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House Committee Adopts Amendment to Rehire Troops Fired for Refusing COVID Vaccine + More
House Committee Adopts Amendment to Rehire Troops Fired for Refusing COVID Vaccine
The House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday adopted an amendment to the annual defense policy bill that would push the Department of Defense to rehire U.S. service members who were fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.
The measure, which would require the Pentagon to create a robust plan for rehiring those service members, was adopted by voice vote as the committee considered a round of amendments for a markup of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The measure, however, faces an uncertain future later this year, when the committee will meet with the Democratic-led Senate Armed Services Committee to reconcile differences in the NDAA before full passage in Congress.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who offered the amendment, said the measure would correct the wrongful firing of 8,400 service members who refused the COVID-19 vaccine when it was made mandatory for the U.S. military.
Biden Administration Suspends Funding for Scientist at Center of COVID Lab Leak Theory
The Biden administration said it has suspended from all federal funding programs the scientist at the heart of the lab leak theory of the origins of the coronavirus, and proposed blocking him from receiving federal funding in the future.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent a letter to Peter Daszak on Tuesday, less than a week after the agency took similar action against Daszak’s organization, EcoHealth Alliance (EHA). In the letter, HHS said it was holding Daszak responsible for EcoHealth Alliance’s failure to adequately monitor the activities of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and then subsequently failing to report on the lab’s high-risk virus studies.
HHS cited information from 31 federal documents dating back to the National Institutes of Health’s initial 2014 grant to EcoHealth, leading up to the May 15 notice suspending and proposing debarment of Daszak’s organization.
EcoHealth and Daszak have come under fire from Republicans and Democrats over the group’s work with the Wuhan lab, particularly regarding controversial “gain of function” research to enhance the ability of the virus to cause disease or make it more transmissible.
Biggest Bombshells From New Fauci COVID Emails
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is under fire after the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic reviewed more than 30,000 pages of subpoenaed emails and documents from Dr. David Morens, Fauci‘s former senior adviser.
The subcommittee, led by Republican Representative Brad Wenstrup, said the emails raised “serious questions as to whether Dr. Fauci took part in a conspiracy amongst the highest levels of [the National Institutes of Health] to hide official records related to the origins of COVID-19.” Morens testified in front of the subcommittee Wednesday, and Fauci is slated to testify on June 3.
According to a press release from the subcommittee, the 35-page memo “incriminates Dr. Morens in undermining the operations of the U.S. government, unlawfully deleting federal COVID-19 records, using a personal email to avoid the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and repeatedly acting unbecoming of a federal employee.”
Fauci, as the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, led the emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020. Over the years, he has faced public backlash over mask and vaccine mandates and theories about the virus’ origin and subsequent alleged cover-ups. Several GOP leaders believe the virus originated from a scientific lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in Wuhan, China — not through species-to-species transmission, a widely supported theory in the scientific community.
Study Finds COVID Shutdown Flipped Drug Overdose Mortality Rates Among Industries
Drug overdose deaths spiked following Kentucky’s COVID-19 stay-at-home and business closure orders of March 2020. But the industries that suffered the most overdose deaths were surprising, according to research conducted by the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center (KIPRC) at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health (CPH).
In the years leading up to the study, researchers found Kentucky’s service industry employees experienced the most drug overdose deaths. However, non-service industry workers were more likely to die by drug overdose in the months following the COVID-related shutdown of 2020.
Greg Abbott Vows to Defy Joe Biden Again
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has vowed to defy any World Health Organization (WHO) “pandemic agreement” that is signed by President Joe Biden on behalf of the United States, saying it would contravene American and Texan sovereignty.
In March, a number of world leaders called for a new “pandemic accord” under the constitution of the WHO, which they argued will help prevent a repeat of the pandemic. However, the proposal has proved highly controversial, with some conservatives arguing it would dilute national sovereignty and could threaten free expression.
On Wednesday, in a post on X, Abbott wrote: “I reject the World Health Organization’s proposed ‘Pandemic Agreement’ with the United States. It undermines the sovereignty of the United States & the State of Texas. Texas will NOT comply.”
Abbott also shared an article from news website My Hometown Today that listed 24 Republican governors who signed an open letter in opposition to a new WHO pandemic accord, which they said would “undermine national sovereignty.” The signatories, including Abbott, said such an accord could create “a global surveillance infrastructure” and would “seek to elevate the WHO from an advisory body to a global authority in public health.”
Academic Validation: COVID, Psychological Operations, and the War for Technocracy
Finally, academia weighs in on Technocracy. David A. Hughes has released his massive book, “COVID-19, Psychological Operations, and the War for Technocracy.” He says, “Technocracy has been incubated for decades in China with the support of the Rockefellers and various technology transfers, and, with proof of concept having been established, the aim is now to roll it out in the West.”
Catherine Austin Fitts recognized David Hughes in the Solari Report: “Our Hero of the Week, the brilliant David A. Hughes, is a university lecturer on security studies, international relations theory, foreign policy analysis, globalization, and U.S. exceptionalism. With dual doctorates in German Studies and International Relations, his wide-ranging research interests include psychological warfare, 9/11, COVID-19, the deep state, intelligence crime, technocracy, resurgent totalitarianism, and global class relations.”
Nebraska Sues TikTok for ‘Fueling a Youth Mental Health Crisis’
Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers (R) filed a suit against TikTok on Wednesday, accusing the social media giant of being “addictive and harmful to teens and children,” adding that the app is “fueling a youth mental health crisis.”
The suit claims that TikTok’s algorithm and content distribution structure provide minor users with harmful content without proper consumer protection warnings.
Hilgers continued, “TikTok tells parents its platform is safe for kids, but our investigation reveals that nothing could be further from the truth.”
Hilgers claimed that the social media app’s algorithm “has shown kids inappropriate content, ranging from videos that encourage suicidal ideation and fuel depression, drive body image issues, and encourage eating disorders to those that encourage drug use and sexual content wildly inappropriate for young kids.”
California Bill Targeting Social Media Addiction in Teens Passes State Senate
In a bipartisan vote, the California State Senate approved a bill from a Bay Area lawmaker aimed at targeting social media addiction among children and teens.
On Monday night, senators approved Senate Bill 976 by State Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) on a 35-2 vote. The bill now goes onto the Assembly for consideration.
“Studies show that once a young person has a social media addiction, they experience higher rates of depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. But social media companies have been unwilling to voluntarily change their practices,” Skinner said in a statement. “With SB 976, the state Senate has sent a clear message: When social media companies won’t act, it’s our responsibility to protect our children.”
Under the bill, which is also known as the “Protecting Our Kids From Social Media Addiction Act,” platforms would be prohibited from sending an “addictive” social media feed to a minor without consent from a parent or guardian.
Police in U.S. Cities That Ban Facial Recognition Asking Others to Do It for Them
A major report in the Washington Post has found that law enforcement officers in U.S. several cities where facial recognition tech is banned for police have asked neighboring forces to search face databases for them.
Facial recognition has been prohibited in San Francisco since 2019. But Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s former district attorney, sums up the problem: “Police are using it but not saying they are using it.” The Post says the SFPD have outsourced at least five attempts to make facial matches. Some of these were done by the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC), a “multi-jurisdiction program serving law enforcement agencies in the region.” Others were farmed out to the Daly City Police Department. None were successful.
Police in Austin, Texas, however — also among the biggest U.S. cities to ban facial recognition — recorded 13 requests to a neighboring department for assistance with biometric face matching, and some of these led to arrests. Austin city employees are barred from using facial recognition as well as “information obtained” from the technology, with certain exceptions. But the suburb of Leander, just a 30-minute drive north of Austin, has no such restriction.
Leander’s police force has access to Clearview AI, which has courted many law enforcement agencies in the U.S., despite lingering questions about whether its method of scraping the public internet for facial images is 100 percent consensual. According to the Post, the Leander force also has a recognized Clearview AI “influencer”: Officer David Wilson, who performed several searches for the Austin force via Leander’s Clearview account. Emails seen by the Post show that officers contacted Wilson directly for the express purpose of requesting facial recognition searches.
Canada: Government Pushes Flawed Internet Age Verification and Blocking Law, Fines up to $500,000 for Non-Compliance
Canadian authorities are clearly making a concerted and targeted effort to grab control over various aspects of their citizens’ online activities, and the way internet companies are allowed to operate. And that’s true both of the government and the legislators, who are not afraid to support dubious bills if it benefits their immediate political interest.
Another such draft, now moving close to becoming law, is Bill S-210. It is designed to push the implementation of age verification, choosing sites that feature sexually explicit material as its primary target.
The bill has been in the Senate for several years, with the main criticism centered around a proposal to utilize biometric data (facial recognition and face scanning being one of the ideas), while undermining constitutionally protected freedom of expression by extending its power over regular services that, due to their nature, although not being adult sites, include adult material — such as search engines and social media.
New Rule Mandating Meningitis Vaccine for Wisconsin Students to Take Effect, After Yearlong Suspension + More
New Rule Mandating Meningitis Vaccine for Wisconsin Students to Take Effect, After Yearlong Suspension
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported:
A new rule requiring students in middle and high school to get vaccinated against meningitis will go into effect next school year, after a year-long suspension of the rule expired this spring, according to state health officials.
The new requirement for students to get the vaccine against meningitis was one of several changes to the state’s vaccination requirements for children in childcare and K-12 schools made by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration early last year.
But that and other changes were blocked in March of last year when the Republican-controlled Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules voted to temporarily suspend parts of the new rule, citing concerns that the changes were excessive, unnecessary and burdensome to parents.
On top of existing vaccine requirements for school-age children, the new rule mandates the vaccine against meningitis, a disease affecting the brain and spinal cord, for students entering seventh grade and a booster dose for eligible students entering 12th grade, according to DHS. It also requires parents to show proof from a doctor or other health care provider that their child was infected with chickenpox before obtaining a waiver from the state’s chickenpox vaccine requirement.
Previously, Wisconsin recommended but did not require school-age children to get a vaccine for meningitis protection, and parents only had to give their word their child had had chickenpox.
Years Later, Fury Still Burns Hot Over COVID Restrictions — and Even Politicians Who Opposed Them Are Feeling the Heat
The pandemic may be waning and restrictions in the rear-view mirror, but this week the long arm of COVID politics flexed the grip it still has on Alberta, with Danielle Smith, arguably the country’s most vaccine-skeptical premier, trying to distance herself from a town hall questioning the safety of shots for children.
The problem? The event — which promises to ask how to “help Albertans put a stop to COVID shots that kill children” — is being hosted by a local branch of her own United Conservative Party, boosted by the party president and promises a post-event mixer where attendees can bump elbows with MLAs.
The event, titled “An Injection of Truth,” will be held in Calgary on June 17 and offers an “all-star” lineup including Dr. William Makis, who continues to push the debunked idea that the deaths of many Canadian doctors are linked to COVID-19 vaccines, and University of Guelph veterinary professor Dr. Byram Bridle, who sued the university over what he claims was unfair treatment because of his vaccine-critical views.
Not on the ticket however, is Smith, who said in a statement that she is “not involved in this event” and does “not plan to attend.” LaGrange will continue to work with public health experts to review the evidence on all vaccines, she added. But Smith, who flew to Arizona in the early days of the vaccine roll out to get a non-mRNA shot and infamously called the unvaccinated “the most discriminated group that I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime,” added that “it is important to note that the COVID-19 vaccine for children is not mandatory.”
Meta, Google Leading Nearly $1 Million Lobbying Fight to Kill NY Online Child Safety Bills
Google and Meta are spearheading a fierce push to kill New York legislation aimed at protecting children online — and the controversial lobbying battle is poised to surpass $1 million in spending, The Post has learned.
A group of Big Tech firms, advocacy groups and companies from other sectors have spent $823,235 lobbying Albany lawmakers through mid-March as two high-profile bills — the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act and the New York Child Data Protection Act — advance toward votes, according to recent public disclosures. “This is an astonishing amount of money to be spent to kill two reasonable bills,” said one longtime Albany insider who requested anonymity to discuss the lobbying push.
The SAFE Act would crack down on addictive recommendation algorithms used by social media apps by requiring them to provide default chronological feeds for users 18 or younger unless they receive parental consent. It would also allow parents to impose time limits on social media use and in-app notifications.
The Child Data Protection Act would block apps from collecting or selling the personal or location data from users under 18 unless they consent. Kids under 13 would need a parent’s consent.
Digital ID Laws Pass in Australian Parliament as Government Allocates Millions for Online Digital ID Implementation
The Australian Digital ID Law (Digital ID Bill 2024), which already passed the Senate, was adopted by Australia’s House of Representatives in an 87-56 vote.
Australia is joining the EU and several countries who seek to get rid of people’s physical IDs and replace them with digital schemes that pool the most sensitive personal information into massive, centralized databases.
This is considered by opponents as a security and privacy catastrophe in the making, with many purely political (ab)uses possible down the road.
In Australia, the goal is to get government services, health insurance, taxes, etc, all linked. And to do this, the governments will spend just shy of $197 million to launch the scheme.
U.S. to Deploy More Than $50 Million to Shield Private Hospitals From Cyberattacks
The U.S. government is seeking to play a more active role in protecting the private healthcare sector from a deluge of cyberattacks that have disrupted patient care and left providers unpaid.
U.S. health officials unveiled on Monday a new program to create tools that defend internet-connected hospital equipment from cyberattacks that could take them offline or leave them incapacitated. The effort could shore up protections for imaging devices used to detect cancer or assist with surgeries, EKGs that monitor heartbeats and systems that allow doctors to prescribe drugs to patients.
COVID Inquiry Investigating Impact on Children and Young People
The U.K. COVID Inquiry has opened its investigation into the impact of the pandemic on children and young people. Areas it will focus on include how children’s education, development, mental health and use of social media were affected.
When the draft terms of the COVID inquiry — which covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — were published in March 2022, there was criticism that they failed to even mention the impact on children and young people.
But after a public consultation, the pandemic’s effect on the health, wellbeing and education of children was included. The inquiry began in 2022 and public hearings started in 2023, chaired by former High Court judge Baroness Heather Hallett.
“The pandemic affected children and young people in many different ways; they lost loved ones, academic opportunities, years of social development and interaction with family and friends,” Baroness Hallett said.
World’s First Major Law for Artificial Intelligence Gets Final EU Green Light
European Union member states on Tuesday gave final agreement to the world’s first major law for regulating artificial intelligence, as institutions around the world race to introduce curbs for the technology.
The EU Council said it had approved the AI Act — a groundbreaking piece of regulatory law that sets comprehensive rules surrounding artificial intelligence technology. The AI Act applies a risk-based approach to artificial intelligence, meaning that different applications of the technology are treated differently, depending on the perceived threats they pose to society.
The law prohibits applications of AI that are considered “unacceptable” in terms of their risk level. Such applications feature so-called “social scoring” systems that rank citizens based on aggregation and analysis of their data, predictive policing and emotional recognition in the workplace and schools.
Matthew Holman, a partner at law firm Cripps, said the rules will have major implications for any person or entity developing, creating, using or reselling AI in the EU — with U.S. tech firms firmly in the spotlight.
Assange Wins High Court Victory in Temporary Reprieve From Extradition to U.S. + More
Assange Wins High Court Victory in Temporary Reprieve From Extradition to U.S.
The High Court in London ruled Monday that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can appeal his extradition to the U.S. Given it was essentially his ‘last chance’ to mount a final challenge before he could have been handed over to U.S. custody and on a plane to American soil, Monday marks a huge win.
His legal team successfully convinced the court that Assange is being denied his First Amendment rights and that these protections cannot be guaranteed for him if transferred to the U.S.
According to CNN, “His legal team made the case that Assange could be discriminated against on the basis of his nationality, as an Australian-born foreign national.”
“In a short ruling, the judges said the U.S. submissions were not sufficient, granting Assange permission to a full appeal in relation to the points on freedom of speech and nationality,” the report noted. No date has yet to be announced for the full appeal.
With JPMorgan, Mastercard on Board in Biometric ‘Breakthrough’ Year, You May Soon Start Paying With Your Face
Automated fast food restaurant CaliExpress by Flippy, in Pasadena, Calif., opened in January to considerable hype due to its robot burger makers, but the restaurant launched with another, less heralded innovation: the ability to pay for your meal with your face.
It’s not the only fast-food chain to employ the technology. In January, Steak ’N Shake, a fast-casual restaurant in the Midwest, started installing facial recognition kiosks in its 300 locations for patron check-in. The chain says that using PopID takes two to three seconds compared with a check-in with a QR code or mobile app, which can take up to 20 seconds.
Biometric payment options are becoming more common. Amazon introduced pay-by-palm technology in 2020, and while its cashier-less store experiment has faltered, it installed the tech in 500 of its Whole Foods stores last year. Mastercard, which is working with PopID, launched a pilot for face-based payments in Brazil back in 2022, and it was deemed a success — 76% of pilot participants said they would recommend the technology to a friend. Late last year, Mastercard said it was teaming with NEC to bring its Biometric Checkout Program to the Asia-Pacific region.
As stores implement biometric technology for a variety of purposes, from payments to broader anti-theft systems, consumer blowback, and lawsuits, are rising. In March, an Illinois woman sued retailer Target for allegedly illegally collecting and storing her and other customers’ biometric data via facial recognition technology without their consent. Amazon and T-Mobile are also facing legal actions related to biometric technology.
Ex-NIH Director Confirms ‘No Science’ Behind 6-Foot Distancing Rules
Newly released testimony from former NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins confirms that Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx did not base the pandemic-era six-foot social distancing rule on science, and instead were making things up as they went along. On Thursday, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, released a transcript from Collins’ January closed-door interview, in which he’s asked about a range of issues — including the lab-leak theory and the six-foot social distancing rule.
“We asked Dr. Fauci where the six feet came from and he said it kind of just appeared, is the quote,” the majority counsel on the committee told Dr. Collins, per the transcript. “Do you recall science or evidence that supported the six-foot distance?”
“I do not,” Collins replied.
A number of experts and studies have warned about the harms of prolonged isolation during the pandemic. For instance, the American Psychological Association said in November 2023 that Americans have suffered “collective trauma” related to the pandemic. The association cited a study suggesting that the heavy-handed response to the COVID-19 outbreak — which, in addition to the social distancing rule, included quarantines, school closures, business shutdowns, and near-universal mandating of masks — had a negative effect on people’s physical and mental health.
Another study that looked at a wide array of research into lockdowns concluded that such measures can be an effective tool in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic but only if “long-term collateral damage is neglected.” The price tag of lockdowns in terms of public health is high: by using the known connection between health and wealth, we estimate that lockdowns may claim 20 times more life years than they save,” the study’s authors wrote.
U.S. FDA Clears Neuralink’s Brain Chip Implant in Second Patient, WSJ Reports
The U.S. health regulator has allowed billionaire Elon Musk‘s Neuralink to implant its brain chip in a second person after it proposed to fix a problem that occurred in its first patient, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Earlier this month, Neuralink said tiny wires implanted in the brain of its first patient had pulled out of position. Reuters reported last week, citing sources, the company knew from animal testing that the wires might retract.
The company intends to fix the problem by embedding some of the device’s wires deeper into the brain, the WSJ report said citing a person familiar with the company and a document it had viewed.
Neuralink expects to implant its device in the second patient in June and a total of 10 people this year, the report said, adding that more than 1,000 quadriplegics had signed up for its patient registry.
Slack Is Training Its Machine Learning on Your Chat Behavior — Unless You Opt Out via Email
Slack has been using customer data to power its machine learning functions, including search result relevance and ranking, leading to the company being criticized over confusing policy updates that led many to believe that their data was being used to train its AI models.
According to the company’s policy, those wishing to opt out must do so through their organization’s Slack admin, who must email the company to put a stop to data use.
In response to uproar among the community, the company posted a separate blog post to address concerns arising, adding: “We do not build or train these models in such a way that they could learn, memorize, or be able to reproduce any customer data of any kind.”
Slack confirmed that user data is not shared with third-party LLM providers for training purposes. The company added in its correspondence to TechRadar Pro that its “intelligent features (not Slack AI) analyze metadata like user behavior data surrounding messages, content and files but they don’t access message content.”
Facebook Parent’s Plan to Win AI Race: Give Its Tech Away Free
The Wall Street Journal reported:
Mark Zuckerberg has an unusual plan for winning the artificial intelligence race: giving away his company’s technology for free.
Like many of its rivals, Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms is spending tens of billions of dollars on high-end computer chips, top-flight computer scientists and gigawatts of electricity to build the most powerful AI tools it can. Unlike any of those rivals, some of whom made AI announcements last week, Zuckerberg is giving away the fruit of that investment — Meta’s most advanced chatbots and the technology that drives them.
For the AI giveaway strategy to work, Meta must get its billions of users to look to those free AI services in the same way they flocked to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. It wagers that advertising can come later, as it did in the past. Meta’s ability to turn eyeballs into ad dollars is well established, although early user responses to its AI services have been mixed.
Vermont’s Data Privacy Law Sparks State Lawmaker Alliance Against Tech Lobbyists
Vermont lawmakers just defied national trends by passing the toughest yet state bill protecting online data privacy — and they did it by using a new tactic designed to get around industry pressure.
The bill lets Vermont residents sue companies directly for collecting or sharing sensitive data without their consent. As they drafted and finalized it, lawmakers deployed a countermeasure against business pushback: They brought together lawmakers in states from Maine to Oklahoma who had fought their own battles with the tech industry and asked them for advice.
The Vermont story is a rare but powerful exception to an emerging national current: With little action in Congress, the burden of regulating tech has shifted to the states. And that pits state lawmakers, often with small staffs and part-time jobs, against powerful national lobbies with business and political clout.
It’s not clear Vermont’s new game plan is waterproof: Republican Gov. Phil Scott has yet to sign the bill, and lawmakers and industry are still jousting over it.
Colorado Governor Signs Sweeping AI Regulation Bill
Colorado will require developers of artificial intelligence (AI) to avoid discrimination in high-risk systems as part of a bill signed into law Friday by Gov. Jared Polis (D).
The first-in-the-nation law adds requirements for developers of “high-risk” AI systems to “use reasonable care to avoid algorithmic discrimination.”
It will also require developers to disclose information about the systems to regulators and the public and complete impact assessments of such systems.
The bill faced opposition from technology industry groups, but ultimately was signed into law by Polis.
AI Chatbots’ Safeguards Can Be Easily Bypassed, Say UK Researchers
Guardrails to prevent artificial intelligence models behind chatbots from issuing illegal, toxic or explicit responses can be bypassed with simple techniques, U.K. government researchers have found.
The U.K.’s AI Safety Institute (AISI) said systems it had tested were “highly vulnerable” to jailbreaks, a term for text prompts designed to elicit a response that a model is supposedly trained to avoid issuing.
The AISI said it had tested five unnamed large language models (LLM) — the technology that underpins chatbots — and circumvented their safeguards with relative ease, even without concerted attempts to beat their guardrails.
COVID Face Masks Didn’t Stop Infections After First Omicron Wave — Report + More
COVID Face Masks Didn’t Stop Infections After First Omicron Wave — Report
The wearing of face masks on public transport and airplanes was federally mandated in the United States in February 2021 in a bid to stop the spread of COVID-19. However, in April 2022, the mandate was ruled unlawful. But did it actually help stop the spread of the virus?
In late November 2021, the Omicron variant was first identified, becoming the dominant strain in the U.S. by late December. “[But] after the first wave of Omicron there was no significant difference in people always wearing a mask from those never wearing them and, in children, maybe even a slight reduced risk of testing positive if never wearing a mask.”
In a new study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia in the U.K., and colleagues from the University of East Anglia analyzed official data from the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics from November 2021 to May 2022 to explore how infection risk factors changed before and after the first Omicron wave. Risk factors included history of foreign travel, household size, employment status, contact with children and wearing a face mask.
“If masks can reduce transmission by about 20 to 30%, then if the virus becomes much more infectious, as was the case with Omicron, 20 to 30% isn’t going to ultimately be enough to slow the infection that much,” Hunter said. “But the more important issue is that COVID does not generate long-lasting immunity.”
He continued: “For highly infectious viruses like COVID with a short duration of immunity, once they have spread through the population once, then the number of infections that occur in a population is more affected by the rate at which immunity is lost [rather] than by changes in behavior intended to reduce exposure [like wearing masks.] And people who wore a mask really rigorously throughout the first two years will likely be more susceptible to infection [less immunity] than people who didn’t.”
WHO Accuses Nigel Farage of Spreading Misinformation About Pandemic Treaty
The World Health Organization has accused Nigel Farage of spreading misinformation after he launched a campaign to block an international treaty designed to improve global pandemic preparedness.
WHO member states are negotiating a deal to shore up cooperation against new pathogens. If adopted, the legally binding treaty would commit countries to helping each other in the event of a pandemic, increase research and sharing of data, and promote fair access to vaccines. But populist figures including Farage and a number of Tory MPs are lobbying the U.K. government to block the deal, claiming that it will give the WHO power to enforce lockdowns on countries, dictate policy on mask-wearing and control vaccine stocks.
The U.K. health minister Andrew Stephenson urged MPs in parliament this week to dismiss what he described as myths being spread about the treaty, which the U.K. is considering whether or not to support.
Lockdown mandates are not part of the deal and a claim by Farage that the treaty would require countries to give away 20% of their vaccines was “simply not true”, said Stephenson.
Meta Faces EU Investigation Over Child Safety Risks
Meta Platforms’ (META.O) social media sites Facebook and Instagram will be investigated for potential breaches of EU online content rules relating to child safety, EU regulators said on Thursday, a move that could lead to hefty fines.
Tech companies are required to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content on their platforms under the European Union’s landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), which kicked in last year.
The European Commission said it had decided to open an in-depth investigation into Facebook and Instagram due to concerns they had not adequately addressed risks to children. Meta submitted a risk assessment report in September.
“The Commission is concerned that the systems of both Facebook and Instagram, including their algorithms, may stimulate behavioral addictions in children, as well as create so-called ‘rabbit-hole effects’,” the EU executive said in a statement.
Google’s Call-Scanning AI Could Dial Up Censorship by Default, Privacy Experts Warn
A feature Google demoed at its I/O confab yesterday, using its generative AI technology to scan voice calls in real-time for conversational patterns associated with financial scams, has sent a collective shiver down the spines of privacy and security experts who are warning the feature represents the thin end of the wedge. They warn that once client-side scanning is baked into mobile infrastructure, it could usher in an era of centralized censorship.
Google’s demo of the call scam-detection feature, which the tech giant said would be built into a future version of its Android OS — estimated to run on some three-quarters of the world’s smartphones — is powered by Gemini Nano, the smallest of its current generation of AI models meant to run entirely on-device.
This is essentially client-side scanning: A nascent technology that’s generated huge controversy in recent years in relation to efforts to detect child sexual abuse material (CSAM) or even grooming activity on messaging platforms.
Apple abandoned a plan to deploy client-side scanning for CSAM in 2021 after a huge privacy backlash. However, policymakers have continued to heap pressure on the tech industry to find ways to detect illegal activity taking place on their platforms. Any industry moves to build out on-device scanning infrastructure could therefore pave the way for all sorts of content scanning by default — whether government-led or related to a particular commercial agenda.
Responding to Google’s call-scanning demo in a post on X, Meredith Whittaker, president of the U.S.-based encrypted messaging app Signal, warned: “This is incredibly dangerous. It lays the path for centralized, device-level client-side scanning.
Google Is About to Change Everything — and Hopes You Won’t Find Out
It’s difficult to overstate the magnitude and impact of the changes Google has been making to its search engine and overall product suite this month, some of which were laid out during Tuesday’s I/O 2024 conference. The reason is not just that parent company Alphabet is determined to shove some form of “artificial intelligence” and machine learning software into your Chrome browser and your phone calls and your photo galleries and your YouTube habits. It’s that the central tool that powers and shapes the modern internet is about to permanently change — and it may make for an even worse search experience than that which has defined Google’s most recent era.
Google Search, that powerful, white, oblong textbox that became the default portal for organizing, showcasing, platforming, exploring, optimizing, and determining the ultimate reach of every single webpage across the entirety of cyberspace (often by paying other gatekeepers to favor it over other search tools), is becoming something else entirely: a self-ingesting singular webpage of its own, powered by the breadth of web information to which it once gave you access.
Google is attempting to transform itself from a one-stop portal into a one-stop shop via “search generative experience,” where the Gemini chatbot will spit out a general “AI Overview” answer at the top of your search results. These answers will be informed by (or even plagiarized from) the very links now crowded out by a chatbox.
Yet the company doesn’t seem to want you to know anything about that. As Will Oremus noted in the Washington Post, this could also affect the way Google is perceived by regulators: If it’s directly writing results for you instead of just boosting other editorial options, Google could be judged legally as a publisher, not just a platform, and thus be held accountable for what Gemini says.
West Virginia GOP Senate President, Doctor Who Opposed Drawing Back Vaccine Laws Ousted in Election
West Virginia voters ousted the Republican state Senate president on Tuesday, as well as a doctor who drew fire for breaking with his party over school vaccination policy. They were among at least eight incumbent GOP legislators who lost in the state’s primary elections.
In the state’s eastern panhandle, U.S. Army Special Forces Green Beret veteran Tom Willis defeated Republican Senate President Craig Blair, who has helmed the chamber since 2021. And State Health and Human Resources Chair Sen. Mike Maroney was defeated by Chris Rose, a utility company electrician and former coal miner.
Maroney’s loss came after he publicly advocated against a bill pushed by the Republican caucus that would have allowed some students who don’t attend traditional public institutions or participate in group extracurriculars like sports to be exempt from vaccinations typically required for children starting daycare or school.
West Virginia is only one of a handful of states in the U.S. that offers only medical exemptions to vaccine requirements. Maroney, a radiologist from Marshall County, called the bill “an embarrassment” on the Senate floor and said he believed lawmakers were harming the state.
COVID, Other Misinformation Varies by Topic, Country on Social Media
PLOS One has published a study noting that the spread of COVID-related and other misinformation on social media varies by topic and by country in Europe.
The study was conducted by analyzing news activity on Twitter (now X) in France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom from 2019 to 2021, noting misinformation on major news topics including Brexit, coronavirus, and COVID-19 vaccines.
The authors found the United Kingdom maintained a relatively stable proportion between questionable and reliable retweets across different topics. Germany, on the other hand, had the highest ratio of questionable news retweets on each of the three topics analyzed, followed by France.
“Monitoring the information landscape at both national and European levels is indeed crucial to understanding the state of public discourse on contentious topics and detecting the emergence of new and divisive narratives within the European context,” they said.
B.C.’s COVID Vaccine Mandate for Healthcare Workers Survives Court Challenges
B.C.’s ongoing mandate that healthcare workers be vaccinated against COVID-19 survived a legal challenge this week, though the judge in the case remitted part of the provincial health officer’s order back to her for reconsideration.
Issued Friday and published online Monday, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Simon R. Coval’s ruling dealt with three separate lawsuits brought against Dr. Bonnie Henry in her role as the provincial health officer. All three cases sought judicial review of Henry’s most recent order regarding vaccination requirements for healthcare workers, which she issued on Oct. 5, 2023.
By that time, B.C. was the only province in Canada that had not lifted its vaccine mandate for such workers, though “certain hospitals” in Ontario and Nova Scotia retained similar rules, according to Coval’s decision.
The decision indicates more than 1,800 healthcare workers lost their jobs in B.C. because they chose not to be vaccinated after the mandate first took effect in 2021.