Category: Economics

Healthcare Competition Sometimes Reduces Prices

Numerous complex government healthcare regulations differentially increase the costs of small healthcare firms and independent healthcare practitioners that cannot afford to hire the specialized experts to understand and navigate the regulations. As a result the small firms and independent practitioners often give up and merge with larger organizations, thereby reducing competition. Also, in many locations, governments give incumbent hospitals veto power over the start-up of new hospitals, thereby also reducing competition.

(p. A3) Prices for surgery, intensive care and emergency-room visits rise after hospital mergers. The increases come out of your pay.

Hospitals have struck deals in recent years to form local and regional health systems that use their reach to bargain for higher prices from insurers. Employers have often passed the higher rates onto employees.

Such price increases added an average of $204 million to national health spending in the year after mergers of nearby hospitals, according to a study published Wednesday [April 24, 2024] by American Economic Review: Insights.

Workers cover much of the bill, said Zack Cooper, an associate professor of economics at Yale University who helped conduct the study. Employers cut into wages and trim jobs to offset rising insurance premiums, he said. “The harm from these mergers really falls squarely on Main Street,” Cooper said.

For the full story see:

Melanie Evans. “Hospital Prices Rise After Mergers, and Patients Bear Brunt.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, April 25, 2024): A3.

(Note: bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated April 24, 2024, and has the title “The True Cost of Megamergers in Healthcare: Higher Prices.” The online version says that the title of the print version was “Hospital-Care Prices Rise After Mergers.” But my national edition of the print version had the title “Hospital Prices Rise After Mergers, and Patients Bear Brunt.”)

The forthcoming article co-authored by Cooper, and mentioned above, is:

Brot-Goldberg, Zarek, Zack Cooper, Stuart Craig, and Lev Klarnet. “Is There Too Little Antitrust Enforcement in the U.S. Hospital Sector?” American Economic Review: Insights (forthcoming).

Cloud Brightening Could Counter Global Warming

If the costs of global warming become large enough, we can brighten clouds to reverse global warming.

(p. A1) A little before 9 a.m. on Tuesday [April 2, 2024], an engineer named Matthew Gallelli crouched on the deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier in San Francisco Bay, pulled on a pair of ear protectors, and flipped a switch.

A few seconds later, a device resembling a snow maker began to rumble, then produced a great and deafening hiss. A fine mist of tiny aerosol particles shot from its mouth, traveling hundreds of feet through the air.

It was the first outdoor test in the United States of technology designed to brighten clouds and bounce some of the sun’s rays back into space, a way of temporarily cooling a planet that is now dangerously overheating. The scientists wanted to see whether the machine that took years to create could consistently spray the right size salt aerosols through the open air, outside of a lab.

If it works, the next stage would be to aim at the heavens and try to change the composition of clouds above the Earth’s oceans.

. . .

(p. A14) Brightening clouds is one of several ideas to push solar energy back into space — sometimes called solar radiation modification, solar geoengineering, or climate intervention. Compared with other options, such as injecting aerosols into the stratosphere, marine cloud brightening would be localized and use relatively benign sea salt aerosols as opposed to other chemicals.

. . .

“I hope, and I think all my colleagues hope, that we never use these things, that we never have to,” said Sarah Doherty, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington and the manager of its marine cloud brightening program.

. . .

But it’s vital to find out whether and how such technologies could work, Dr. Doherty said, in case society needs them. And no one can say when the world might reach that point.

In 1990, a British physicist named John Latham published a letter in the journal Nature, under the heading “Control of Global Warming?,” in which he introduced the idea that injecting tiny particles into clouds could offset rising temperatures.

Dr. Latham later attributed his idea to a hike with his son in Wales, where they paused to look at clouds over the Irish Sea.

“He asked why clouds were shiny at the top but dark at the bottom,” Dr. Latham told the BBC in 2007. “I explained how they were mirrors for incoming sunlight.”

Dr. Latham had a proposal that may have seemed bizarre: create a fleet of 1,000 unmanned, sail-powered vessels to traverse the world’s oceans and continuously spray tiny droplets of seawater into the air to deflect solar heat away from Earth.

The idea is built on a scientific concept (p. A15) called the Twomey effect: Large numbers of small droplets reflect more sunlight than small numbers of large droplets. Injecting vast quantities of minuscule aerosols, in turn forming many small droplets, could change the composition of clouds.

“If we can increase the reflectivity by about 3 percent, the cooling will balance the global warming caused by increased C02 in the atmosphere,” Dr. Latham, who died in 2021, told the BBC. “Our scheme offers the possibility that we could buy time.”

A version of marine cloud brightening already happens every day, according to Dr. Doherty.

As ships travel the seas, particles from their exhaust can brighten clouds, creating “ship tracks,” behind them. In fact, until recently, the cloud brightening associated with ship tracks offset about 5 percent of climate warming from greenhouse gases, Dr. Doherty said.

Ironically, as better technology and environmental regulations have reduced the pollution emitted by ships, that inadvertent cloud brightening is fading, as well as the cooling that goes along with it.

A deliberate program of marine cloud brightening could be done with sea salts, rather than pollution, Dr. Doherty said.

For the full story see:

Christopher Flavelle. “Salting the Clouds to Cool an Overheating Earth.” The New York Times (Thursday, April 4, 2024): A1 & A14-A15.

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

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 2, 2024, and has the title “Warming Is Getting Worse. So They Just Tested a Way to Deflect the Sun.”)

The article by the physicist John Latham, published in the one of the top two journals in science, and mentioned above, is:

Latham, John. “Control of Global Warming?” Nature 347, no. 6291 (Sept. 27, 1990): 339-40.

The Benefits of the “Energy Transition” Are Distant and Uncertain, While the Costs Are Immediate and Large

(p. A15) The 2015 Paris Agreement aspired to “reduce the risks and impacts of climate change” by eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions in the latter half of this century. The centerpiece of the strategy was a global transition to low-emission energy systems.

. . .

The energy transition’s purported climate benefits are distant, vague and uncertain while the costs and disruption of rapid decarbonization are immediate and substantial. The world has many more urgent needs, including the provision of reliable and affordable energy to all.  . . .

U.S. and European governments are trying to induce an energy transition by building or expanding organizations and programs favoring particular “clean” technologies, including wind and solar generation, carbon capture, hydrogen production and vehicle electrification. Promoting technological innovation is a worthy endeavor, but such efforts face serious challenges as costs and disruptions grow without tangible progress in reducing local, let alone global, emissions. Retreats from aggressive goals are already under way in Europe, with clear signs of mandate fatigue. The climbdown will be slower in the U.S., where subsidies create constituencies that make it more difficult to reverse course.

. . . today’s ineffective, inefficient, and ill-considered climate-mitigation strategies will be abandoned, making room for a more thoughtful and informed approach to responsibly providing for the world’s energy needs.

For the full commentary see:

Steven E. Koonin. “The ‘Climate Crisis’ Fades Out.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, June 11, 2024): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 10, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

Koonin’s commentary, quoted above, is related to his book:

Koonin, Steven E. Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. Dallas, TX: BenBella Books, 2021.

IRS Has “Ridiculous” 675 Day Delay in Getting Earned Refunds to the Victims of Identity Fraud

Some federal politicians sanctimoniously seek voter approval by pushing new giveaway programs to select groups (like $25,000 to first-time home buyers). If they were sincere about wanting to help the most deserving among the least-well-off, they would instead prioritize getting earned refunds to the low-income victims of identity theft.

(p. B6) If a thief files a fraudulent return using your tax information and pilfers your refund, you’ll have to wait an average of 675 days to get the money rightfully owed to you, according to the Taxpayer Advocate Service, a group within the Internal Revenue Service that works on behalf of taxpayers.

“That period of time is just ridiculous,” Erin M. Collins, who leads the service, said in an interview.

For reasons not yet clear, Ms. Collins noted, many of those affected are lower-income tax filers, who often depend on tax refunds to cover basic living costs. Those filers often qualify for tax breaks for working families, like the earned-income tax credit, that can result in significant refunds.

“These are true victims,” Ms. Collins said. “The I.R.S. should be helping these people.”

About half a million tax returns are in limbo at the I.R.S. because of identity theft fraud, a spokesman for the Taxpayer Advocate Service said.

. . .

The lengthy processing time for identity theft returns can cause other problems, Ms. Collins said in the blog post, like difficulty applying for a mortgage. When taxpayers are flagged for identity theft, she said, the I.R.S. won’t send tax transcripts — a record of the filers’ income and tax information — directly to lenders. So taxpayers have to request the transcripts themselves and give them to the lender. The red tape delays the completion of their home loan applications.

Other issues can arise, such as when a taxpayer chooses to have a refund applied to a subsequent tax year but the I.R.S. hasn’t yet applied it because of an unresolved identity theft issue. The tax owed on the subsequent year then goes unpaid, and the I.R.S. system begins to send collection notices.

For the full commentary see:

Ann Carrns. “Long Wait for Victims of Tax Return Fraud.” The New York Times (Saturday, June 15, 2024): B6.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 14, 2024, and has the title “First a Victim of Tax Return Identity Theft, Then a 2-Year Wait for a Refund.” Where there are a couple of small differences in wording, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

The blog post by Collins mentioned above is:

Collins, Erin M., National Taxpayer Advocate. “Identity Theft Victims Are Waiting Nearly Two Years to Receive Their Tax Refunds.” In NTA Blog, June 6, 2024.br />

The New York Times Is Open to the Possibility and Desirability of Geoengineering

In the past, The New York Times either ignored, or was dismissive of, geoengineering to reverse or mitigate the alleged future effects of global warming. A few months ago, I was pleasantly surprised to see the paper publish a page one article, quoted below, that was open to the policy of geoengineering. This is progress because the left’s standard response to the alleged effects of global warming is to advocate reduced economic growth. Geoengineering would allow economic growth, and the human flourishing it allows, to continue, even if global warming becomes as severe as the pessimists fear.

(p. 1) On a windswept Icelandic plateau, an international team of engineers and executives is powering up an innovative machine designed to alter the very composition of Earth’s atmosphere.

If all goes as planned, the enormous vacuum will soon be sucking up vast quantities of air, stripping out carbon dioxide and then locking away those greenhouse gases deep underground in ancient stone — greenhouse gases that would otherwise continue heating up the globe.

Just a few years ago, technologies like these, that attempt to re-engineer the natural environment, were on the scientific fringe. They were too expensive, too impractical, too sci-fi. But with the dangers from climate change worsening, and the world failing to meet its goals of slashing greenhouse gas emissions, they are quickly moving to the mainstream among both scientists and investors, despite questions about their effectiveness and safety.

. . .  Once science fiction, today these ideas are becoming reality.

Researchers are studying ways to block some of the sun’s radiation. They are testing whether adding iron to the ocean could carry carbon dioxide to the sea floor. They are hatching plans to build giant parasols in space. And with massive facilities like the one in Iceland, they are seeking to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air.

. . .

(p. 12) A plant similar to the one in Iceland, but far larger, is being built in Texas by Occidental Petroleum, the giant oil company.

. . .

The Occidental plant, being built near Odessa, Texas, and known as Stratos, will be more than 10 times more powerful than Mammoth, powered by solar energy, and have the potential to capture and sequester 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

It uses a different process to extract carbon dioxide from the air, though the goal is the same: Most of it will be locked away deep underground. But at least some of the carbon dioxide, Occidental says, will also be used to extract more oil.

In that process, carbon dioxide is pumped into the ground to force out oil that might otherwise be too difficult to reach. Techniques like this have made Occidental a company worth more than $50 billion and helped send American crude production to a new high in recent years.

Of course, it is the world’s reliance on the burning of oil and other fossil fuels that has so dangerously sent carbon dioxide levels soaring. In the atmosphere, carbon dioxide acts as a blanket, trapping the sun’s heat and warming the world.

Today, Occidental says it is trying to become a “carbon management” company as well as an oil producer. Last year, it paid $1.1 billion for a start-up called Carbon Engineering that had developed a way to soak up carbon dioxide from the air, and began building the Stratos project. Today, what was a barren plot of dirt less than 12 months ago is a bustling construction site.

“It’s like the Apollo missions at NASA,” said Richard Jackson, who oversees carbon management and domestic oil operations at Occidental. “We’re trying to move as quickly as we can.”

For the full story see:

David Gelles. “Can We Engineer Our Way Out of a Climate Crisis?” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, March 31, 2024): 1 & 12-13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated April 4, 2024, and has the title “Can We Engineer Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis?” The sentence above that starts “Once science fiction” appeared in the print, but not the online, version.)

Black Physician Wants to “Play Fair” and Be Judged on Merit

(p. A17) Do I deserve to jump the line? If I say yes, I may play a leading role in ending the scourge of atherosclerosis—also known as hardening of the arteries. If I play fair, I may lose the opportunity to save people around the world from heart attacks and strokes. I’m angry at the National Institutes of Health for putting me in this position. I’m even angrier it has done so in the name of racial equity.

My quandary comes down to whether I should “check the box” on an upcoming NIH grant application attesting to my recent African heritage. Since at least 2015, the NIH has asserted its belief in the intrinsic superiority of racially diverse research teams, all but stating that such diversity influences funding decisions. My family’s origins qualify me under the federal definition of African-American. Yet I feel it’s immoral and narcissistic to use race to gain an advantage over other applicants. All that should matter is the merit of my application and the body of my work, which is generally accepted as foundational in atherosclerosis research.

. . .

If I refuse to identify myself as African-American, our application is more likely to lose on “diversity” grounds. It’s a double wrong. Not only is the system rigged based on nonscientific—and possibly illegal—criteria; it encourages me to join in the rigging.

Truth be told, I made my decision years ago. When my study team files our application, it won’t note my West African origins. If we don’t get the grant, so be it. I refuse to engage in a moral wrong in pursuit of a moral good—even one as important as saving lives from the leading killer on earth. My father, who struggled against racism to achieve so much on the merits of his own work, would never forgive me for “checking the box” to grab a race-based advantage.

And no matter what happens, I can never forgive the National Institutes of Health for reinjecting racism into medical research.

For the full commentary see:

Kevin Jon Williams. “Why I’m Saying No to NIH’s Racial Preferences.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, March 28, 2024): A17.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 27, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

Sweden’s Restraint in Mandating Covid Lockdowns Resulted in Much Lower Excess Mortality Than the U.S. Suffered

(p. A17) The best measure of health performance during the pandemic is all-cause excess mortality, which captures the overall number of deaths relative to the expected level, encompassing Covid and lockdown-related deaths. On this measure Sweden—which kept most schools open and avoided strict lockdown orders—outperformed nearly every country in the world.

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the U.S. “would have had 1.60 million fewer deaths if it had the performance of Sweden, 1.07 million fewer deaths if it had the performance of Finland, and 0.91 million fewer deaths if it had the performance of France.” In America, states that imposed prolonged lockdowns had no better health outcomes when measured by all-cause excess mortality than those that stayed open. While no quantifiable relationship between lockdown severity and a reduction in Covid health harms has been found, states with severe lockdowns suffered significantly worse economic outcomes.

. . .

The economic costs of lockdowns were also staggering. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as many as 49 million Americans were out of work in May 2020. This shock had health consequences. A National Bureau of Economic Research study found that the lockdown unemployment shock is projected to result in 840,000 to 1.22 million excess deaths over the next 15 to 20 years, disproportionately killing women and minorities.

For the full commentary see:

Scott W. Atlas and Steve H. Hanke. “Covid Lessons Learned, Four Years Later.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, March 19, 2024): A17.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 18, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

The “recent study” mentioned above is:

Ioannidis, John P. A., Francesco Zonta, and Michael Levitt. “Variability in Excess Deaths across Countries with Different Vulnerability During 2020–2023.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120, no. 49 (Dec. 5, 2023): e2309557120.

The published version of the National Bureau of Economic Research study mentioned above is:

Bianchi, Francesco, Giada Bianchi, and Dongho Song. “The Long-Term Impact of the Covid-19 Unemployment Shock on Life Expectancy and Mortality Rates.” Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 146 (Jan. 2023): 104581.

Ending the “License Raj” in India Allowed Economic Growth and the Creation of Earned Entrepreneurial Wealth

(p. A8) The younger son of Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, is set to wed his fiancée in Mumbai on Friday, the finale of a monthslong extravaganza that signaled the arrival of the unapologetic Indian billionaire on the global stage — and introduced the world to the country’s Gilded Age.

. . .

Kavil Ramachandran, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Indian School of Business, said there were more billionaires with fatter wallets because India has sustained a high growth rate for more than two decades. That’s created a deep domestic market for goods and services, and pushed Indian companies to pursue new businesses, pairing opportunity with ambition.

“It’s a consequence of rapid growth and entrepreneurialism,” Mr. Ramachandran said.

. . .

India has come a long way from its socialist origins. Until 1990, the country operated under strict government supervision and protectionist policies. Companies could only run after procuring multiple permits and licenses from the government, leading to the name “License Raj” — a play on the term British Raj, which referred to colonial rule.

Once India opened up its economy after a series of reforms, some domestic companies embraced the logic of free markets while remaining family-run and tightly controlled, diversifying into new businesses.

. . .

Many Indians see in Mr. Ambani’s staggering rise in stature and wealth a version of the India they want: a country that doesn’t make a play for attention but demands it. Some even feel pride that his son’s wedding has attracted such global attention. To them, India’s poverty is a predictable fact, such opulence is not.

“Based on the level of the Ambanis’ wealth, the wedding is perfect,” said Mani Mohan Parmar, a 64-year-old resident from Mumbai.

“Even the common man here in India spends more than his capacity on a wedding,” Ms. Parmar said. “So it’s nothing too much if we talk about Ambani. He has so much money due to God’s grace, so why shouldn’t he spend it by his choice?”

For the full story see:

Anupreeta Das. “India’s New Gilded Age on Display at a Wedding.” The New York Times (Monday, June 15, 2024): A8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 12, 2023, and has the title “A Wedding Puts India’s Gilded Age on Lavish Display.”)

Human Ancestor 1.45-Million Years Ago Was a Victim of Cannibalism

Modern capitalism is sometimes criticized as inferior to a long-ago golden age. A past golden age is a myth. Human ancestors suffered from cannibalism and other violence.

(p. D3) In today’s scholar-eat-scholar world of paleoanthropology, claims of cannibalism are held to exacting standards of evidence. Which is why more than a few eyebrows were raised earlier this week over a study in Scientific Reports asserting that a 1.45-million-year-old fragment of shin bone — found 53 years ago in northern Kenya, and sparsely documented — was an indication that our human ancestors not only butchered their own kind, but were probably, as an accompanying news release put it, “chowing down” on them, too.

The news release described the finding as the “oldest decisive evidence” of such behavior. “The information we have tells us that hominids were likely eating other hominids at least 1.45 million years ago,” Briana Pobiner, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and first author of the paper, said in the news release.

. . .

Dr. Pobiner, an authority on cut marks, had spied the half-tibia fossil six summers ago while examining hominid bones housed in a Nairobi museum vault. She was inspecting the fossil for bite marks when she noticed 11 thin slashes, all angled in the same direction and clustered around a spot where a calf muscle would have attached to the bone — the meatiest chunk of the lower leg, Dr. Pobiner said in an interview.

She sent molds of the scars to Michael Pante, a paleoanthropologist at Colorado State University and an author on the study, who made 3-D scans and compared the shape of the incisions with a database of 898 tooth, trample and butchery marks. The analysis indicated that nine of the markings were consistent with the kind of damage made by stone tools. Dr. Pobiner said that the placement and orientation of the cuts implied that flesh had been stripped from the bone. From those observations she extrapolated her cannibalism thesis.

“From what we can tell, this hominin leg bone is being treated like other animals, which we presume are being eaten based on lots of butchery marks on them,” Dr. Pobiner said. “It makes the most sense to presume that this butchery was also done for the purpose of eating.”

. . .

. . ., clear proof of systematic cannibalism among hominids has emerged in the fossil record. The earliest confirmation was uncovered in 1994 in the Gran Dolina cave site of Spain’s Atapuerca Mountains. The remains of 11 individuals who lived some 800,000 years ago displayed distinctive signs of having been eaten, with bones displaying cuts, fractures where they had been cracked open to expose the marrow and human tooth marks.

Among our other evolutionary cousins now confirmed to have practiced cannibalism are Neanderthals, with whom humans overlapped, and mated, for thousands of years. A study published in 2016 reported that Neanderthal bones found in a cave in Goyet, Belgium, and dated to roughly 40,000 B.C. show signs of being butchered, split and used to sharpen the edges of stone tools. Patterns of bone-breakage in Homo antecessor, considered the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, suggest that cannibalism goes back a half-million years or more.

For the full story see:

Franz Lidz. “For Paleoanthropology, Cannibalism Can Be Clickbait.” The New York Times (Tuesday, June 11, 2024): D3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated July 3, 2023, and has the title “Cannibalism, or ‘Clickbait’ for Paleoanthropology?”)

The study in Scientific Reports mentioned above is:

Pobiner, Briana, Michael Pante, and Trevor Keevil. “Early Pleistocene Cut Marked Hominin Fossil from Koobi Fora, Kenya.” Scientific Reports 13, no. 1 (2023): 9896.

Kahneman’s “Adversarial Collaboration” Might Bring Us More Joy and Better Science

(p. A19) Professor Kahneman, who died . . . at the age of 90, is best known for his pathbreaking explorations of human judgment and decision making and of how people deviate from perfect rationality. He should also be remembered for a living and working philosophy that has never been more relevant: his enthusiasm for collaborating with his intellectual adversaries. This enthusiasm was deeply personal. He experienced real joy working with others to discover the truth, even if he learned that he was wrong (something that often delighted him).

. . .

Professor Kahneman saw . . . “angry science,” which he described as a “nasty world of critiques, replies and rejoinders” and “as a contest, where the aim is to embarrass.” As Professor Kahneman put it, those who live in that nasty world offer “a summary caricature of the target position, refute the weakest argument in that caricature and declare the total destruction of the adversary’s position.” In his account, angry science is “a demeaning experience.”

. . .

Professor Kahneman meant both to encourage better science and to strengthen the better angels of our nature.

For the full commentary see:

Cass R. Sunstein. “The Value of Collaborating With Adversaries.” The New York Times (Wednesday, April 3, 2024): A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 1, 2024, and has the title “The Nobel Winner Who Liked to Collaborate With His Adversaries.”)

During Black Death Only 7 of 21 Regions of Europe Had Catastrophic Decline in Agricultural Activity

(p. D4) In the mid-1300s, a species of bacteria spread by fleas and rats swept across Asia and Europe, causing deadly cases of bubonic plague. The “Black Death” is one of the most notorious pandemics in historical memory, with many experts estimating that it killed roughly 50 million Europeans, the majority of people across the continent.

“The data is sufficiently widespread and numerous to make it likely that the Black Death swept away around 60 percent of Europe’s population,” Ole Benedictow, a Norwegian historian and one of the leading experts on the plague, wrote in 2005. When Dr. Benedictow published “The Complete History of the Black Death” in 2021, he raised that estimate to 65 percent.

But those figures, based on historical documents from the time, greatly overestimate the true toll of the plague, according to a study published on Thursday [Feb. 10, 2022]. By analyzing ancient deposits of pollen as markers of agricultural activity, researchers from Germany found that the Black Death caused a patchwork of destruction. Some regions of Europe did indeed suffer devastating losses, but other regions held stable, and some even boomed.

. . .

Losing half the population would have turned many farms fallow. Without enough herders to tend livestock, pastures would have become overgrown. Shrubs and trees would have taken over, eventually replaced by mature forests.

If the Black Death did indeed cause such a shift, Dr. Izdebski and his colleagues reasoned, they should be able to see it in the species of pollen that survived from the Middle Ages. Every year, plants release vast amounts of pollen into the air, and some of it ends up on the bottom of lakes and wetlands. Buried in the mud, the grains can survive sometimes for centuries.

To see what pollen had to say about the Black Death, Dr. Izdebski and his colleagues picked out 261 sites across Europe — from Ireland and Spain in the west to Greece and Lithuania in the east — that held grains preserved from around 1250 to 1450.

In some regions, such as Greece and central Italy, the pollen told a story of devastation. Pollen from crops like wheat dwindled. Dandelions and other flowers in pastureland faded. Fast-growing trees like birch appeared, followed by slow-growing ones like oaks.

But that was hardly the rule across Europe. In fact, just seven out of 21 regions the researchers studied underwent a catastrophic shift. In other places, the pollen registered little change at all.

. . .

Monica Green, an independent historian based in Phoenix, speculated that the Black Death might have been caused by two strains of the bacteria Yersinia pestis, which could have caused different levels of devastation. Yersinia DNA collected from medieval skeletons hints at this possibility, she said.

In their study, Dr. Izdebski and his colleagues did not examine that possibility, but they did consider a number of other factors, including the climate and density of populations in different parts of Europe. But none accounted for the pattern they found.

“There is no simple explanation behind that, or even a combination of simple explanations,” Dr. Izdebski said.

. . .

“What we show is that there are a number of factors, and it’s not easy to predict from the beginning which factors will matter,” he said, referring to how viruses can spread. “You cannot assume one mechanism to work everywhere the same way.”

For the full essay see:

Carl Zimmer. “Questioning the Toll Of a 1300s Pandemic.” The New York Times (Tuesday, February 15, 2022 [sic]): D4.

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

(Note: the online version of the essay was updated Feb. 15, 2022 [sic], and has the title “Did the ‘Black Death’ Really Kill Half of Europe? New Research Says No.”)

The book cited above as over-estimating the death toll of the Black Death is:

Benedictow, Ole J. The Complete History of the Black Death. Martlesham, UK: Boydell Press, 2021.

The academic article co-authored by Izdebski and mentioned above is:

Izdebski, A., P. Guzowski, R. Poniat, L. Masci, J. Palli, C. Vignola, M. Bauch, C. Cocozza, R. Fernandes, F. C. Ljungqvist, T. Newfield, A. Seim, D. Abel-Schaad, F. Alba-Sánchez, L. Björkman, A. Brauer, A. Brown, S. Czerwiński, A. Ejarque, M. Fiłoc, A. Florenzano, E. D. Fredh, R. Fyfe, N. Jasiunas, P. Kołaczek, K. Kouli, R. Kozáková, M. Kupryjanowicz, P. Lagerås, M. Lamentowicz, M. Lindbladh, J. A. López-Sáez, R. Luelmo-Lautenschlaeger, K. Marcisz, F. Mazier, S. Mensing, A. M. Mercuri, K. Milecka, Y. Miras, A. M. Noryśkiewicz, E. Novenko, M. Obremska, S. Panajiotidis, M. L. Papadopoulou, A. Pędziszewska, S. Pérez-Díaz, G. Piovesan, A. Pluskowski, P. Pokorny, A. Poska, T. Reitalu, M. Rösch, L. Sadori, C. Sá Ferreira, D. Sebag, M. Słowiński, M. Stančikaitė, N. Stivrins, I. Tunno, S. Veski, A. Wacnik, and A. Masi. “Palaeoecological Data Indicates Land-Use Changes across Europe Linked to Spatial Heterogeneity in Mortality During the Black Death Pandemic.” Nature Ecology & Evolution 6, no. 3 (March 2022): 297-306.