Author: Art Diamond

The Elite Experts Who Have Failed, Tend to Censor the Heterodox Outsiders Who They Fear

(p. 8) When you have a chronic illness and struggle to get better, you try to maintain a certain equilibrium by distinguishing yourself from all those other sick people, the ones who are trying truly crazy things while you are proceeding sensibly and moderately along the path to health.

. . .

These exotic treatments, from acupuncture to IV vitamin C to magnet therapy and more, weren’t the core of what helped me eventually gain ground and improve — strong and various doses of antibiotics played the central role. But they were the most educational part of my slow, still-continuing recovery, in the sense of what they revealed about the complexity and strangeness of the world.

The strangest of them all was the Rife machine.

. . .

Naturally, it worked.

What does “worked” mean, you may reasonably ask? Just this: By this point in my treatment, there was a familiar feeling whenever I was symptomatic and took a strong dose of antibiotics — a temporary flare of pain and discomfort, a desire to move or rub the symptomatic areas of my body, a sweating or itching feeling, followed by a wave of exhaustion and then a mild relief. I didn’t get this kind of reaction with every alternative treatment I tried. But with the Rife machine I got it instantly: It was like having a high dose of antibiotics hit the body all at once.

Of course, this was obviously insane, so to the extent that I was able I conducted experiments, trying frequencies for random illnesses to see if they elicited the same effect (they did not), setting up blind experiments where I ran frequencies without knowing if they were for Lyme disease or not (I could always tell).

. . .

When I set out to write about the entire chronic-illness experience, I hesitated over whether to tell this kind of story. After all, if you’re trying to convince skeptical readers to take chronic sickness seriously, and to make the case for the medical-outsider view of how to treat Lyme disease, reporting that you’ve been dabbling in pseudoscience and that it works is a good way to confirm every stereotype about chronic ailments and their treatment: It’s psychosomatic … it’s all the power of suggestion … it’s a classic placebo effect … poor Ross, taken in by the quacks … he’ll be ‘doing his own research’ on vaccination next

    .

    But there are two good reasons to share this sort of story. The first is that it’s true, it really happened, and any testimony about what it’s like to fight for your health for years would be dishonest if it left the weird stuff out.

    The second is that this kind of experience — not the Rife machine specifically, but the experience of falling through the solid floor of establishment consensus and discovering something bizarre and surprising underneath — is extremely commonplace. And the interaction between the beliefs instilled by these experiences and the skepticism they generate (understandably) from people who haven’t had them, for whom the floor has been solid all their lives, is crucial to understanding cultural polarization in our time.

    On both sides of our national divides, insider and outsider, establishment and populist, something in human psychology makes us seek coherence and simplicity in our understanding of the world. So people who have a terrible experience with official consensus, and discover that some weird idea that the establishment derides actually seems to work, tend to embrace a new rule to replace the old one: that official knowledge is always wrong, that outsiders are always more trustworthy than insiders, that if Dr. Anthony Fauci or the Food and Drug Administration get some critical things wrong, you can’t trust them to get anything right.

    This impulse explains why fringe theories tend to cluster together, the world of outsider knowledge creating its own form of consensus and self-reinforcement. But it also explains the groupthink that the establishment often embraces in response, its fear that pure craziness automatically abounds wherever official knowledge fails, and its commitment to its own authority as the only thing standing between society and the abyss.

    This is a key dynamic in political as well as biomedical debates. The conspicuous elite failures in the last 20 years have driven many voters to outsider narratives, which blend plausible critiques of the system with outlandish paranoia. But the insiders only see the paranoia, the QAnon shaman and his allies at the gates. So instead of reckoning with their own failures, they pull up the epistemic drawbridge and assign fact checkers to patrol the walls. Which in turn confirms for outsiders their belief that the establishment has essentially blinded itself and only they have eyes to see.

    What we need, I’m convinced, are more people and institutions that sustain a position somewhere in between.

For the full commentary, see:

Ross Douthat. “How I Became Extremely Open-Minded.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sunday, November 7, 2021): 8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date November 6, 2021, and has the same title as the print version. The passages that are underlined above, were in italics in the original. In the underlined passages I use a hyphen were the original had ellipses.)

The passages quoted above are from a commentary adapted from Douthat’s book:

Douthat, Ross. The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery. New York: Convergent Books, 2021.

Large Retailers Chartered Ships to Avoid the Most Crowded Ports

(p. A1) Global supply-chain delays are so severe that some of the biggest U.S. retailers have resorted to an extreme—and expensive—tactic to try to stock shelves this holiday season: They are chartering their own cargo ships to import goods.

Port delays, Covid-19 outbreaks and worker shortages have snarled the flow of products between Asia and North America, threatening the supplies of everything from holiday decorations and toys to appliances and furniture. It is taking roughly 80 days to transport goods across the Pacific, or twice as long as before the pandemic, retail and shipping executives said.

Walmart Inc., Home Depot Inc., Costco Wholesale Corp. and Target Corp. —some of the biggest U.S. retailers by revenue—are among the companies that are paying for their own chartered ships as part of wider plans to mitigate the disruptions, a costly and unattainable option for most companies.

For the full story, see:

Sarah Nassauer and Costas Paris. “Retailers Charter Ships to Ensure Supplies.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, October 11, 2021): A1 & A6.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date October 10, 2021, and has the title “Big U.S. Retailers Charter Private Cargo Ships Amid Port Delays.”)

To Get “Free” Covid Pills from 60 Miles Away You Pay Private Uber to Deliver

(p. 1) Just after 1 p.m. on Tuesday last week, my phone buzzed with a text message from my mother: “Well, came down with cold, aches, cough etc over wknd.” She had taken an at-home coronavirus test. It was positive.

Having spent the past year writing about Covid-19 vaccines and treatments for The New York Times, I knew a lot about the options available to people like my mother. Yet I was about to go on a seven-hour odyssey that would show me there was a lot I didn’t grasp.

. . .

(p. 3) In the end, my scramble to find a prescriber turned out to be unnecessary. In the early evening, my mother got an unexpected call from a doctor with her primary care provider. She told the doctor about her symptoms and about the Rite Aid I had found with Paxlovid in stock.

The doctor told her that he was surprised that we had been able to track down Paxlovid. He phoned in a prescription to the Rite Aid.

Now we just needed to pick up the pills before the pharmacy closed in about an hour.

Uber came to the rescue. I requested a pickup at the Rite Aid and listed the destination as my mother’s home, some 60 miles away.

Once a driver accepted the ride, I called him and explained my unusual request: He’d need to get the prescription at the pharmacy window and then drive it to my mother’s. I told him I’d give him a 100 percent tip.

The driver, who asked me not to use his name in this article, was game. He delivered the precious cargo just after 8 p.m. My mother swallowed the first three pills — the beginning of a five-day, 30-pill regimen — within minutes of the driver’s arrival.

. . .

. . . the fact that the process was so hard for a journalist whose job it is to understand how Paxlovid gets delivered is not encouraging. I worry that many patients or their family would give up when told “no” as many times as I was.

I was also reminded that even a “free” treatment can come with significant costs.

The federal government has bought enough Paxlovid for 20 million Americans, at a cost of about $530 per person, to be distributed free of charge. But I spent $256.54 getting the pills for my mother. I paid $39 for the telemedicine visit with the provider who told my mother that she would need to visit in person. The rest was the Uber fare and tip. Many patients and their families can’t afford that.

President Biden recently called the Pfizer pills a “game changer.” My experience suggests it won’t be quite so simple.

For the full story, see:

Rebecca Robbins. “A 7-Hour Odyssey to Get My Mom Covid Pills.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sunday, January 23, 2022): 1 & 3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 19, 2022, and has the title “When My Mom Got Covid, I Went Searching for Pfizer’s Pills.”)

Change in Census Question-Wording Drove Seeming Decline in “White” Population

(p. A17) The most common reaction to the release of the 2020 census was summed up in the headline “Census Data show the number of white people fell.” The data show the number of whites declining by 8.6%. This observation was often coupled with a political projection: that while gerrymandering could benefit Republicans in 2022, the political future belongs to the Democratic Party, which commands large majorities among minorities.

. . .

In the 2010 census, 53% of those who said they were of Hispanic origin checked off only “white,” a 58% increase in numbers from 2000. That rise in white Hispanics helped account for the increase in the number of whites from the prior census. But in the 2020 census, a mere 20.3% of Hispanics checked off only “white,” contributing to the 8.6% decline in the total number of people identifying only as white.

That dramatic change probably stemmed not from a shift in social consciousness or demographics, but from a subtle change in the 2020 question about race. In 2010 the census asked respondents to check off whether they were white, black or African-American, American Indian or Alaska Native, various varieties of Asian or Pacific Islander, and “some other race.” They may check off as many race boxes as are applicable.

But in 2020 the census asked respondents who checked off “white” to specify their nationality: “Print, for example, German, Irish, Italian, Lebanese, Egyptian, etc.” No Spanish-speaking nationality was listed. That likely created the impression that Hispanic was another race, notwithstanding the previous question’s disclaimer that “Hispanic origins are not races.”

For the full commentary, see:

John B. Judis. “How the Census Misleads on Race.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, August 30, 2021): A17.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date August 29, 2021, and has the same title as the print version.)

Less-Ventilated Energy-Efficient Buildings Reduce Indoor Air Quality, Harming Cognitive Performance

(p. D6) A new study shows that poor indoor air quality is associated with subtle impairments in a number of cognitive functions, including our ability to concentrate and process information. The study tracked 302 office workers in commercial buildings in six countries — the United States, Britain, China, India, Mexico and Thailand — for 12 months.

The scientists used monitors to measure ventilation and indoor air quality in the buildings, including levels of fine particulate matter, which includes dust and minuscule particles from smoking, cleaning products and outdoor air pollution that seeps into the building. The workers were asked to use an app to take regular cognitive tests during the workday. The tests included simple math problems, as well as a tricky color and word brain teaser called the Stroop test, in which a word like “blue” or “purple” is printed in green or red ink.  . . .

The study found that the office workers in buildings with the poorest indoor air quality tended to perform worse on the brain teasers. While the effect wasn’t dramatic, the findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that the air we breathe affects brain health.

. . .

“This study looked at how several factors in the indoor environment have an immediate impact on our cognitive function and performance,” said Joseph G. Allen, the director of the Harvard Healthy Buildings program and the study’s senior author. “This study shows that the air you’re breathing at your desk at that moment has an impact on how well you think.”

In the past, air quality control in buildings has been mostly focused on energy efficiency and comfort, with little consideration given to infection control or overall worker health.

. . .

Dr. Allen is the co-author of a new book, “Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity.” He said he’s been encouraged to see more businesses and individuals taking indoor air quality more seriously as a result of the pandemic. Recently he saw a job posting at a major company advertising for a “head of healthy buildings” in the company’s global real estate division.

“It tells you that serious companies are changing how they approach their buildings, and they’re not thinking about this as a one-off during Covid,” said Dr. Allen.

. . .

“The pressure is coming from employees, parents of kids in school, teachers — there’s a heightened level of awareness and expertise,” said Dr. Allen. “How many people were talking about MERV 13 filters prior to the pandemic? This knowledge that our indoor spaces have been underperforming is not going away. I think people are rightly frustrated and fed up with it.”

For the full story, see:

Tara Parker-Pope. “What Bad Indoor Air Could Do to Your Brain.” The New York Times (Tuesday, September 28, 2021): D6.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Sept. 28, 2021, and has the title “Is Bad Indoor Air Dulling Your Brain?”)

The book co-authored by Allen, and mentioned above, is:

Allen, Joseph G., and John D. Macomber. Healthy Buildings: How Indoor Spaces Drive Performance and Productivity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020.

Pandemic Increased Population Shift to the Exurbs

(p. A1) MURFREESBORO, Tenn.—This bucolic town 30 miles southeast of Nashville, Tenn., was once best known for its nearby Civil War battlefield and state college. Now it is one of the fastest-growing places in the country.

Surging housing costs and remote work are sending droves of people to live in new, fast-growing exurbs of metropolitan areas in the Southeast where suburban living has long been concentrated closer to the city.

Nashville, Charlotte, N.C., Charleston, S.C., and Jacksonville, Fla., are among the places getting the type of outer-ring residential development once found only around the country’s largest cities.

In 2020, net migration into a large group of exurban counties rose 37%, according to an analysis of U.S. Postal Service permanent change-of-address data by The Wall Street Journal. Nearly two-thirds of the flow came from large cities and their close-in suburbs.

Exurban areas, which include 240 counties as defined by the Brookings Institution, grew at almost twice the national rate over the past decade, a shift that began before the pandemic. There are signs it is accelerating this year as Americans prepare for an expected post-pandemic landscape where increased working from home reduces the need to commute.

Researchers differ in defining exurbs, but they gen-(p. A10)erally include the fast-growing outer fringes of large metro areas where single-family homes mix with farms and many workers have traditionally commuted a significant distance to the core of the metro area.”

For the full story, see:

Cameron McWhirter and Paul Overberg. “Pandemic Changes Swell Exurbs.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, August 30, 2021): A1 & A10.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date August 29, 2021, and has the title “New Life and Work Choices Revitalize Exurbs, Bringing New Strains.” The online version says that the title of the (New York?) print version was “Pandemic Stokes Exurbs Boom.” But my (National?) print version had the title “Pandemic Changes Swell Exurbs.”)

Democratic Gerrymandering in New York Greater Than Republican Gerrymandering in Any Other State

(p. A1) Democrats across the nation have spent years railing against partisan gerrymandering, particularly in Republican states — most recently trying to pass federal voting rights legislation in Washington to all but outlaw the practice.

But given the same opportunity for the first time in decades, Democratic lawmakers in New York adopted on Wednesday [February 3, 2022] an aggressive reconfiguration of the state’s congressional districts that positions the party to flip three seats in the House this year, a greater shift than projected in any other state.

. . .

(p. A21) Overall, the new map was expected to favor Democratic candidates in 22 of New York’s 26 congressional districts. Democrats currently control 19 seats in the state, compared with eight held by Republicans. New York is slated to lose one seat overall this year because of national population changes in the 2020 census.

“It’s a master class in how to draw an effective gerrymander,” said Michael Li, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which has also sounded alarms about attempts by Republicans to gerrymander and pass other restrictive voting laws.

“Sometimes you do need fancy metrics to tell, but a map that gives Democrats 85 percent of the seats in a state that is not 85 percent Democratic — this is not a particularly hard case,” he said.

For the full story, see:

Nicholas Fandos, Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Grace Ashford. “Gerrymandering by New York Democrats May Flip 3 House Seats.” The New York Times (Thursday, February 3, 2022): A1 & A21.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date February 2, 2022, and has the title “A ‘Master Class’ in Gerrymandering, This Time Led by N.Y. Democrats.”)

A Driving Goldfish Shows “Smart” Adaptive Intelligence

(p. A1) Ronen Segev is out to clear the goldfish’s bad reputation.

“Many times people come to me and ask me, ‘We thought that [a] goldfish has a three-second memory span.’ This is incorrect. It’s very important to make this point,” he said. “Fish are smart, even goldfish.”

His case rests on a viral video he tweeted last month of a goldfish driving a water-tank-equipped robotic vehicle down the side of a street and inside his lab at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. The roboride was part of a scientific study to test whether goldfish had the mental acuity to navigate a terrestrial environment toward a target using a machine. The six goldfish that took part in driver’s training passed their test.

. . .

(p. A9) “The ability to change in response to a changing environment, it’s so important to survival,” said Kelly Lambert, a neuroscientist at the University of Richmond in Virginia, who has trained rats, but not fish, to drive. “The flexibility is what is so amazing about a brain. If you had a brain that was fixed, if anything changed in the environment—we’re done.”

Dr. Segev, a neuroscientist who has been studying fish cognition for 16 years, didn’t hold back on the menu of challenges he devised for his goldfish. His aim was to show that animal brains aren’t inferior to human ones; they’re just different because they evolved in a different environment, he said. Animal brains are flexible enough to adapt to new situations, a fundamental characteristic of all brains, neuroscientists say.

He put a goldfish in a tank aboard a robot outfitted with computer-vision software that tracked the fish’s movement. When the fish moved inside its plexiglass pool, the robot moved with it. The fish had to learn that when it swam right, the robotic vehicle moved in that direction too.

The fish had to use their new cognitive skills to find a target, a pink board inside a lab. In return for hitting their mark, the fish got rewarded with a pellet of food.

For the full story, see:

Daniela Hernandez. “In This Fish Story, a Goldfish Drives a Vehicle Down the Street.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, February 7, 2022): A1 & A9.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date February 6, 2022, and has the title “How Do You Teach a Goldfish to Drive? First You Need a Vehicle.”)

Jobs and Wages Improved for Black Americans During Pre-Pandemic Trump Years

(p. A11) Over the first three years of Mr. Trump’s presidency, blacks (and Hispanics) experienced record-low rates of unemployment and poverty, while wages for workers at the bottom of the income scale rose faster than they did for management. Whether that was the goal of the Trump administration or an unintended consequence is a debate I’ll leave to others. But there is no doubting that the financial situation of millions of working-class black Americans improved significantly under Mr. Trump’s policies.

. . .

. . . job growth accelerated, unemployment kept falling, and economic growth improved. In early 2017, the new president set about implementing what he had promised during the campaign: lower taxes and lighter regulation. He nominated Kevin Hassett, who had published research showing how corporate taxes depress wages for manufacturing workers, to lead the Council of Economic Advisers. He urged Congress to reduce the tax rate on corporate profits, which at 35% was one of the highest in the developed world.

. . .

Between 2017 and 2019, median household incomes grew by 15.4% among blacks and only 11.5% among whites. The investment bank Goldman Sachs released a paper in March 2019 that showed pay for those at the lower end of the wage distribution rising at nearly double the rate of pay for those at the upper end. Average hourly earnings were growing at rates that hadn’t been seen in almost a decade, but what “has set this rise apart is that it’s the first time during the economic recovery that began in mid-2009 that the bottom half of earners are benefiting more than the top half—in fact, about twice as much,” CNBC reported.

Citing a graph included in Goldman’s analysis, CNBC added that the “trend began in 2018”—the first year that the corporate tax cuts were in effect—“and has continued into this year and could be signaling a stronger economy than many experts think.”

For the full commentary, see:

Jason L. Riley. “The Trump Boom Lifted Black Americans.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, January 29, 2022): A11.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 28, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

The passages from Riley’s commentary quoted above were adapted from his book:

Riley, Jason L. The Black Boom. West Conshocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2022.

Best New Climate Models Fail at Accurately “Hind-Casting” Past Temperatures

(p. A1) BOULDER, Colo.—For almost five years, an international consortium of scientists was chasing clouds, determined to solve a problem that bedeviled climate-change forecasts for a generation: How do these wisps of water vapor affect global warming?

They reworked 2.1 million lines of supercomputer code used to explore the future of climate change, adding more-intricate equations for clouds and hundreds of other improvements. They tested the equations, debugged them and tested again.

The scientists would find that even the best tools at hand can’t model climates with the sureness the world needs as rising temperatures impact almost every region.

When they ran the updated simulation in 2018, the conclusion jolted them: Earth’s atmosphere was much more sensitive to greenhouse gases than decades of previous models had predicted, and future temperatures could be much higher than feared—perhaps even beyond hope of practical remedy.

(p. A9) “We thought this was really strange,” said Gokhan Danabasoglu, chief scientist for the climate-model project at the Mesa Laboratory in Boulder at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, or NCAR.

. . .

As world leaders consider how to limit greenhouse gases, they depend heavily on what computer climate models predict. But as algorithms and the computer they run on become more powerful—able to crunch far more data and do better simulations—that very complexity has left climate scientists grappling with mismatches among competing computer models.

While vital to calculating ways to survive a warming world, climate models are hitting a wall. They are running up against the complexity of the physics involved; the limits of scientific computing; uncertainties around the nuances of climate behavior; and the challenge of keeping pace with rising levels of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases. Despite significant improvements, the new models are still too imprecise to be taken at face value, which means climate-change projections still require judgment calls.

“We have a situation where the models are behaving strangely,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences, a leading center for climate modeling. “We have a conundrum.”

. . .

In its guidance to governments last year, the U.N. climate-change panel for the first time played down the most extreme forecasts.

Before making new climate predictions for policy makers, an independent group of scientists used a technique called “hind-casting,” testing how well the models reproduced changes that occurred during the 20th century and earlier. Only models that re-created past climate behavior accurately were deemed acceptable.

In the process, the NCAR-consortium scientists checked whether the advanced models could reproduce the climate during the last Ice Age, 21,000 years ago, when carbon-dioxide levels and temperatures were much lower than today. CESM2 and other new models projected temperatures much colder than the geologic evidence indicated. University of Michigan scientists then tested the new models against the climate 50 million years ago when greenhouse-gas levels and temperatures were much higher than today. The new models projected higher temperatures than evidence suggested.

For the full story, see:

Robert Lee Hotz. “Climate Scientists Encounter Computer Models’ Limits.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, February 7, 2022): A1 & A9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date February 6, 2022, and has the title “Climate Scientists Encounter Limits of Computer Models, Bedeviling Policy.”)

30,000 Tourists Find the Longest Queue at Shanghai Disney Is for Covid-19 Test

(p. A1) More than 30,000 visitors to the Shanghai Disneyland theme park were kept within the park’s gates on Sunday [October 31, 2021] and forced to undergo Covid-19 testing after a customer tested positive for the virus, a move that underscores China’s eradication efforts.

With fireworks exploding above them as they awaited nasal swabs, the Disney visitors became the latest Chinese residents to experience life under a “zero tolerance” policy for the virus enforced by their country’s government. Leaders there have taken stringent measures to contain pockets of the coronavirus in the country, despite criticism from business groups and a close to 80% vaccination rate.

“I never thought that the longest queue in Disneyland would be for a nucleic acid test,” one visitor said on social media.

(p. A6) Disney’s gargantuan mainland park—home to a Tomorrowland, Gardens of Imagination and Mickey Avenue—turned into a giant testing site late into Sunday evening, with guests required to be tested before being allowed to leave. The last visitor walked out at 10:30 p.m., said a Walt Disney Co. spokesman. Disney, which is a minority owner in the resort and has seen a spectrum of responses to Covid-19 at its parks around the world, had to comply with China’s local protocols, said the spokesman.

The shutdown on Sunday illustrates the lack of control Disney and other Western firms have in China, especially as officials work to clamp down Covid-19 outbreaks. The world’s largest entertainment company has yet to see park attendance return to pre-pandemic levels, and Sunday’s shutdown highlights the difficulties of reopening the global tourism economy while the threat of outbreaks still looms.

. . .

The mass testing proved a surreal scene. Videos shared by guests on social media showed swarms of people—many dressed up in Halloween costumes—queuing up for tests before they could leave. One showed the Disney evening fireworks erupting behind workers in hazmat suits conducting tests for park visitors.

For the full story, see:

Natasha Khan and Erich Schwartzel. “China Pens 30,000 Visitors In Park After Covid-19 Case.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, November 2, 2021): A1 & A6.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Nov. 1, 2021, and has the title “China Locks 30,000 Visitors Inside Shanghai Disneyland After Covid-19 Case.”)