Author: Art Diamond

Covid-19 Pandemic Reduces Appeal of Reusable Bags

(p. B5) An oft-cited study by researchers at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University found that reusable plastic bags can contain bacteria, and that users don’t wash reusable bags very often.

. . .

In New York, John Flanagan, the top Republican in the State Senate, called for the state this month to suspend the plastic bag ban that went into force on March 1 [2020]. The ban’s enforcement had already been delayed pending a legal challenge unrelated to the virus.

“Now is not the time or place,” Mr. Flanagan said in an interview. “This is a state of emergency.” Moreover, “people miss the plastic bags,” he said. “They were very functional and useful. We need to reopen the discussions.”

Libertarian groups have joined the effort. In Albuquerque, the Rio Grande Foundation, which bills itself as New Mexico’s premier free-market think tank, has spearheaded opposition to a move to strengthen the city’s plastic bag ban.

. . .

“Is there a worse idea in this time of Coronavirus,” the group quipped in a recent posting on Twitter, “than a plan to ‘more fully’ ban plastic bags?’”

Some supermarket chains have moved ahead with their own ban on reusable bags. The Midwestern supermarket chain Hy-Vee has said it was no longer accepting reusable bags at their stores. Price Chopper said on Twitter that it was phasing plastic bags back into use at its stores in New York.

For the full story, see:

Hiroko Tabuchi. “Plastics Industry Sees Chance to Undo Bans on Single-Use Bags.” The New York Times (Friday, March 27, 2020): B5.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 26, 2020, and has the title “In Coronavirus, Industry Sees Chance to Undo Plastic Bag Bans.”)

The “oft-cited study” mentioned above, is:

Williams, David L., Charles P. Gerba, Sherri Maxwell, and Ryan G. Sinclair. “Assessment of the Potential for Cross-Contamination of Food Products by Reusable Shopping Bags.” Food Protection Trends 31, no. 8 (Aug. 2011): 508–13.

Fresh Water Great Lakes at Near-Record High Levels

Global warming activists sometimes claim that a harm of global warming is reduced fresh water supplies. As noted in the passage quoted below, the Great Lakes, the world’s greatest reserve of fresh water, are now at record or near-record levels.

(p. A3) Record and near-record water levels in all five Great Lakes are resulting in tens of millions of dollars in damage from Minnesota to New York as eroding shorelines and monster waves cause homes to plummet into the water, public piers and lakeside trails to crack and crumble, and parks and properties to flood.

The high levels come after several years of above-average rains and snowfall in the region. Last year was the wettest on record for the Great Lakes and the second wettest across the continental U.S., according to federal data. Forecasts from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers show the elevated lake levels persisting through at least July.

Lakes Huron and Michigan set record lows in early 2013—an unprecedented swing, said Drew Gronewold, an associate professor at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability. He said the warming climate is exacerbating both precipitation and evaporation, the two main forces affecting lake levels. “My eyes are open right now that water levels may continue to swing like that,” he said, but the question needs more study to make better predictions about what might happen next.

For the full story, see:

Erin Ailworth. “Rising Great Lakes Pose Peril.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, February 21, 2020): A3.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date February 20, 2020, and has the title “On Rising Great Lakes, Backyards Are Disappearing Overnight.”)

“Bludgeoned by Years of Subservience to Their Masters in Beijing”

(p. C2) The salient fact that we have learned about Chinese administrative and managerial practices from this latest outbreak is not that China is capable of impressive infrastructure projects but that its vaunted system of top-down decision-making, state control and central planning is directly responsible in large part for the virulence, intensity and rapid spread of the disease that has already claimed more than 1,300 Chinese lives.

According to reports from Wuhan in this and other news outlets, one of the principal reasons that the virus spread so quickly and infected so many was because officials in Wuhan, bludgeoned by years of subservience to their masters in Beijing, were simply terrified of taking any initiative. Zhou Xianwang, Wuhan’s mayor, told reporters that he didn’t take measures to deal with the epidemic earlier because he needed authorization from his political bosses.

For the full commentary, see:

Gerard Baker. “China’s Crisis Exposes a Badly Flawed Model.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, February 15, 2020): C2.

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated Feb. 14, 2020, and has the title “THE NEW NEW WORLD; A Loyal Chinese Critic Vanishes, in a Blow to the Nation’s Future.”)

Mickey Mouse “Was a Beloved Little Guy Defying Authority, Beating the Odds”

(p. C8) “. . . like Mickey Mouse, Harry Houdini was a beloved little guy defying authority, beating the odds, standing up to the bully, making it on his own.”

For the full review, see:

Robert Wilson. “Houdini.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, March 14, 2020): C7-C8.

(Note: the online version of the review was updated March 13, 2020, and has the title “Two New Lives of Harry Houdini.”)

(Note: ellipsis added. The line in quotation marks is from Begley, as quoted by Wilson. In the print version this line is part of a longer indented quote from Begley.)

The Begley book, is:

Begley, Adam. Houdini: The Elusive American. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.

Outspoken Admirer of Friedman and Hayek Disappears in Communist China

(p. A19) The disappearance of Mr. Ren, a longtime critic of the Chinese government, adds to fears that China is sliding backward and abandoning the reforms that saved it from extreme poverty and international isolation. Mr. Ren was no radical — he was a decades-long loyal Communist Party member, the former leader of a state-run company and a friend to some of China’s most powerful politicians. He emerged in what now seems a distant time, from the 1980s to the period before Mr. Xi became top leader, when the party brooked no challenge to its rule but allowed some individuals to question some of its choices.

Mr. Ren’s fate remains unclear. But if he was punished for his writing, it suggests China’s leadership won’t tolerate criticism no matter how justified it might be.

. . .

He was influenced by free-market economists like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. He believed government control needed to be checked.

“State power in any country is greedy, so it needs to be subject to public supervision,” he wrote in his autobiography. “Otherwise, the power will be abused and everybody will suffer from it.”

. . .

In 2011, near the peak of China’s openness to new ideas, Mr. Ren, an avid reader, started a book club. It drew China’s top entrepreneurs, intellectuals and government officials. Books included Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” and Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” The events became so popular that people had to apply through a lottery system to join. Some people flew to Beijing from all over the country to attend.

Mr. Ren said his goal was to help China’s young generation develop independent thinking so it would not follow the orders of authority slavishly. The government said no to some topics and speakers, but left it largely alone.

By early 2016, he had nearly 38 million followers on Weibo. But party attitudes toward expression were changing.

That same year, Mr. Xi declared that all Chinese news media had to serve the party. No Chinese leader since Mao Zedong had made that obligation so explicit. Mr. Ren shot back on Weibo, writing that the news media should serve the people, not the party, or the people would suffer.

Retribution was swift. His Weibo account was deleted. His party membership was suspended for a year. His passport was taken away. Members of his family weren’t allowed to leave the country. He faced constant investigations and interrogations.

. . .

Then came the coronavirus outbreak. When doctors working with the disease tried to publicly warn China about the outbreak, they were threatened by government officials. For Mr. Ren, friends said, this confirmed his argument that a media that serves the party couldn’t serve the people.

“Without a media representing the interests of the people by publishing the actual facts,” he wrote in the essay that circulated this year, “people’s lives are being ravaged by both the virus and the major illness of the system.”

He shared the essay with a few friends. Three days after his 69th birthday, he disappeared. His assistant and his son have disappeared, too.

For the full commentary, see:

Li Yuan. “THE NEW NEW WORLD; A Longtime Party Insider Vanishes, in a Blow to China’s Future.” The New York Times (Wednesday, April 1, 2020): A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated April 2, 2020, and has the title “THE NEW NEW WORLD; A Loyal Chinese Critic Vanishes, in a Blow to the Nation’s Future.”)

Chinese Doctors Wear Adult Diapers to Avoid Taking Off Their One-Per-Day One-Piece Protective Suit

(p. A1) The coronavirus outbreak has exposed the jarring absence in China of a vibrant civil society — the civic associations like business groups, nonprofit organizations, charities and churches that bring people together without involving the government.

. . .

(p. A10) “The traditional management mechanism of ‘big government’ is no longer efficient, and is even failing,” Duan Zhanjiang, a management consultant, wrote in an article about managing the epidemic. “The government is very busy but not effective.

. . .

The Communist Party has never liked or trusted civil society. It is suspicious of any organization that could potentially pose challenge to its rule, including big private enterprises. It has cracked down on nongovernment organizations like rights groups and charities as well as churches and mosques. The party wants nothing to stand between its government and China’s 1.4 billion people.

Big Chinese corporations and wealthy individuals have been donating, many generously. But they also try to keep low profiles for fear of offending a government that is eager to take credit for any success and quick to suspect outside groups of challenging it.

Those gaps are evident on the front lines of the outbreak, where workers have lacked the proper equipment to keep themselves safe. Doctors and nurses wear disposable raincoats instead of protective gowns. They wear ordinary, and inadequate, surgical masks while conducting dangerous throat swab tests. They wear adult diapers because, once they take off their one-piece protective suits, the suits will have to be thrown away. They get only one per day.

For the full commentary, see:

Li Yuan. “THE NEW NEW WORLD; China Blocks Ally in Virus Fight: Its Own People.” The New York Times (Wednesday, February 19, 2020): A1 & A10.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 5, 2020, and has the same title “THE NEW NEW WORLD; In Coronavirus Fight, China Sidelines an Ally: Its Own People.”)

“Rage and Despair” Outpace Chinese Communists’ “Army of Censors”

(p. A9) HONG KONG — Under normal circumstances, Patrick Wu, a college student from Anhui Province in China’s east, knows better than to talk to his parents about politics.

Mr. Wu, a senior at a university in Beijing, is a self-described skeptic of the Chinese government. His parents are local government officials.

But recent months have been anything but normal. The coronavirus outbreak, and its political implications, have been all that Mr. Wu, 21, thinks about.

. . .

“Things just got out of control. You could see people dying at home,” Mr. Wu said. “I just felt like more people should know about this, and I should open myself to more conversations about this — at least with my parents, who I can trust.”

His parents, from the start, resisted. “Their first reaction was shock and rejection: ‘How could this happen in Wuhan? It must be fake,’” Mr. Wu recalled.

After they were persuaded that the outbreak was genuine, they rejected that Chinese officials had at first covered it up and questioned how it could have exploded so quickly.

Were people who eat wild animals to blame, they asked after the virus was linked to a Wuhan market that sells wildlife. Or maybe the United States planted the virus, his parents said, considering an unfounded conspiracy theory peddled by a top Chinese government spokesman.

“I think the gap in information is too big, and sometimes I alone can’t fill it,” Mr. Wu said.

Slowly, though, he felt his mother relenting. The sheer number of online posts about the virus outpaced even the government’s army of censors. Rage and despair found their way into his parents’ social media feeds, and when a whistle-blower doctor, Li Wenliang, died of the coronavirus, prompting an online revolt against censorship, it was Mr. Wu’s mother who alerted him to the news.

For the full story, see:

Vivian Wang. “INSIDE THE OUTBREAK; Stuck With His Parents and Sparring Over Politics.” The New York Times (Wednesday, April 1, 2020): A9.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 31, 2020, and has the title “INSIDE THE OUTBREAK; Quarreling in Quarantine and Bridging a Generational Divide.”)

Audiences Know Showmen Often Lie “as an Act of Self-Promotion”

Showman and medical entrepreneur Martin Couney has been dismissed because he claimed credentials that he may not have possessed. The passage quoted below suggests that this behavior was common for showmen during the late 1800s and the early decades of the 1900s. Perhaps this mitigates what Couney claimed?

(p. C7) But Mr. Begley’s book is indeed brief, offering a brisk passage through the facts so far as they can be known. The accusation Houdini made against Robert-Houdin of “utter disregard for the truth” applied to Houdini with a vengeance; he lied not merely as an act of self-promotion, which could be said about many showmen and performers of his time and our own, but also about things that really didn’t matter.

For the full review, see:

Robert Wilson. “Houdini.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, March 14, 2020): C7-C8.

(Note: the online version of the review was updated March 13, 2020, and has the title “Two New Lives of Harry Houdini.”)

The book discussed in the passage quoted above, is:

Begley, Adam. Houdini: The Elusive American New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.

“Two Promising Approaches” for Drugs to Reduce Severe Cases of Covid-19

(p. A19) Americans would have the confidence to return to work, even if the virus is still circulating in the fall, if they knew that a robust screening system is in place to identify and arrest new outbreaks and medication can significantly reduce the chance of becoming severely ill. Kevin Warsh, a former Federal Reserve governor, estimates that such a drug could restore at least $1 trillion in economic activity.

. . .  There are two promising approaches, and both could be available soon if government and private industry do things right.  . . .

One approach involves antiviral drugs that target the virus and block its replication. Think of medicines for treating influenza, HIV or cold sores. The drugs work by blocking the mechanisms that viruses use to replicate.  . . .

The other approach involves antibody drugs, which mimic the function of immune cells. Antibody drugs can be used to fight an infection and to reduce the risk of contracting Covid-19. These medicines may be the best chance for a meaningful near-term success.

Antibody drugs are based on the same scientific principles that make “convalescent plasma” one interim tactic for treating the sickest Covid-19 patients. Doctors are taking blood plasma from patients who have recovered from Covid-19 and infusing it into those who are critically ill. The plasma is laden with antibodies, and the approach shows some promise. The constraint: There isn’t enough plasma from recovered patients to go around.

For the full commentary, see:

Scott Gottlieb. “Bet Big on Treatments for Coronavirus; Antivirals and antibody therapies are showing promise. The FDA needs to step up its pace.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, April 6, 2020): A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 5, 2020, and has the same title as the print version.)

In Covid-19 Lockdown, Cars Allow a Private Escape from Crowded Noisy Homes

(p. D6) Public spaces are hard to safely navigate, or totally off-limits and, as a result, I haven’t felt this strongly about my car since I was 16 — not just grateful, but deeply attached. Not just attached, but somehow amalgamated.

Every car is a getaway, even when it’s parked.

In my neighborhood, where so many people live in multigenerational homes, parked cars now double as quiet meeting spaces, meditation rooms, listening stations, nap pods, whatever extra spaces we need.

We sip coffee, fight loudly and make out in our cars. We eat snacks and take important phone calls and watch TikTok videos and put the seats way back and just breathe.

I haven’t seen my brother, who lives 15 minutes away from me, in weeks. He uses his tiny car as an office. Never mind that the floor is covered in Cheerios, and the windows are dotted with peeling stickers.

Week Three of lockdown, and it’s a privilege if you can work safely, in isolation, if you can escape momentarily into your car. Even if — especially if — you have nowhere else to go but home.

For the full commentary, see:

Tejal Rao. “Car Culture Has a New Meaning.” The New York Times (Wednesday, April 1, 2020): D6.

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 31, 2020, and has the title “Dining and Driving on the Empty Freeways of Los Angeles.”)

Fossil of Oldest Air-Breathing Animal Found

(p. A3) In a trove of fossils dug up decades ago in Wisconsin, a team of paleontologists say they have discovered the oldest known prehistoric scorpion species—and clues about how early organisms evolved to venture onto land.

The arachnids, which were well-enough preserved that researchers could study their internal anatomy, wandered the rich shallow waters of its ancient habitat. Yet the species had cardiovascular and respiratory systems like modern scorpions that could breathe air, say researchers who described their findings in a paper published Thursday in Nature Scientific Reports.

. . .

The researchers dated the fossils to the Silurian Age, a period in the Paleozoic Era between 443 million and 416 million years ago when shallow waters and abundant sunlight allowed colorful reefs and other ancient life to make their debut.

. . .

Joanna Wolfe, who works in the organismic and evolutionary biology department at Harvard University, said the Wisconsin quarry is famously home to marine fossils, so they are “definitely not fully terrestrial, but they are older than the oldest truly terrestrial body fossil of a millipede-like [organism] 427 million years ago.”

“It’s plausible to me that indeed there was a more complex pattern of evolution where we’re going from water to land and back to water, and that that could’ve happened more than once,” said Dr. Wolfe, who wasn’t involved in the research.

For the full story, see:

Katie Camero. “Scorpions Among Earth’s First Air Breathers.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, January 17, 2020): A3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 16, 2020, and has the title “Ancient Scorpion Offers Clues to How Animals Moved From Sea to Land.”)