Unit 06 Periodic Trends: Fill & Download for Free

(updated 1/2020 - Since I first penned this answer in 4/2015, there continues to be significant interest, so I’m updating this answer with new figures)Do the people of Taiwan consider themselves Chinese?3.6% do.36.5% identify as both Taiwanese and Chinese.56.9% identify as just Taiwanese.3.0% declined to respond.Taiwan’s National Chengchi University Election Study Center regularly conducts a survey asking respondents whether they identify as Taiwanese, as both Taiwanese and Chinese, or as Chinese. The latest poll, conducted in June 2019, found that 56.9% of respondents identified as Taiwanese, which is up from 54.5% one year previous. There’s been a corresponding downward change in the amount of respondents identifying as both Taiwanese and Chinese, and very little change in the number of respondents identifying as only Chinese or not responding.Analysis / Speculation:Overall, it looks like the the numbers have reversed course again—during the period from 2014–2018, the “Taiwanese” only trend was slightly downward, but in 2019 it has almost returned to its high point in 2014. I expect that this is possibly due to the Hong Kong protests which first exploded in June 9, 2019—given the continuing protests and the negative impact this has had on the Taiwanese perception of China’s influence on Hong Kong, I would expect the next survey to show an even stronger increase in the number of people identifying as “Taiwanese” only.Translation Note:"Chinese," as used in the poll, refers to [中國人]. As a note for non-Chinese speakers, this is important because the term "Chinese" may be translated into either [中國人] or [華人]. In Taiwan, these terms used to be interchangeable, but over the past 60 years or so the definition has diverged such that the former [中國人] has more of a flavor of PRC nationalism attached to it, while the latter [華人] is a more generic term that has more of a flavor of Chinese ancestry attached to it. But it's not that simple either; the two terms are still used interchangeably sometimes, both deliberately and accidentally. The "flavors" I've described above are general guidelines, but there is by no means a consensus out there on the exact differences between the two terms.I would also guess that some folks would argue that the use of the term [中國人] in the linked survey would tend to bias the survey respondents against identifying as "Chinese" because of the "flavor" issue. That being said, I'd love to see a survey where the [華人] flavor of "Chinese" was offered as a survey response as well. Then again, maybe the only way to get a really clear answer on this would be to define the terms [中國人] and [華人] in the survey as well.It should be noted that this particular survey also includes questions about whether the respondent believes that Taiwan and China should be united or if Taiwanese should declare independence or support the status quo, as well as a question about identification with particular political parties; this means that the respondent is primed to consider this question about Taiwanese or Chinese identity through a political lens.References:Taiwanese / Chinese Identification Trend Distribution in Taiwan(1992/06~2017/12)Study methodology (scroll down for English)

There are going to be a fairly large number of detained illegal immigrant kids who will not be reunited with their parents because the process of doing DNA confirmation is going to take time and it will turn out that thousands of them did not cross illegally with their parents but with coyotes paid to smuggle them across the border.This happened a lot during the Obama administration and it is happening now. But there certainly wasn’t much outrage several years ago. Our progressives and our mainstream media act like Rip Van Winkle and only woke up after sleeping 8 years.During a surge of undocumented immigration from Central America in 2014, a federal judge ruled that families were being held in “deplorable” conditions in Texas detention centers after crossing the border, according to previous Texas Tribune reporting. U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee gave the Obama administration about two months to release women and children in centers in Dilley and Karnes City, Texas.Homeland Security officials initially said they were detaining families to deter immigrants from illegally crossing the border, according to The New York Times. In February 2015, a federal court ruled that the children had to be released. In 2016, a judge ruled that a 20-day detention limit for children applied to families, too. Federal authorities then released many of those families and told them to return for their court dates. What's happening at the border? Here's what we know about immigrant children and family separationsThe detention time limit for kids was ordered by a federal judge when Obama was President.The policies about placing unaccompanied minors with sponsors and separating children from their families were in place during the Obama administration. They go back to the administration of President George W. Bush.In 2014, Obama faced a dramatic influx of immigration from Central America. DHS officials announced at the time that they would deport anyone who entered the U.S. illegally. And they expanded access to immigration detention centers, where families were held with their children while they were awaiting immigration hearings.The key difference: They did not prosecute those migrants criminally. And court rulings eventually required the administration to end some of the extended detentions of parents and children.And in 2016, a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee released a report that said department officials failed to establish procedures that protected unaccompanied minors. Per that report, children were placed with traffickers who forced them to work on egg farms in Marion, Ohio. Immigrant children: Here's what's happening with kids at the border, policywiseBut this kind of stuff happened during the Bush43 administration as well. This is from the Washington Post.The Associated PressSunday, May 7, 2006; 11:06 PMTIJUANA, Mexico -- Alejandro Valenzuela, a loquacious 12-year-old, memorized the details of a borrowed U.S. birth certificate and jumped in the front seat of his smuggler's car.Tired from a two-day bus trip to the border from Mexico's central state of Jalisco, Alejandro soon fell asleep. He was awakened by the flashlight of a U.S. immigration inspector."I told him in English, 'I'm an American citizen,' but he kept asking questions. That's all the English I know," Alejandro said as he rested at a child welfare office back in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego.Alejandro is one of a rising number of children trying to sneak into the United States without their parents. Some hide in cars or try to pass themselves off as U.S. citizens, while others ride inner tubes across the Rio Grande or trek through the harsh Arizona desert.Since October, about 70,000 children have been detained along the Mexican border, a 5 percent increase over the same period a year earlier, the U.S. Border Patrol says.Like Alejandro _ who wants to get to Corona, Calif., to join a father he hasn't seen in nine years _ most children are heading north to reunite with parents living illegally in the United States.The Sept. 11 terror attacks prompted the United States to tighten security along its southern border, making it harder to sneak in. Rather than risking a return to Mexico to get their children, many migrants are paying smugglers to bring them north.Experts say that number will likely increase if the U.S. Congress presses ahead with plans to tighten border security even more.In the traditional method of crossing children, a smuggler drives across the border pretending to be a relative of the child, who is carrying false or "borrowed" documents. But border agents are giving closer scrutiny to documents, and smugglers are tyring other methods."We're seeing a very dangerous trend of stuffing minors in trunks, in hidden compartments, in washing machines, even in gas tanks," said Adele Fasano, director of field operations for the San Diego district of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.Her district includes the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the world's busiest border crossing.Last August, border inspectors found a 10-year-old boy who had been sedated with cough medicine and crammed inside the dashboard of a van. The boy was unconscious and dehydrated, Fasano said.Other children detained on the California border have been found strapped under car seats, rolled into carpets, hidden in compartments welded under pickup trucks and _ in one case _ stuffed inside a pinata.Fasano said many of those children had to be treated for respiratory distress or burns from being near hot engines."These are criminals working with sophisticated smuggling organizations that will go to any length to make money," Fasano said. "That parents would turn their children over to these criminals is very distressing."Migrants pay up to $2,500 to have a child smuggled through an official border crossing into California. The fee is often cut in half for crossings by foot through the hills near Tijuana or Tecate or across the Arizona desert.Mexican authorities say they are seeing more children smuggled through the Arizona desert, where migrants often endure three days of walking in searing heat during the day and freezing cold at night.In the first three months of this year, Mexican officials turned back 3,289 minors at border crossings in the state of Sonora, across from Arizona _ more than double the 1,566 sent back in the same period last year.Juan Enrique Mendez, who oversees the Tijuana child welfare office that receives children turned over by U.S. authorities, said his center has handled more than 1,700 youngsters since January, 200 more than in the same period last year. Illegal Immigrants Have Kids Smuggled InThat there is delay and difficulty reuniting illegal immigrant kids detained during illegal border crossing is not shocking given the thousands who were brought across the border by adult smugglers.What is shocking is that by a 2 to 1 margin Hispanics in America support more enforcement against illegal immigration, not less.For communities of color, the new administration’s focus on immigration enforcement undoubtedly improves the prospects for American working-class citizens who no longer have to constantly compete in the wage markets against an unending flood of illegal workers. Perhaps for this reason, polling done by a liberal survey organization at the University of California shows that nearly 60 percent of respondents in deeply blue California believe that increasing deportations is very or somewhat important. Nationally, Hispanic Americans believe by a 2-to-1 margin that immigration enforcement is too lax as opposed to too strict. Hispanics Score Under Trump | RealClearPolitics

The Operative: I believe in something greater than myself. A better world.Mal: So me and mine gotta lay down and die so you can live in your better world?”Serenity, 2005You put your real name to this question, User-10149041734004954919, and so I’m going to presume it’s not a troll question and give it a real answer. The fact that your profile says “director, healthcare” gives me pause and concern. I’ll assume that you’re trying to solicit good responses for people who are actually asking you this, and that you yourself are not asking this question personally.There’s a number of problems with this approach of just letting people out because they want to “get on with our lives,” even setting aside the, let’s call it “questionable morality” of human sacrifice to the gods of capitalism.First, who are you going to define as “the most susceptible among us”? As you noted, some “perfectly healthy’ people are also getting sick, some of them critically. How are you going to determine who is at risk and who isn’t? By what criteria will you decide who is locked in their home and who is allowed to go free?Keep in mind that about a quarter of the infected are both asymptomatic and contagious at the same time. They appear fine. And we don’t have effective rapid tests for this disease yet that are not prone to false positives or negatives.So, if you just go with those that seem healthy, you will spread this virus like wildfire, just as you are starting to see with states that didn’t issue stay-at-home orders early on. Florida. Georgia. South Dakota. These states reported their first cases relatively recently, and they are seeing geometric progression of new cases and deaths. The people there aren’t taking it seriously enough because right now, those numbers still seem low, especially compared to New York and New Jersey, and aren’t progressing very rapidly.But that’s largely because they’re several weeks behind those early-impacted states. The problem with geometric progressions is that in the very early stages, they appear to increase about the same as linear progressions. And then they go up. Fast.New York reported its first case at the end of February, 40 days ago. On March 15, there were under 800 cases and three deaths. On March 20, there were 7,102 cases and 46 deaths. On March 30, there were 66,497 cases and 1,218 deaths. On April 10, New York alone stands at 161,504 cases and 7,067 deaths.That means in less than thirty days, New York went from three deaths to over 7,000. In less than fifteen days, New York saw over 6,000 deaths. But in the first three weeks, New York only saw fewer than sixty deaths.Florida didn’t shut down beaches and continued to allow college kids to have their spring break. There are now dozens of confirmed cases that contact tracing shows that’s where they picked it up, and those people passed it on and spread it further. And that’s the thing about geometric progression. Even if every person only goes on to infect two other people, and then those people infect only two other people, in two weeks, just that first person contributed to over 16,000 new cases. There were thousands of people on those beaches.Scientists call this the “R” value. The current estimated R value with only some compliance with precautionary measures is around 2.5. That means in two weeks, one initial case becomes almost 375,000 cases.And that’s precisely what we’re seeing.There is no way to tell for sure, but in just two weeks, there is full reason to believe that those spring breakers may have contributed over a million new cases. At just 1% fatality, that’s 10,000 dead, right there. Just from “perfectly healthy people” who thought they were in a low risk category “getting on with their lives.”There are, as of 9:30 AM CDT, April 10, 2020 (as I write this), approximately 470,000 confirmed cases and 16,700 deaths from COVID-19 in the United States. Because of lack of efficient and effective widespread testing, most epidemiologists believe there is probably an order of magnitude more cases out there that are unconfirmed. That’s nearly five million people.I wrote another answer about this just eighteen days ago, and there were just shy of 15,000 deaths worldwide at that time. Today? It just surpassed 100,000. Believe it or not, that’s actually good news. That means instead of doubling every 3–5 days, which is what it was doing, it’s doubling more like every ten days. That’s amazing, and a testament to how well measures like social distancing early on are working, worldwide.The same is true of cases. Where stay at home orders were not issued until recently or not taken seriously, cases are still doubling about every 5 days. That means in about ten days to two weeks, we’ll see the results of that. There’s a lag in time because of the incubation period. But where stay at home orders have been issued and complied with, such as Minnesota (which is absolutely crushing it right now), they are seeing doubling more like every 15–25 days. That is fantastic.We are nowhere near out of the woods on this one. We are generally doing the right things, but that means we have to keep doing them or we’ll get slapped with a second wave where infections start redoubling every 3–5 days again and then you’ll see deaths follow that doubling pattern about ten days to two weeks later and we’re right back to square one.So, you let people “get on with their lives” today, and about mid-May you can expect the same huge surge in deaths from this rather than in mid-April as was originally going to happen without doing something.But we’re not done here, either. Because this directly impacts the second problem.People are still getting sick and dying of regular things. It’s not like every ICU bed and ventilator were unoccupied going into this. Hospitals generally operate around half to 2/3ds capacity normally. People are still going to have heart attacks and break their legs and get sick from other stuff and have cancer and everything else that occupies hospital and ICU beds.Every case of COVID-19 adds to that load. That’s what makes this so dangerous to do nothing. It might feel like this is going to drag on forever, and it will, but if we just turn it loose and it surges to a peak at the end of April or May, tens or hundreds of thousands more people will die just because there isn’t enough medical care to go around. More people will die of heart attacks. More people will die because of pulmonary failure. More people will die because of cancer. More people will die because of everything that they already die of, just because the system is overloaded.That’s why we have to “flatten the curve.” It’s not just about fewer people getting sick and dying of this thing. It’s about making sure we don’t overload the capacity of our medical system so that people die of every other thing on top of it.If you released everyone that didn’t seem sick today, by August, I’d bet we’d be looking at something like 7–10 million deaths in the United States. Conservatively. That’s a little less than 3% of the U.S. population. That’s assuming that it only infected half of the U.S. population and including the extra deaths from the overloaded healthcare system.Worst case scenario, if you get to Italy levels of overloaded, you’re looking at 8–10%. 10% of the U.S. population is approximately 33 million people. That’s when you include the COVID-19 related deaths and the extra people that will die because there isn’t enough hospital space to go around.By the end of July or August, given those rates, with only minimal precautions like the one you suggest, it’s not unrealistic to expect over five million total deaths. In months.Now, I’m not an epidemiologist. Or a statistician. This is all guesswork based on simple mathematics. It could be a lot more. It could be a lot less.But the folks who do have this expertise are telling us the same thing.If we do everything right, and we do it right now, and we do it very well, 100,000 to 250,000 dead in the United States is our optimistic scenario.If we do nothing or we have poor compliance, it’s millions.Why shouldn’t we just try to quarantine some old or immunocompromised folks and let everyone else roam free?Because that’s a death sentence for hundreds of thousands of people.Now, let’s say you’re good with that, because some people are. Let hundreds of thousands if not millions die for the sake of economy, right? The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, right? The cure can’t be worse than the disease, right? We just have to sacrifice a few virgins to the volcano as the cost of doing business, really. Some folks would say this is abhorrent, but fuck ‘em. The Great God Commerce must be appeased.And you’re bored and you’ve already watched Tiger King and every rerun you can think of. You’ve learned how to bake bread and everything else, besides.Do you know what the economic impact of a million or more people exiting the economy is? A million or more people spending money and buying things and working? It’s a lot. The best way to grow the economy is to keep people in it and the best way to send it into recession is to take a lot of people out.The economic impact of not doing this right is a lot worse than everyone staying home for a couple months.If we try to reopen things too soon and we end up with a crushing second wave of this, it’s a lot worse than doing it right for a longer period of time. If you try to aim at two birds at once, you will end up missing both.Trust the public health experts who have been preparing for this for decades. Listen to them. They are considering the economic impacts as well as the health impacts.Stay home. Wash your hands. Wear a mask if you go out for essentials, and wash everything when you get back.Do your part to make this safer for everyone.Everyone.Edit 4/12/20 — I had to do a mass airlocking this morning of people who couldn’t behave on this even after a couple of warnings. So, a few things that apparently I have to make clear.First, this isn’t the seasonal flu, and comparing the two is dead wrong. And if you think otherwise, you’re likely to end up both dead and wrong. If it was, I’m pretty sure the public health experts, whose job it is to think about this stuff, would have probably figured that out already, don’t you think?You know why it’s not like the flu? Here’s what I’m hearing from those actual public health experts.We have good rapid tests for the flu, including the particular strains at stake. These tests are not prone to false positives or negatives. That means we could quickly and easily identify cases and get a handle on it early. We can quarantine cases right away and the most dangerous strains of the flu can burn themselves out rather than spreading like wildfire.I have a friend who is a clinical lab technician who develops these things. She and the company she works for had a test ready to go in January. The government actually forbid her company from testing. This is in contrast to the H1N1pdm09 outbreak in 2009, where the government was asking labs to prepare testing kits immediately. Because of this good testing, we were able to isolate the most virulent strains incredibly early.Also, this coronavirus is a lot nastier than even a bad seasonal flu. It’s more virulent and contagious, to begin with. It’s R value is closer to 3 than 2, which is where the flu is typically at. To give you a sense of why that matters, an R value of 2 vs. an R value of 3 is the difference between 16,000 new infections from the original infection in two weeks as opposed to 4.78 million, if left unchecked. About 8% of the U.S. population gets the seasonal flu each year (largely thanks to a fairly effective vaccine). If left unchecked, models showed this coronavirus outbreak infecting upwards of sixty to seventy-five percent of the U.S. population. In weeks.On top of that, the flu incubation period is typically 24–96 hours. That means you show symptoms much more quickly, which means you’re less likely to go out and infect others because you feel sick. With this coronavirus, the incubation period is much longer - on average taking ten to fourteen days to become symptomatic. And in that incubation period, you can still be considerably contagious.Additionally, the hospitalization rate for this virus is significantly above that of even a bad seasonal flu. About 1% of flu cases end up in the hospital over the course of a year. It’s about 61 hospitalizations per 100,000 people, or .06%. In contrast, in the U.S., right now we’re looking at nearly three times that: approximately 162 hospitalizations per 100,000 people. Of confirmed cases, the hospitalization rate was about .4% for the H1N1pdm09 flu . We’re still having trouble firming up the numbers for COVID-19 because of inadequate testing, but it’s looking to be around a ten to fifteen percent hospitalization rate for this virus. Even if we assume that’s off by an entire order of magnitude, this thing is still 2.5 times to around 4 times more likely to land you in the hospital than the flu.So, if the same 8% of the U.S. population gets this virus as the seasonal flu, we’re looking at a much higher hospitalization rate, and again: that’s the problem. We don’t have enough beds that can handle those patients. It’s not like if you have spare rooms in the maternity recovery ward, you can shove them in there. You need a ward where they won’t infect everyone else.The morbidity rate of those who are hospitalized is also dramatically greater than influenza and significantly greater overall. The death rate with influenza is about .1% of total cases; even the H1N1 strain that everyone was worried about was about .2%.The morbidity rate with this coronavirus has been averaging closer to 2–8% of total confirmed cases depending on where you are and the adequacy of care. That means that with good health care systems in place, this thing is an order of magnitude more deadly than the flu. Where the health care system goes to shit, such as if it gets swamped and overrun by patients, you could be looking at forty to eighty times more deadly than the seasonal flu, and more overall cases (remember that R value).And no, doctors are not being told to label anyone who tested positive for the virus and later died as having died from coronavirus to artificially inflate the numbers. Stop it with the conspiracy theories.Co-morbidity rates are still wildly unknown, but there is already an alarming trend of younger, healthier people without significant or even any underlying conditions dying from this. All of this data is being tracked, just like it always is.Early on, we thought it mainly attacked the elderly, particularly those susceptible to respiratory illness, when looking at the initial Chinese data. We’re already finding that statistically, that’s not the whole story. There’s a lot of theory that it has to do with viral load and how much exposure you have, as well as two strains (L and S) with the L type seeming to be far more aggressive. It does appear to still have a greater impact the older you are, and that seems to correlate with the number of a specific type of receptor that the virus attacks that gets more concentrated as you age. There can also be genetic predisposition to it by having more of those receptors. We’re still trying to figure this out.Additionally, we’re also finding that a significant number of patients who do recover have lasting respiratory damage. Nobody knows if this will resolve itself or be permanent scarring.This isn’t the flu.This isn’t the flu.This isn’t the goddamned flu.Stop it with “this is just like the flu.”Additional comments to that effect will be deleted and their owners summarily frogmarched to the nearest airlock for a free trip into the voids of cyberspace. I’m done putting up with this nonsense.Second, yes, eventually, we will have to figure out how to manage this and probably before we have a workable vaccine or mass-producible treatments. Right now, we’re buying ourselves time. It’s buying time to figure out how this works. It’s buying time to build more beds and ventilators and the drugs to use them safely. It’s buying time to get enough protective equipment for medical workers, who are starting to suffer the effects of all of this and are starting to die themselves. It’s buying time to slow the peak of all of this so we don’t overwhelm the system and then everyone else dies of things like broken legs that are otherwise treatable.Third, for those bitching about their civil liberties, I’ll point you to the words of Thomas Jefferson, who sagely noted that your right to swing your fist ends at my face.When you decide that you can just go fishing because you’re bored despite a stay at home order, you are putting people at risk. When you decide that you are young and healthy and so you go out to the beaches or play ultimate frisbee with your friends, you are putting people at risk. When you don’t take this seriously and don’t engage in social distancing, you are putting people at risk.Your civil liberties do not give you the right to engage in negligent homicide.Your stock portfolio’s decline does not give you the right to engage in negligent homicide.Your boredom does not give you the right to engage in negligent homicide.I will no longer indulge these kinds of comments. Their owners will also be summarily frogmarched to the exits.