A8 THE BULLETIN • WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2021
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Legislature rethinks
police mug shots
S
uspects usually don’t look their best in a booking photo.
Being arrested is not a good day in anybody’s life.
And as you know, once a photo is
on the internet it can stick around.
A police mug shot can become a
digital scarlet letter. Years later, even
if a person was never convicted of
any crime, it could be that photo
that pops up when someone does a
web search.
Some websites collect up the mug
shots and post galleries of them.
Those websites can exist ostensibly
just to charge people to take photos
down.
A proposal in the Oregon Leg-
islature would prohibit law en-
forcement from releasing booking
photos to the public. There would
be exceptions such as when law en-
forcement is asking the public for
help or if a person is convicted of
crime. Otherwise, the mug shots
would be secret. The House Sub-
committee on Equitable Policing
briefly went over the ideas in the bill
on Monday.
The proposal also contains a
second provision, which would
require websites that charge a fee
to take down a photo — to take it
down within 30 days if requested
and charge no more than $50. The
website also would have only seven
days to take the photo down, if an
individual can submit evidence that
he or she was acquitted or not pros-
ecuted, or was set aside, vacated or
pardoned. The proposal contains
penalties of up to $1,000.
People who are arrested do have
a privacy concern about how their
photo is used and how it can dam-
age their reputation. Being arrested
does not mean a person is guilty. A
mug shot can give that impression.
There is also a competing interest
in the public’s ability to understand
what law enforcement is doing. If
a person’s mug shot is not released,
there can be confusion about who
was actually arrested when people
have similar names. A photo can
clear it up pretty quickly. More se-
crecy would make it easier for law
enforcement to conceal some ar-
rests — a very dangerous path. The
public needs to be able to know who
is arrested and what for. That for the
public’s safety and to be able to hold
law enforcement accountable.
We cannot say we are fans of
websites that exist to make money
off people by charging them to take
a person’s personal information
down. Some states have already
enacted legislation to prevent busi-
nesses from charging fees to remove
such photos. That aspect of the pro-
posal deserves serious deliberation.
Are legislators going to
debate vaccination policy?
T
he decision Gov. Kate Brown
made to prioritize vaccina-
tions for educators before
many seniors get vaccinated de-
serves a debate. It is a decision at
odds with federal guidelines which
say seniors living outside nursing
homes should be next.
Where is the debate about it in
the Legislature? We checked out
both the Senate Committee on Ed-
ucation and the Senate Committee
on Health Care on Monday. For
such a major policy decision, legis-
lators didn’t seem to be asking a lot
of questions.
The only real argument at the
Senate Committee on Education
on Monday was one-sided. Lind-
say Capps, senior policy adviser for
Gov. Brown, gave a justification for
Brown’s choice.
“Locked school doors are hav-
ing heartbreaking consequences for
our kids,” he said. He pointed out
some children are struggling with
distance learning. Too many chil-
dren have more difficulty accessing
services that schools can provide
to shelter and support students.
Schools have not been able to play a
role in helping to identify students
who may be suffering from abuse
and neglect. “We are not powerless
to respond,” he said.
Colt Gill, director of the Ore-
gon Department of Education, and
Dean Sidelinger, the state epidemi-
ologist, went into some detail about
requirements to keep students and
educators safe as they return to
school.
There was some discussion about
the policy at the Senate Committee
on Health Care on Monday. As The
Bulletin’s Gary Warner reported,
Sen. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, pointed
out some of his constituents are
upset with Brown’s decision. Ore-
gon Health Authority Director Pat
Allen said federal guidelines were
“advisory.”
We know the Democrats that
control the Legislature may not
want to challenge the governor. But
Oregonians do deserve a serious
policy debate over Brown’s choice.
Where is that going to happen?
Editorials reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board, Publisher Heidi Wright, Editor
Gerry O’Brien and Editorial Page Editor Richard Coe. They are written by Richard Coe.
Fossil fuel disinformation playbook
BY SCOTT CHRISTIANSEN
Contributing columnist
P
lastics, coal, oil and gas are all
economically important but en-
vironmentally damaging. Fossil
fuel producers have generated pub-
lic relations strategies to distract and
misinform the public about the link
between their pollutants and global
warming. We all know how depen-
dent we have been on these products
— perhaps that is why we looked the
other way for so many decades. Not
all companies use disinformation, but
it is far too widespread.
A 2019 list of top global polluters
identifies the 20 companies respon-
sible for 35% of fossil fuel emissions
since 1965. The top six polluters were
Saudi Aramco, Chevron, Gazprom,
Exxon, BP and Shell. Disinformation
was a key ingredient of oil industry
success and profitability across the
past six decades. How is disinforma-
tion deployed?
“Dark Money” by Jane Mayer is a
book that traces a trail of billions of
dollars spent by the Koch brothers’
network, revealing a conglomeration
of think tanks, academic institutions,
media groups, courthouses and gov-
ernments that have fallen under their
sphere of influence to mislead the
public. The story tells how money
can make disinformation come out of
a corrupted ally’s mouth.
The most recent revelation of mis-
leading the public features the plastics
industry. Renewables now compete
with gas, oil, and coal as sources of
energy, but plastic remains a central
product for fossil fuel companies.
We like plastic because it is so use-
ful; therefore, we readily agree to re-
cycle. NPR reports that, “Used plastic
is not valuable, and it never has been.
And what is more, the makers of
plastic — the nation’s largest oil and
gas companies — have known this all
along, even as they spent millions of
dollars telling the American public
the opposite.”
In “Blowout” by Rachel Maddow,
she tells how fracking leads to earth-
Climate Changed
CENTRAL OREGON
GON
CROSSROADS S
By Scott Christiansen
quakes — more than 100 measuring
a magnitude of 3.0 or higher in the
state of Oklahoma — in February
2016 alone.
She also describes how the oil and
gas industry has weakened democ-
racies in developed and developing
countries, fouled oceans and rivers
and propped up authoritarians like
Vladimir Putin. The jacket cover says,
“Blowout is a call to stop subsidizing
the wealthiest businesses on earth, to
fight for transparency, and to check
the influence of the world’s most de-
structive industry and its enablers.”
Diversions: Hey, look over here!
Nearly all the fossil fuel compa-
nies are now investing in new carbon
capture and storage (CCS) technol-
ogies. Yes, we want to believe CCS
will work. It sounds wonderful but
CCS is an expensive and immature
technology. It will take decades to be-
come scalable, longer than the time
available for us to reverse course on
climate disruption. According to the
New Republic’s reporting, the public
is influenced to conclude that invest-
ments in CCS by fossil fuel producers
represent a change of direction, when
in reality, it is meant to direct atten-
tion away from profit-taking at a time
when the public is becoming more
concerned about causes of climatic
tragedies.
Discriminating good from bad
behavior
The following are recommended
indicators of good behavior that
should be adopted by the fossil fuel
industry in dealing with the climate
crisis: (a) publicly renounce disin-
formation on climate science; (b)
develop business models that limit
global warming from rising above
pre-industrial temperature more
than 2°C (3.6°F); (c) support cli-
mate policies to reduce emissions of
greenhouse gases; (d) fully disclose
to shareholders climate-related risks
faced by their business; and (e) pay
their fair share of the costs for cli-
mate-related damage and adaptation.
Red flags
What you need to guard against:
The disinformation playbook un-
dermines science by manufactur-
ing doubt and creating uncertainty,
which can be used to block regula-
tions or minimize corporate liability.
The Union of Concerned Scientists
outlines some methodologies:
1. Using counterfeit science —
planting articles in journals or com-
missioning scientific studies that use
methods designed to find “the right
results.”
2. Defunding research, interfering
with promotions, transferring staff
to other positions, tarnishing reputa-
tions, muting scientists with nondis-
closure agreements or litigating.
3. Fronting alleged independent
trade associations to undermine sci-
ence, influence public opinion, and
indirectly influence policymakers.
4. Buying credibility through alli-
ances with academia or professional
societies, using this screen to influ-
ence research and spread misinforma-
tion that serves corporate interests.
5. Lobbying to help enact legisla-
tion favorable to company interests;
using connections to reach top offi-
cials.
People are busy so we need to en-
sure they can be accurately informed.
We need to support both education
and journalism. A proper education
combined with verified, trusted in-
formation are the antidotes to disin-
formation and misinformation.
ý
Scott Christiansen is an international
agronomist with 35 years of experience. He
worked for USDA’s Agricultural Research
Service and the U.S. Agency for International
Development.
Everyone in the country should be wearing N95 masks by now
BY JOSEPH ALLEN
Special to The Washington Post
W
e are rightly grateful to the
front-line health-care work-
ers who put their lives on
the line each day. Their relative risk of
death rose 20% in 2020 over previous
years.
We should also be grateful for the
bakers and cooks, whose risk of death
rose more than 50%. And for maids
and truck drivers, who saw a 30% in-
crease in death risk. And construction
workers and shipping clerks, up more
than 40%.
Those numbers come from a new
report out of California that shines
a light on the shocking risk to the
novel coronavirus by occupation. It
also shows how necessary it is that
we ramp up protections for essential
workers. The best way to do that: bet-
ter masks.
In the scrambling for information
and tools in early days of the pan-
demic, it was acceptable to just say
any cloth mask will do, because it’s
true. Any face covering is better than
none.
But we’ve learned so much since
then, and we need to adjust our strat-
egy. A typical cloth mask might cap-
ture half of all respiratory aerosols
that come out of our mouths when we
talk, sing or just breath. A tightly wo-
ven cloth mask might get you to 60%
or 70%, and a surgical mask can get
you to 70% or 80%.
But there’s no reason any essential
worker — and, really, everyone in the
country — should go without masks
that filter 95%.
The masks I’m referring to, of
course, are N95s. These are cheap
— pre-pandemic they cost about 50
cents — and easy to manufacture. Yet
our country has failed to invoke the
Defense Production Act to produce
enough masks for health-care work-
ers and other essential workers. That
needs to change, as my colleagues at
Harvard University’s medical school
have said.
To see the true power of masks as a
public health tool, we have to examine
them in the context of everyone wear-
ing them, where the power of each
mask doubles. That’s because the par-
ticles have to pass through the mate-
rial twice — once after being emitted
and again before someone breathes
them in. Take the example of two 70%
efficient masks, which combine to re-
duce 91% of particles. Not bad. But
two N95s result in greater than a 99%
reduction in exposure.
We could reduce exposure by 99%
for what should be $1 a mask. (Prices
are higher now because of the fail-
ure to produce an adequate supply.)
Throw in better ventilation and some
distance between people and you have
hospital-grade protections.
How well a mask works isn’t just
about filtration; it must also fit well. A
mask with a good set of filters doesn’t
do much good if your breath can es-
cape out the sides or top. The mask
needs to go over the bridge of your
nose, down around your chin and be
flush against your cheeks.
Americans should become famil-
iar with ways to test a mask’s fit. Every
time you put on a mask, do a “user
seal check.” Put your hands over the
mask to block the air moving through
it, and exhale gently. You shouldn’t
feel air coming out the side or up to-
ward your eyes. Then, test to make
sure it stays in place by moving your
head side to side and all around. Read
passages of text, such as the “Rainbow
Passage” that’s commonly used for
respirator fit testing, and see whether
the mask slides around too much
when you talk.
Beyond the basics of filtration and
fit, consumers will need to navigate
a confusing market. Is a KN95 mask
acceptable? How about KF94? Does
country of origin matter? What about
counterfeits? A formal federal pro-
gram could help by offering clear
guidance on high-quality masks.
Until that happens, here’s my cheat
sheet: If you can find an N95, go for
it. These are certified in the United
States. Barring that, I’d go for the cer-
tified mask used in South Korea, the
KF94. Next I’d choose KN95s, but
there is a catch: The government re-
ports that KN95s out of China might
not meet standards unless the man-
ufacturer holds a “NIOSH (National
Institute for Occupational Safety and
Health) Certificate.”
If you can’t find one of these masks,
or if you’re not sure whether they
meet the standards, there’s something
you can do right now with confi-
dence: Double-mask with a surgical
mask and a cloth mask. The surgical
mask gives you good, certified fil-
tration, while the cloth mask on top
helps improve the fit. Research shows
this can achieve greater than 90% fil-
tration.
Many people ask whether they
need an N95 on their morning runs
or while sitting on a park bench. The
answer to both is no. Choose masks
based on the level of risk for that ac-
tivity. If you’re out for a jog with no
one around or on a walk outside
with a friend, a simple two- or three-
layer cloth mask is fine. But use a
high-quality mask or double-mask
if you head indoors. If you’re an es-
sential worker, a high-quality mask is
critical.
I’m not alone in calling for better
masks, and certainly not the first. But
I am joining the chorus calling for
them. This could be the key to slow-
ing the pandemic and limiting spread
from the new more transmissible
variants until we all get vaccinated.
ý
Joseph Allen is an associate professor and director
of the Healthy Buildings program at Harvard
University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.