scholarly journals Public opinion on coronavirus vaccination 1: A majority of Americans would take the existing Russian vaccine and believe that they ought to be allowed to buy it

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Kelley ◽  
MDR Evans ◽  
Charlotte Corday
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Approval Process ◽  
National Surveys ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Republican Government ◽  
Considerable Period ◽  
New Vaccines ◽  
Do So

In the US new vaccines are banned until shown to be safe and effective. But the approval process is slow and cautious and no vaccine has yet been approved. The faster but perhaps riskier Russian system produced an approved coronavirus vaccine months more quickly, leaving Americans at risk of dying for months longer than Russians. Our data from two national surveys in September show that a majority of Americans would willingly take the existing Russian vaccine and that a two-to-one majority – rich and poor, young and old, Democrat and Republican alike – believe that they ought to be allowed to do so. We estimate that making the Russian vaccine immediately available would save approximately 40 to 100 American lives each day after the first month and many more subsequently, To put the matter bluntly, current US government policy will kill some 40 to 100 people each day for a considerable period later this year and early next. To put those deaths in context, all American murderers combined kill only 45 people each day – not a record the US government should wish to emulate. There are also implications for the 2020 election; Since feelings about the Russian coronavirus vaccine are strongly favorable, and the benefits of allowing it in the US are large, making it available should be attractive politically. The Republican government has the power to adopt that policy and gain the credit. Alternatively, the Democratic opposition has the opportunity to advocate that policy, and claim the credit.

scholarly journals Public opinion on coronavirus vaccination: Health Implications of Americans' surprisingly widespread acceptance of early Russian and Chinese vaccines

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Kelley ◽  
MDR Evans ◽  
Charlotte Corday
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Medical Technology ◽  
Domestic Policy ◽  
Approval Process ◽  
National Surveys ◽  
The Us ◽  
Widespread Acceptance ◽  
Us Government ◽  
New Vaccines

In the US, new vaccines are banned until accepted as safe and effective by the FDA. But the approval process is slow and cautious. The faster, but perhaps riskier, Russian system (like the Chinese) produced an approved coronavirus vaccine months more quickly, leaving Americans at risk of dying for months longer than Russians. Despite widespread fears that many would be hesitant to accept vaccination at all, and understandable doubts about vaccine approval processes outside the US, data from two national surveys in September 2020 show, very surprisingly, that a majority of Americans at that time would have willingly taken the Russian vaccine. Moreover a two-to-one majority of Americans – rich and poor, young and old, Democrat and Republican alike – believed that they ought to be allowed to buy it. Based on those figures, we estimate that making the Russian vaccine (or the Chinese) immediately available would have saved 70 or more American lives each day in the autumn of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. To put that in context, US government prohibitions on Russian and Chinese vaccines cost more lives each day than the roughly 45 people killed daily by all American murderers combined. For the US government, a less authoritarian domestic policy, and a clearer appreciation of the globalization of medical technology, would seem to be indicated.

Public Opinion and International Policy Choices: Global Commitments for Japan and Its Peers?

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davis B. Bobrow ◽  
Mark A. Boyer
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Global Order ◽  
International Policy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Political Incentives ◽  
International Public Goods ◽  
The Us ◽  
Actual Contribution ◽  
Do So

To understand the prospects for global order and progress in the coming years, we explore the joint implications of three premises: (1) states advantaged by the current international order have stakes in its regularity and predictability, and thus in moving to counter or prevent threats to those stakes; (2) along impure public and club goods lines, they are more likely to make efforts to do so when some private or club benefits result; and (3) public opinion provides a bounded policy acceptance envelope offering incentives and disincentives to national political elites to act as envisioned by the first two premises. We present a mosaic of public opinion in major OECD countries (the US, Japan, and major EU members) on three policy areas – foreign aid, UN peace-keeping operations, and environmental quality – that contain international public goods elements. Actual contribution tendencies in those areas found in our previous work largely conform to the public opinion patterns reported here. Within the limits of available data, domestic political incentives as represented by public opinion warrant neither extreme optimism nor pessimism about the prospects for continuing contributions by OECD states to sustaining orderly functioning of the current world system.

Preventive Pediatrics: The Promise and the Peril

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-422
Author(s):  
Leon Eisenberg
Keyword(s):  
Government Policy ◽  
Premature Death ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Motivation ◽  
Medical Specialists ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Us ◽  
To Come ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Do So

I was deeply honored to have been invited by the Canadian Paediatric Society to serve as its 18th Queen Elizabeth II Lecturer. Even as I relished the honor, I found it daunting, given the distinction of my predecessors. Having considered at length how best to respond, I chose to address prevention, a field with which pediatrics has been concerned since its inception as a specialty. Although the commitment of pediatrics to disease prevention has been unswerving, the diseases that have been the target of its efforts have necessarily changed as the distribution of disease in the population has changed and as scientific advances have created new opportunities for intervention. What pediatricians were once almost alone among medical specialists in emphasizing has now become the target of government policy in Canada,1 the United States,2 and the United Kingdom.3 This, however, is not quite the triumph it may seem. Physicians who advocate prevention do so in the hope of avoiding unnecessary suffering and premature death for their patients. Politicians who do so may not be unmindful of these goals, but their primary motivation is controlling the costs of medical care. The US Forward Plan for Health2 was unabashed about it: "the primary focus of our program is a major attack on cost escalation." The differences in motivation between physicians and politicians have important consequences for health policy, consequences that imperil the promise of prevention. Let me, then, begin with a few words of history, move on to the promise of preventive pediatrics in the years to come, and conclude by discussing the hazards associated with the use of prevention as a political rather than a medical slogan.

The Party or the Purse? Unequal Representation in the US Senate

2019 ◽  
Vol 113 (4) ◽  
pp. 917-940 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEFFREY R. LAX ◽  
JUSTIN H. PHILLIPS ◽  
ADAM ZELIZER
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Lower Income ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Us Senate ◽  
Do So

Recent work on US policymaking argues that responsiveness to public opinion is distorted by money, in that the preferences of the rich matter much more than those of lower-income Americans. A second distortion—partisan biases in responsiveness—has been less well studied and is often ignored or downplayed in the literature on affluent influence. We are the first to evaluate, in tandem, these two potential distortions in representation. We do so using 49 Senate roll-call votes from 2001 to 2015. We find that affluent influence is overstated and itself contingent on partisanship—party trumps the purse when senators have to take sides. The poor get what they want more often from Democrats. The rich get what they want more often from Republicans, but only if Republican constituents side with the rich. Thus, partisanship induces, shapes, and constrains affluent influence.

Countries prepare for ‘active defence’ of space

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Arms Control ◽  
Near Miss ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Active Defence ◽  
Actual Conflict ◽  
Do So ◽  
Trigger Action

Subject Space as a domain of warfare. Significance The US government has created a Space Force as a new branch of its military. Similar changes are under way in France and Japan. Russia’s test of an anti-satellite missile on April 15 and the ‘shadowing’ of a US satellite by a Russian spacecraft in January highlight the growing military importance of space. Impacts Development of offensive capabilities for space warfare will probably be slow and those who do so will downplay it. Covert Russian and Chinese anti-satellite missiles tests will help make the case for arming the US Space Force as a deterrent. Only a near miss or actual conflict in space is likely to trigger action to reach arms control agreements.

scholarly journals Remembering the Future: Entrepreneurship Guidebooks in the US, from Meditation to Method (1945-1975)

2012 ◽  
pp. 40-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Giraudeau
Keyword(s):  
Business Plan ◽  
The Self ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Future ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Major Shift ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Mental Techniques ◽  
Do So

This paper discusses Foucault’s analyses of the rise of the entrepreneur in the second half of the 20th century. Whereas Foucault based his conclusions on readings of economic theory, we propose here to look at “practical texts,” i.e. entrepreneurship guidebooks, in the way Foucault himself did in his research on antiquity. We also mobilize Foucauldian concepts from his lectures on the “Care of the Self” and the “Hermeneutics of the Subject” to account for our empirical observations. By comparing two series of entrepreneurship guidebooks issued by the US government in the mid-1940s and the late 1950s-1975, we argue that a major shift occurred between these two periods. In the 1940s, the future was supposed to be meditated upon: entrepreneurs were incited to mentally consider the dangers of running a business, and they were given mental techniques, along with basic paper technologies (e.g. checklists), in order to do so. A bit more than a decade later and for the decades to follow, entrepreneurs were told to plan their new businesses thoroughly, and thus to devise their future; they were provided with more advanced paper technologies (accounting technologies and business plan templates). The future was no more an object of meditation: it had become a methodical project.

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