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Hospital and Drugmaker Move to Build a Vast Database of New Yorkers’ DNA
The New York Times via The Buffalo News reported:
The Mount Sinai Health System began an effort this week to build a vast database of patient genetic information that can be studied by researchers — and by a large pharmaceutical company.
The goal is to search for treatments for illnesses ranging from schizophrenia to kidney disease, but the effort to gather genetic information for many patients, collected during routine blood draws, could also raise privacy concerns.
The data will be rendered anonymous, and Mount Sinai said it had no intention of sharing it with anyone other than researchers. But consumer or genealogical databases full of genetic information, such as Ancestry.com and GED match, have been used by detectives searching for genetic clues that might help them solve old crimes.
The health system hopes to eventually amass a database of genetic sequences for 1 million patients, which would mean the inclusion of roughly 1 out of every 10 New York City residents. The effort began this week, a hospital spokesperson, Karin Eskenazi, said.
America’s Kids Unmasked Two Years Later: Examining COVID Mandate Consequences as Students Return to Class
As a new school year starts ramping up, many children nationwide will experience their first day back to school without mask requirements or other COVID-related mandates for the first time in more than two years.
But for many, the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic remains. That is especially true in California, where schools implemented some of the strictest COVID policies in the country. The state was also among the last to reopen its schools.
Multiple parents who spoke with Fox News Digital said they were relieved that mask mandates have been dropped but say the impact of the past 2.5 years of COVID policies lingers.
“Isolating children, especially in Los Angeles, socially, academically and emotionally from their peers has had detrimental effects, the likes of which we are only beginning to feel,” Daniella Bloom, whose children attend school in the Los Angeles area, told Fox News Digital.
Novak Djokovic Withdraws From Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati Due to COVID Vaccination Status
World No. 6 Novak Djokovic has withdrawn from the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati because of his COVID-19 vaccination status. The unvaccinated tennis star’s participation in the U.S. Open, which begins on Aug. 29, is still uncertain.
The hard-court tournament in Cincinnati is set to take place Aug. 13- 21. At this moment, unvaccinated foreigners are not allowed to travel to Canada or the United States. Earlier this month, Djokovic had to pull out from the Canadian Open in Montreal. He also had to miss the Australian Open in January after being deported from the country due to his unvaccinated status.
Djokovic doesn’t necessarily need to rule out the U.S. Open yet, as the CDC could still change its guidelines to allow unvaccinated travelers into the country in the next few weeks.
Mask Mandate Didn’t Work Against COVID in LA, Say Doctors From USC and UCLA
Los Angeles Daily News reported:
A letter from top-level doctors and researchers arguing against the effectiveness of indoor mask mandates, along with pushback from health departments, cities and business groups, possibly played a role in a surprise decision not to re-institute the mandate in Los Angeles County last month.
This newspaper obtained a copy of a February 2022 letter signed by doctors from UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine and USC’s Keck School of Medicine sent to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, asking the county to end the mask mandate that was in effect this past winter, claiming the policy did not work.
The letter from the group of doctors cites the county’s statistics, and studies in Europe and some U.S. states, showing that after mask mandates were imposed, the transmission of COVID-19 did not slow down. It contends that vaccines and boosters, plus immunity from those who’ve been infected, form a safeguard against high levels of serious illness and that masks are not necessary for mid-2022, unlike during the early stages of the pandemic.
New Jersey Dropping Some COVID Requirements for Schools, Childcare Settings and State Contractors
New Jersey’s Governor Phil Murphy signed an executive order Monday easing some COVID-19 requirements. Soon, it will no longer be necessary for school districts, childcare settings and state contractors to require their unvaccinated workers to undergo routine testing.
The change in New Jersey goes into effect immediately for schools and childcare facilities and on Sept. 1 for contractors. However, the governor says those employers can still create their own vaccination or testing policy if they wish.
Colorado Department of Corrections to Review COVID Vaccine Mandate as It Scrambles to Fill 1,800 Open Positions
Colorado Department of Corrections officials are revisiting a policy requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for employees as the department scrambles to fill nearly 1,800 open positions.
The vaccine mandate and testing requirements for prison workers remained under administrative review Friday, and a potential rollback could come this week, the DOC confirmed.
The move comes amid efforts to speed hiring and chip away at a backlog of vacancies that has swelled to nearly one-quarter of the DOC’s 8,000-person workforce, fueling safety concerns among workers at state prisons.
Chaos at Shanghai Ikea After Store Attempted to Lock Down Over COVID Threat
Videos circulating on social media Sunday show the moment chaos ensued at an Ikea store in Shanghai, China after authorities ordered it to shut down over a COVID-19 scare.
Shoppers rushed for the exits as health authorities attempted to lock down the building after learning that someone who had been in contact with a COVID-19 patient had visited.
In one video, an announcement can be heard inside the store saying authorities asked for an immediate shutdown and to stop people from entering or exiting.
Bloomberg reported that one visitor who shared her experience on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, said those who weren’t able to leave the store were forced to remain inside from 8 p.m. until just after midnight. They were then reportedly relocated to quarantine hotels.
Apple Finds Its Next Big Business: Showing Ads on Your iPhone
Before even talking about how Apple Inc. could expand its advertising business, I need to address the elephant in the room: how the company’s privacy efforts have stymied third-party advertising on its platform.
Last year, Apple launched a feature called App Tracking Transparency, or ATT. It allows consumers to decide whether apps can track them across other applications and websites — a key way for marketers to gather data and then serve up more relevant ads. Typically, the better the ad, the more money it generates.
You may not feel too bad for social media giants like Meta Platforms Inc. and Snap Inc. that have claimed to have lost billions of dollars as a result of Apple’s changes, but smaller developers also say the feature has upended their businesses.
With that in mind, what you’re about to read may seem a bit ironic: Apple is going to, over time, significantly expand its own advertising business.
Police Used Baby’s DNA to Investigate Its Father for a Crime
If you were born in the United States within the last 50 or so years, chances are good that one of the first things you did as a baby was give a DNA sample to the government. By the 1970s, states had established newborn screening programs, in which a nurse takes a few drops of blood from a pinprick on a baby’s heel, then sends the sample to a lab to test for certain diseases. Over the years, the list has grown from just a few conditions to dozens.
The blood is supposed to be used for medical purposes — these screenings identify babies with serious health issues, and they have been highly successful at reducing death and disability among children. But a public records lawsuit filed last month in New Jersey suggests these samples are also being used by police in criminal investigations.
The lawsuit, filed by the state’s Office of the Public Defender and the New Jersey Monitor, a nonprofit news outlet, alleges that state police sought a newborn’s blood sample from the New Jersey Department of Health to investigate the child’s father in connection with a sexual assault from the 1990s.
Crystal Grant, a technology fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union, says the case represents a “whole new leap forward” in the misuse of DNA by law enforcement. “It means that essentially every baby born in the U.S. could be included in police surveillance,” she says.
‘They Can Do Audio, Video & Physical Surveillance on You 24 Hours/365 Days a Year’: Rex Lee on Intrusive Apps
In this special episode, The Epoch Times’ Tiffany Meier sat down with Rex M. Lee, the cybersecurity adviser at My Smart Privacy. He helps shed light on China’s cyberattacks on America, how they affect us in our daily lives and what can be done to stop them.
“A single intrusive app enables the developer to collect over 5,000 highly confidential data points associated with the end user’s personal information, business information, medical information, legal information and employment information because the surveillance and data mining done by these companies is indiscriminate, meaning that they’re not only collecting consumer information, they’re collecting every bit of information from the end user, including text messages, email, email attachments, calendar events and so forth,” he added.
“So they can do audio, video and physical surveillance on you 24 hours, 365 days a year while collecting those 5,000 highly confidential data points on the end user. What they’re doing is they package that and they monetize it. But also, as we’re seeing in the news, is that these tech companies are aligned with governments. So the information a lot of times is ending up in the hands of the government.”
