The Morning Dispatch: The Swift Backlash to the Roger Stone Commutation

Plus, expect more bad news on the pandemic front.

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Happy Monday! The past few days have been filled with some incredibly silly news—most of it related to canned beans. We hope you were able to tune it all out and enjoy your weekend like a normal person.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • As of Sunday night, 3,302,695 cases of COVID-19 have been reported in the United States (an increase of 56,770 from yesterday) and 135,176 deaths have been attributed to the virus (an increase of 399 from yesterday), according to the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 Dashboard, leading to a mortality rate among confirmed cases of 4.1 percent (the true mortality rate is likely much lower, between 0.4 percent and 1.4 percent, but it’s impossible to determine precisely due to incomplete testing regimens). Of 40,282,176 coronavirus tests conducted in the United States (728,781 conducted since yesterday), 8.2 percent have come back positive.

  • President Trump officially announced he would be commuting the sentence of Roger Stone—one of his longtime friends—who had been convicted of obstructing justice, lying to Congress, and witness tampering in relation to investigations into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Stone, 67, was facing 40 months in prison for 7 felony convictions.

  • Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced on Sunday he will call former special counsel Robert Mueller to testify before Congress. Mueller broke his near yearlong public silence over the weekend with a Washington Post op-ed defending the prosecution of Roger Stone.

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  1. Charles Winters

    The problem as I see it is that we citizens are not as engaged in the subtle nuances of the constitution as we should have been or as the founders hoped we would be. Our representatives recognize this and vote accordingly.

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    Pat Riot

    Hi folks, I've finally found a great summary of the data I've been talking about in comments:

    https://www.quora.com/How-can-a-disease-with-1-mortality-shut-down-the-United-States/answer/Franklin-Veaux

    The data I've been trying to find is the COVID "screwed up survivor rate". In other words, we've been focused on *deaths* from this disease, but the reality is that besides out and out death, this disease really, really messes up your body and in a lot of cases *permanently*. Here's the TLDR:

    For every one person who dies:

    19 more require hospitalization.
    18 of those will have permanent heart damage for the rest of their lives.
    10 will have permanent lung damage.
    3 will have strokes.
    2 will have neurological damage that leads to chronic weakness and loss of coordination.
    2 will have neurological damage that leads to loss of cognitive function.

    So now all of a sudden, that “but it’s only 1% fatal!” becomes:

    3,282,000 people dead.
    62,358,000 hospitalized.
    59,076,000 people with permanent heart damage.
    32,820,000 people with permanent lung damage.
    9,846,000 people with strokes.
    6,564,000 people with muscle weakness.
    6,564,000 people with loss of cognitive function.

    The above is the price we'd pay for, "hey lets all just get it and face the consequences"...

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    Phil Pennington

    Not a question of either/or. They both were right. We’ve seen presidents use the power as Mason feared. We’ve witnessed the descent of Congress from its place as one of three coequal branches of government to a gaggle of neither thoughtful nor interesting pundits, incapable of acting as a whole in the country’s and their constituents’ best interests.

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  4. MPR

    Regarding the George Mason vs. James Madison question, I side with Mason: impeachment, successful or not, does not undo the injustice of pardon granted to the lawbreaker, who goes free regardless of the outcome of impeachment. In the case of a tried and convicted offender, pardon undoes the checks and balances of our tripartite system, giving the executive supremacy over the judiciary. It places the President's favorites above the law.

    It is also terrible public policy. Citizens should hesitate to commit illegal acts out of respect for the law and their fellows, and out of fear of the consequences. Crimes solicited by a President should be rejected by those s/he solicits, not given the oily inducement of freedom from consequence.

    Finally, the President who grants an unjust pardon commits a new, separate offense against the People, one that is prosecuted, or not, in a court of politics rather than law. Madison was naive and short-sighted to believe that impeachment was an adequate remedy to an unjust use of the Presidential pardon.

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    WALL-E

    On the Mason/Madison question, IMHO, it seems like the commutation of Roger Stone is a more impeachable offense than the Ukraine phone call debacle. The wrongness of the commutation seems more obvious than the wrongness of the phone call. Stone clearly lied to Congress about matters relating to Trump; Trump commutes the sentence before Stone spends real time in prison.

    Good to see Toomey making a statement on the subject. Part of me would like to see him run for President some day, as he's probably closer to Calvin Coolidge than any other major politician out there today. We could use some political modesty but, unfortunately, that likely means most of America doesn't want him.

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  6. CatoTheElder

    A brief presentation of data regarding rate of change of important measures of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic: The rate of change (aka 'slope' for those of recalling, perhaps with clenched teeth, their high school mathematics classes) of two things--new cases (number of positive tests reported) per day and deaths per day over the last two months, as determined from publicly available data on incidence of these events in the US.

    From May 13 to June 13, the average rate of change in new cases (units: hundreds of thousands/day) was 2.19. The average rate of change in deaths over the same time (units: thousands/day) was 1.03. The ratio of these two, the rate of change in cases/rate of change in deaths, over the period May 13-June 13, is 2.12.

    From June 13 to July 13, the average rate of change in new cases (units: hundreds of thousands/day) was 4.17 (a doubling of the rate of increase--thus all the current concern). The average rate of change in daily deaths (units: thousands/day) was down to 0.67. The ratio of these two over the period June 13-July 13 is 6.22, indicating that the rate of change in new cases (determined by number of reported positive tests) is increasing much faster than the rate of change in deaths.

    One important caveat in this (or any discussion of comparison of numbers of cases to numbers of deaths) is that because deaths from the coronavirus don't generally occur immediately, but only after some significant period of illness ranging from days to weeks, one should expect there to be a lag in any increase in rate of change in deaths relative to the beginning of any significant increase in rate of change of new cases.

    There are of course many other factors that should be considered when carefully considering the effects of the ongoing pandemic. The above is simply one way of evaluating--or perhaps better put, beginning to evaluate--not just changes in incidence of disease, but also changes in rates of mortality due to the disease. Should there be continued divergence between the rates of change in new cases and deaths, that might be one sign of progress against the disease, but such will have to be evaluated with the accumulation of more data and then considered in the full context of what's happening with the pandemic.

    One final caveat: The disease is not uniformly affecting the world. Some cities/states/regions have higher rates of disease, death, and disability than do others, for what may be a host of reasons. Health care availability and sophistication (primarily technology) also vary tremendously from place to place, even within the US. One should not make glib comparisons between locales with very different circumstances.

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      SusanC

      The Atlantic also published really interesting article today describing the work of several mathematicians who are incorporating chaos theory and "the butterfly effect" in their attempts to model the level of infection necessary to reach herd immunity. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/herd-immunity-coronavirus/614035/

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      1. CatoTheElder

        I just read that, and, to be honest, came away a bit disappointed. The article presented lots of key information and concepts, but did it rather piecemeal and without producing a clear picture for the reader—but encouraging the reader to believe that she had developed a good understanding of the topic of herd immunity. For those uninitiated into the world of epidemiology, the concepts allowed to flutter around—like the mis-represented story of the butterfly effect—don’t alight and allow for study.

        That said, perhaps the single most important point for a non-medically-trained person to take away from it is that herd immunity, as a concept, is fairly simple—a given “herd” (of people, cows, manatees, ferrets, frogs, whatever), with its particular characteristics (size, age demographics, and varying of heterogeneity in things from diet to sleep patterns to hair length to immune system genetics to gut microbiomes and more), can, and in most circumstances eventually will, develop a level of functional immunity that keeps a disease in check enough so as to greatly reduce if not entirely prevent major outbreaks within the population—the herd. One part of that “functional immunity” is actual, biochemical/physiological immunity of the more or less classic kind—antibodies, infection-fighting white blood cells, etc. Other parts may have to do with many other characteristics of the herd, such as, perhaps, diet, climate zone, propensity to keep pets, time spent outside, and more. Herd immunity forms when the combined characteristics of the herd—including biological immunity AND all that other stuff—sufficiently reduce the chances of an outbreak that epidemiologists consider the herd “protected”.

        Contrary to what the author seems to state at the end of the article, we do not yet know enough to make the rules, take the steps, do the things, etc. so as to make the level of biochemical/physiological, antibody-and-white-cell-driven classical immunity be some arbitrarily low number. If we decide that members of the herd must wear masks, and stay at least six feet from non-family-members, and take Vitamin D supplements, and eat fish, but no red meat, we are determining characteristics of the herd, some of which may be protective. But when we loosen the rules—no more masks, approval of gatherings of tens of thousands for sporting events, etc.—we change the nature of the herd, and the hard-earned herd immunity may no longer exist.

        This is why herd immunity is such a difficult thing to pin down. We know some of the basic elements—functioning immune systems, doing their things, often prompted by vaccines—but to identify prospectively the necessary level of measurable physiological/biochemical markers of immunity to provide herd immunity for a new disease?—that’s very, very hard to do. The mathematicians and epidemiologists, working together, are getting there, but, considering that the number (representing the proportion of the population biologically immune) absolutely must be greater than 0% and less than 100%, to narrow the range of possibilities down to, say 20-70% isn’t to have made great progress yet.

        My own prediction is that the numbers they produce as prospective estimates will not matter much. Vastly different societies will have slogged through the disease until not just one but several different vaccines become available, and the use of those, combined with naturally accruing immunity in those surviving the disease, and the added affects of persisting behavioral changes will eventually produce what will in effect be the herd immunity they’re now trying to predict. But I’ll freely acknowledge that it’s easy for me to place a bet saying that none of ‘em will really know until the game’s over, just because it’s so dang hard to do.

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          JohnF

          The one positive thing about this situation is that it has drawn attention to basic health hygiene. Handwashing, sanitizing, and staying home when you're sick (even if it's just a cold), should be common practice, even if there's no pandemic. Mask-wearing is a big step, but if we can overcome the stigma, it would keep us all healthier.
          That being said, there are still some cultural things to overcome. Yesterday, I pulled into my local drugstore's parking lot. In the car across from me, a couple were putting masks on prior to entering the drugstore. Last year, I probably would have called the cops (suspecting a robbery in process), yesterday I completely approved.

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      Pat Riot

      Here's a great article in The Atlantic about this:

      https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/why-covid-death-rate-down/613945/

      Their conclusion is that it's a variety of factors, including younger people getting sick more, who have a better chance at survival. The numbers are a little early as well since we started the new surge about two weeks ago. And also they are getting better at keeping people alive.

      The *new* data Americans need is the rate of *very sick people*. Just because somebody didn't outright die doesn't mean they aren't extremely sick and potentially messed up for the rest of their life. "Not dead" does not mean, "okay don't worry about it".

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      1. CatoTheElder

        An excellent article, I agree. And I completely agree as well that it’s too early to draw any conclusions from the present divergence in data—we could easily see an upswing in mortality in the near future. I didn’t point out the demographic shift in the afflicted population, but even the CDC director mentioned that the age of typical patients was skewing younger, and there’s really no doubt that medical professionals are getting much better at caring for these patients. Both factors will push case fatality rates down relative to where they were earlier in the pandemic.

        I would quibble oh-so-slightly on the final matter—rather than a measure of the rate of “very sick people”, I’d rather see a measure of the rate of complications likely to give rise to major long-term disability. While there’s always some squishiness about such data (not all patients who have a stroke, for instance, will suffer long-term complications from same), it’s much better than nothing, and more discrete, measurable, and repeatable from place to place than necessarily vague measures of “very sick”. Whilst intensivists can often agree that this patient or that patient is extremely ill, devising reliable and meaningful scores, assessments, etc. to measure “extremely ill” or “very sick” is actually quite difficult. For this very reason, discrete events like stroke, myocardial infarction, kidney failure, and more are often used to help measure/predict outcomes.

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          Pat Riot

          The skewing younger is interesting to me because it would most certainly have to do with *individual behavior*: basically older people are more scared so they are more careful and don't get the virus as much.

          I agree about the noisy data, but we also have a pretty good lot of it since there are so many cases. The hospitalization rate was running 2x the mortality rate for a while so I wonder if that's still the case.

          Also, we're starting to get the data in for the longer-term effects (now that we've had three months for a lot of people). I would love to see what that looks like.

          And then there's a study showing that immunity might only last a few months. Hopefully *this* doesn't hold up:


          https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/13/health/covid-immunity-antibody-response-uk-study-wellness/index.html

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  7. Craig Slater

    Nobody asked but my vote for the Washington NFL team’s new name is the Washington Swamp Rats.

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    Earl King

    If Comey and Hillary didn’t go to jail for lying nor Brennen I don’t see the point of putting a 67 yr old in jail for a white collar political crime. He still is a Felon. Make him pay a fine. Community service.
    Restrepo was 10 times the movie the Outpost is. Bad directing. Characters wooden.

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      Pat Riot

      Also, everybody else they've convicted in the last five years. There are probably several thousand inmates in Federal prisons convicted since those two people allegedly lied. All of those convicted people should obviously go free now. Or maybe just the ones over the age of 66? What do you think?

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        Earl King

        Other than Roger poses no risk to society. He was convicted of one count of witness tampering. The gentlemen who he supposedly tampered said he didn't feel threatened. I think it was over his dog? I have no love for this man but with Governors letting convict violent offenders out of jail over the virus...this seems pretty much a nothing burger. I also don't remember a similar outrage over Obama and Clinton pardons of terrorists. This is political as proven by your hyperbolic reaction.

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      Stephanie

      Comey and Hillary, no matter how much you dislike them, were never indicted and never will be. And 67 years old is young!

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        Pat Riot

        Trump is the only laws, judges and juries his supporters need.

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  9. Gene

    Definitely, after the abuses of Clinton, Obama and Trump.

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    BrettH

    I’ll go with team Mason on the presidential pardoning argument.

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