William McGurn says the danger of East Palestine's chemical spill has been exaggerated. The EPA and private scientists have declared the air and water safe, but a lot of residents don't believe them:
Today’s fear is the price Americans are paying for the public-health authorities’ response to Covid. So many things experts claimed in the name of science—from the efficacy of masks to the shortcomings of natural immunity—turned out not to be true. The result is East Palestine, where many ask why they should now believe authorities who assure them the air and water are safe.
This is tiresome. Scientists did not, in fact, get all that much wrong about COVID. The bigger problem is people like McGurn, who seem not to understand how science works. It doesn't produce correct answers instantly out of thin air; actual research and analysis has to be done first. This takes time and frequently overturns previously held beliefs. That's not a problem with science, it's the very thing that makes science science.
There are also some pretty concrete reasons to be skeptical of official pronouncements about stuff like this. Corporations routinely lie about the dangers of their products. Politicians, mostly on the right, routinely belittle science whenever it doesn't provide answers they like. And of course, governments have a pretty spotty record of being open and honest about anything that might inconvenience them.
All of this is in play in East Palestine, and it goes back way, way further than COVID. I doubt there's any kind of PR miracle cure for this, but a starting point would be a basic understanding of how science works in the first place. Unlike the other problems, at least that one is relatively easy.
Red Hill water contamination. Read up on it and ask yourself how you'd react if you were living in the affected area. Who do you trust?
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These are the people who thought the elderly should lick the virus pole for capitalism. Of course they think masks are useless and herd immunity (bye grandma, nice knowing you!) is the quickest way back to a strong stock market
The criminal psychotics who keep loudly claiming masks didn't work are the people who didn't die --through sheer chance.
A million people died and most of them died because of the people who claimed masks didn't work.
I'm not a criminal psychotic, nor was the research I read at the time published by criminal psychotics. I've been a medical school professor for nearly 36 years. I was in the Moderna phase III trial.
In fact, there is very little evidence that unfitted cloth masks protect the wearer from COVID. They can protect others if you have COVID and are sneezing and coughing.
Much more important to blunting the pandemic was social distancing. Closing indoor gathering places (bars, restaurants, classrooms, churches). Unfitted cloth masks were mostly helpful by keeping people from touching their nose and mouth, two known routes of infection, and for virtue signaling, to remind people to social distance.
"In fact, there is very little evidence that unfitted cloth masks protect the wearer from COVID."
And then you go on to list reasons why they indeed also protect the wearer.
If people are not spreading the virus as much when sick, they are also protecting themselves by limiting the spread of the disease, since less sick people around means less chance for them to catch it again in the future. That's an indirect personal protection. Limiting the amount of face touching is very much direct protection.
You may not be a criminal psychotic, but it does seem you are not too bright if you don't realize the incongruence of your two statements.Scary for someone claiming to be a medical school professor with nearly 36 years of experience.
That was the great sticking point for masks. Explaining to solipsists that we wear masks to protect each other and not ourselves is like talking to a stone.
Solar, I have no idea whether you are bright or not. However, your ad hominem screed here does not show any signs of it.
However, your ad hominem screed here does not show any signs of it.
Yeah, way over the top. Also with a nice dollop of pedantry and flat-out inaccuracy. Joel was simply repeating what is well-known by now: lower quality masking's principal benefit is only realized as a herd effect. If you're in a room with 100 people, all of whom are masked, your chances of avoiding infection are enhanced because of all those masks (even if of the cloth/unfitted variety). But if you're the only one of those 100 wearing a mask, you'll gain precious little protection unless the mask is fitted, high quality.
"lower quality masking's principal benefit is only realized as a herd effect."
Principal benefit is not the same as no benefit.
Unfortunately far too many people assume that if things don't produce an immediate and direct benefit, it is not producing any in an indirect way.
Or binary benefit. If it only lowers your chance by a few minutes, well, gosh.
Well, that's a few more minutes than you had before, now isn't it?
Principal benefit is not the same as no benefit.
True. Just precious little. And arguably no benefit at all on net because the messaging may confuse people into wearing cloth masks to provide individual protection, which they absolutely should not be doing (for individual protection, they need to wear the fitted, high quality variety).
When someone tries to boost their opinion in response to another by making an appeal to authority ("I am so and so") I hold them to a higher standard if their comment is contradictory.
LOL. There is nothing incongruent in my statement. You just don't understand it. And your resort to ad hominem instead of reason would fail you as a medical student.
You don't see the incongruence between this:
"In fact, there is very little evidence that unfitted cloth masks protect the wearer from COVID. "
And this:
"Unfitted cloth masks were mostly helpful by keeping people from touching their nose and mouth, two known routes of infection
Do you realize that in the second statement you are literally describing one way in which unfitted cloth masks protected people who wore them?
As for the Ad hominem, like I said above, when someone tries to boost their opinion with some claim of "I am so and so" when dismissing the opinion of someone else, the opinion given better be solid.
You call it virtue signaling (a negative, political framing), I call it human-factors engineering, that is, a change to a system designed to elicit safer and/or more efficient, effective behavior from the humans in the system. I’m an engineering psychologist with over 40 years experience.
Good call on the framing. I've always wanted to learn more about engineering psychology -- what little I know is fascinating -- but, alas! Time, as always, is limited.
Thanks. Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things is very readable; lots of examples that illustrate how design shapes behaviors.
It's in my to read pile (The older edition, that is. $287 is a bit rich for my blood.)
And that is just as easily thought of as a condescending characterization & dismissal of another's opinion as the response deemed an ad hominem attack, IMO.
When Dr. Fauci recommended that we not rush to buy the masks needed for medical professionsls, I made & bought cloth masks. Purchasing masks that are intended for one-time use unaffordable for many people, anyway.
I did NOT do that as "virtue signaling" & think that that phrase should be removed from use by most people.
The research you cite apparently looked at unfitted cloth masks. Did they compare with better-fitted masks made from better materials? Or even the cheap surgical masks most people seem to have worn, which aren't fitted but are made of material that filters better than cloth?
Yes.
I missed your monosyllabic response the first time around. So I've got to ask -- and truly, I honestly want to know -- why didn't you simply go with something like 'masks of the right type and properly fitted are effective, unfitted cloth masks not so much'? Because from here, I think I've got every reason to suspect you were trying to push a both-sides frame. Or to put it another way, I can't thnk of a single good reason for you to make that sort of what seems to me deceptive post. I freely admit that just because I can't think of a good reason doesn't mean there isn't one, if you'll excuse the colloquialism.
Okay, I'll bite: So how effective are properly worn K/N95 masks at preventing the wearer from contracting COVID?
Because I don't think it's news that gators -- AKA 'improperly fitted cloth masks' -- don't do squat to protect the users.
"Three metres are not enough to ensure protection. Even at that distance, it takes less than five minutes for an unvaccinated person standing in the breath of a person with Covid-19 to become infected with almost 100 percent certainty. That's the bad news. The good news is that if both are wearing well-fitting medical or, even better, FFP2 masks, the risk drops dramatically. "
https://www.mpg.de/17916867/coronavirus-masks-risk-protection
IOW, masks _are_ effective at preventing the wearer from being infected when exposed to the COVID virus. Uh, isn't that pretty much the opposite of the implication you were trying to push?
And that point was made early on; everybody here remembers the aerosol vs droplet model throw-down (our little pod already had a stack of N95's on hand because that's just what you do, like with bandaids and disinfectants.) So, yeah, poorly made airplanes fall out of the sky. Poorly made cars crash and burn. And poorly made masks aren't going to do much to protect the wearer. This is news? Why didn't you lead with that instead of your IMHO rather deceptive statement about the efficacy of masks?
Specific sorts of masks.
Uh, that's implied in the wording, innit? If I say that surgery can correct a defective lens, please tell me that you don't think I mean all surgical procedures.
Implication is prime fodder for the Telephone Game.
Okay. Rick thinks breast augmentation will improve your eyesight. I'll grant it's a novel theory (or at least, one I hadn't heard of yet.)
Or: Rick thinks that dogs are in fact _not_ four-legged animals on the strength that some have only three.
There are many more obvious ones, but I'll leave it for now.
And the test bed is whatever public that participates. And that's the problem. Undisciplined, irrational, and uncooperative.
From the report you linked to:
Although the detailed analysis by the Max Planck researchers in Göttingen shows that tight-fitting FFP2 masks provide 75 times better protection compared to well-fitting surgical masks and that the way a mask is worn makes a huge difference; even medical masks significantly reduce the risk of infection compared to a situation without any mouth-nose protection at all. "That's why it's so important for people to wear a mask during the pandemic," says Gholamhossein Bagheri. And Eberhard Bodenschatz adds, "Our results show once again that mask-wearing in schools and also in general is a very good idea."
Five minutes is more than it takes to grab your take out and go, tho.
Why is it important that cloth masks protect the wearer directly?
If I were a skeptical resident of East Palestine, OH, it wouldn't be because of scientists: it might be because I remembered Bush's EPA appointee Christie Todd Whitman claiming without evidence that the air was safe around Ground Zero after 9/11.
the magical cure would be an end to right-wing attacks on science.
Kevin's been spending far too much time reading the Wall Street Journal lately. It's been an utterly worthless tabloid since Murdoch, as he does to all things, turned into shit.
In the late 70's and early 80's, in Warren Buffett's offices, the editorial stuff was considered the missing cartoon section in the WSJ. I cancelled back then. I believe that was well before Murdoch's involvement.
Infecting the rest of the pages happened under Murdoch's watch.
This is an opinion piece in WSJ, the daily diary of the American managerial and ownership strata. In it, McGurn sneers at government, in the form of the EPA and other agencies responding to the chemicals, at the scare-mongering media, and at politicians for good measure. These are all favorite country-club and conference-table betes noires.
So, mission accomplished, priors confirmed, and the earth is round, and the sun rises in the east, and all is right with the world. Really bog standard, imho.
I can see only two potentially notable elements in the op-ed. One is McGurn's positioning himself as the calm voice of science and reason assuring us that since all the vinyl chloride has evaporated or been burned away, akshually there's no possible worry for anyone, despite not knowing what else might have been either spilled or burned (yes, color me a little skeptical about that myself despite being on Team D generally-- just how much can we trust NS's word, for a start?).
The other is that he points to trump as just another politician trying to make some hay out of a disaster. So has Rupert sent the word forth, or is McGurn's nose quick to catch a scent?
Since vinyl chloride was in liquid form before being burned, one can expect a lot of atmospheric as well as ground contamination, at least by that part that was not burned.
Also, the uncontrolled burning likely resulted in further contamination. I noted that the inspectors took samples several days later, after a west wind cleared out the impact site.
Maybe I'm making up risks, but I keep thinking about the chance of surface deposition of all kinds of stuff from the burning. Vinyl chloride couldn't have been the only thing that burned unless they were very careful and very lucky, plus visible thick dark smoke would have to indicate particulates of some kind even if it really was only the one chemical that burned. That means I'd want to look at house exteriors and interiors (older houses tend to be very porous) and other structures as well as soil under the smoke plume and downwind.
I really do not trust NS's account of anything about what was on the train or what happened. Their very busy main line runs right through the middle of my town and they don't cooperate worth a damn with hazmat and emergency coordination offices here, not even in drills. They're notoriously close-mouthed about everything with all the municipalities up and down their line.
This is the future of humanity,
https://twitter.com/dinnafashh/status/1627064005134270466
Late to the game: https://youtu.be/9WfZuNceFDM
This: Corporations routinely lie about the dangers of their products
is much more relevant than
This: understanding of how science works.
___________
Look-- we've killed something like five Vietnam-war's-worth of Americans with prescription opioids since 2000. More Americans died than Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
These are drugs that both the gov't and the pharmaceutical companies told us were safe.
I find calls to "trust the science" somewhat naive and even insulting.
Because where there is money to be made, "truth" and "science" are often quite squishy.
I'm with you 120%. Your last line is classic.
Uh huh. So, of course, you yourself don't trust the scientific process. Yes, I saw what you did there.
The drugs aren't what killed them, so much as the dosages.
And the government didn't say they were safe from addiction?
The FDA supposedly requires proof of safety and efficacy before it approves a drug.
That's a heck of lot of corpses for drugs that are "safe."
Declare the zone around the wreck uninhabitable and call it a day. Make them move. Clean it up after they are gone. Really… why even bother with this?
Well, yeah. I agree.
However, most peoples's wealth, such as it is, is in their house and property. "Make them move" -- great. And how will they buy another house, or even rent, without the value of their property to back them up? What about all their stuff, which could be contaminated and might have to be disposed of, in some hazmat landfill, probably in Texas?
All these folks have taken a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Plus, it's likely that their places of employment are also in the "condemned" zone, so they're now unemployed, too. And the kids can't go to school.
Who pays?
("Who cares," you say. As fellow Americans, we ought to.)
We all pay. Now that republicans have professed their support for these oppressed people, the vote on a compensation fund should be nearly unanimous. Then the US government can negotiate payments from the railroad and their insurance companies to reimburse the government later.
Keep the ambulance chasing lawyers out of it. Like the 9/11 fund.
It’s been done before.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal
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I agree with you entirely, but liberals have some blame here too, smugly saying "we believe in science in this house' when following not-yet-settled science issued by the CDC. Don't get me wrong, it was a crisis and the CDC was doing their best; they had to make some tough calls and it was inevitable they would get some things wrong due to the time pressure involved. But no one should have treated their pronouncements as gospel in the early days.
Yet another guy who doesn't believe in the iterative process of scientific discovery, I see. Also, your last sentence is ... weird. It's almost as if you're deliberately conflating two separate notions to make a vacuous rhetorical point 😉
This is worse than dissembling, this is murderous. This type of language harms real people by blunting their thinking. You should be ashamed.
There’s a whole lot of daylight between ‘treating it as gospel’ and ‘going with the best available knowledge at the time’.
The chutzpah and complete lack of self-awareness it takes for Kevin to write this is as well as most of these comments is off the charts.
This blog has been a tour de force of anti-science idiocy where COVID is concerned. Democrats, in particular, have proven themselves to be rank morons over and over again.
When Kevin says “scientists didn’t get that much wrong” it’s simple misdirection because Kevin and his ilk were constantly invoking “scientists” to justify bullying people that doubted the efficacy of masks, lockdowns, school closures, vaccine mandates and vaccine policy, among other things. Yet every single one of these, Democratic policy people(and Kevin!) got spectacularly wrong. Did scientists get them right? All depends on their politics, as far as the Kevins of the world are concerned.
In a decent world, the Kevin’s would recognize the size of the their errors and politely excuse themselves from public commentary ever again, since they’d recognize their behavior revealed them to be unfit to pretend anymore. But it isn’t a decent world, and Kevin’s need to bumble on to the next mistake, so we get this tripe of a post.
What miserable pieces of excrement the Kevin’s are.
poor lammy needs a hug. desperately. but will he get one? cries for help are often misunderstood.
Heh. You don't believe in science. But you sure do believe in religion.
And he appears to see no morons among the Republicans. Amazing.
All of those people deserved all the bullying they got. They in fact should have been bullied more.
No, they got absolutely, 100% right.
You may be forgiven your inability to distinguish possessives from plurals, but your crude attacks on this blogger, who provides this platform free at his expense, is inexcusable.
There are positively evil forces at work on corporate & political websites, & you really belong there.
And you don't seem to know what a "decent world" is or could be.
+10. This sort of abuse of language really should be called out more often, and called out much harder at that. This reminds me of nothing so much as the stupid word games libertarians would play online back on USENET.
Thank you - but when others feel the need to insult Kevin Drum as he & Marian are dealing with his serious health problem, when they are perfectly free to simply make known their disagreement with his opinion, it really is sad.
And it shouldn't take someone with a serious health issue or polite Middle Western upbringing to object to that kind of attack.
Head to Walmart, you need another sock, this one is crusty.
Spoken like a true "piece of excrement."
"Anti-science idiocy" indeed. Absolutely nothing in your comment shows any appreciation for, understanding of, or even interest in science. Just whining about "bullying." Just more grievance - the life blood of the new, Fox-fueled Right.
Kamala's office is probably going to leak something damaging to get back at Pete for all the stories his team has been leaking about her.
Ah, the wonders of an education and critical thinking skills. This country has lost that and it's too late. We are now easily duped.
I think that we have always had many people who are easily duped. But before online encounters made interaction about what has been learned from both bad sources & good ones easy, putting opinions on full blast, especially anonymously, wasn't available to make it worse.
And so how long does the scientist wait to publish a press release on her latest findings, and how long does the press wait to cover it?
When something like COVID arises, or the train derailment, there is an urgency for which “We don’t know yet, we have to conduct more research.” does not do well as an answer.
No room in your cosmos for current best practice recommendations, I see.
The recommendation may start as “ We are not sure yet, but X, Y, and Z are current best practices” but once it gets run through the Telephone Game it becomes “Do X, Y, and Z because science.” And then after science has had time to study and finds X doesn’t matter it becomes a flip-flop.
Certainly. But that's not the science at fault; that's the telephone game and motivated priors.
My wife and I knew exactly what to do and we didn't need to wait for researchers to create well researched deeply grounded papers. My mother was a public health and Navy nurse, my wife is a walking talking medical encyclopedia.
The techniques are hundreds (or more) years old, maybe older in Asia. It's very simple - mask/isolate, keep sanitizing hands and surfaces with high alcohol (or other) disinfectant, wear gloves and well fitted clothing sealed tightly to pants and shirts if there's any possibility of insect transmission like fleas). If anybody has seen those drawings or paintings of the people in black wearing long beaked bird masks, long pants and tight fitted gloves and boots. The bird masks were often stuffed with cloth, with healing herbs and scents sprinkled in. The classic look for plague-wear.
After you get more information on the actual transmission vectors, you can adjust behavior as appropriate. And we didn't need to wait for the CDC - particularly since TFG was being a loud lunatic who almost invariably appointed idiots to positions where they were sure to F'up big time.
One of Fauci's fears came true very early in 2020. The day after the isolation/mask/sanitize regime was announced there wasn't a single high quality medical grade mask to be had anywhere in our county Good thing I had a box of N95s, built our own hand sanitizer (Everclear and Aloe juice). Cottage industries sprang up making hand sanitizer (in gallon containers for hospitals and clinics), and making multi-layer cloth masks till the supply chain for high quality masks slowly sputtered back into action. All the local HW stores cleared their shelves of any remotely useful mask and heavy duty barrier gloves and donated them.
The Lab Leak truth that dare not speak its name:
https://www.mattball.org/2023/02/the-lab-leak-truth-that-dare-not-speak.html
I find it very odd that everyone argues about the CDC, when this pandemic took place during a period of unprecedented access to scientific research from around the world. Simple Google and Google Scholar searches could find scholarly articles and governmental reports from countries around the world, much of it in English.
Early reports about actual spreading events in Asia quickly made the airborne nature of covid obvious, and early reports of superspreader events in places with some mask use illustrated that masks provided some, but not total protection. It was fantastic to be able to read reports from the Netherlands and Israel, and look at the public health messaging of more successful countries, like Japan.
One problem we will always face when it comes to science and pandemics is that the "scientists" people trust are medical doctors, who often have limited knowledge of epidemiology, and the people making local policy often have only masters degrees in epidemiology, and probably are ill-equipped to read and understand all the scholarly literature being produced.
On top of that is the general public's desire to virtue signal. On the right that meant doing really risky stuff (crowds of unmasked people indoors), but on the left that meant shaming people for safe activities (like a game of outdoor tennis with your household members). I remember how angry people were when I said going to George Floyd protests was unlikely to spread much covid, just don't carpool there or get arrested. And, guess what, the Floyd protests spread little covid while Sturgis (with its shopping, hotel stays, and indoor restaurant meals) spread a ton of it.