. Thousands more died from derivative causes, like disruptions in their healthcare and a spike in overdoses.


Covid-19 has left the same proportion of the population dead—about 0.3%—as did World War II, and in less time.

Unlike the 1918 flu pandemic or major wars, which hit younger people, Covid-19 has been particularly hard on vulnerable seniors. It has also killed thousands of front-line workers and disproportionately affected minority populations.

It robbed society of grandparents, parents, spouses, sons and daughters, best friends, mentors, loyal employees and bosses. Those lost include a 55-year-old Rhode Island correctional officer; a 46-year-old Texas dental-office receptionist who helped care for her granddaughter; a 30-year-old Iowan who fatally overdosed; and an active 72-year-old and grandmother of 15 who was Nashville’s first female city bus driver.

“It’s catastrophic,” said Steven Woolf, director emeritus at the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. “This is an enormous loss of life.”

O. Trent Hall and colleagues have an article at JAMA Pediatrics titled "Unintentional Drug Overdose Mortality in Years of Life Lost Among Adolescents and Young People in the US From 2015 to 2019."

 Over the 5-year period of this cross-sectional study, adolescents experienced nearly 200 000 YLL, and young people amassed greater than 1.25 million YLL [years of life lost]. Male adolescents and young people accounted for substantially greater unintentional drug overdose mortality (YLL and incident deaths) than female adolescents and young people. Although limited by death records potentially undercounting overdoses and a cross-sectional design insensitive to temporal relations between risk factors and deaths, our findings represent an unacceptable preventable mortality burden for adolescents and young people in the US. Prior research has identified polysubstance use, psychiatric comorbidity, and unstable housing as relevant risk factors for unintentional drug overdose in this age cohort.6 Our findings suggest that further resources are needed to mitigate these factors. The present study should inform future mortality reviews among adolescents and young people, as well as ecologic interventions involving family, school, and community, in unintentional drug overdose prevention and substance use treatment.

Exceptional Polarization

At the Carnegie Endowment, Jennifer McCoy and Benjamin Press have an article titled "What Happens When Democracies Become Perniciously Polarized?"

Another troubling realization stands out: the United States is quite alone among the ranks of perniciously polarized democracies in terms of its wealth and democratic experience. Of the episodes since 1950 where democracies polarized, all of those aside from the United States involved less wealthy, less long-standing democracies, many of which had democratized quite recently. None of the wealthy, consolidated democracies of East Asia, Oceania, or Western Europe, for example, have faced similar levels of polarization for such an extended period, as figure 1 shows.

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International Drop in Trust

Diana Marszalek at Reuters:

The 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer finds faith in government and media continues to drop, perpetuating a cycle of distrust that “threatens societal stability.”

The survey of 36,000 consumers in 28 countries found 48% of respondents view government and 46% view media as divisive forces today, versus business and NGOs which fared better with 31% and 29% respectively.

On top of that, government leaders (42%) and journalists (46%) are the least trusted societal leaders, whereas people have the most confidence in coworkers (74%) and scientists (75%). Most respondents also believe that the government (66%, up nine points) and journalists (67%, up 8 points) are lying to them.

The numbers show a precipitous fall from grace for government, which was the most trusted institution in May 2020 but has dropped 13 points (from 65% to 52%) to third behind business (61%) and NGOs (59%). Only the media (50%) fared worse.

“Government is seen as less competent than business, and we are in a whole new game,” said Edelman CEO Richard Edelman. “We have very big problems and government isn’t seen as able to manage them.”

The collapse in government trust was particularly acute in developed democracies (not one reached a 60-point score), largely pinned to respondents in every one of those countries believing they will be worse off financially in five years — and 85% fear they will lose their jobs to factors including automation. The US ranks 43 in the trust index (a 10-point drop since 2017), 40 points lower than China, at 83.

Overdose

Kaitlin Sullivan and Reynolds Lewis at NBC:

Drug overdose deaths in the United States surpassed 100,000 in a 12-month period for the first time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday, a troubling milestone amid an already devastating period for the country.

The number of overdose deaths rose 29 percent, from 78,056 from April 2019 to April 2020, to 100,306 in the following 12 months. The data, from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, is considered provisional but is a good indication of what the final numbers will show next month.

“It’s a staggering increase for one year,” said Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the NCHS.

“As we continue to make strides to defeat the Covid-19 pandemic, we cannot overlook this epidemic of loss, which has touched families and communities across the country,” President Joe Biden said in a statement Wednesday.

Vermont saw the biggest rise, with a nearly 70 percent increase. Large increases were also observed in West Virginia (62 percent), Kentucky (55 percent), Louisiana (52 percent) and Tennessee (50 percent). Drug overdose deaths went down in just four states: Delaware, New Hampshire, New Jersey and South Dakota. South Dakota had a nearly 20 percent decrease in overdose deaths, the greatest by far.

Washington Post:

Four-Year House Term?

 Richard Pildes at NYT:

The two-year House term has profound consequences for how effectively American government can perform — and too many of them are negative. A longer, four-year term would facilitate Congress’s ability to once again effectively address major issues that Americans care most about.

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In nearly all other democracies, parliaments are in power for four to five years. Political scientists view voting as primarily the voters’ retrospective judgment on how well a government has performed. Four to five years provides plausible time for that. But the comparison with U.S. House members is even starker than focusing on the two-year term alone. In most democracies, members of parliaments do not have to compete in primary elections; the parties decide which candidates to put up for office. But since the advent of the primary system in the early 20th century, members of Congress often have to face two elections every two years.

Moreover, in most democracies, candidates do not have to fund-raise all the time to run; governments typically provide public financing to the political parties. The two-year term, combined with primary elections and the constant need to raise funds individually, generates exceptional turbulence and short-term focus in our politics.