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House Republicans Introduce Bill to Block Tracking Religious Accommodations to COVID Vaccine

Fox News reported:

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., introduced a bill Tuesday that would prevent the federal government from tracking information on individuals who receive a religious exemption to the coronavirus vaccine.

The bill comes after the Pretrial Services Agency (PSA) for the District of Columbia — a federal entity — announced a system recording “personal religious information” of employees with “religious accommodation requests for religious exemption from the federally mandated vaccination requirement.”

“As if overreaching government vaccine mandates aren’t bad enough, it is highly inappropriate for federal dollars to be used to collect information about someone’s religious beliefs. The only way to prevent this information from being abused is to prevent its collection in the first place, and I thank Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, for joining me in this effort,” he added.

OSHA Scraps Its Vaccine Mandate for Large Employers After the Supreme Court Dealt the Requirement a Mortal Blow

Business Insider reported:

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced on Tuesday that it will stop requiring large employers to have their employees get vaccinated or test for COVID-19.

As of Wednesday, the emergency temporary standard will be withdrawn, according to court documents seen by Insider.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration’s previously implemented vaccine mandate for large companies, saying it could not be enforced while challenges from multiple Republican-run states worked their way through the court system.

A New York Judge Rules That the State’s Mask Mandate Is Unconstitutional and Can’t Be Enforced

The New York Times reported:

A New York State judge ruled on Monday that the state’s mask mandate had been enacted unlawfully and is now void, according to court documents.

Gov. Kathy Hochul had renewed a mask mandate at all indoor public places throughout the state — including in schools and nursing homes and on public transit — in December, amid a winter virus surge, and said it would last a month. The state Health Department then extended the mandate an additional two weeks, to expire on Feb. 1.

In his six-page decision, State Supreme Court Justice Thomas Rademacher wrote that Ms. Hochul and state health officials lacked the authority to enact the mask mandate without the approval of state lawmakers, and that it violated the state constitution.

NY Schools Told to Keep Masks After Judge Overturns Mandate

Associated Press reported:

New York state education officials told school administrators to continue enforcing the state’s mask mandate for students and teachers Tuesday despite a judge’s ruling overturning it, causing confusion as some districts rushed to make masks optional.

The Education Department said the state had filed notice that it would appeal Monday’s ruling by a judge on Long Island, a step that could keep the rule in place at least until its planned expiration Feb. 1.

But in some districts, administrators immediately made masking optional for students and staff.

California State Senator Proposes Removal of ‘Belief’ Exemption for School COVID Shots

Newsweek reported:

California State Senator Richard Pan announced on Monday the Keep Schools Open and Safe Act, which would remove the personal belief exemption for school COVID vaccine shots, according to a press release.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in October that he would add the COVID vaccine to the list of required vaccinations needed to go to school in person, according to a news release, but only with the FDA‘s full approval for all age ranges after this initial period of emergency approval, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts.

When asked whether the bill’s implementation is based on the FDA’s full approval of COVID vaccines, Pan said, “currently the bill is silent on that issue,” NBC Los Angeles reported.

Pritzker Vetoes Proposal to Pay COVID Sick Leave to All School Employees, Says Only Fully Vaccinated Should Be Compensated

Chicago Tribune reported:

Gov. J.B. Pritzker vetoed legislation Monday that would have guaranteed COVID-19-related sick leave for school employees, while signaling support for a “compromise” plan that would limit compensation to only those who are fully vaccinated.

Pritzker and leaders with the state’s two largest teachers unions have been huddling for weeks, with the unions urging Pritzker to sign the School Employee Benefit and Wage Protection bill after it passed with strong bipartisan support in October.

Officials with Pritzker’s office said the “joint initiative,” if passed, would provide paid administrative leave for every employee of a public school district who is “fully vaccinated or has received the required doses to become fully vaccinated within five weeks” of the passage of the law.

Seven Virginia School Boards File Lawsuit Against Glenn Youngkin’s Mask Order

Newsweek reported:

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is facing a new legal challenge from seven school boards over his executive order allowing parents to opt out of school mask mandates.

On Monday, the school boards in Fairfax, Richmond, Prince William and Arlington counties and the cities of Alexandria, Hampton and Falls Church filed a lawsuit in Arlington Country Circuit Court seeking to block Youngkin’s order. Collectively, they represent more than 350,000 students.

Home Births in England May Be Denied if Midwives Without COVID Jab Lose Jobs

The Guardian reported:

Hospital bosses fear that pregnant women could be denied a home birth or water birth in the event of an exodus of midwives triggered by compulsory COVID vaccination for NHS staff.

There are concerns that mothers-to-be could also be unable to have their baby at their local hospital as already understaffed maternity units in England struggle to cope with the loss of up to 2,000 midwives.

Hospital chiefs have described preparing to scale back the care they offer to expectant mothers from Apr. 1, the deadline for frontline staff to be double-vaccinated or lose their jobs.

Mandatory COVID Shots Could Deepen German Nurse Shortage, Say Care Companies

Reuters reported:

As Germany gears up to make COVID-19 vaccination compulsory in the healthcare sector, the industry fears that resistance among some workers will exacerbate staffing shortages and leave many families reliant on carers in the lurch.

Around 90% of medical staff in Germany are vaccinated, compared to about 70% in the general population, but that still leaves hundreds of thousands not vaccinated.

No One Knows What the Metaverse Is and That’s What’s Driving All the Hype

CNBC reported:

The day after Microsoft announced its intent to buy gaming powerhouse Activision Blizzard, the company released a statement saying the deal would “accelerate the growth in Microsoft’s gaming business across mobile, PC, console and cloud and will provide building blocks for the metaverse.”

Every week, it seems, another company is planting its flag in the metaverse, scrambling to figure out how to make money in this next digital frontier.

Whether the metaverse is something long-forgotten in a year or our new way of being remains to be seen. Skeptics, like Phil Libin, founder and former CEO of Evernote, the note-taking app, and now co-founder and CEO of mmhmm, point to the seismic changes now taking place in the wake of the pandemic as issues that need more attention than outfitting avatars in the metaverse with designer clothes or spending real money on virtual real estate.

“We should be making actual reality better. We shouldn’t be spending time making a different reality,” he says.

Optimizing Machines Is Perilous. Consider ‘Creatively Adequate’ Artificial Intelligence.

Wired reported:

Everywhere, artificial intelligence (AI) is breaking. And everywhere, it’s breaking us. The breaking ensues whenever AI encounters ambiguity or volatility. And in our hazy, unstable world, that’s all the time: Either the data can be interpreted another way or it’s obsolesced by new events.

At which point, AI finds itself looking at life through errant eyes, seeing left as right or now as yesterday. Yet because AI lacks self-awareness, it doesn’t realize that its worldview has cracked. So, on it whirs, unwittingly transmitting the fracture to all the things plugged into it. Cars are crashed. Insults are hurled. Allies are auto-targeted.

We’ve been forced into metric assessments at school, standard flow patterns at work and regularized sets at hospitals, gyms and social-media hangouts. In the process, we’ve lost large chunks of the independence, creativity and daring that our biology evolved to keep us resilient, making us more anxious, angry and burned out.