Fighting Street Gun Violence as if It Were a Contagion [nytimes.com]

CHICAGO — Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist, has spent his life treating contagious diseases: cholera, tuberculosis, H.I.V. — and for the last 23 years, violence.

Yes, violence. A disease is a condition with identifiable symptoms that causes sickness or death. That describes violence.

And we know it spreads itself. There is overwhelming evidence that hurt people hurt other people. Children who grow up in poverty and misery do not commit violence — unless they experienced it. If they were chronically exposed to violence as a child, they are more than 31 times more likely than other people to behave violently themselves.

[For more on this story by Tina Rosenberg, go to https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...ere-a-contagion.html]