Big Brother News Watch
Unvaccinated Fans Can Attend the U.S. Open. Why Can’t Novak Djokovic? + More
Unvaccinated Fans Can Attend the U.S. Open. Why Can’t Novak Djokovic?
Fresh off his historic victory at Wimbledon, Novak Djokovic is hoping to compete at the upcoming U.S. Open for his 22nd Grand Slam — which would tie him with Rafael Nadal for the most in history.
Unfortunately, the world’s greatest tennis player appears unlikely to make the trip. Although the Serbian star looked perfectly healthy in his four-set victory over Australian Nick Kyrgios in England, current COVID-19 protocols are likely to prevent Djokovic from playing. “I’m not vaccinated and I’m not planning to get vaccinated,” Djokovic said following his victory at Wimbledon.
First, it’s noteworthy that Djokovic had COVID-19 in December. Many sporting organizations — including the NCAA — recognize prior infection as a form of immunization, and rightly so. An abundance of scientific evidence shows that natural immunity offers as much protection as vaccination alone, if not more.
Second, it’s worth noting that spectators are allowed to attend the Open regardless of their vaccination status. In other words, fans can attend the U.S. Open even if they haven’t had the shot — but the world’s greatest tennis star will not be able to set foot in the country.
Amazon to Buy One Medical for $3.9 Billion as It Expands Healthcare Footprint
Amazon (AMZN) on Thursday said it has entered an agreement to acquire primary healthcare company One Medical in an all-cash deal valued at approximately $3.9 billion.
One Medical is a membership-based primary care service that promises customers “24/7 access to virtual care.” The company operates in a dozen major U.S. markets, according to its website, and works with over 8,000 companies to offer One Medical health benefits to their employees.
The acquisition is just the latest example of the tech giant expanding its footprint in the healthcare industry. Amazon acquired PillPack, an online pharmacy, in 2018 and later launched its own digital pharmacy in the United States.
Separately, Amazon partnered with JP Morgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway on an effort to provide better healthcare services and insurance at a lower cost to workers and families at the three companies, and possibly other businesses, too. That effort, called Haven, shut down last year.
Canadian Armed Forces Poised to End Vaccine Mandate
Canadian Forces members discharged from service because they disobeyed an order to get vaccinated against COVID-19 will have the opportunity to re-enroll, according to leaked details of the military’s revised vaccination policy.
That policy, expected to be unveiled later this summer, will put an end to the military’s vaccine mandate, which was introduced in October 2021.
Under the updated policy, service members will no longer have to attest to their vaccine status and new recruits will no longer have to be fully vaccinated to enroll in the Canadian Armed Forces.
Police Officers Grappling With Vaccine Mandates Weigh in on President Biden’s COVID Diagnosis
President Biden, who is fully vaccinated with two additional boosters, has contracted the coronavirus as officers in some big city police, fire, health and education departments are forced out of work for resisting vaccine mandates.
“When the pandemic hit, we had no supplies in New York City,” said John Macari, a former NYPD lieutenant who says he retired early in February at great financial cost rather than submit to the mandate. “There were no masks, there was nothing And I went to work every day to do my job like thousands of others — firemen, EMS workers, teachers, nurses. We were out there during the pandemic when everybody locked down.”
“Not only did we expose ourselves, but we exposed our families for the betterment of the city,” he said. “Now we’re being blamed for the ineffectiveness of the produce. We’re being blamed for the spread.”
“We’re approaching three years, what harm have the unvaccinated caused to America or the public that they’re being removed from society and employment?” Macari said.
Contemptible School Officials Re-Imposing COVID Mandates Are Defying Science: Dr. Nicole Saphier
More than two years after coronavirus first paralyzed the world the CDC, public health leaders and local officials are not following the science. They are defying it.
According to CDC guidance put in place in July 2021, when a community is experiencing ‘high’ transmission, indoor masking is encouraged. The guidance is not a mandate. But liberal parts of the country blindly follow these severe recommendations.
Don’t they realize how much has changed since July 2021? Many more Americans have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or have acquired natural immunity through infection. We now benefit from many more effective treatments. The dominant variants are far less lethal.
So when will America’s health leadership wrench their heads out of the sand and acknowledge their method of basing public policy recommendations on COVID case numbers is now obsolete? Don’t take my word for it — the evidence is clear.
Poll: RI Still Backs COVID Vaccine Requirement, but Support Is Dipping
The majority of Rhode Islanders still think everyone should be required to get the COVID-19 vaccine, but support for such a mandate has fallen below 60% for the first time.
A new survey from the COVID-19 Consortium for Understanding the Public’s Policy Preferences Across States found that 58.8% of Rhode Island residents believe there should be a universal requirement to get the vaccine.
That’s down from a high in June 2021, when 73.8% of Rhode Islanders supported a vaccine mandate. In March, 63.8% said they support such a requirement.
The consortium includes researchers from Harvard, Northeastern, Rutgers and Northwestern, and has conducted 18 50-state surveys during the pandemic (nine have included questions about a vaccine mandate).
Nearly 60% of Americans Want TikTok Removed From App Stores: Poll
Almost 60% of Americans believe that the Chinese-owned short video app TikTok should be removed from app stores after revelations that U.S. user data have been repeatedly accessed in China, according to a new poll.
In a survey conducted by the Convention of States Action and Trafalgar Group, 58.6% of respondents said they supported “efforts to remove TikTok from app stores now that the company has revealed Americans’ user data can be accessed by TikTok employees in China.”
The results come less than a month after leaked recordings of internal company meetings obtained by BuzzFeed News allegedly show that from at least September 2021 to January, engineers in China had access to the app’s U.S. data.
TikTok employees, at times, had to turn to their colleagues in China to determine how U.S. data were flowing, as the U.S. staff wasn’t authorized to independently access that information, according to the report.
Meta Is Changing Facebook and Instagram to Look and Act More Like TikTok
Meta has tweaked both Facebook and Instagram‘s apps to more closely resemble its competitor TikTok. The changes appear to signal how much of an existential threat Meta perceives TikTok to be.
Instagram announced Thursday that from now on any video under 15 minutes will be converted into a Reel. If that video is posted by a public account, it will also be automatically fed into the company’s recommendation algorithms to show to other accounts.
For Facebook, the company is splitting its classic News Feed on its iOS and Android apps. Users will be immediately taken to a “Home” tab, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s “discovery engine” will promote content it thinks the user will be interested in.
Zuckerberg told Meta staff the company faces an “unprecedented level of competition” from Tiktok in February, Bloomberg reported.
Meta Commits Another $150 Million to Its Oversight Board
Meta has committed to keeping its Oversight Board running by providing ongoing financial support. The company has pledged to fund the board’s operations with a contribution of an additional $150 million. Meta previously earmarked $130 million for the board’s trust when it was set up in 2019.
The Oversight Board reviews certain content moderation decisions made by Facebook and Instagram and provides recommendations to Meta. Through the lens of human rights standards, it also assesses Meta’s policies and how it enforces them.
The board says it has received more than a million appeals from users against moderation decisions. To date, it has issued 25 binding decisions on cases and made 118 policy suggestions, while asking many questions about Meta’s practices.
Serving as a ‘Clinical Colleague,’ AI Shows Potential to Reduce Sepsis Deaths in Real-World Studies
Three studies published Thursday found that an artificial intelligence (AI) platform developed by Bayesian Health and Johns Hopkins University reduced deaths from sepsis by 18.2% in real-world use when physicians responded promptly to its alerts, a finding that suggests AI has the potential to become an important tool in battling a leading cause of deaths in hospitals.
The company and Hopkins researchers tested the platform at five hospitals in the Northeast — both academic and community-based — with more than 4,000 clinicians. The software, which was integrated into the hospitals’ electronic health records, monitors patient data and alerts clinicians when it spots early signs of potential sepsis.
It identified over 17,500 cases of sepsis from over 750,000 patient encounters among all adults who presented to the emergency department or were admitted to a medical or surgical unit over the course of one to two years.
ClassDojo Won Over Classrooms. Now It’s on a $125 Million Mission to Bring Kids to the Metaverse.
ClassDojo is the remote-based tech startup Liam Don co-founded with CEO Sam Chaudhary in 2011. The British friends spent the past decade building an app that won over teachers with feedback and lesson planning tools, and then parents with features to communicate and receive updates on their children’s progress at school.
Now, they’re pouring their efforts — and $125 million in previously undisclosed funding — into a software environment beyond the classroom.
After testing with tens of thousands of students since late last year, ClassDojo is now unveiling its big new act in time for the upcoming school year, with the goal, according to Chaudhary, of making the company’s virtual space available to at least half of the 51 million kids in active ClassDojo classrooms starting in August. (ClassDojo declined to share how many of those students are themselves monthly active users of its app.)
Novak Djokovic Can’t Play in U.S. Open Unless He Has COVID Vaccination + More
Novak Djokovic Can’t Play in U.S. Open Unless He Has COVID Vaccination, Tournament Organizers Confirm
The U.S. Open has confirmed that tennis star Novak Djokovic can’t play in the tournament because of his vaccination status. The reigning Wimbledon champion said publicly he is not vaccinated against COVID-19.
While the U.S. Open does not have a vaccine mandate for players, organizers said in a statement that it will “respect the U.S. government’s position regarding travel into the country for unvaccinated non-U.S. citizens.”
The U.S. currently requires non-citizens to be fully vaccinated against COVID in order to enter the country. If not, a person is not allowed to board a flight to the U.S. — unless certain criteria are met. However, there has been no indication Djokovic would fall under any of the categories of exemptions.
California School District’s Return to Masking Has Many Parents Outraged: ‘Insanity’
Parents are dismayed and even outraged to see that a California school district is bringing back indoor masking for its students.
Parents are already expressing outrage at it, especially given San Diego Unified School District board president Sharon Whitehurst-Payne’s comments that any student who doesn’t want to wear a mask should “just not return.”
Fox News Digital heard from an array of parents about the prospect of masking up children again or pushing them into remote learning, with one Massachusetts grandmother calling it a case of “delirium.”
“This is an insanity, a delirium,” said the grandmother of six, who requested anonymity, about the masking of students. “The loss of education in the last two years, added to the mental stresses of masking — my grandkids who are school-age said they never knew if someone was smiling at them or not — is already unacceptable.”
Fired Seattle-Area Detective Calls out ‘Hypocrisy’ of COVID Vaccine Mandates After Being Called Back to Court
Jenifer Eshom was fired from her position as a detective at the King County Sheriff’s Office in Washington State over her refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. She’s now calling out the hypocrisy of the system after she was ordered to return to testify in court in her old cases.
Eshom explained on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday that she was ordered to be physically present in court for her cases that were moving through the system when she was fired.
“Ironically, these were the exact same buildings, for instance, the courthouse and other King County buildings, that prior to my termination, I was actually ordered that I was forbidden to even enter these buildings because I was too much of a danger to my coworkers and the public for being unvaccinated,” she told host Ainsley Earhardt.
Eshom said her vaccine status is no longer a concern while inside the government buildings now that she is not an employee at the sheriff’s office.
Support for Vaccine Passport and Mask Mandates Waning in Canada
Many Canadians are still fearful about the risk of the COVID-19 virus and the BA.5 variant, but there is now only a fraction who support more government health measures, an Angus Reid Institute study shows.
Back during the fourth wave in September 2021, 70% of Canadians supported vaccine passports to prove inoculation to enter large public spaces.
Now, that concept is only supported by 25% of Canadians, even though masking indoors is still recommended by public health officials.
While vaccine passports are not particularly popular in any part of the country, 55% of people in Ontario and B.C. would accept a mandate in their province. In Atlantic Canada, 62% would accept a mandate. In Alberta, the percentage is 36% and in Saskatchewan, it is 38%.
Congress’ Push to Regulate Big Tech Is Fizzling out
Hopes for a congressional vote this summer on a major tech antitrust bill have all but fizzled out as the August recess quickly approaches.
It’s more likely than ever that this Congress will push efforts to pass Big Tech competition rules into the fall, where they will face slim chances with lawmakers distracted by midterm elections.
If an autumn push fails, competition regulation will have to wait for the new Congress — and if the GOP takes back congressional control, it’s unlikely to be a top priority.
Elite Universities Are Investing in China’s Surveillance State. A New Bill Would Tax Those Investments at 100%.
A bill proposed by Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) on Wednesday would tax university endowments at a 100% rate for investments into Chinese entities deemed a threat to national security.
Elite schools such as Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have invested in SenseTime, Megvii and other companies linked to the Chinese surveillance state, according to a 2019 investigation from BuzzFeed News, such as through facial recognition technology used to track racial minorities in the province of Xinjiang.
The Protecting Endowments from our Adversaries Act would tax investments in such entities and others on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s “Entity List” with 50% excise taxes upon acquisition and 100% capital gains taxes.
Apple Argues It’s Now a Major Force in the Healthcare World
Apple Inc. published a nearly 60-page report Wednesday outlining all its health features and partnerships with medical institutions, arguing that such offerings are key to the tech giant’s future.
The company pointed to its breadth of existing services — from sleep monitoring and fitness classes to atrial-fibrillation detection and cycle tracking — and promised to build on that foundation. Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, who oversees Apple’s health endeavors, said in a statement attached to the report that the company will continue to innovate in “science-based technology.”
The report serves as a response to Apple critics, who have knocked the company for not doing as much as rivals in healthcare. Though the Apple Watch dominates the market, the device hasn’t always gotten novel health features as quickly as competitors’ products. And fellow tech titans such as Amazon.com Inc. and Google have made ambitious forays into the medical field — with mixed results.
Big Tech Builds AI With Bad Data. So Scientists Sought Better Data.
Yacine Jernite, 33, is trying to push artificial intelligence (AI) in a better direction. After leaving Facebook, he joined BigScience, a global effort by 1,000 researchers in 60 countries to build a more transparent, accountable AI, with less of the bias that infects so many Big Tech initiatives.
The largely volunteer effort trained a computer system with good data that was curated by humans from different cultures, rather than readily available data scraped from the internet, written mostly in English, and riddled with harmful speech on race, gender and religion. The resulting AI was released on July 12 for researchers to download and study.
Microsoft Teams Is Going After Facebook With Its Own Social Network
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has announced plans to take on the likes of Facebook with the company’s own social media platform, Viva Engage.
The new offering, part of Microsoft Teams, looks to enhance the experience of the outgoing Yammer Communities, bringing “new capabilities to connect people, find and share knowledge, express [oneself] and find belonging at work,” according to Yammer and Viva CVP Murali Sitaram in a company blog post.
Microsoft Viva Engage is primarily a business-oriented product, set to “help organizations build community, spark engagement with leadership, harness knowledge and answers and build personal networks,” in a model similar to LinkedIn.
NBA Champion Andrew Wiggins Wishes He Didn’t Get COVID Vaccine: ‘I Didn’t Like That It Wasn’t My Choice’ + More
Andrew Wiggins Says He Wishes He Didn’t Get COVID Vaccine: ‘I Didn’t Like That It Wasn’t My Choice’
At the start of the 2021-22 season Golden State Warriors forward Andrew Wiggins held out until the last possible moment to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Wiggins’ refusal against getting the vaccine would’ve caused a problem for the Warriors, as the San Francisco Department of Public Health had an order requiring COVID-19 vaccination for all participants age 12 and older at large indoor events.
The former No. 1 overall pick eventually decided to receive the vaccine, and he went on to help Golden State win a championship. But now, just over a month removed from hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy, Wiggins says he regrets the decision.
“I just don’t like putting all that stuff in my body, so I didn’t like that and I didn’t like that it wasn’t my choice. I didn’t like that it was either get this or don’t play.” This is the same sentiment Wiggins had early in the season after receiving the vaccine, saying he was “kind of forced” to get it.
DC Schools Require COVID Vaccine for Students 12 and up
Students ages 12 and older will be required to get the COVID-19 vaccine to attend Washington, DC, schools in the fall.
The Office of the State Superintendent of Education announced that beginning in the 2022-23 school year, student immunization requirements include the coronavirus vaccine for all students of an age for which there is a vaccine fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Currently, this includes students 12 and up, according to a news release.
The requirement was detailed in a law that the DC Council voted to approve last year. It was the first legislation of its kind in the DC region.
Mark Zuckerberg to Testify to Federal Court on Facebook Data Scandal
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg will be deposed for six hours in a lawsuit about the social media giant’s handling of consumer data as plaintiffs in the case continue to press the company for information.
A joint case statement in the U.S. District Court Northern District of California San Francisco Division filed on Tuesday shows that the Meta CEO will make a deposition in the lawsuit involving consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica collected information from millions of Facebook users in the 2010s without their consent and the company assisted in the presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump. It is also being accused of interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom.
The litigation relates to Facebook’s data-sharing policies with app developers and is a consolidated case for pre-trial purposes, bringing together several civil cases from a variety of defendants.
Critics Worry Government Surveillance of HIV May Hurt More Than It Helps
Molecular surveillance is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s HIV cluster detection and response program. It uses different kinds of surveillance data, including genetic changes in the virus, to identify networks of HIV transmission and tailor interventions to emerging outbreaks. HIV changes quickly, the CDC says, and finding similar viral strains in people can be a sign of rapid transmission.
Cluster detection and response is a pillar of the federal government’s 2019 plan to cut new HIV infections in the country by 90% by 2030. Late last year, the Biden administration renewed its commitment to the program and then pumped an additional $115 million into the effort.
But molecular surveillance has met considerable opposition since it was rolled out nationally. Service providers, health equity advocates and people living with HIV worry the risks of the approach outweigh the benefits, and their concerns have gotten louder as awareness of the tool grows.
Some have called for the practice to stop until federal health officials address concerns about patient consent, data security, and the potential for HIV criminalization.
Will the BA.5 COVID Strain Force New Mask Mandates?
The new COVID-19 variant, called BA.5, has been rapidly spreading across the country and is now estimated to make up more than 60% of new cases, according to the CDC. It is highly transmissible, compared to previous variants, and seemingly more resistant to prior vaccinations and immunities.
These factors are making people think differently about wearing masks, which experts say are still an effective way to curb the spread of the virus. Los Angeles County, for example, will likely reinstate an indoor mask mandate at the end of the month due to rising COVID-19 cases.
Canada Faces Call to Scrap Vaccine Passport App After Elderly Man Without a Smartphone Is Threatened With Fine
There is growing discontent in Canada with the official government-mandated ArriveCan app that contains mandatory travel and health information, the use of which is required for entry into the country.
And although Canadian authorities say that its goal is to keep travelers safe and “modernize cross-border travel,” ArriveCan is increasingly a source of frustration to those forced to use it, and many are now calling for it to be abandoned.
The app was introduced during the COVID pandemic as a public health measure but is now morphing into one way to implement the digital ID agenda, critics are warning, and those in power in Canada are not really protesting this claim.
A recent incident is very telling of the app’s negative impact. An 86-year-old disabled man was last weekend threatened with a $5,000 fine because he didn’t use the app.
Disinformation Governance Board Is Officially Killed — But What Comes Next?
In a rare and perhaps fleeting victory for those trying to slow America’s slide into dystopian authoritarianism, the Department of Homeland Security on Monday said it has concluded: “There is no need for a Disinformation Governance Board.”
The news comes just under three months after the existence of the board first came to public attention. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced its creation at an April 27 House budget hearing — igniting a firestorm of opposition to what critics derisively labeled the “Ministry of Truth.”
House Panel Set to Advance Privacy Bill, Striking a Long-Awaited Grand Bargain
For years, lawmakers have avoided making tough calls about what data privacy protections Congress should give consumers and how they should be enforced. That’s finally changing.
On Wednesday, a House panel is expected to greenlight a watershed privacy bill that strikes compromises on a series of major issues that have long vexed negotiators. It would mark the first time a consumer privacy bill has made it out of committee, a historic feat.
Most notably, the proposal brokers a bipartisan compromise by overriding most state privacy laws, as Republicans have sought, in exchange for granting consumers a right to bring lawsuits against violators, which Democrats have called for.
The bill appears to address concerns by children’s privacy advocates about a loophole that could let companies dodge scrutiny for serving targeted ads to children and teens if firms didn’t know it was happening. The updated bill only applies that more-limited standard to smaller firms. Larger companies could be held accountable if they knew or should have known about it.
Twitter-Musk Takeover Dispute Heading for an October Trial
Tesla CEO Elon Musk lost his fight to delay Twitter’s lawsuit against him as a Delaware judge on Tuesday set an October trial, citing the “cloud of uncertainty” over the social media company after the billionaire backed out of a deal to buy it.
Twitter is trying to force the billionaire to make good on his April promise to buy the social media giant for $44 billion — and the company wants it to happen quickly because it says the ongoing dispute is harming its business.
The Most Popular Period-Tracking Apps, Ranked by Data Privacy
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, tens of thousands of Americans have turned to their smartphones to share information and assess their app libraries. Legal experts have warned that people seeking abortion care have become critically vulnerable to privacy threats, especially those who reside in states where “bounty hunter” laws incentivize private citizens to file civil complaints against them.
As a response, many people have sought out more dependable and secure ways to track their menstrual cycles via period-tracking apps, despite a recent flurry of tweets urging users to delete them en masse.
What really makes a period-tracker app safe to use? To find out, we analyzed the privacy policies of the 5 most popular period-tracking apps in the U.S.: Flo, Clue, Stardust, Period Calendar and Period Tracker (these earned the highest number of downloads in 2022, according to AppMagic).
TechScape: Suspicious of TikTok? You’re Not Alone
What’s the problem with TikTok? It’s a harder question to answer than it seems. The social video app, which has joined Facebook/Instagram, YouTube and Twitter in the list of societally important social networks, is frequently spoken about with an air of suspicion, and it’s not hard to guess why: the app’s Chinese roots loom large in the conversation.
So I was interested to read a report that attempts to look at the general suspicion of the service. Published on Monday by the Australian-U.S. cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0, it is based on a teardown of TikTok’s Android and iOS apps.
Thomas Perkins, the report’s author, offers a dizzying list of data the TikTok app can access while it’s running, including the device location, calendar, contacts, other running applications, wi-fi networks, phone number and even the SIM card serial number.
The most alarming finding in the report is an unexplained connection to a server that Perkins locates in mainland China, run by Guizhou BaishanCloud Technology Co Ltd.
San Diego School Board President Says Students Must Wear Masks or Don’t Bother Returning to School + More
San Diego School Board President Says Students Must Wear Masks or Don’t Bother Returning to School
San Diego Unified School District Board President Sharon Whitehurst-Payne defended the district’s decision to return to indoor mask mandates, suggesting that students uncomfortable with wearing a mask not return to school.
“They really should wear the mask,” Whitehurst-Payne said in an interview with “Good Morning San Diego” Monday, adding that students who feel uncomfortable with the mask “at that point, just not return.”
The comments come after the district announced that students enrolled in summer school will be required to wear masks indoors.
Whitehurst-Payne said that for parents concerned about the possibility of a mask mandate in the fall, there are “some options” such as “school that’s online.”
Catholic Nurse Wins Right to Be Exempted From COVID Vaccine
A Catholic nurse in Ontario had a right to a religious exemption from COVID-19 vaccination because of the “quite remote” link between the shots and aborted fetuses, an arbitrator has ruled in one of the first legal pronouncements on the issue.
Arbitrator Robert Herman said Public Health Sudbury discriminated against the unnamed nurse — a member of the conservative “Latin Mass” group of Catholics — when it fired her for not being immunized.
COVID vaccination would interfere with “the exercise of her faith and her relationship with the divine,” he said.
Vaccine mandates have gradually been lifted throughout Canada and employees have always been able to at least apply for a religious exemption, with no guarantee of success. But the ruling last month, largely overlooked outside the northern Ontario city, may be the first in Canada to offer some legal clarity on when such exemptions are justified.
Los Angeles County Confirms Only 3 COVID Hospitalizations at LAC USC Medical Center as City Reinstates Masks
Los Angeles County encouraged its residents to comply with health safety measures regarding the COVID-19 pandemic in a statement released on Monday, despite confirming only three hospitalizations for COVID at the LAC and University of Southern California Medical Center.
Los Angeles County attributed the low figures at the 600-bed hospital to a high vaccination rate and underscored the importance of following health safety precautions.
“The COVID-19 pandemic remains a very serious public health threat that we must continue to fight with every tool available, including vaccines, masking, social distancing, and treatment,” LA County said in the statement.
The release comes as the LA County Department of Health announced it will be reinstating its mask mandate.
Exclusive: Hospital Staff Faces Staff Shortages Due to COVID Infections, Despite Vaccine Mandate
The first hospital in America to mandate a COVID-19 vaccine for all employees is now facing a staffing shortage from infections.
Houston’s Methodist Hospital has hundreds of employees out of work because they tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. At the same hospital in 2021, 153 staff members who refused to get vaccinated quit or were fired. Now Methodist leadership is trying to avert a crisis.
“What is worrisome is the climbing number of our employees who cannot work because they are home sick with COVID-19. Almost 400 employees tested positive last week,” Dr. Robert Phillips, the executive vice president and chief physician executive of Houston Methodist, wrote in an internal email on July 12 obtained by The Epoch Times.
Houston Methodist, with a workforce of around 28,000, was the first hospital system in the country to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for all of its employees. It also was the first system in the nation to mandate the vaccine for its private healthcare providers who are credentialed members of its medical staff. The hospital later required all its employees to get a vaccine booster by March 1.
Alberta Health Services No Longer Requires COVID Immunization for Its Healthcare Workers
Alberta Health Services says it is rescinding its COVID-19 immunization policy for its workers. The agency says workers, as well as new hires and students, will no longer be required to have at least two vaccine doses.
It says vaccines continue to provide strong protection against serious effects from COVID-19, but there is emerging evidence that the shots have become less protective against infection.
Authorities in South China Apologize Over COVID Break-Ins
Authorities in southern China have apologized for breaking into the homes of people who had been taken to a quarantine hotel in the latest example of heavy-handed virus-prevention measures that have sparked a rare public backlash.
State media said that 84 homes in an apartment complex in Guangzhou city’s Liwan district had been opened in an effort to find any “close contacts” hiding inside and to disinfect the premises.
The Liwan district government apologized Monday for such “oversimplified and violent” behavior, the paper said. An investigation has been launched and “relevant people” will be severely punished, it said.
COVID: European Governments Must Urgently Boost Monitoring, WHO Says
The World Health Organization has called on European governments to urgently reinforce rather than reduce COVID-19 monitoring, warning of a potentially difficult winter as a new wave of infections sweeps across the continent.
Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, said it was now “abundantly clear” that the region faced a surge driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variants BA.2 and BA.5 and that it would intensify further as indoor mixing increases in the autumn.
Kluge said vaccination uptake in the general population must be increased, second booster doses administered to all at-risk populations, and mask use and improved ventilation promoted indoors and on public transport.
Amazon Sues More Than 10,000 Facebook Group Administrators Over Fake Reviews
Amazon said it filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against more than 10,000 Facebook group administrators for allegedly orchestrating fake reviews on Amazon in exchange for money or free products.
Amazon said in a statement that it has reported more than 10,000 fake review groups to Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and Meta has already taken down more than half of those groups for policy violations as it investigates others.
The tech giant said it has 12,000 employees dedicated to cracking down on fraud, including fake reviews, and the company proactively stopped more than 200 million suspected fake reviews in 2020 using its monitoring and technological tools.
Facebook said it does not allow groups that facilitate or encourage fake reviews and had already removed most of the groups in question.
Twitter Wins Round 1 in Court After Flaming Musk Over His ‘Buyers Remorse’
Twitter’s lawyers laid into Elon Musk Tuesday with blistering, blunt language in opening arguments of the multi-billion dollar court case that will decide whether the richest man in the world will purchase one of the internet’s most influential social networks, as he agreed to months ago.
“What we are looking at is a buyer conjuring an exit plan,” Twitter’s lawyers said of the Tesla CEO’s multiform complaints. “Buyer’s remorse can be an overused phrase, your honor, but it sure looks like what we have here.”
Musk’s lawyers wasted no time in firing back, calling the company’s efforts to contravene the termination “too little, too late.”
New Internal Documents Could Bolster Antitrust Case Against Google, Amazon
Internal documents from Google and Amazon provided to POLITICO show new examples of how the companies favor their own products over competitors’ — adding ammunition to the push for Congress to toughen antitrust laws.
The documents — which include emails, memos and strategy papers — were shared by the House Judiciary Committee, which obtained them as part of its long-running antitrust investigation of Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta that wrapped in October 2020 with a 450-page staff report. The documents were cited in the report but had not previously been made available.
The documents bolster the committee’s claims that the internet giants illegally favor their own products, a practice that pending legislation to update antitrust laws would make more difficult.
Canada-Based Researchers Use Artificial Intelligence Tool for Detecting Rare Birth Defects
Canadian researchers recently developed a deep-learning algorithm using Artificial Intelligence-based tools to identify and diagnose potentially fatal cysts on a baby during the first trimester of pregnancy.
Researchers out of the Ottawa Hospital have demonstrated such models can detect benign tumors that form a fluid-filled sac-like structure in the baby’s head and neck area known as cystic hygroma. The tumor blocks the lymphatic system, which causes fluid to build up underneath the skin that could result in a stillbirth or miscarriage.
Dr. Mark Walker at the University’s Faculty of Medicine said the ground-breaking experiment could apply to many other fetal anomalies identified by ultrasonography after further development, including large multi-site dataset testing and outside review.
TikTok Has Been Accused of ‘Aggressive’ Data Harvesting. Is Your Information at Risk?
Cybersecurity experts have warned Australian TikTok users that the Chinese government could use the app to harvest personal information, from in-app messages with friends to precise device locations.
The warnings follow a report by Australian-U.S. cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0, which found the most popular social media app of the year collects “excessive” amounts of information from its users.
Here’s what you need to know about TikTok’s data harvesting, and how to keep your information safe.
