Author: Art Diamond

Since SARS, Japanese Protect One Another by Wearing Masks

(p. A4) PARIS — Until a few weeks ago, Asian tourists were the only mask-wearers in Paris, eliciting puzzlement or suspicion from French locals, or even hostility as the coronavirus began sweeping across Europe.

. . .

This taboo is falling fast, not only in France but across Western countries, after mounting cries from experts who say the practice is effective in curbing the coronavirus pandemic.

The shift for Western nations is profound and has had to overcome not merely the logistical challenges of securing enough masks, which are significant enough, but also a deep cultural resistance and even stigma associated with mask-wearing, which some Western leaders described flatly as “alien.”

Seemingly, it won’t be for much longer. After discouraging people from wearing face masks, France, like the United States, has begun urging its citizens to wear basic or homemade ones outside. And some parts of Europe are moving faster than the United States by requiring masks instead of simply recommending their use.

. . .

. . . masks were . . . alien to Asia until it was struck by the SARS pandemic in 2003.

In Japan, after people got used to masks, they continued to wear them against seasonal allergies or to protect one another from germs. Unlike in other Asian nations, where many wear masks against air pollution, mask-wearing became widespread despite the absence of immediate threats.

Mask-wearing has become such a part of daily life that it now plays a role in maintaining an overall feeling of being “reassured” in Japanese society, said Yukiko Iida, an expert on masks at the Environmental Control Center, an environmental consulting company based in Tokyo.

“When you put on a mask, you’re not inconveniencing others when you cough,” Ms. Iida said. “You’re showing others that you’re abiding by social etiquette, and so people feel reassured.”

. . .

Daniel Illouz, a pharmacist in eastern Paris, said that he had been skeptical of the government’s repeated message that widespread mask-wearing was not helpful in fighting the epidemic.

“I don’t see why in all the Asian countries, where they have masks, it would work, but it wouldn’t work for us,” he said.

For the full story, see:

Norimitsu Onishi and Constant Méheut. “Wearing Masks, Common in Asia, Rises in the West.” The New York Times (Friday, April 10, 2020): A4.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 9, 2020, and has the title “Mask-Wearing Is a Very New Fashion in Paris (and a Lot of Other Places).”)

Low Quality Parts from Corrupt Contractors Endanger Russian Sailors in Deep-Diving Subs

(p. A22) OFF THE COAST OF NORWAY — There could hardly have been a more terrifying place to fight a fire than in the belly of the Losharik, a mysterious deep-diving Russian submarine.

. . .

A fire on any submarine may be a mariner’s worst nightmare, but a fire on the Losharik was a threat of another order altogether. The vessel is able to dive far deeper than almost any other sub, but the feats of engineering that allow it do so may have helped seal the fate of the 14 sailors killed in the disaster.

. . .

(p. A23) As for the accident itself, few expressed surprise that a jewel of the Russian submarine fleet might catch fire not very far from its home base — probably in water no more than 1,000 feet deep — leaving most of its crew dead. The Russians, some experts said, seem to have a greater tolerance for risk than the West.

. . .

Mr. Lobner, the former American submarine officer, said “we have nothing except unmanned vehicles” operating at such depths.

Still, while some see an engineering marvel, others see evidence that Russia may be unable to build the kind of sophisticated, autonomous underwater drones the United States appears to rely on.

“They would rather adapt existing systems, modernize them, and try to muddle through,” Mr. Boulègue said. “So, no wonder these things keep exploding,” he said. Mr. Boulègue believes accidents have been far more common than publicly known.

John Pike, director of the think tank GlobalSecurity.org, said the Losharik fire suggested that the Russian military was still contending with some longstanding issues: corrupt contractors, and problems with quality control in manufacturing, spare parts supply chains and maintenance.

“I assume that every other sub in the Russian fleet has similar problems,” Mr. Pike said. “I just think the whole thing is held together with a lot of baling wire and spit.”

For the full story, see:

James Glanz and Thomas Nilsen. “A Deep-Diving Sub, a Deadly Fire And Russia’s Secret Undersea Agenda.” The New York Times (Tuesday, April 21, 2020): A22-A23.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated April 21, 2020, and has the title “A Deep-Diving Sub. A Deadly Fire. And Russia’s Secret Undersea Agenda.”)

Hospitals Punish Workers Who Expose Management Failures

(p. B5) In New York City, the epicenter of the crisis in the United States, every major private hospital system has sent memos in recent weeks ordering workers not to speak with the media, as have some public hospitals.

One system, NYU Langone Medical Center, which has more than 30,000 employees at six inpatient centers, dozens of outpatient facilities and the New York University School of Medicine, sent an email on March 27 [2020] warning that staff members speaking to the media without permission “will be subject to disciplinary action, including termination.” The email was reported earlier by Bloomberg.

Administrators suggested “appropriate” posts on social media instead. “Please share positive and uplifting messages that support your colleagues and our organization,” they said in another email.

Similar lines are being drawn nationwide. A doctor in Washington State was removed from his hospital position after speaking publicly about a shortage of protective equipment and testing; the staffing firm that employs him said he was being reassigned. Nurses in Detroit recently walked off the job to protest critically low staffing after a colleague who had spoken up on the issue was fired.

For the full story, see:

Noam Scheiber and Brian M. Rosenthal. “Nurse Questions Hospital On Safety. He’s Out a Job.” The New York Times (Friday, April 10, 2020): B1 & B5.

(Note: bracketed year added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated April 15, 2020, and has the title “Nurses and Doctors Speaking Out on Safety Now Risk Their Job.”)

Entrepreneurially Nimble Amish Pivot to Make Face Masks

(p. A9) SUGARCREEK, Ohio — On April 1, John Miller, a manufacturer here with deep connections to the close-knit Amish community of Central Ohio, got a call from Cleveland Clinic. The hospital system was struggling to find protective face masks for its 55,000 employees, plus visitors. Could his team sew 12,000 masks in two days?

He appealed to Abe Troyer with Keim, a local lumber mill and home goods business and a leader in the Amish community: “Abe, make a sewing frolic.” A frolic, Mr. Miller explained, “is a colloquial term here that means, ‘Get a bunch of people. Throw a bunch of people at this.’”

A day later, Mr. Troyer had signed up 60 Amish home seamstresses, and the Cleveland Clinic sewing frolic was on.

. . .

Almost overnight, a group of local industry, community and church leaders has mobilized to sustain Amish households by pivoting to work crafting thousands of face masks and shields, surgical gowns and protective garments from medical-grade materials. When those run scarce, they switch to using gaily printed quilting fabric and waterproof Tyvek house wrap.

For the full story, see:

Elizabeth Williamson. “In Ohio, Amish Families Pivot to Make Medical Gear.” The New York Times (Friday, April 10, 2020): A9.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated April 16, 2020, and has the title “In Ohio, the Amish Take On the Coronavirus.”)

“A Clinical Hunch by a Lot of Really Smart People”

(p. A1) Thomas Oxley wasn’t even on call the day he received the page to come to Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan. There weren’t enough doctors to treat all the emergency stroke patients, and he was needed in the operating room.

The patient’s chart appeared unremarkable at first glance. He took no medications and had no history of chronic conditions. He had been feeling fine, hanging out at home during the lockdown like the rest of the country, when suddenly, he had trouble talking and moving the right side of his body. Imaging showed a large blockage on the left side of his head.

Oxley gasped when he got to the patient’s age and covid-19 status: 44, positive.

The man was among several recent stroke patients in their 30s to 40s who were all infected with the novel coronavirus. The median age for that type of severe stroke is 74.

As Oxley, an interventional neurologist, began the procedure to remove the clot, he observed something he had never seen before. On the monitors, the brain typically shows up as a tangle of black squiggles – “like a can of spaghetti,” he said – that provide a map of blood vessels. A clot shows up as a blank spot. As he used a needlelike device to pull out the clot, he saw new clots forming in real-time around it.

“This is crazy,” he remembers telling his boss.

A SURGE

Reports of strokes in the young and middle-aged – not just at Mount Sinai but in many other hospitals in communities hit hard by the coronavirus – are the latest twist in our evolving understanding of its connected disease, covid-19. Even as the virus has infected nearly 2.8 million people worldwide and killed 195,000 as of Friday, its biological mechanisms continue to elude top scientific minds. Once thought to be a pathogen that primarily attacks the lungs, it has turned out to be a much more formidable foe – impacting nearly every major organ system in the body.

Until recently, there was little hard data on strokes and covid-19.

There was one report out of Wuhan, China, that showed that some hospitalized patients had experienced strokes but many of those were seriously ill and elderly. But the linkage was considered more of “a clinical hunch by a lot of really smart people,” said Sherry H-Y Chou, a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center neurologist and critical care doctor.

Now for the first time, three large U.S. medical centers are preparing to publish data on the stroke phenomenon. The numbers are small, only a few dozen per location, but they provide new insights into what the virus does to our bodies.

For the full story, see:

Ariana Eunjung Cha. “Strokes Are Striking Younger, Symptomless COVID-19 Victims.” The Washington Post (Saturday, April 25, 2020): A1.

(Note: bold in original.)

(Note: some of the above quote may have been continued onto a later page than A1.)

Data Retrieval Does Not Equal Creativity

(p. F2) Steve Jobs once described personal computing as a “bicycle for the mind.”

His idea that computers can be used as “intelligence amplifiers” that offer an important boost for human creativity is now being given an immediate test in the face of the coronavirus.

In March [2020], a group of artificial intelligence research groups and the National Library of Medicine announced that they had organized the world’s scientific research papers about the virus so the documents, more than 44,000 articles, could be explored in new ways using a machine-learning program designed to help scientists see patterns and find relationships to aid research.

. . .

Jerry Kaplan, an artificial-intelligence researcher who was involved with two of Silicon Valley’s first A.I. companies, Symantec and Teknowledge during the 1980s, pointed out that the new language modeling software was actually just a new type of database retrieval technology, rather than an advance toward any kind of “thinking machine.”

“Creativity is still entirely on the human side,” he said. “All this particular tool is doing is making it possible to get insights that would otherwise take years of study.”

For the full commentary, see:

John Markoff. “You Need A.I. to Spell Creative.” The New York Times (Thursday, April 9, 2020): F2.

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

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 8, 2020, and has the title “You Can’t Spell Creative Without A.I.”)

You Build Your Dream “and You Don’t Let Anybody Stop You”

(p. A10) Though he never became a household name, Chuck Peddle was among the peers of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in the 1970s who transformed personal computers from curiosities for geeky hobbyists into essential tools for the masses.

Mr. Peddle led a team at MOS Technology Inc. that designed a microprocessor priced at $25, around a 10th of the cost of competing devices. The MOS 6502, introduced in 1975, served as the electronic brain for some of the earliest personal computers, including the Apple I and II, as well as for videogame consoles.

The microprocessor’s low price changed the economics for personal-computer makers, allowing them to offer higher performance at affordable prices, said Douglas Fairbairn, a director at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

. . .

In an interview last March with the University of Maine’s alumni magazine, he summed up his engineering philosophy: “You take a dream, and you build a dream, and you keep building on it and you don’t let anybody stop you.”

For the full obituary, see:

James R. Hagerty. “Engineer Helped Launch Personal Computer Era.” The Wall Street Journal (Satursday, January 4, 2020): A10.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date Jan. 1, 2020 and has the title “Chuck Peddle’s $25 Microprocessor Ignited Computer Market.”)

“Masks Are Pilloried Until They Are Mandatory”

(p. 6) The surreal reality of American cities and towns also mirrors the half-remembered, half-empty approximations explored in sleep, ordered by the same pliable, foggy logic: Masks are pilloried until they are mandatory; liquor stores open early for sexagenarians only; an invisible plague makes people fall gravely ill seemingly at random; touching anything — everything — is banned.

For the full story, see:

Caity Weaver. “The Interpretation of Viral Dreams.” The New York Times, SundayStyles Section (Sunday, April 12, 2020): 6.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 11, 2020, and has the title “Why Am I Having Weird Dreams Lately?”)

87% of American Liberals Support Some Merit-Based Income Differences

In my Openness to Creative Destruction, I claim that most people do not care as much about inequality per se, as they do about unfair inequality. What they care about is the differences in income be roughly related to differences in contribution. I illustrate this by recounting a famous experiment that Frans de Waal conducted with capuchin monkeys. The evidence in the study quoted below, supports my claim.

(p. B3) In 2018, four economists at the Center for Experimental Research on Fairness, Inequality and Rationality at the Norwegian School of Economics conducted a huge experiment — mostly via face-to-face interviews — using the Gallup World Poll. The Norwegian team — Bertil Tungodden, Alexander Cappelen, Ingvild Almas and Erik O. Sorensen — worked with Gallup to survey 65,000 people across 60 countries about their beliefs related to the gaps between the rich and the poor.

Part of the survey was an experiment. Respondents were randomly assigned to different conditions and presented a real-life scenario: Two people were recently hired to independently complete a short assignment; they were both paid, but one was given an additional $6.

In the first group, survey takers were told that the additional $6 was given out randomly. In the second group, they were told the $6 went to the worker who was more productive in completing the assignment. In both cases, respondents were asked how they would divide the additional earnings: whether they would transfer none of it, some of it or all of it to the other worker.

. . .

American conservatives might assume liberals are averse to merit-based compensation. The experiment proves that’s not so. When told the bonus payment was made only to the most productive worker, only 13 percent of the liberals transferred all of the money equally to the less productive worker, which is within the margin of error of the American conservative response (10 percent).

Americans both liberal and conservative were more likely than most people worldwide to accept merit-based income differences. As one of the study’s investigators, Mr. Tungodden, mentioned in his public presentation on the study, people in richer countries were more likely than people in poorer countries to allow merit-based differences. In the rich and more egalitarian country of Norway, 88 percent of respondents transferred the bonus payment equally when told it was allocated by chance, but only 33 percent did so when allocated by merit.

For the full commentary, see:

Jonathan Rothwell. “THE UPSHOT; Think Only Liberals Will Share the Wealth? A Survey May Surprise You.” The New York Times (Friday, February 14, 2020): B3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was last updated February 14, 2020, and has the title “THE UPSHOT; Experiment Shows Conservatives More Willing to Share Wealth Than They Say.”)

The soon-to-be-published version of the research discussed above, is:

Almås, Ingvild, Alexander W. Cappelen, and Bertil Tungodden. “Cutthroat Capitalism Versus Cuddly Socialism: Are Americans More Meritocratic and Efficiency-Seeking Than Scandinavians?” Journal of Political Economy (forthcoming 2020).

My book, mentioned above, is:

Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.