Author: Art Diamond

“The Last Bastion of Freedom in the Chinese-Speaking World”

(p. A14) The new security rules for Hong Kong that China passed this week — without input from the city’s Beijing-backed leadership — have made Mr. Xi’s promise of autonomy under the “one country, two systems” framework seem hollow. And it has raised fears that China will move more aggressively to bring Taiwan, too, under its control.

. . .

In recent weeks, China has buzzed Taiwan’s territorial airspace almost daily. It accused Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, of carrying out a “separatist plot” by speaking at an international democracy forum. It has warned the Taiwan government to stop providing shelter to Hong Kong political activists, who are flocking to what they call the last bastion of freedom in the Chinese-speaking world.

For the full story, see:

Javier C. Hernández and Steven Lee Myers. “Taiwan Sees Ominous Signs for Its Own Autonomy.” The New York Times (Thursday, July 2, 2020): A14-A15.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 1, 2020, and has the title “As China Strengthens Grip on Hong Kong, Taiwan Sees a Threat.”)

Paper Towels Spread Fewer Germs Than Hot-Air Drying

(p. R1) In the age of coronavirus, handwashing can save lives. But proper hand-drying matters, too.

“It might sound pedantic, but it’s actually critical,” says John Gammon, professor of infection prevention and control at Swansea University in the U.K.

Prof. Gammon was the lead author of a review of hand-drying research and published his findings in the March 2019 issue of the Journal of Infection Prevention. His paper, “The Neglected Element of Hand Hygiene,” examined the effectiveness of paper towels, cloth towels and dryers that use hot air or high-velocity air.

In a clinical situation, such as a hospital, disposable paper towels are generally the quickest, most efficient and hygienic method of hand drying. “The mechanical action of rubbing with paper towels has an effect on reducing microorganisms on hands,” Prof. Gammon says. Paper towels are also less likely to spread germs into the surrounding environment than hot-air and high-velocity air dryers, he adds.

For the full story, see:

Beth DeCarbo. “The Best Way to Dry Your Hands.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, April 3, 2020): R1.

(Note: the online version of the story was updated April 2, 2020, and has the title “You’ve Perfected Your Handwashing Technique. Here’s How to Dry Them.” Where there is a slight difference in wording between the versions, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

Gammon’s academic paper, mentioned above, is:

Gammon, John, and Julian Hunt. “The Neglected Element of Hand Hygiene – Significance of Hand Drying, Efficiency of Different Methods and Clinical Implication: A Review.” Journal of Infection Prevention 20, no. 2 (March 2019): 66-74.

Disney Will Only Re-Open a Park When It Can “Cover Its Variable Costs”

(p. B14) Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Chapek has maintained that the company wouldn’t reopen a park without at least the ability to cover its variable costs, but analysts expect more will be needed to get parks fully back into the black. Bernstein analyst Todd Juenger estimates Disney’s parks would need to be at 60% of their “normal run-rate attendance” to reach break-even on a pretax basis.

. . .

On Thursday, [June 25, 2020] UBS reported results of a survey of 2,000 U.S. consumers conducted earlier this month. In that survey, among the respondents who had cited worries about social distancing as keeping them from visiting, nearly two-thirds said they would only consider attending a Disney park once a vaccine is available.

For the full story, see:

Dan Gallagher. “The Magic Kingdom Is Losing Its Spell.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, June 27, 2020): B14.

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

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 26, 2020, and has the title “Disney’s Parks Need a Cure.”)

After Age 65, Men Lose More “Antibody-Producing B Cells” Than Women Lose

(p. B5) By examining gender-based distinctions in the immune system, cell structure, brain and other systems, researchers are discovering how and why men and women grow older in clearly different ways.

Their findings could help explain why Covid-19 has had a greater impact on older men than older women. A recent study found that men, after the age of 65, lost important antibody-producing B cells in the blood, while women didn’t.

“It was surprising,” said Duygu Ucar, an associate professor who led the study at the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine in Farmington, Conn. The research team also found that men, as they age, experience greater inflammation in their blood, which has been associated with severe cases of Covid-19.

. . .

Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, looked at the blood of men and women between the ages of 65 and 95 and found protein levels changed at different rates. Less change means more stability, he said. Men’s levels changed far more than women’s, with 600 significant changes versus 277 for women, according to the study, published in December.

“The female biology seems to be more stable than men’s,” says Dr. Barzilai, the author of “Age Later” who specializes in geroscience.

For the full story, see:

Clare Ansberry. “Women and Men Age Differently—-And in More Ways Than Just Longevity.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, July 15, 2020): A13.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 14, 2020, and has the title “Women and Men Age Differently—in More Ways Than Just Longevity.” The last couple of paragraphs quoted above, appeared in the online, but not the print, version of the article.)

The “recent study” mentioned above is:

Márquez, Eladio J., Cheng-han Chung, Radu Marches, Robert J. Rossi, Djamel Nehar-Belaid, Alper Eroglu, David J. Mellert, George A. Kuchel, Jacques Banchereau, and Duygu Ucar. “Sexual-Dimorphism in Human Immune System Aging.” Nature Communications 11, Article #751 (Feb. 6, 2020): 1-17.

The book by Barzilai, mentioned above, is:

Barzilai, Nir. Age Later: Health Span, Life Span, and the New Science of Longevity. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2020.

Politically Incorrect Research Is Cancelled from Proceedings of the National Academy of Science

(p. A15) Psychologists Joseph Cesario of Michigan State and David Johnson of the University of Maryland analyzed 917 fatal police shootings of civilians from 2015 to test whether the race of the officer or the civilian predicted fatal police shootings. Neither did. Once “race specific rates of violent crime” are taken into account, the authors found, there are no disparities among those fatally shot by the police. These findings accord with decades of research showing that civilian behavior is the greatest influence on police behavior.

. . .

My June 3 [2020] Journal op-ed quoted the PNAS article’s conclusion verbatim. It set off a firestorm at Michigan State. The university’s Graduate Employees Union pressured the MSU press office to apologize for the “harm it caused” by mentioning my article in a newsletter. The union targeted physicist Steve Hsu, who had approved funding for Mr. Cesario’s research. MSU sacked Mr. Hsu from his administrative position. PNAS editorialized that Messrs. Cesario and Johnson had “poorly framed” their article—the one that got through the journal’s three levels of editorial and peer review.

Mr. Cesario told this page that Mr. Hsu’s dismissal could narrow the “kinds of topics people can talk about, or what kinds of conclusions people can come to.” Now he and Mr. Johnson have themselves jeopardized the possibility of politically neutral scholarship. On Monday they retracted their paper. They say they stand behind its conclusion and statistical approach but complain about its “misuse,” specifically mentioning my op-eds.

The authors don’t say how I misused their work.

. . .

This retraction bodes ill for the development of knowledge. If scientists must disavow their findings because they challenge reigning orthodoxies, then those orthodoxies will prevail even when they are wrong.

For the full commentary, see:

Heather Mac Donald. “I Cited Their Study, So They Disavowed It.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, July 9, 2020): A15.

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

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 8, 2020, and has the same title as the print version.)

The PNAS article co-authored by Cesario, Johnson, and others is:

Johnson, David J., Trevor Tress, Nicole Burkel, Carley Taylor, and Joseph Cesario. “Officer Characteristics and Racial Disparities in Fatal Officer-Involved Shootings.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 32 (Aug. 6, 2019): 15877-82.

Reduce Spread of COVID-19 “With Plenty of Fresh Air” in Buildings

(p. B5) One way to reduce the spread of coronavirus is to maintain ventilation .

. . .

Modifications from equipment manufacturers such as Trane Technologies PLC, Carrier Global Corp. and Johnson Controls International PLC include filtering indoor air more thoroughly, drawing more outdoor air into buildings and deploying ultraviolet light against the virus inside ventilation systems.

“More fresh air and cleaner air are the direction that customers are going. This is top-of-mind for building owners and contractors,” said Jeff Williams, president of global products for Johnson Controls, maker of York-brand heating and air-conditioning equipment.

. . .

Research released this spring by the Department of Homeland Security found that coronavirus particles decay faster at a room temperature of 78 degrees Fahrenheit with a relative humidity of 50% than at lower temperatures and humidity. Add in a strong dose of ultraviolet light, and the virus decays by 90% in less than seven minutes, according to the department. Humans’ immune systems also are more effective against viruses in warmer, more humid conditions, according to a Yale University study published in May 2019.

“We can minimize the spread of the virus in the summer when there is plenty of sunlight and higher humidity. They’re actually effective in a defined space,” said Luke Leung, epidemic task force leader for the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, a trade association.

. . .

Recirculated air should include about 20% outdoor air to effectively dilute coronavirus particles, the Atlanta-based engineers’ society says. Many buildings’ air handlers were set up to draw less outdoor air, to maximize energy efficiency.

“The past few years there was a lot of emphasis on energy saving and there was less outside air in buildings,” said Seth Ferriell, chief executive of SSC Services for Education, a Tennessee-based company that manages ventilation systems for schools and universities. The firm has a contract to upgrade air handlers at Texas A&M University.

Mr. Ferriell estimated that increasing the amount of outdoor air in a building by 50% would drive up natural gas or electricity costs by as much as 15% a year because that additional air has to be cooled or heated to match the desired interior temperature.

For the full story, see:

Bob Tita. “Virus Spurs Ventilation Boost.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, July 9, 2020): B5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 8, 2020, and has the title “Offices Try to Combat Coronavirus With More Fresh Air.” The last couple of paragraphs quoted above, appeared in the online, but not the print, version of the article.)

Diverse Distinguished Intellectuals Defend Free Speech

(p. A1) The killing of George Floyd has brought an intense moment of racial reckoning in the United States. As protests spread across the country, they have been accompanied by open letters calling for — and promising — change at white-dominated institutions across the arts and academia.

But on Tuesday, a different type of letter appeared online. Titled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” and signed by 153 prominent artists and intellectuals, it began with an acknowledgment of “powerful protests for racial and social justice” before pivoting to a warning against an “intolerant climate” engulfing the culture.

“The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted,” the letter declared, citing “an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.”

“We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other,” it continues. “As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes.”

The letter, . . . was published by Harper’s Magazine and will also appear in several leading international publications, . . .

. . .

(p. A19) The debate over diversity, free expression and the limits of acceptable opinion is a long-burning one. But the letter, which was spearheaded by the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, began taking shape about a month ago, as part of a long-running conversation about these issues with a small group of writers including the historian David Greenberg, the writer Mark Lilla and the journalists Robert Worth and George Packer.

. . .

“We’re not just a bunch of old white guys sitting around writing this letter,” Mr. Williams, who is African-American, said. “It includes plenty of Black thinkers, Muslim thinkers, Jewish thinkers, people who are trans and gay, old and young, right wing and left wing.” Continue reading “Diverse Distinguished Intellectuals Defend Free Speech”

Masks “Absolutely Essential” to “Get Control of the Virus”

(p. 6A) Adm. Brett Giroir, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, called mask-wearing in public, which has been met with resistance in some U.S. states, “absolutely essential.”

Giroir, the assistant secretary at the Health and Human Services Department, told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday [July 12, 2020] that “if we don’t have that, we will not get control of the virus.”

For the full story, see:

AP. “As U.S Wrestles With Virus Florida Sets Daily Record.” Omaha World Herald (Monday, July 13, 2020): A6.

(Note: bracketed date added.)

FEE Features Three Articles Opposing Masks and One Article in Favor

On Thursday, August 6, 2020, the Foundation for Economic Education’s (FEE’s) web site featured four articles on masks, three opposed and one in favor. The web site provides further proof that the majority is not always right, but also proof that FEE is open to hearing minority arguments.