Leah Litman

Leah Litman is an assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School .
• The Supreme Court Says Sorry , It Just Can ’ t Help With Political Corruption In overturning the criminal convictions that resulted from the Bridgegate scandal , the Court is embracing a view of the world that is unbearably bleak .
• The Supreme Court ’ s Wisconsin Decision Is a Terrible Sign for November The justices are forcing citizens to choose between voting and staying safe from the coronavirus .
This fall ’ s election could be no different .
• The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A case now before the Fifth Circuit threatens to upend the laws that enable Native self-governance .
• The Guns Case Is About Much More Than Guns By hearing this case about the Second Amendment , the Supreme Court is declaring itself the only appropriate forum for remedying constitutional violations .
• How the Court Could Limit Abortion Rights Without Overturning Roe No matter which path the court takes , the destination will likely be the same—the end of access to safe , legal abortion for many women .
• Federal Officials Should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need to be the ones to make them pay .

Leah Litman is an assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School.
Shutterstock / The Atlantic How the Court Inverted Constitutional Protections Against Discrimination What was once constitutionally prohibited is now constitutionally required.
Getty / The Atlantic The Election Is Already Under Way in America’s Courts And the two parties—and the judges they have appointed—are on completely divergent legal paths.
PrintCollector / Getty / Katie Martin / The … Progressives’ Supreme Court Victories Will Be Fleeting The groundwork is now in place for major conservative wins in the years ahead.
Leah Millis The Supreme Court Says Sorry, It Just Can’t Help With Political Corruption In overturning the criminal convictions that resulted from the Bridgegate scandal, the Court is embracing a view of the world that is unbearably bleak.
KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI / AFP / GETTY The Supreme Court’s Wisconsin Decision Is a Terrible Sign for November The justices are forcing citizens to choose between voting and staying safe from the coronavirus. This fall’s election could be no different.
Andy Clark / Reuters The Necessity of the Indian Child Welfare Act A case now before the Fifth Circuit threatens to upend the laws that enable Native self-governance.
Alicia Tatone The Guns Case Is About Much More Than Guns By hearing this case about the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court is declaring itself the only appropriate forum for remedying constitutional violations.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP / Getty How the Court Could Limit Abortion Rights Without Overturning Roe No matter which path the court takes, the destination will likely be the same—the end of access to safe, legal abortion for many women.


theatlantic--2020-03-13--The 4 Key Reasons the U.S. Is So Behind on Coronavirus Testing

Read : What you need to know about the coronavirus Though some elements of the breakdown are by now understood , the full extent of the difficulties laboratory directors have faced has remained largely opaque .
Interviews with laboratory directors and public-health experts reveal a Fyre Festival–like cascade of problems that have led to a dearth of tests at a time when America desperately needs them .
The issues began with onerous requirements for the labs that make the tests , continued because of arcane hurdles that prevented researchers from getting the right supplies , and extended to a White @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic ’ s early days .
Getting out lots of tests for a new disease is a major logistical and scientific challenge , but it can be pulled off with the help of highly efficient , effective government leadership .
In this case , such leadership didn ’ t appear to exist .
Here are the four main reasons the testing issues have been so bad : The Food and Drug Administration has a protocol called emergency use authorization , or EUA , through which it clears tests from labs around the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Getting more of these tests up and running would greatly increase the capacity of doctors and public-health officials to screen patients for the coronavirus .
Former FDA officials I spoke with said that during past outbreaks , EUAs could be granted in just a couple of days .
But this time , the requirements for getting an EUA were so complicated that it would have taken weeks to receive one , says Alex Greninger , the assistant director of the virology division at the University of Washington Medical Center , which is located @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outbreak .
Greninger told me clinical labs were not allowed to begin testing at all before they had received the EUA , even if they had already internally made sure their tests worked .
Though these regulations are in place to ensure that faulty lab tests don ’ t get used on patients , several microbiologists told me they felt the precautions were excessive for a fast-moving outbreak of this scale .
“ The speed of this virus versus the speed of the FDA and the EUA process is mismatched , ” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do if you start coughing ?
On February 28 , Greninger and dozens of other clinical microbiologists wrote a letter to Congress complaining that the EUA process was slowing down the ability of their labs to deploy coronavirus tests .
“ Many of our clinical laboratories have already validated [ tests ] that we could begin testing with tomorrow , but can not due [ to ] the FDA EUA process , ” they wrote .
The following day , the FDA changed the EUA process so that labs like Greninger ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ submit data for the FDA ’ s authorization two weeks later .
But weeks had already passed during which many labs and hospitals were unable to use their tests .

The COVID-19 outbreak has been a confusing time for Americans, but one thing has been glaringly clear: The U.S. is way behind when it comes to testing people for the coronavirus.
Despite the fact that last week, Vice President Mike Pence promised that “roughly 1.5 million tests” would soon be available, an ongoing Atlantic investigation can confirm only that 13,953 tests have been conducted nationally. New York, which has shut down Broadway and has at least 328 coronavirus cases, is still failing to test patients who have worrying symptoms. As late as March 6, a busy clinic in Brownsville, Texas, a border city of nearly 200,000 whose population crosses back and forth from Mexico frequently, told me they could test only three people. By comparison, South Korea, which has one of the largest outbreaks outside China, is testing nearly 20,000 people a day.
Testing is essential for identifying people who have been infected and for understanding the true scope of the outbreak. But when the initial test from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was rolled out to state public-health laboratories in early February, one of its components was discovered to be faulty. Since then, academic, clinical, and other laboratories have struggled to get or make new tests and diagnose patients.
Read: What you need to know about the coronavirus
Though some elements of the breakdown are by now understood, the full extent of the difficulties laboratory directors have faced has remained largely opaque. Interviews with laboratory directors and public-health experts reveal a Fyre Festival–like cascade of problems that have led to a dearth of tests at a time when America desperately needs them. The issues began with onerous requirements for the labs that make the tests, continued because of arcane hurdles that prevented researchers from getting the right supplies, and extended to a White House that seemed to lack cohesion in the pandemic’s early days. Getting out lots of tests for a new disease is a major logistical and scientific challenge, but it can be pulled off with the help of highly efficient, effective government leadership. In this case, such leadership didn’t appear to exist.
Here are the four main reasons the testing issues have been so bad:
Red Tape
The Food and Drug Administration has a protocol called emergency use authorization, or EUA, through which it clears tests from labs around the country for use in an outbreak. Getting more of these tests up and running would greatly increase the capacity of doctors and public-health officials to screen patients for the coronavirus.
Former FDA officials I spoke with said that during past outbreaks, EUAs could be granted in just a couple of days. But this time, the requirements for getting an EUA were so complicated that it would have taken weeks to receive one, says Alex Greninger, the assistant director of the virology division at the University of Washington Medical Center, which is located right near the heart of the American outbreak. Greninger told me clinical labs were not allowed to begin testing at all before they had received the EUA, even if they had already internally made sure their tests worked. Though these regulations are in place to ensure that faulty lab tests don’t get used on patients, several microbiologists told me they felt the precautions were excessive for a fast-moving outbreak of this scale. “The speed of this virus versus the speed of the FDA and the EUA process is mismatched,” he said.
Read: What will you do if you start coughing?
On February 28, Greninger and dozens of other clinical microbiologists wrote a letter to Congress complaining that the EUA process was slowing down the ability of their labs to deploy coronavirus tests. “Many of our clinical laboratories have already validated [tests] that we could begin testing with tomorrow, but cannot due [to] the FDA EUA process,” they wrote. The following day, the FDA changed the EUA process so that labs like Greninger’s could begin testing—they would just have to submit data for the FDA’s authorization two weeks later. But weeks had already passed during which many labs and hospitals were unable to use their tests.
“The EUA pathway … has served for Ebola and Zika, etc.,” says Mark Miller, the chief medical officer at bioMérieux, an infectious-disease diagnostic company based in France. “And then you have a situation like now with coronavirus, which I don't think any of us have ever lived through.”
Margaret Hamburg, who served as the FDA commissioner from 2009 to 2015, told me that while she doesn’t have knowledge of what went on inside the FDA over the past few months, the agency could have proactively reached out to different national and international labs to see whether their tests could be approved for use in the U.S. For example, the FDA might ask a lab, “Would you be interested to try to redirect what you were doing for a MERS diagnostic to a novel-coronavirus diagnostic?” she says. Instead, as The New York Times reported, federal officials told one Seattle infectious-disease expert, Helen Chu, to stop testing for the coronavirus entirely. (In an email, an FDA spokesperson denied that the agency acted slowly. Ensuring the validity of tests is important, she noted, to prevent false results.)
It looks like Chu was not alone. Dozens of labs in the U.S. were eager to make tests and willing to test patients, but they were hamstrung by regulations for most of February, even as the virus crept silently across the nation.
Hard-to-Get Virus Samples
Labs and companies need samples of the virus itself in order to make their tests, but delays in getting access to samples further slowed down the test-development process. The coronavirus originated in China, and as several microbiologists told me, the Chinese government does not allow specimens to be shipped outside its borders.
Many researchers have had difficulty getting their hands on samples even as the virus has spread. “I was working the phones to try to get access to the virus,” Greninger said.
BioMérieux just released three versions of its coronavirus test this week, after beginning work on it on January 23. Miller says that with every viral outbreak, the company’s biggest problem by far is getting access to virus and patient specimens so that it can validate its tests. Even when working with nonauthoritarian countries, a combination of government processes, researcher reticence, complex shipping regulations, and patient-privacy concerns makes getting samples difficult for diagnostic companies like his.
Read: How to understand your state’s coronavirus numbers
Miller said it would help if researchers, governments, and companies firmed up pathogen-sharing contracts in advance of an outbreak, but so far that hasn’t happened. “The problem is that in the past, industry has been viewed as this dirty participant in all of this, and we can't be trusted, and why would I have contracts with you?” Miller says. “But that’s ignoring the plain fact that we’re the ones that create the product in the end.”
Lacking Equipment
The type of test Greninger is making is called a lab-developed test. To be used in other labs, his test requires special instruments that extract and then amplify the RNA that makes up the virus. However, labs across the country—like those at many county hospitals—don’t have the tools to do this. They can only run a simple type of test called a sample-to-answer test. As late as this week, several lab directors told me that no sample-to-answer versions of the coronavirus test had been approved in the U.S. “That means that the vast majority of clinical labs in this country will not be able to do in-house testing at this time,” says Susan Butler Wu, an associate professor of clinical pathology at the University of Southern California.
The U.S. health-care system is broken up into state and county public-health laboratories, which have different equipment than academic research institutions, which have different equipment than hospitals that diagnose patients. So the same test won’t necessarily work in different places. “We don’t have a nationalized health-care system where you put the same equipment in all the hospitals,” Wu says. “We have all these independent hospital systems with their own equipment in their own labs.”
Even though some hospitals actually have the new, functional CDC tests, the extraction machines and reagents that are used to perform them are in short supply. “We’ve been pleading to the research laboratories to please, if they have RNA-extraction machines, to give them to the hospital,” says Michael Mina, an associate medical director in the department of pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Leadership and Coordination Problems
For months, President Trump has made light of the coronavirus, telling attendees at a Black History Month reception, for instance, that perhaps the virus could miraculously disappear. He claimed on Twitter that the U.S. has done a “great job” handling the outbreak. Such a cavalier attitude seems unlikely to have motivated health officials to take things seriously. It also contradicted advice from most public-health experts. Even Scott Gottlieb, who recently resigned as Trump’s FDA commissioner, wrote in The Wall Street Journal on February 4 that “it’s time to start testing more people.”
Containing a new infectious disease requires a lot of close collaboration between the president, the CDC, the FDA, and other parts of the Department of Health and Human Services, several Obama-era health officials told me. “One reason we were able to move quickly [during the Ebola outbreak] was that there was a great deal of coordination and issue spotting and troubleshooting that went on,” Hamburg, the former FDA commissioner, told me.
Read: You’re likely to get the coronavirus
The different arms of the sprawling health department have to feel like they’re all pulling toward the same goal. “I think you have fabulous people at CDC and FDA all doing the best they can, but we always found it was incredibly important to have all the agencies together in the same room,” says Jesse Goodman, a former FDA chief scientist who helped manage the country’s response to the 2009 H1N1 outbreak. When issues came up that merited the attention of the White House, he says, they got it.
Though Trump has proposed a payroll-tax break, as my colleague Peter Nicholas has pointed out, “Much of what he’s said publicly about the virus has been wrong, a consequence of downplaying any troubles on his watch.”
On top of that, there’s reportedly been tension and infighting between the president and his HHS secretary, Alex Azar, as well as between the FDA and the CDC. Politico reported that Vice President Mike Pence, who has no background in public health, repeatedly sidelined Azar from the coronavirus-response task force, and the White House appears to be blaming Azar for any failures in its coronavirus response. Politico also reported that an FDA scientist was “initially rebuffed”—made to wait overnight—when he attempted to visit the CDC in order to help coordinate testing. (In an email, a CDC spokesperson said this was “in full compliance with standard security processes required for all individuals whether they are federal employees or other visitors.”)
“I gather that there was a huge amount of infighting about who could or who should lead this, and there was a sense that a lot of people [inside HHS] weren’t considering it a major threat,” said a former Obama-administration official who has been in contact with current staffers and who related these private discussions under the condition of anonymity. “And why that was, I don’t know.”
It’s possible that all of these other hurdles could have been cleared if officials at the highest levels of government had been working together smoothly. Instead, we’ve seen confusion, doubt, and even more delays.


Franklin Foer

Franklin Foer is a staff writer at The Atlantic .
He is the author of World Without Mind and How Soccer Explains the World : An Unlikely Theory of Globalization • What Big Tech Wants Out of the Pandemic The firms are all too eager to help the government manage the coronavirus crisis .
• The Trump Regime Is Beginning to Topple The best way to grasp the magnitude of what we ’ re seeing is to look for precedents abroad .
• Biden Has Changed—For the Better If one of the ultimate purposes of protest is to push politicians @ @ @ @ @ @ @ willing to be pushed .
• Are Community Hospitals Ready for the Coronavirus ?
A physician describes the gap between well-resourced institutions and those struggling to prepare .
• A Doctor Warns of the ‘ Biggest Risk ’ We Face Right Now Can we keep health-care workers healthy enough to provide care ?
• Congress has leverage to rebalance the economy , but so far , it isn ’ t using it .
• A Frontline Physician Speaks Out on the Coronavirus “ I ’ ve been walking around for the last week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ somehow unable to share that clearly and effectively.
” • In an age of political dysfunction , the Amazon founder has begun to subsume the powers of the state .
• Now We Know What Kind of Authoritarian Trump Aspires to Be Over the past week , Trump has showed his commitment to creating Kyiv-on-the-Potomac .
• The Differences Between Warren and Sanders Matter Where socialism imagines greater concentrations of power , her vision ultimately points in the direction of a more decentralized , more competitive economy .
• The surreal story of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ president on TV became the president in real life—then found himself at the center of an American political scandal • My dad loved the Senators .
He thought the Nationals would never win .
• What the Amazon founder and CEO wants for his empire and himself , and what that means for the rest of us .

Franklin Foer is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Asanka Brendon Ratnayake / Reuters I’m Supporting Colombia Now For its electric style and all that its players have overcome to reach the Women’s World Cup, it’s a no-brainer.
Robin Alam / USSF / Getty The End of the U.S. Women’s Soccer Dominance The rest of the world has caught up—and that’s a good thing.
The Atlantic / Getty Biden Declares War on the Cult of Efficiency New antitrust guidelines revive the old-fashioned idea that American life is about more than just buying lots of cheap stuff.
Heritage Art / Getty Obsessed With the Life That Could Have Been In her latest novel, Deborah Levy continues a career-long search for the authentic self.
Marla Aufmuth / Getty Eat, Pray, Pander The decision by Elizabeth Gilbert to indefinitely delay the publication of her novel is a wrongheaded attempt to help the Ukrainian cause.
Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Getty Should We Psychoanalyze Our Presidents? Sigmund Freud once applied his Oedipal theory to the leader of the free world.
Photo-illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Eric Thayer / … The New Washington Consensus Both Trump and Biden have positioned themselves as economic nationalists, self-consciously abandoning the precepts of the old order.
Lea Suzuki / San Francisco Chronicle / Getty Dianne Feinstein and the Cult of Indispensability When does the beneficent version of gerontocracy give way to the destructive version of it?
Daniel Zender / The Atlantic; Getty Can Humanism Save Us? In her new book, Sarah Bakewell champions an intellectual tradition that might be just what we need today—if only we could properly define it.
Stringer / Reuters / Redux No Time for Funeral Rites The gravedigger of Bucha provides evidence of Russian atrocities.
Alex Wong / Getty Biden Brings in a Consultant Jeff Zients will make for a very different—and less familiar—chief of staff than his predecessor.
Drew Angerer / Getty How Joe Biden Wins Again Biden Rest Stops as far as the eye can see
Tyler Comrie / The Atlantic; Getty You’ll Miss Gerontocracy When It’s Gone Are the oldsters who refuse to retire hoarding power or just better at wielding it?
Ben Hickey The Cynic’s Dilemma As 2022 comes to a close, I feel something unfamiliar, something I can’t entirely trust: optimism.
Chris Brunskill / Fantasista / Getty The Lionel Messi Guide to Living Like any great artist, the aging soccer phenom showed a youth-obsessed world the potential glory of a late-style triumph.
Doug Zimmerman / ISI Photos / Getty Remembering Grant Wahl, a Champion of American Soccer The journalist died on Friday in Qatar at age 49.
John Dorton / ISI Photos / Getty America, the Naive In Saturday’s World Cup–eliminating defeat, the U.S. men’s team revealed its shortcomings against the old-world sophistication of the Netherlands.
Ian MacNicol / Getty The Tormented Soul of Iranian Soccer This World Cup could pose the gravest threat yet to the Islamic regime.
Markus Gilliar / GES Sportfoto / Getty At Last, the Americans Have Arrived Sometimes progress is measured in ties.


theatlantic--2020-09-23--Bill Gates: The Pandemic Has Erased Years of Progress

This interview has been edited for length and clarity .
Ed Yong : Bill , we last spoke about this topic in 2018 , a very different time .
How do you feel about the way the pandemic has played out this year ?
Bill Gates : Well , sadly , I think the most pessimistic view of how unprepared we were has actually played out , particularly in the United States .
With something that can grow exponentially , like infectious disease , a little bit of preparedness makes such a difference .
A few countries have distinguished themselves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yong : And looking at how the U.S. has fared , what has surprised you , and where do you see we ’ ve gone wrong ?
Gates : The U.S. had a lot of assets going into this .
We weren ’ t ground zero , so the U.S. had more time to get ready .
The U.S. has more PCR [ polymerase chain reaction ] machines than all other countries per capita .
We are very blessed with an expensive medical infrastructure .
And we have groups like the CDC [ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and BARDA [ the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority ] .
So the U.S. had done more to get ready than other countries had in advance .
I would have expected us to get the commercial [ testing ] providers up and going like South Korea or Germany or Australia did .
There were so many phone calls about , We have to get diagnostic capacity up and we have to get quick results .
I participated in a lot of those calls .
And yet , to this day , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Yong : I think you are one of the few people who has had direct contact with the president and the administration about the matter of pandemic preparedness .
What is your assessment of America ’ s leaders and their response to this pandemic ?
Gates : Even though the U.S. didn ’ t do a very good job , most other countries didn ’ t .
There were a few that had been hit by SARS or MERS that had practice understanding , Oh , wow , diagnosis , contact tracing is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the countries that did the best .
So I ’ d give the U.S. , like , a C– .
Once it hit , the first community spread of coronavirus in the United States should have set off such alarms .
This notion that the travel ban was some beneficial thing , that ’ s just not true .
And then after the pandemic starts , there hasn ’ t been any coherence .
Now the R & D funding , I will say that ’ s where the U.S. actually does get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We need to complement that with funding the factories and the procurement for the global response , in which the U.S. has been absent so far .
But I ’ m still hopeful that if there ’ s another supplemental bill , we ’ ll get about $ 8 billion for international COVID activities into that .
Yong : Do you think that the pandemic should change the way we think about global health ?
In this crisis , many of the richest countries have fared appallingly , whereas many poorer ones , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ really well .
Do you think that this should be cause for humility and change in our approach ?

In April 2018, I spoke with Bill Gates about two near certainties—that the world would eventually face a serious pandemic and that it was not prepared for one. Even then, Gates acknowledged that this was the rare scenario that punctured his trademark optimism about global progress. “My general narrative is: Hey, we’re making great progress and we just need to accelerate it,” he told me. “Here, I’m bringing more of: Hey, you thought this was bad? [You should] really feel bad.”
Two years after that conversation, COVID-19 has infected at least 31 million people around the world. The confirmed death toll is nearing 1 million. Both numbers are likely underestimates. The annual “Goalkeepers Report” from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is usually a hopeful account of an improving world, is instead a litany of loss. The global economy will decline by at least $12 trillion by the end of 2021. About 37 million people have already been pushed into extreme poverty. Twenty-five years of progress in vaccine coverage have disappeared in 25 weeks.
Read: America is trapped in a pandemic spiral
Today at The Atlantic Festival, I talked (virtually) with Gates again about the lessons that the world—the United States in particular—must learn from the coronavirus pandemic.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ed Yong: Bill, we last spoke about this topic in 2018, a very different time. How do you feel about the way the pandemic has played out this year?
Bill Gates: Well, sadly, I think the most pessimistic view of how unprepared we were has actually played out, particularly in the United States. With something that can grow exponentially, like infectious disease, a little bit of preparedness makes such a difference. A few countries have distinguished themselves, but most countries have not.
Yong: And looking at how the U.S. has fared, what has surprised you, and where do you see we’ve gone wrong?
WATCH: ATLANTIC STAFF WRITER ED YONG IN CONVERSATION WITH BILL GATES
Gates: The U.S. had a lot of assets going into this. We weren’t ground zero, so the U.S. had more time to get ready. The U.S. has more PCR [polymerase chain reaction] machines than all other countries per capita. We are very blessed with an expensive medical infrastructure. And we have groups like the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and BARDA [the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority]. So the U.S. had done more to get ready than other countries had in advance.
I would have expected us to get the commercial [testing] providers up and going like South Korea or Germany or Australia did. There were so many phone calls about, We have to get diagnostic capacity up and we have to get quick results. I participated in a lot of those calls. And yet, to this day, that’s just a complete mess.
Yong: I think you are one of the few people who has had direct contact with the president and the administration about the matter of pandemic preparedness. What is your assessment of America’s leaders and their response to this pandemic?
Gates: Even though the U.S. didn’t do a very good job, most other countries didn’t. There were a few that had been hit by SARS or MERS that had practice understanding, Oh, wow, diagnosis, contact tracing is super important, so they are among the countries that did the best. So I’d give the U.S., like, a C–.
Once it hit, the first community spread of coronavirus in the United States should have set off such alarms. This notion that the travel ban was some beneficial thing, that’s just not true. And then after the pandemic starts, there hasn’t been any coherence.
Read: How the pandemic defeated America
Now the R&D funding, I will say that’s where the U.S. actually does get the highest grade in the world. We need to complement that with funding the factories and the procurement for the global response, in which the U.S. has been absent so far. But I’m still hopeful that if there’s another supplemental bill, we’ll get about $8 billion for international COVID activities into that.
Yong: Do you think that the pandemic should change the way we think about global health? In this crisis, many of the richest countries have fared appallingly, whereas many poorer ones, Senegal to Vietnam, have actually done really well. Do you think that this should be cause for humility and change in our approach?
Gates: Certainly humility is called for because the damage—whether it’s economic, educational, mental health—is so large. Other than a world war, this is the worst thing that’s happened in over a century. And so we should all say, “Wow, we didn’t understand about masks; we didn’t understand about asymptomatics.” Even the medical profession. We haven’t taken understanding these different respiratory diseases quite as seriously as we should. So everyone has lessons here.
Yong: I think that one of the things the pandemic has highlighted is the relevance of social interventions. The pandemic has so much widened inequities, both around the world and domestically, between rich and poor. It has disproportionately hit Black and Latinx and Indigenous communities. How are you thinking about those disparities and what needs to be done to address them?
Gates: Yeah, it’s kind of unbelievable that every dimension of inequity has been exacerbated here. Every other year, [our “Goalkeeper’s Report”] has been this positive story of gradual progress—less children dying, less malnutrition, longer life spans. We get to say to the world, “Hey, pay attention to that steady progress.”
This report had to deliver the news that if you only look at COVID deaths, you’re actually missing the scale of the setback. Because it’s also routine immunization, malaria, getting HIV medicines. Things are so disrupted, even gathering the numbers for that was very, very difficult. But we dropped our routine-immunization levels by over 14 percent. There’s going to have to be a stronger equity agenda, hopefully on a global basis, once we get out of this. Thirty-seven million people have been driven into extreme poverty. That’s really just gut-wrenching.
Read: The pandemic experts are not okay
Most of the time when we talk about infectious diseases, our problem is, the world doesn’t pay attention to malaria or TB. Here, because people care so much about getting the [COVID-19] vaccines, they’re actually saying, “Okay, we should maybe be even less generous.” The kind of generosity that historically has helped might even go down.
Yong: Do you see those kinds of inequities also play out in the U.S.? One of my concerns is that the groups that have been disproportionately burdened by this pandemic and by this long-standing history of systemic discrimination will be last in line to receive the vaccine. What work should and can be done to reduce that inequity back home?
Gates: One way to help with that is to have so much volume that you’re not making superhard trade-offs. With our vaccine expertise in the foundation, we’re trying to help with that. If multiple [vaccines] get approved, actually, the volumes could be quite large.
We should look at the risk levels. And based on that, you would say that communities including Blacks and Hispanics would have higher priority. You can come up with what the equitable priority ranking should be, [but] I’m not seeing that sense of gathering the data to come up with those algorithms. It’s kind of bizarre that you have these overoptimistic projections that the vaccine will come soon. When you read the 67-page report about how it’s distributed, it doesn’t actually concretely identify the criteria or how the information is going to be gathered to do the prioritization.
It’s just like everything with this—the vacuum of leadership and the unwillingness of people to step forward because it’ll say, “Oh, you know, this thing’s a mess.”
Yong: You and your foundation have shaped a lot of the research, the funding space, the thinking around global health. Looking at what is happening with a pandemic this year, with the benefit of hindsight, do you see any mistakes? Would you do anything differently in the future?
Gates: I think the prescription is still the same as it was before this pandemic, and the cost of doing it is in the tens of billions, not hundreds of billions. Compared to, say, defense budgets, this is not a gigantic additional burden. And, in fact, if it’s done appropriately, it will drive progress and will help us with diseases that are here today.
I think we can be ready for the next time, so that if something that’s not much worse than this hits, the impact would be, you know, 5 percent of what it’s been here.
Yong: Do you think that this crisis will actually spur introspection?
Gates: Yes. People didn’t think about infectious diseases, mostly because we’ve made so much progress that rich countries kind of ignore them. But this thing has cost trillions of dollars. The [cost of] preparedness, as a percentage of the damage this thing has done, is not even close to 1 percent. There’s basically no country that hasn’t had very big damage. If you care about education, and if you care about race, if you care about mental health, if you care about gender, if you care about government budgets and having money to do things that you want the government to do, this has cost so much.
So yes, it takes rich people getting sick. It takes rich economies being affected. But when that happens, the world gets together. If this had hit 20 years ago, with the state of biology, digital infrastructure, you would have had to just pray that it didn’t come back. Now we do have all the things that we need so that a pathogen like this wouldn’t be a big deal in the future.
Yong: I hope you are right, Bill. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us today. Really appreciate it.
Gates: Great to talk to you.


theatlantic--2020-09-24--Democrats’ SCOTUS Message Could Really Work in Swing States

In the latter group—which includes North Carolina , Iowa , and Montana—voters are much more closely divided on abortion and , in some cases , lean toward the GOP .
A confirmation fight focused on abortion is also likely to further diminish Democratic Senator Doug Jones ’ s already modest reelection chances in Alabama , a state with a clear anti-abortion majority .
By contrast , the prospect that another Trump Supreme Court nominee could vote to overturn the ACA and its popular protections for those with preexisting conditions may create a broader set of opportunities for Democrats .
Support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ party and regional lines than attitudes about abortion .
And Democrats , as in 2018 , have already invested heavily in ads reminding voters that all of the GOP incumbents ( except Maine ’ s Susan Collins ) moved to eliminate those provisions when they voted to repeal the ACA in 2017 .
Read : Is this really the end of abortion ?
“ The president is in such a rush [ to fill the seat ] , because he ’ s in a hurry to overturn the Affordable Care Act , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s editor in chief , Jeffrey Goldberg , referring to a Supreme Court hearing scheduled just days after the election on a Republican lawsuit to overturn the ACA .
Trump “ wants to get a justice in there in time for that so they can hear the arguments and vote on it .
People have to know what this means to them , ” continued Pelosi , who spoke with Goldberg this week at the virtual Atlantic Festival .
“ And what it means to 150 million families in America is that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Affordable Care Act when it comes to a preexisting medical condition.
” Likewise , when asked yesterday about Amy Coney Barrett , one of the leading contenders for the open Court spot , Biden immediately zeroed in on what a new justice would mean for health care—even though Barrett is considered the most likely of Trump ’ s potential picks to vote to ban abortion .
“ I think we should focus on what this is going to mean for health care , what it ’ s going to mean to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re pregnant [ that ] it ’ s a preexisting condition , to be able to charge women more for the same procedure as men .
It ’ s wrong , ” Biden told reporters .
Historically , conventional wisdom in both parties has been that fights over the Supreme Court energize Republican voters more than Democratic ones .
But operatives say the incredible surge of grassroots donations to Democratic candidates since Ginsburg ’ s death suggests that any GOP advantage on the issue has evaporated .
As a result , most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t expecting the confirmation fight to dramatically change the landscape in a year when the electorate ’ s divisions have been so deep and durable .
“ I have been saying for probably a year now that it will probably be record turnout since women got the right to vote , ” says Glen Bolger , a longtime Republican pollster .
“ Does this increase that ?
I don ’ t know .
Who said , ‘ I ’ m not voting—oh , there ’ s a Supreme Court opening ?
Yeah @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you are still on the couch , I don ’ t know that this is the thing that gets you off it .
I don ’ t know if anything does at this point .
”

The struggle over Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement on the Supreme Court could help propel Democrats to the brink of a Senate majority in November’s election. But whether it lifts them over that threshold could turn on the terms of the confirmation fight. Given the nature of the states that will decide Senate control, the Democrats’ path to a majority may be much easier if they can keep the debate centered on economic issues—particularly the survival of the Affordable Care Act—rather than social issues, especially abortion.
The reason: The confirmation fight is likely to further weaken the position of endangered Republican senators in Colorado, Maine, and Arizona—states where polls show that a solid majority of voters support legal abortion. But even if Democrats flip all three, they will still likely need to win one more seat to take the majority. And in the next tier of states where they could possibly flip a seat, the politics of abortion will make that more difficult.
What the confirmation fight could do is “give the Democrats a path to picking up two or even three Senate seats but make it harder in those other four or five states,” says Matt Mackowiak, an Austin-based GOP strategist.
In the latter group—which includes North Carolina, Iowa, and Montana—voters are much more closely divided on abortion and, in some cases, lean toward the GOP. A confirmation fight focused on abortion is also likely to further diminish Democratic Senator Doug Jones’s already modest reelection chances in Alabama, a state with a clear anti-abortion majority.
By contrast, the prospect that another Trump Supreme Court nominee could vote to overturn the ACA and its popular protections for those with preexisting conditions may create a broader set of opportunities for Democrats. Support for those protections is more consistent across party and regional lines than attitudes about abortion. And Democrats, as in 2018, have already invested heavily in ads reminding voters that all of the GOP incumbents (except Maine’s Susan Collins) moved to eliminate those provisions when they voted to repeal the ACA in 2017.
Read: Is this really the end of abortion?
“The president is in such a rush [to fill the seat], because he’s in a hurry to overturn the Affordable Care Act,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, referring to a Supreme Court hearing scheduled just days after the election on a Republican lawsuit to overturn the ACA.
Trump “wants to get a justice in there in time for that so they can hear the arguments and vote on it. People have to know what this means to them,” continued Pelosi, who spoke with Goldberg this week at the virtual Atlantic Festival. “And what it means to 150 million families in America is that no longer will they have the protection of the Affordable Care Act when it comes to a preexisting medical condition.”
Likewise, when asked yesterday about Amy Coney Barrett, one of the leading contenders for the open Court spot, Biden immediately zeroed in on what a new justice would mean for health care—even though Barrett is considered the most likely of Trump’s potential picks to vote to ban abortion. “I think we should focus on what this is going to mean for health care, what it’s going to mean to once again have to say if you’re pregnant [that] it’s a preexisting condition, to be able to charge women more for the same procedure as men. It’s wrong,” Biden told reporters.
Historically, conventional wisdom in both parties has been that fights over the Supreme Court energize Republican voters more than Democratic ones. But operatives say the incredible surge of grassroots donations to Democratic candidates since Ginsburg’s death suggests that any GOP advantage on the issue has evaporated. As a result, most operatives I’ve spoken with aren’t expecting the confirmation fight to dramatically change the landscape in a year when the electorate’s divisions have been so deep and durable. “I have been saying for probably a year now that it will probably be record turnout since women got the right to vote,” says Glen Bolger, a longtime Republican pollster. “Does this increase that? I don’t know. Who said, ‘I’m not voting—oh, there’s a Supreme Court opening? Yeah, I’m voting.’ If you are still on the couch, I don’t know that this is the thing that gets you off it. I don’t know if anything does at this point.”
Even if the Court fight doesn’t fundamentally upend the election’s dynamics, small tremors could have a huge effect given how tight many of the key Senate contests remain. Each party sees one principal potential benefit for their candidates.
The biggest Republican hope is that a highly partisan confirmation fight will help GOP Senate candidates consolidate their party’s traditional voters, who in some races are supporting the legislators at slightly lower rates than they are Trump, polls suggest. The theory is that a pitched battle over the Court will encourage voters to retreat to their traditional partisan corners. That would especially benefit candidates in crucial states that lean Republican already, such as North Carolina, Montana, Iowa, and Georgia. “If everybody goes to their own sideline, that is going to help those Senate candidates,” Bolger says.
North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis would be the most likely beneficiary of such movement, given how consistently he’s trailed his Democratic challenger, Cal Cunningham, in polls. In those surveys, Tillis has almost invariably run behind Trump, including among Republican voters: Last week’s New York Times/Siena College poll showed Trump winning 89 percent of self-identified Republicans in the state and Tillis just 80 percent. The same dynamic might benefit Joni Ernst in Iowa: This week’s Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll found Trump winning 90 percent of Republicans there compared with Ernst’s 84 percent.
In other states, polls show less room for further Republican consolidation. For example, a recent Quinnipiac University survey showing a surprise dead-heat race in South Carolina found Republican Senator Lindsey Graham already drawing 92 percent of Trump voters against Democrat Jaime Harrison. This week’s University of Georgia survey found GOP Senator David Perdue winning that same share of Trump voters against Democrat Jon Ossoff. “There’s not a lot left” for Perdue to squeeze out among Trump supporters, notes Trey Hood, a University of Georgia political scientist who supervises the poll.
Read: How to lose a swing state
Democrats also see opportunity in the fight, but with a different set of targets: less ideological swing voters exhausted with the level of partisan conflict in Washington. The most recent state polls show GOP Senate candidates trailing among independents in Arizona, Maine, and North Carolina; running even in Georgia (with a large number undecided); and leading only narrowly in South Carolina. In Iowa, Ernst already trails among independents by 15 points, an even bigger deficit than Trump faces among them.
Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster working in multiple races, says the GOP’s attempt to push through a nominee is likely to alienate independent voters, given that Congress has been unable to agree on a relief package for Americans suffering economically or physically from the coronavirus outbreak.
For those voters, “it’s another example of how deeply craven and political Washington is, and how deeply craven [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell is,” she told me. “It’s not that hypocrisy arguments are going to be all that powerful; people expect politicians to be politicians. But I think this idea that Rome is burning and we’ve got to do this thing right now couldn’t be a more political thing to do in a moment of ongoing crisis for the country.”
The GOP’s rush, she says, “just reinforces that sense of intense partisanship, especially for independent voters who are longing for a return to normalcy … It’s exactly what independent voters don’t want.”
Biden more closely reflected swing voters’ mood a few days ago when he urged Republicans not to escalate the partisan wars by rushing on a nominee, says Charles Coughlin, a veteran Phoenix-based Republican consultant. “Biden was like: ‘Don’t do this, this is not who we are,’ and I think that’s where most of the country, most of those middle-road voters, want to be,” Coughlin told me. “They don’t want to be in this highly charged atmosphere.”
No issue in the confirmation process seems more likely to charge the atmosphere—or heighten interparty conflict—than abortion. For many liberals, the principal threat of appointing another conservative justice is that it will finally provide Republicans enough votes to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision legalizing abortion. On a national basis, an argument over abortion is a clear winner for Democrats: In 2019 polling by the Pew Research Center, 61 percent of Americans said abortion should remain legal in all or most cases. And the issue creates greater internal fissures for the GOP: The share of Republicans who said it should remain legal (37 percent) was more than double the percentage of Democrats who said it should not (17 percent). Josh Schwerin, the communications director for the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, says the group’s research has found that a majority of the voters who switched from Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 oppose overturning Roe.
But that advantage isn’t consistent across the key Senate races. State-by-state polling results from 2018 and 2019, provided to me by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, show 56 percent or more of adults favoring abortion rights in Colorado, Maine, and Arizona, where Republican incumbents are endangered. Strong abortion-rights majorities of at least 55 percent are also evident in Michigan and Minnesota—where the GOP harbors longer-shot hopes of dislodging Democrats—and in Alaska, where an independent candidate remains within range of GOP Senator Dan Sullivan. In all of those states, white evangelical Christians, traditionally the constituency most focused on installing conservative justices, make up just 15 percent or less of the population.
But in Iowa, only a slim 52 percent majority favors abortion rights. Support dips to 49 percent in North Carolina and Georgia; 48 percent in Texas, Montana, and Kansas; and 47 percent in South Carolina. Evangelical Christians represent nearly one-fourth of the population in Kansas and South Carolina, one-fifth in North Carolina, and just below that in Georgia and Iowa. In all of those states, Mackowiak says, “these cultural issues are net unhelpful to the Democrats.” Support for legal abortion falls even further, to the low 40s, in both Kentucky and Alabama.
Read: Trump takes away a lifeline for swing-state senators
Comparable state-by-state data isn’t available on the ACA’s protections for patients with preexisting conditions. But the 2018 election results suggest that defending those provisions was an effective argument for Democrats virtually everywhere. National polling earlier this year by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation reported that not only did 95 percent of Democrats and 83 percent of independents consider preserving those protections “extremely” or “very” important, but so did 71 percent of Republicans. More recent Kaiser polling, conducted in partnership with “The Cook Political Report,” found that voters in Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona all gave Biden big leads over Trump on the issue of protecting patients with preexisting conditions—a measure of how widely Democrats lead on that concern.
Likewise, a new poll from the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund, released today, found that voters in 10 battleground states prefer Biden over Trump on the issue. The Democrat led by double-digit margins in almost every state tested—not only in places where Democrats have been competitive, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida, but even in states where the GOP has dominated, like Texas, Georgia, Arizona, and North Carolina.
Based on their advertising spending, Democrats are betting that health care may be even more relevant right now than in years past because of the likelihood that insurance companies will consider COVID-19 a preexisting condition. “The whole ‘pre-ex’ conversation is arguably more salient in ’20 than it was in ’18, and [the possible upcoming] Court decision adds to that," says J. B. Poersch, the president of Senate Majority PAC, the principal super PAC supporting Democratic senators. Adds Rachel Irwin, the group’s communications director: “A good portion of our advertising so far has laid the groundwork on preexisting conditions with personal stories. Every single Senate race has been hammering [that].”
Confirmation hearings for a Trump-appointed justice who may provide the deciding vote to overturn the ACA could provide Democrats an unparalleled platform to keep “hammering” the message that Republican senators are threatening the law’s protections. With multiple contests now teetering on the razor’s edge, the Democrats’ prospects of winning the Senate may turn on whether they can do so.


theatlantic--2020-09-25--Listen: How Bad Will Winter Get?

Listen: How Bad Will Winter Get?

Wells : On the vaccine , Jim , you mentioned that it may only be 50 percent or 70 percent effective .
Can you explain what that means ?
Hamblin : No vaccine is perfect , just like no medicine is perfect .
No test is perfect .
At best , a vaccine offers you a really good shot that if someone coughs in your face while they ’ re infectious , that you ’ re going to be protected .
But our best vaccines are not 100 percent .
There will always be some people who don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immune response fades .
There ’ s been discussion about what the effectiveness of these vaccines against this coronavirus will end up being , and how effective they would need to be to even be worthwhile .
We don ’ t know yet .
We ’ re waiting on these clinical trials .
It ’ s very possible , even likely , that that effectiveness will end up being between 50 and 75 percent , meaning that you ’ re very likely to be protected if you have it , but you would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scenarios .
Once you get a whole population that ’ s vaccinated at that level , it ’ s effectively gone .
But when you ’ re just rolling it out to start with , it doesn ’ t mean that you go back to doing things exactly like you used to .
It would be miraculous in terms of the number of cases dropping , number of fatalities dropping , but as long as there ’ s still that possibility , it means life does not go back totally to normal .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s talk about testing .
What are the realistic prospects of mass availability of cheap , rapid , at-home antigen testing ?
Is this the kind of thing where , in December , I ’ ll be able to go into a drugstore , buy a box of paper-strip antigen tests , and test myself every day ?
Is that going to happen , or are we really far away from that ?
Madrigal : I think there will be something available , maybe not in December .
But later in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think there ’ ll be such tests available .
One hope might be that the antigen test can soak up some of the less vital demand for tests so that PCR tests can be targeted at people who did have a high-risk exposure or who have presented with symptoms .
And other technologies are coming along .
For schools in particular , pooled testing , where you take a bunch of different samples and run them through the same machine in one test .
This technology is kind of , like , coming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quite nice for workplaces and schools—places where you know the group , you can assign risk factors to them , and you know you ’ re going to have continued interaction .
This goes back to my main theme , which is : You have all of these things coming online that could help in some way , and when you layer them all on top of each other , does that get you somewhere ?
That really is the question for me .
I don ’ t think there ’ s any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to knock the virus out .
But does it get you to what we ’ ve been doing so far : bumping along with a rate of transmission about one , which means each person that gets infected basically infects one other person ?
You don ’ t get runaway growth of transmission , but you also don ’ t really suppress the thing , and you continue to have community transmission out there .
We ’ ve just been balanced on this knife edge of R =1 .
And over the winter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go way up or are we going to see it go way down ?
Or are we going to be able to stay balanced on this knife edge even as winter comes because we have this set of tools that help us stay close to that number ?

Experts have long feared that the virus will peak again in winter. The days are now getting shorter, life is moving indoors, and the pandemic isn’t contained. How bad could the next few months get?
Katherine Wells wants to know what to expect and how to prepare. She was joined at a live Atlantic Festival taping of Social Distance by her co-host, staff writer James Hamblin, and Alexis Madrigal, staff writer and co-founder of the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic.
Listen to the episode here:
Subscribe to Social Distance on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or another podcast platform to receive new episodes as soon as they’re published.
What follows is a portion of their conversation, edited for length and clarity:
Katherine Wells: We’ve reached a pretty grim milestone. Two hundred thousand deaths, and we’re heading into winter. I’ve been worried about winter since the beginning. We’re so dependent on being outside right now. A couple of months ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, Robert Redfield, said the winter is “going to be probably one of the most difficult times that we’ve experienced in American public health.” That’s terrifying.
James Hamblin: Yeah, it seems like the writing is on the walls. As you go through New York, the solution to so much life has been: Just do it outside. Open windows. Push people into empty parking spaces that are makeshift restaurants. And now, fall is starting to be in the air. Restaurants are starting to allow for 25 percent [indoor] capacity. Schools are reopening. Kids—not all kids, but some kids —are meeting in class. It’s this sort of perfect storm that makes a lot of people worry about resurgence.
Wells: There’s so much regional variation and there’s so much uncertainty. Alexis, you’ve been following the numbers the whole time. What do you think the winter is going to look like?
Alexis Madrigal: I think the base case here, the default scenario, is that things get a lot worse. There is an alternative scenario, though. If we really look at what happened during the Sun Belt surge, we were actually better able to contain it than I thought as we were going through it at the time. A lot of overlapping half steps and a lot of imperfect but smart things came together to bring transmission rates down and eventually contain those outbreaks in Arizona and Texas and Florida without very extreme measures. We didn’t actually get rid of the virus. But we stopped runaway growth.
I think the big question for me this winter is whether that same thing will happen. We know cases are going to grow. If we’re sitting on this plateau of 40,000 cases a day, the virus is pretty much everywhere. So if you’ve got community transmission everywhere, and you then increase the mobility and interaction that people have, you’re going to see more cases. It’s just happened time and time again.
There is a scenario in this pandemic, though, where masking helps not only with COVID-19, but also with the flu, where testing begins to catch more contagious people, where a vaccine rolls out among crucial populations. And maybe you don’t see the darkest winter in public health. When I really look at the scenarios, you see this tremendous divergence. Maybe it’s only 500 people dying a day at the end of December. Or maybe it’s 1,500. That’s a huge difference. You’re talking 80,000 people in the hospital at any given time versus 20,000 people in the hospital. These are hugely different on-the-ground realities, and it’s very hard to know precisely how to weight them. Though, like I said, I think the base case here is that things don’t go well.
Wells: There’s no scenario where we get this under control soon. This is definitely with us through the winter in a devastating way. Is that your sense?
Madrigal: That would be my sense, yeah.
Hamblin: If Alexis said anything other than that, I would jump in and correct him. The talk of a vaccine existing has been conflated with the idea of a vaccine being widely distributed. We need to plan for a winter where a vaccine is not part of our lives. [Anthony] Fauci said that he would be happy if the vaccine were 50 percent effective. Ideally, it would be closer to 75 percent. Right now you have polls saying about 50 percent of Americans would try a vaccine if it were available now. So a vaccine is not going to get rid of this. Alexis is following cool testing developments, which can help, and we’re hoping in November there are rollouts of rapid tests, but those are not going to be perfect. They’re not going to be instantly everywhere. And the confluence of weather and a lack of economic stimulus ... I think people are reaching a breaking point. There are going to be a lot of things coming together right at the same time.
Wells: On the vaccine, Jim, you mentioned that it may only be 50 percent or 70 percent effective. Can you explain what that means?
Hamblin: No vaccine is perfect, just like no medicine is perfect. No test is perfect. At best, a vaccine offers you a really good shot that if someone coughs in your face while they’re infectious, that you’re going to be protected. But our best vaccines are not 100 percent. There will always be some people who don’t mount an effective immune response or whose immune response fades. There’s been discussion about what the effectiveness of these vaccines against this coronavirus will end up being, and how effective they would need to be to even be worthwhile.
We don’t know yet. We’re waiting on these clinical trials. It’s very possible, even likely, that that effectiveness will end up being between 50 and 75 percent, meaning that you’re very likely to be protected if you have it, but you would probably still want to avoid really high-risk scenarios. Once you get a whole population that’s vaccinated at that level, it’s effectively gone. But when you’re just rolling it out to start with, it doesn’t mean that you go back to doing things exactly like you used to. It would be miraculous in terms of the number of cases dropping, number of fatalities dropping, but as long as there’s still that possibility, it means life does not go back totally to normal.
Wells: Right. Okay, let’s talk about testing. What are the realistic prospects of mass availability of cheap, rapid, at-home antigen testing? Is this the kind of thing where, in December, I’ll be able to go into a drugstore, buy a box of paper-strip antigen tests, and test myself every day? Is that going to happen, or are we really far away from that?
Madrigal: I think there will be something available, maybe not in December. But later in the winter and into the spring, I think there’ll be such tests available. One hope might be that the antigen test can soak up some of the less vital demand for tests so that PCR tests can be targeted at people who did have a high-risk exposure or who have presented with symptoms.
And other technologies are coming along. For schools in particular, pooled testing, where you take a bunch of different samples and run them through the same machine in one test. This technology is kind of, like, coming along and has some features that are quite nice for workplaces and schools—places where you know the group, you can assign risk factors to them, and you know you’re going to have continued interaction. This goes back to my main theme, which is: You have all of these things coming online that could help in some way, and when you layer them all on top of each other, does that get you somewhere?


theatlantic--2020-09-29--Should I Help Imprison the Man Who Tried to Sexually Assault Me?

He was the first stranger to enter our house in 105 days .
It was 4:13 a.m. on a Friday , and my husband , who works at night in an office in our backyard , was listening to music with headphones .
He didn ’ t hear the stranger pass through the gate , walk up the back steps , and enter through the back door of our house .
I woke when the man switched on the bedroom light .
For an instant , I was simply confused , befuddled by sleep .
The stranger was standing by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wide , protuberant eyes stared down at me , and there seemed to be something like a smile on his face .
I asked the obvious questions .
I can ’ t remember my exact words , but they were the questions of someone whose bewilderment was turning rapidly to terror .
Who are you ?
What are you doing ?
The stranger told me he had permission to be in my room .
You said it would be all right .
He took a step closer to the bed .
He slipped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I felt the shock of his fingers sliding up my leg .
That is when I started to scream , though the word scream doesn ’ t really convey the animal sound , deep and ragged , that ripped loose from my chest .
For two weeks , my voice was hoarse , my throat raw .
It hurt to speak .
The howl woke our two teenage children , my younger daughter and son , who ran down the hall .
They confronted the stranger they found standing by their parents ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to think .
My daughter grabbed him by his sweatshirt , jerked him out of the bedroom , and shoved him down the stairs .
With her brother ’ s help , she pushed him out the door .
I called 911 .
In a strange coincidence , this was not the first 911 call I had made that week .
The previous Monday morning , a man in his early 20s had knocked on our door , begging for help .
He couldn ’ t remember his name , he said , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a large bump on his head .
His clothes were filthy , and there was a hole in the toe of one of his Vans , but he was dutifully wearing a mask .
He said he didn ’ t know where he was going , or why he had decided to come to our house .
The eyes above the mask looked wild and afraid .
That time , I did not , at first , call 911 .
I live in Berkeley , California , which , unlike many cities , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kind of mental-health emergency .
The team ’ s hours are limited , however : 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. , five days a week .
When I called , no one picked up .
I felt I had no choice but to call 911 .
I told the dispatcher who answered that we had a stranger at our house who seemed to be in the midst of some kind of psychiatric crisis , perhaps caused by an evident head injury .
He seemed vulnerable rather than dangerous , I said , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police—and definitely not armed police .
The dispatcher informed me that I did not have the right or authority to dictate what kind of action the situation demanded .
I slammed the phone down .
By now the young man had drifted from the porch to the front yard , where my daughter and husband were trying by turns to reassure , placate , and find out what they could about him—to little effect .
Every so often some clarity about his predicament seemed to overwhelm him , but he couldn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ words .
He looked to be about the age of my eldest child—I could have been his mother .
Keeping six feet away , speaking in the same kind of soothing tone I used to calm my kids when they were small , I invited him to sit down in an Adirondack chair and urged him to count his breaths .
At the same time , I tried to think of someone , anyone , who could help without the threat of force .
Finally , I called 911 again , hoping for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my best sensible , obliging lady voice , a pleading rather than demanding Karen , if you will .
The second dispatcher promised that she would make it clear to the responder that the young man needed assistance , not violent intervention .
My husband and I sat with him until the police arrived , and at one point he asked us to read to him .
He greeted my husband ’ s recitation of Thomas Gray ’ s “ Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard ” with a request for a “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I was frantically Googling happy poem when the officer showed up .
Her response was initially gruff , but when the man panicked , and we asked her to be more gentle , she complied .
Eventually EMTs arrived and transported this fragile young man to an ER .
Afterward , my husband and I discussed the incident with our kids , in light of the recent push to defund the police .
We noted that the officer in our affluent , mostly white Berkeley neighborhood had acquiesced when we insisted that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the young man became agitated—first when he saw her , and then when the ambulance pulled up—she respected our request that she not escalate the matter .
No doubt , we told our children , her accommodating approach had a lot to do with the fact that both we and the stranger were white .
Days later , with an invader in my house , I did not set any preconditions when I called 911 .
Sobbing , shaking , I just shouted , “ There ’ s a man in my house @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my house !
” Within minutes , multiple units responded to the call .
One officer took my statement , another took my husband ’ s , and others fanned out across the area .
Two more interviewed my children in different rooms , and they gave detailed , congruent descriptions of the intruder : skinny , jumpy , bug eyes , loose hoodie , shorts , beat-up sneakers , black backpack .
Old enough to have lines on his face .
His skin was brown , they said .
Perhaps he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ description out over the radio , and a few minutes later got a call : Officers had detained a suspect .
My children were loaded into separate squad cars and driven past the man whom the police had grabbed and cuffed .
He was a Black man , with nothing in common with the intruder but his backpack .
My daughter was so infuriated that she started to cry .
My son could not stop thinking about the way the man had looked back at him as the police car rolled by , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how many times he ’ d been stopped by the cops over the past years , months , or even days .
Ten minutes later , the police picked up another guy .
It was past five in the morning by now .
Again they bundled my son and daughter , exhausted and wired , into separate cruisers and drove them past the suspect .
It was the intruder ; neither of them had any doubt .
He was taken to jail and charged with two felonies .
I ’ ve been immersed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of law enforcement since early in my career , when I worked as a public defender , law professor , and drug-policy reformer , and served on the board of a prison-reform organization .
I was also part of the team that created the recent Netflix show Unbelievable , which examined the police response to sexual assault .
Taken together , my two encounters offer an ( almost too ) ideal platform to consider what law enforcement looks like now , and what a fundamental reimagining of it might consist of .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ straightforward—a clear example of when weapon-wielding cops can easily do more harm than good .
The NYU law professor Barry Friedman , among others , argues that police functions should be “ disaggregated ” : Mental-health professionals should respond to incidents involving people like the young man ; substance-abuse counselors should deal with drug-related crises ; experienced mediators should address situations that require conflict resolution ; and so on .
As for the second guy , the best-case scenario is more complicated .
A few weeks after this invasion , Donald Trump posted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in an empty office .
An answering machine clicks on and a female voice ominously intones , “ Due to defunding of the police department , we ’ re sorry , but no one is here to take your call .
If you ’ re calling to report a rape , please press 1 .
To report a murder , press 2 ... ” The last image is Joe Biden ’ s face , superimposed over a city on fire , with the words “ You won ’ t be safe in Joe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ misleading as the ad is ( for one thing , Biden does not support defunding the police ) , it plays on a frequently expressed fear , one perhaps particularly common among white women : What about sex crimes ?
If we dramatically downsize the police , who will deal with the violence against women endemic in our culture ?
Mariame Kaba , an anti-criminalization organizer , wants us to shift our focus .
No matter the system , she told me , there will always be violence .
The question Kaba believes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enforcement , an institution that nominally exists to keep us safe , so often does the opposite .
For years , decades , centuries , Black people have wrestled with whether to bring in the authorities for serious and not-so-serious crimes , and often rejected the option as too dangerous—for themselves , for the perpetrator , or for others in their community .
Many people who ’ ve been sexually assaulted have experiences like Unbelievable ’ s Marie , who was raped and then victimized again and again by misogynist , incompetent cops @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In fact , she was one of the early victims of a serial rapist who went on to attack at least half a dozen other women .
More generally , the police are remarkably ineffective at catching the perpetrators of violence , especially sex offenders .
According to RAINN ( the Rape , Abuse & Incest National Network ) , an arrest is made in only 20 percent of reported sexual assaults , and only 10 percent of those arrested end up serving time .
From the August 2019 issue : An epidemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Policing Project , argues that investigating crimes is not a natural function for police , at least not as they ’ re currently recruited and trained .
“ Recent breakthroughs in forensic science suggest we need way less police and much more dispassionate evidence collection and evaluation to get things right , ” he has written .
Investigators need scientific expertise , as well as sophisticated interviewing skills characterized by “ a certain combination of skepticism and emotional intelligence ” : the ability to make people feel comfortable opening up while @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hang together .
Even the pursuit and apprehension of offenders would be better served by a rightsized public-safety response team , it seems , a corps perhaps screened for racist bias and trained in de-escalation and the avoidance of force .
Dialing 911 was the first decision I had to make after I discovered the man by my bed—if you can describe my frantic call as a “ decision.
” The second came a day later , when a police investigator contacted me to ask whether I wanted to prosecute .
In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ busy underestimating ( “ I ’ m fine .
I ’ m fine .
Really , I ’ m fine ” ) , I tried to balance a host of considerations .
For starters , would my children and I be willing to testify if he went to trial ?
I ’ ve seen what a competent defense attorney can do to a witness .
I was a competent defense attorney , setting traps for people , tying them up in their own words , doing my best to trigger confusion and even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stand up to that ?
Would rekindling the trauma be worth it ?
Knowing that the majority of criminal cases end in a plea bargain , no court required , somewhat alleviated my anxieties , but it didn ’ t make the decision appreciably easier .
How could I consign someone to the brutalities of incarceration when I ’ ve long advocated for the abolition of prisons ?
I even edited a book called Inside This Place , Not of It : Narratives From Women ’ s Prisons , a collection of first-person @ @ @ @ @ @ @ violations that plague prisons in the United States .
Granted , my family and I would feel safer while the man was confined .
Since he stole into my bedroom , I ’ ve been startling awake multiple times a night , terrified .
Before we go to bed , I repeatedly ask my husband if he ’ s locked the doors and turned on the alarm .
For weeks , my son saw the man out of the corner of his eye in dark rooms , and he took to sleeping with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what about when my attacker got out—was there a chance he ’ d be less of a threat , to me or someone else ?
According to the investigating detective , his record includes at least one psychiatric hold , suggesting that his violent behavior might stem in part from some form of mental illness .
He definitely seemed unbalanced when he leeringly insisted that he ’ d been invited into my house , that everything was fine .
Though a significant number of people in American prisons are mentally ill , very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The harsh conditions of confinement could just as easily make him less stable rather than more .
Some prisons have programs targeted specifically at rehabilitating sex offenders , but their effectiveness has been the subject of much debate over the years .
It doesn ’ t have to be this way .
Though hardly perfect , Scandinavian penal systems , for example , are premised on rehabilitation .
They provide treatment and therapy , with the goal of releasing better citizens into the world .
In America , we focus on punishment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will deter offenders .
In fact , the severity of punishment does little to deter crime .
What deters criminals is the certainty of being apprehended , but as I ’ ve said , this is not a certainty the American justice system even begins to provide .
The upshot is that if I prosecuted , I would be participating in a deeply unjust system , one that I ’ ve worked years to get rid of .
Yet if I failed to do so , the guy who came into my bedroom @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Marie been taken at her word , at least half a dozen other women might not have been raped .
I went forward .
There was one last bad choice I had to make .
The deputy district attorney called to ask me what kind of plea I would be willing to accept .
Was I adamant that the guy plead guilty to the sexual offense : breaking and entering for the purpose of committing a sexual crime ?
Or would I approve of a plea to burglary alone ?
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ four years , with the expectation that the perpetrator will serve half of the time ; the former requires 15 years to life .
“ California law , ” the deputy DA told me , “ does not like burglary for the purpose of sexual assault.
” Two to four years behind bars .
Fifteen years to life .
Again , how can I weigh my fear for myself and others against the fact that prisons are dehumanizing , virtually useless for rehabilitation , and usually spit out people who are in far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
Over the years , I ’ d heard that 60 to 80 percent of sexual-assault perpetrators commit additional sex crimes , but when I looked at the data , I discovered that this is a wild exaggeration , a kind of urban myth .
The best estimates peg recidivism at 5 percent three years after an offense , and at 24 percent 15 years out .
But still .
Those numbers aren ’ t nothing , and they come with the caveat that many sex crimes go unreported , so who knows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I tried to think of an alternative path available to me , a “ third way ” that envisioned a transformed criminal-justice system , better for all .
But I couldn ’ t come up with anything .
As Mariame Kaba points out , this wretched system has “ disciplined our imaginations.
” So I split the difference .
Let him plead to the burglary , I told the assistant DA .
( At the time of publication , he hadn ’ t yet responded to the prosecutor ’ s plea offer .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ his sentence be much shorter , but when he gets out , he won ’ t have to be listed on a sex-offender registry .
Registries are notoriously worthless for preventing future sex crimes and , because of strict limits on where people can live and work and with whom they can associate , virtually guarantee that former prisoners aren ’ t able to create better lives for themselves .
The night after the break-in , I made my husband switch sides of the bed with me .
After 28 years , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the one farthest from the door .
In this case , that ’ s as close to a transformation as any of us is likely to get .

He was the first stranger to enter our house in 105 days. It was 4:13 a.m. on a Friday, and my husband, who works at night in an office in our backyard, was listening to music with headphones. He didn’t hear the stranger pass through the gate, walk up the back steps, and enter through the back door of our house.
I woke when the man switched on the bedroom light. For an instant, I was simply confused, befuddled by sleep. The stranger was standing by the side of my bed. His wide, protuberant eyes stared down at me, and there seemed to be something like a smile on his face. I asked the obvious questions. I can’t remember my exact words, but they were the questions of someone whose bewilderment was turning rapidly to terror. Who are you? What are you doing? The stranger told me he had permission to be in my room. You said it would be all right. He took a step closer to the bed. He slipped his hands under the covers, and I felt the shock of his fingers sliding up my leg.
That is when I started to scream, though the word scream doesn’t really convey the animal sound, deep and ragged, that ripped loose from my chest. For two weeks, my voice was hoarse, my throat raw. It hurt to speak.
The howl woke our two teenage children, my younger daughter and son, who ran down the hall. They confronted the stranger they found standing by their parents’ bed. They didn’t stop to think. My daughter grabbed him by his sweatshirt, jerked him out of the bedroom, and shoved him down the stairs. With her brother’s help, she pushed him out the door. I called 911.
In a strange coincidence, this was not the first 911 call I had made that week. The previous Monday morning, a man in his early 20s had knocked on our door, begging for help. He couldn’t remember his name, he said, or where he lived. He had a large bump on his head. His clothes were filthy, and there was a hole in the toe of one of his Vans, but he was dutifully wearing a mask. He said he didn’t know where he was going, or why he had decided to come to our house. The eyes above the mask looked wild and afraid.
That time, I did not, at first, call 911. I live in Berkeley, California, which, unlike many cities, maintains a crisis team for precisely this kind of mental-health emergency. The team’s hours are limited, however: 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., five days a week. When I called, no one picked up. I felt I had no choice but to call 911.
I told the dispatcher who answered that we had a stranger at our house who seemed to be in the midst of some kind of psychiatric crisis, perhaps caused by an evident head injury. He seemed vulnerable rather than dangerous, I said, and we needed an ambulance, not the police—and definitely not armed police. The dispatcher informed me that I did not have the right or authority to dictate what kind of action the situation demanded. I slammed the phone down.
By now the young man had drifted from the porch to the front yard, where my daughter and husband were trying by turns to reassure, placate, and find out what they could about him—to little effect. Every so often some clarity about his predicament seemed to overwhelm him, but he couldn’t put the source of his fear into words. He looked to be about the age of my eldest child—I could have been his mother. Keeping six feet away, speaking in the same kind of soothing tone I used to calm my kids when they were small, I invited him to sit down in an Adirondack chair and urged him to count his breaths.
At the same time, I tried to think of someone, anyone, who could help without the threat of force. Finally, I called 911 again, hoping for a more cooperative dispatcher. I used my best sensible, obliging lady voice, a pleading rather than demanding Karen, if you will. The second dispatcher promised that she would make it clear to the responder that the young man needed assistance, not violent intervention. My husband and I sat with him until the police arrived, and at one point he asked us to read to him. He greeted my husband’s recitation of Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” with a request for a “happy poem.” Good luck with that. I was frantically Googling happy poem when the officer showed up.
Her response was initially gruff, but when the man panicked, and we asked her to be more gentle, she complied. Eventually EMTs arrived and transported this fragile young man to an ER. Afterward, my husband and I discussed the incident with our kids, in light of the recent push to defund the police. We noted that the officer in our affluent, mostly white Berkeley neighborhood had acquiesced when we insisted that she avoid a confrontation. Even when the young man became agitated—first when he saw her, and then when the ambulance pulled up—she respected our request that she not escalate the matter. No doubt, we told our children, her accommodating approach had a lot to do with the fact that both we and the stranger were white.
Days later, with an invader in my house, I did not set any preconditions when I called 911. Sobbing, shaking, I just shouted, “There’s a man in my house! There’s a man in my house!” Within minutes, multiple units responded to the call. One officer took my statement, another took my husband’s, and others fanned out across the area. Two more interviewed my children in different rooms, and they gave detailed, congruent descriptions of the intruder: skinny, jumpy, bug eyes, loose hoodie, shorts, beat-up sneakers, black backpack. Old enough to have lines on his face. His skin was brown, they said. Perhaps he was Filipino. The responding officer sent the description out over the radio, and a few minutes later got a call: Officers had detained a suspect. My children were loaded into separate squad cars and driven past the man whom the police had grabbed and cuffed.
He was a Black man, with nothing in common with the intruder but his backpack. My daughter was so infuriated that she started to cry. My son could not stop thinking about the way the man had looked back at him as the police car rolled by, not angry but resigned. Who knows how many times he’d been stopped by the cops over the past years, months, or even days.
Ten minutes later, the police picked up another guy. It was past five in the morning by now. Again they bundled my son and daughter, exhausted and wired, into separate cruisers and drove them past the suspect. It was the intruder; neither of them had any doubt. He was taken to jail and charged with two felonies.
I’ve been immersed in issues related to the proper role of law enforcement since early in my career, when I worked as a public defender, law professor, and drug-policy reformer, and served on the board of a prison-reform organization. I was also part of the team that created the recent Netflix show Unbelievable, which examined the police response to sexual assault. Taken together, my two encounters offer an (almost too) ideal platform to consider what law enforcement looks like now, and what a fundamental reimagining of it might consist of.
The case of the troubled young man is straightforward—a clear example of when weapon-wielding cops can easily do more harm than good. The NYU law professor Barry Friedman, among others, argues that police functions should be “disaggregated”: Mental-health professionals should respond to incidents involving people like the young man; substance-abuse counselors should deal with drug-related crises; experienced mediators should address situations that require conflict resolution; and so on.
As for the second guy, the best-case scenario is more complicated. A few weeks after this invasion, Donald Trump posted a campaign ad showing a phone ringing in an empty office. An answering machine clicks on and a female voice ominously intones, “Due to defunding of the police department, we’re sorry, but no one is here to take your call. If you’re calling to report a rape, please press 1. To report a murder, press 2 ...” The last image is Joe Biden’s face, superimposed over a city on fire, with the words “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.” Crude and misleading as the ad is (for one thing, Biden does not support defunding the police), it plays on a frequently expressed fear, one perhaps particularly common among white women: What about sex crimes? If we dramatically downsize the police, who will deal with the violence against women endemic in our culture?
Mariame Kaba, an anti-criminalization organizer, wants us to shift our focus. No matter the system, she told me, there will always be violence. The question Kaba believes we need to ask is why law enforcement, an institution that nominally exists to keep us safe, so often does the opposite. For years, decades, centuries, Black people have wrestled with whether to bring in the authorities for serious and not-so-serious crimes, and often rejected the option as too dangerous—for themselves, for the perpetrator, or for others in their community.
Many people who’ve been sexually assaulted have experiences like Unbelievable’s Marie, who was raped and then victimized again and again by misogynist, incompetent cops who refused to believe her story. In fact, she was one of the early victims of a serial rapist who went on to attack at least half a dozen other women. More generally, the police are remarkably ineffective at catching the perpetrators of violence, especially sex offenders. According to RAINN (the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), an arrest is made in only 20 percent of reported sexual assaults, and only 10 percent of those arrested end up serving time.
From the August 2019 issue: An epidemic of disbelief
Friedman, who heads NYU’s Policing Project, argues that investigating crimes is not a natural function for police, at least not as they’re currently recruited and trained. “Recent breakthroughs in forensic science suggest we need way less police and much more dispassionate evidence collection and evaluation to get things right,” he has written. Investigators need scientific expertise, as well as sophisticated interviewing skills characterized by “a certain combination of skepticism and emotional intelligence”: the ability to make people feel comfortable opening up while simultaneously probing to make sure their stories hang together. Even the pursuit and apprehension of offenders would be better served by a rightsized public-safety response team, it seems, a corps perhaps screened for racist bias and trained in de-escalation and the avoidance of force.
Dialing 911 was the first decision I had to make after I discovered the man by my bed—if you can describe my frantic call as a “decision.” The second came a day later, when a police investigator contacted me to ask whether I wanted to prosecute. In the throes of a trauma that I was busy underestimating (“I’m fine. I’m fine. Really, I’m fine”), I tried to balance a host of considerations. For starters, would my children and I be willing to testify if he went to trial? I’ve seen what a competent defense attorney can do to a witness. I was a competent defense attorney, setting traps for people, tying them up in their own words, doing my best to trigger confusion and even fear. Could my kids and I stand up to that? Would rekindling the trauma be worth it?
Knowing that the majority of criminal cases end in a plea bargain, no court required, somewhat alleviated my anxieties, but it didn’t make the decision appreciably easier. How could I consign someone to the brutalities of incarceration when I’ve long advocated for the abolition of prisons? I even edited a book called Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives From Women’s Prisons , a collection of first-person stories designed to illuminate the countless human-rights violations that plague prisons in the United States.
Granted, my family and I would feel safer while the man was confined. Since he stole into my bedroom, I’ve been startling awake multiple times a night, terrified. Before we go to bed, I repeatedly ask my husband if he’s locked the doors and turned on the alarm. For weeks, my son saw the man out of the corner of his eye in dark rooms, and he took to sleeping with a hammer beside his pillow.
But what about when my attacker got out—was there a chance he’d be less of a threat, to me or someone else? According to the investigating detective, his record includes at least one psychiatric hold, suggesting that his violent behavior might stem in part from some form of mental illness. He definitely seemed unbalanced when he leeringly insisted that he’d been invited into my house, that everything was fine. Though a significant number of people in American prisons are mentally ill, very few receive any kind of psychological care. The harsh conditions of confinement could just as easily make him less stable rather than more. Some prisons have programs targeted specifically at rehabilitating sex offenders, but their effectiveness has been the subject of much debate over the years.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Though hardly perfect, Scandinavian penal systems, for example, are premised on rehabilitation. They provide treatment and therapy, with the goal of releasing better citizens into the world. In America, we focus on punishment, in the misguided belief that it will deter offenders. In fact, the severity of punishment does little to deter crime. What deters criminals is the certainty of being apprehended, but as I’ve said, this is not a certainty the American justice system even begins to provide.
The upshot is that if I prosecuted, I would be participating in a deeply unjust system, one that I’ve worked years to get rid of. Yet if I failed to do so, the guy who came into my bedroom might hurt someone else. Had Unbelievable’s Marie been taken at her word, at least half a dozen other women might not have been raped. I went forward.
There was one last bad choice I had to make. The deputy district attorney called to ask me what kind of plea I would be willing to accept. Was I adamant that the guy plead guilty to the sexual offense: breaking and entering for the purpose of committing a sexual crime? Or would I approve of a plea to burglary alone? The latter carries a sentence of up to four years, with the expectation that the perpetrator will serve half of the time; the former requires 15 years to life. “California law,” the deputy DA told me, “does not like burglary for the purpose of sexual assault.”
Two to four years behind bars. Fifteen years to life. Again, how can I weigh my fear for myself and others against the fact that prisons are dehumanizing, virtually useless for rehabilitation, and usually spit out people who are in far worse shape than when they went in? Over the years, I’d heard that 60 to 80 percent of sexual-assault perpetrators commit additional sex crimes, but when I looked at the data, I discovered that this is a wild exaggeration, a kind of urban myth. The best estimates peg recidivism at 5 percent three years after an offense, and at 24 percent 15 years out. But still. Those numbers aren’t nothing, and they come with the caveat that many sex crimes go unreported, so who knows what the true picture really is?
I tried to think of an alternative path available to me, a “third way” that envisioned a transformed criminal-justice system, better for all. But I couldn’t come up with anything. As Mariame Kaba points out, this wretched system has “disciplined our imaginations.”
So I split the difference. Let him plead to the burglary, I told the assistant DA. (At the time of publication, he hadn’t yet responded to the prosecutor’s plea offer.) This way, not only will his sentence be much shorter, but when he gets out, he won’t have to be listed on a sex-offender registry. Registries are notoriously worthless for preventing future sex crimes and, because of strict limits on where people can live and work and with whom they can associate, virtually guarantee that former prisoners aren’t able to create better lives for themselves.
The night after the break-in, I made my husband switch sides of the bed with me. After 28 years, I now sleep on “his” side, the one farther from the door. In this case, that’s as close to a transformation as any of us is likely to get.