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Hudson Valley Community College Rejects State COVID Vaccine Mandate
Hudson Valley Community College (HVCC) will allow students to return to classes this fall without a COVID-19 vaccine — despite the fact the State University of New York system, of which HVCC is a part, requires students to be vaccinated against the virus.
In a two-page written response sent to the Times Union after the newspaper inquired about the college’s posted vaccination rules, HVCC’s Vice President of Student Affairs Louis Coplin wrote, “Vaccination does not prevent infection or transmission of the virus. As one example, U.S. President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden have recently become infected after being vaccinated and boosted.”
Coplin also said the rule is unfair to students because teachers and staff do not have to get vaccinated.
COVID, the CDC and the Commission on Higher Education’s Continuing Discrimination Against the Unvaccinated
The big news about the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s “Summary of Guidance for Minimizing the Impact of COVID-19 on Individual Persons, Communities and Healthcare Systems,” released on Aug. 11, was actually about how subdued the reporting it got from mainstream news sources.
The CDC changed its tune, media downplayed it. The simple fact is: nothing has changed. Doubts regarding the efficacy of mandatory vaccination, masking, distancing and lockdowns have all been expressed from the beginning, only to be duly suppressed by medical “experts” and news media.
Indeed, data have ultimately proven the skeptics right. Japan, Australia and New Zealand, despite high vaccination rates and oftentimes utterly restrictive COVID measures, are seeing record-topping COVID cases and COVID-related deaths. U.S. COVID cases and deaths, on the other hand, have basically taken a cyclical pattern.
And seemingly being brushed under the rug are reported cases after cases of healthy young adults suddenly dropping dead, all from heart or blood-related issues, and of countries seeing this year drastically dropping birth rates.
Exclusive: Marine Faces Court Martial for Not Taking COVID Vaccine, Refuses to Be Sent Back to U.S. for Separation
Lance Corporal Catherine Arnett is on the brink of court martial for decisions made in opposition to what she considers an “unlawful order” to take a COVID-19 vaccination shot.
Immediately following the secretary of defense’s order to vaccinate against COVID-19 on Aug. 24, 2021, Arnett sought religious exemption — which was denied the following month.
Having submitted her appeal against the decision in November, it was denied in January 2022. This began an administrative separation process from the Marine Corps, prompting Arnett to declare she “cannot consent to it.”
The 24-year-old Lance Corporal held firm in her beliefs, telling The Epoch Times that “if your mandate is illegal, then your separation orders are illegal.” In April 2022, Arnett received a letter from her command, giving her 30 days to leave Japan and report to California’s Camp Pendleton to be processed for separation. The Marine Corps does not separate individuals from duty stations overseas or outside the continental United States.
Germany’s Constitutional Court Upholds Measles Vaccine Mandate for Children
The German constitutional court upheld the country’s measles vaccine mandate for children on Thursday, ruling against a challenge brought by parents.
In its final decision on the matter, the court in Karlsruhe said that while the mandate interfered with the rights of children and their parents, this was justified due to the high infection risk with measles and the potential for serious illness.
The measles vaccine mandate came into effect in March 2020 and requires all children to be vaccinated or have already recovered from a course of the disease in order to attend kindergarten or childcare facilities.
Exceptions are allowed only if the child has a medical intolerance for the vaccine.
City in China Orders Fish Swabbed for COVID
In the coastal Chinese city of Xiamen, it’s not just the mouths of fishers being swabbed for COVID-19, but also the fish they’ve caught.
As China maintains its commitment to zero-COVID, city authorities are working to ensure there is no avenue for the virus to enter, ordering all fishers and their catch to undergo a daily nucleic acid test.
“At present, all people in Xiamen City need nucleic acid testing, and the fish catches must be tested as well,” an employee at the Xiamen municipal ocean development bureau told local media. TV news reports showed officials swabbing the mouths of fish and the underside of crabs.
There was no report that any trace of the virus had been detected.
‘I Want Freedom’: One Man’s Escape From Zero-COVID China to Seek His American Dream
Unlike many of the thousands aiming to cross the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border illegally each day, Wang Qun was not fleeing poverty or violence south of the wall.
Instead, the 33-year-old Chinese citizen was running from China’s unrelenting zero-COVID policy and growing authoritarianism under leader Xi Jinping.
From the other side of the Pacific Ocean, Wang left his family behind to travel thousands of miles by plane, bus, boat and motorcycle. He trekked through deep jungles and across barren mountains and spent days in multiple detention centers — all in pursuit of freedom and opportunities in the United States.
Amazon’s Two Big Deals Have One Big Thing in Common — Data
Amazon (AMZN) is buying two different but high-profile companies — Roomba-maker iRobot and concierge healthcare provider One Medical. At first glance, these two companies have little in common. Roombas — which I find terrifying — are mobile robots that vacuum your home, while One Medical provides a tech-powered primary care network.
As it is, Amazon can already get a “robust picture” of you from devices like Alexa and Ring, according to Ian Greenblatt, who leads J.D. Power’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications Intelligence practice.
In addition, Greenblatt added that your name, address, searches and recordings can be collected by Amazon when you speak to its Alexa Voice Assistant.
That’s just the beginning: Cookie trackers that enhance shopping experiences on the company’s e-commerce site, payment and delivery information and facial recognition are all also feeding into the data that Amazon has on us.
Amazon’s Ring Quietly Fixed Security Flaw That Put Users’ Camera Recordings at Risk of Exposure
Amazon-owned Ring quietly fixed a “high-severity” security vulnerability in May that could have allowed malicious actors to access camera recordings from Ring video doorbells and extract users’ personal data.
Researchers at Atlanta-based application security company Checkmarx found that the app had several bugs, which when chained together could have allowed attackers to exploit the vulnerability by creating and publishing a malicious app — or pushing an update to an existing app — running on the same device.
If a would-be victim is tricked into installing a malicious app, it would allow the attackers to obtain authentication cookies, which are small files that keep a user persistently logged in without having to constantly re-enter their passwords.
With these cookies, an attacker could access a user’s account without their password, allowing the malicious app to steal a Ring user’s full name, email address and phone number and Ring device data, such as camera recordings and geolocation data.
Mozilla Slaps 18 Period and Pregnancy Tracking Apps and Devices With a ‘Privacy Not Included’ Warning Label
Eighteen popular reproductive health apps — including Flo, Glow and Ovia — just got slapped with a privacy warning label from Mozilla.
Following the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Mozilla investigated 25 period and pregnancy tracking apps and wearable devices to better understand their privacy and security practices.
Researchers looked at some of the most popular apps, as denoted by downloads, as well as those most often recommended by news outlets.
Of those investigated, 18 have opaque privacy-protection policies, and didn’t provide clear guidelines on what data could be shared with law enforcement institutions, said Jen Caltrider, the lead researcher on Mozilla’s *Privacy Not Included project.
