The title is a mouthful, I know. If someone has a better suggestion I’m all ears. In the meantime, a new study reveals researchers have been busily infecting ants and tracking their response:

Social animals could potentially further reduce epidemic risk by altering their social networks in the presence of pathogens, yet there is currently no evidence for such pathogen-triggered responses. We tested this hypothesis experimentally in the ant Lasius niger using a combination of automated tracking, controlled pathogen exposure, transmission quantification, and temporally explicit simulations. Pathogen exposure induced behavioral changes in both exposed ants and their nestmates, which helped contain the disease by reinforcing key transmission-inhibitory properties of the colony’s contact network.

It’s an interesting point to bring up among managers in the U.S. who argue that workers should be commended for never, ever taking sick leave, or any leave for that matter.

The United States is one of the few industrialized countries without statutory national mandates for paid leave.

The Americans who deny sick leave not only create a national security risk, they also are taking an unnatural position. Fortunately lawmakers have been slowly working towards recognizing the security benefits of granting leave.

San Francisco first passed a law in 2007 granting one hour paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. That concept has been adopted in five states, 26 cities, a county, and even Washington D.C…then New York City passed a paid sick leave law in 2013.

You never will guess what happened next:

It’s sick the way some health care providers are among the most egregious violators of the city’s paid sick leave law this year. Montefiore Medical Center was forced to pay $114,997…

Sad but true. The mounting fines were just evidence of how badly a law was needed to change some people’s opinions about sick leave.

In even more positive news, President Obama called in 2015 for seven paid sick leave days for all workers in America. His economic arguments were sound advice for improving security of the nation:

When 43 million private-sector workers are without any paid sick leave, too many workers are unable to take the time they need to recover from an illness. Many workers will go to work sick, putting their coworkers and customers at risk of illness. And even if workers have access to paid sick leave for themselves, they may not be able to use it to care for sick children. This forces many parents to choose between taking an unpaid day off work—losing much needed income and potentially threatening his or her job—and sending a child who should be home in bed to school.

Just as importantly, a body of research shows that offering paid sick days and paid family leave can benefit employers by reducing turnover and increasing productivity. Paid sick days would help reduce lost productivity due to the spread of illness in the workplace. And these policies can benefit our economy by fostering a more productive workforce.

Unfortunately his leadership wasn’t enough to overcome the unnatural desire of Congress to block sick leave. Some argued businesses are too weak to survive a law that helps them survive weakness. Yeah, Congress can be really dumb. That meant the issue, although gaining national leadership recognition, reverted back to local level where it repeatedly has proven itself a sound idea.

After evidence poured in (as many sanely predicted) that a sick leave law has no negative economic effects only positive ones, even New Jersey just adopted it statewide in 2018

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy has signed into law the New Jersey Paid Sick Leave Act, which will provide eligible employees with paid leave for their own medical needs, those of a family member, or other covered reasons. The Act will take effect on October 29, 2018.

This is great news, and all the other states should follow suit if Congress is too weak to be able to get its thinking together at the federal level.

Tragic stories of pathogens in the news today only drive home the point of leave time improving everyone’s safety and productivity:

The number of sick people is increasing every day. Twenty-five people have been to the hospital for medical support. Staff serving the shelters have also been sick. The outbreak has been identified and confirmed by the Butte County public health laboratory to be the Norovirus which is highly contagious. Norovirus spreads through touching surfaces contaminated with the virus, close contact with someone who is infected, or eating contaminated food or drink.

[…] Please follow these recommended steps to prevent further spread: Stay home if there is any sign of illness…

America should do it because network pathogen-response is natural. I can only hope the next President proposes an Anti-pathogen National Trigger (ANT) Act to grant paid sick leave nation-wide. It would bring everyone together on a topic that naturally separates them.

The dispersal habits of the male hyena means the females are dominant, leveraging support networks more effectively:

A new study on wild spotted hyaenas shows that in this social carnivore, females dominate males because they can rely on greater social support than males, not because they are stronger or more competitive in any other individual attribute. The main reason for females having, on average, more social support than males is that males are more likely to disperse and that dispersal disrupts social bonds.

Some had tried to postulate that female hyenas had male attributes, which led to dominance. Yet the researchers explain quite clearly that is not the case:

“When two hyaenas squabble, the one that can rely on greater social support wins, irrespective of sex, body mass or aggressiveness,” explains Oliver Hoener, head of the Ngorongoro Hyena Project of the Leibniz-IZW. Differences in social support between two individuals correctly predicted who will be the dominant in almost all encounters and in all contexts — between natives and immigrants, members of the same and different clans, residents and intruders, and individuals of the same and opposite sex. Female dominance thus emerges from females being more likely to receive greater social support than males. “What is so fascinating is that it all works without any direct involvement of other hyaenas,” says Colin Vullioud, Hoener’s colleague at Leibniz-IZW and first author of the study. “In the end, it’s all about assertiveness and how confident a hyaena is of receiving support if needed.”

This perhaps is reflected in results of the most recent American elections. Women with social support networks won a lot of contests with a positive support platform:

There will be a record number of women in the 116th Congress, and 67 percent of Americans feel positive about that, including about 4 in 10 who are excited about it.

Whereas at the same time, the women who adopted the U.S. Regime Leader’s aggressive “I grab” platform of self-puffery and alienation did not fare as well:

The number of Republican women in the House will actually decrease next year…

The latest testimony against a US Navy SEAL, by his own team, includes this harrowing explanation of field risk management

…Gallagher [a veteran of eight deployments] repeatedly fired his weapons, even into crowds, during the platoon’s 2017 deployment.

But several SEALs relayed that the chief often missed, due in part to a poorly-maintained rifle, and they stopped short of telling Gallagher because he wasn’t striking his targets because they “thought it was one way to protect” the civilians

The SEAL chief now faces over a dozen criminal counts, including premeditated murder.

When Iraqi forces brought his team an alleged ISIS fighter for medical care in 2017, Gallagher supposedly stabbed the man to death, in front of medical team, and then posed for digital evidence to be recorded of his actions. The testimony also describes several other incidents including two where he allegedly killed civilians with his poorly-maintained rifle.

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Updated with guilty verdict:

During the trial, it was revealed that nearly all of the platoon members readily posed for photos with the dead ISIS fighter and watched as Gallagher read his reenlistment oath near the body in an impromptu ceremony. Some posed for individual photos but only Gallagher faced charges. […] In one of the more startling testimonies, Navy SEAL Corey Scott, a special warfare operator and medic who was testifying for the prosecution on a grant of immunity, said Gallagher plunged a knife into the neck of the teen but did not actually kill him.

The case is interesting for two reasons.

First, the acquisition of cell phone data from multiple devices has a number of twists and turns about user consent and privacy. Second, clearly this convicted criminal is being made an example of among a much larger ethics problem, as a matter of preserving faith and order in military code. While others may too be convicted or not, the main point is the code can be enforced at all and nobody should be treated as above the law.