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Lawsuits Coming for Entities That Don’t Change COVID Mandates After CDC Update: Lawyer
Entities with COVID-19 vaccine mandates that don’t pay heed to the new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance will face lawsuits, a civil liberties lawyer says.
“We don’t have a new lawsuit in the works yet. But if we see that colleges and universities and public employers are not responding to the new CDC guidance the way that they should be, then we would certainly tee up a new lawsuit,” Mark Chenoweth, president and general counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance, told The Epoch Times.
The response to the updated guidance should be, at a minimum, a lifting of mandates for people who have recovered from COVID-19, Chenoweth added. Such people have a high level of protection against severe illness and death, according to a number of studies. Many studies indicate the protection is higher than that from the COVID-19 vaccines — including one funded by the CDC.
Stop Testing Asymptomatic Children in Schools for COVID
Los Angeles Daily News reported:
When children were forced to stay home as the COVID-19 pandemic took the world by storm, numerous voices called out in protest. In contrast to adults, children did not appear to be suffering from either a high burden of infection or a risk of severe complications, and the consequences of school closures were numerous, from worsening socioeconomic disparities including food insecurity and increased rates of physical abuse to a substantial loss in learning.
Many experts agree that the school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic will have far-reaching negative ramifications for years to come.
As a strategy to keep kids in school in spite of the pandemic, routine surveillance testing within schools was widely recommended. This past week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxed its recommendations, no longer recommending universal surveillance testing within schools, but instead suggesting schools consider surveillance testing under certain circumstances such as when students return from vacation.
But as of this writing, the California Department of Public Health continues to recommend routine surveillance testing of asymptomatic students and staff for the 2022-2023 school year.
Philadelphia School District Mandates Masks for First 10 Days of School Year, Pre-K Must Mask up All Year
The School District of Philadelphia is mandating that students and staff wear masks for the first 10 days of the school year, and is requiring that pre-kindergarten attendees mask up all year.
Officials from the school district and city made the announcement in a letter to parents on Friday, stating that after the first 10 days of the school year, from Aug. 29 through Sept. 9, most schools will go mask-optional.
Students and staff at the district’s Pre-K Head Start program, the district’s income-driven pre-kindergarten program for ages 3-5, will be required to wear a mask for the entire 2022-2023 school year, according to the announcement.
DC Mayor Dodges Question on Why She Won’t Allow Unvaccinated Black Students in Schools This Fall
Washington, DC, Mayor Democrat Muriel Bowser appeared to avoid addressing a question on why she will not allow unvaccinated black school children back in the classroom this fall by claiming that the statistics she was provided with were inaccurate.
Though many school districts have moved away from such restrictive measures, Washington, DC, mandates that children 12 and older be “up-to-date on required vaccinations before returning this August.”
A significant portion of DC’s black students is not vaccinated, sparking concerns that the mandate disproportionately impacts these children. And on Monday, The Daily Signal’s Douglas Blair questioned the DC mayor about “how she could justify forcing 40% of unvaccinated black students to stay home from school.”
Parents, Doctors Lament ‘Devastating’ Effects of Pandemic School Closures as Mental Health Crisis Worsens
Nearly two-and-a-half years after COVID-19 first took the U.S. by storm, parents and doctors are speaking out on the devastating effects that the school shutdowns and mandates continue to have on children, including a relentless mental health crisis.
“What I’m seeing happening — particularly with younger kids — is social delays, communication issues,” family therapist Tom Kersting told “Fox & Friends First” Tuesday.
“The biggest thing I’ve seen with teenagers is a rise in anxiety disorders,” he added. Kersting said shutting children and teens out of society for more than two years is behind the decline.
Dr. Kathleen Berchelmann, a pediatrician, told host Todd Piro that the U.S. has seen a “tragic” increase in mental health issues among children and teens since the dawn of the pandemic, including in-patient psychiatric treatments.
Watchdog Sues Biden Administration Over Refusal to Provide Studies on Masks
A watchdog group is suing the Biden administration for allegedly refusing to provide information on studies on the efficacy of cloth masks. Functional Government Initiative (FGI) says the Department of Health and Human Services and two subagencies have violated federal law by refusing to provide the information.
FGI in February sent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the department, the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases seeking details on how the agencies have analyzed the effectiveness of cloth masks, including information on any studies the agencies have funded on the matter.
Scoop: Oracle Begins Auditing TikTok’s Algorithms
Oracle has begun vetting TikTok’s algorithms and content moderation models to ensure they aren’t manipulated by Chinese authorities, Axios has learned.
The effort is meant to provide further assurance to lawmakers that TikTok’s U.S. platform operates independently from the influence of the Chinese Communist Party.
TikTok is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance. ByteDance bought the U.S. lip-syncing app Musical.ly in 2017 and merged it with its version of a similar app called TikTok. The app has since skyrocketed in popularity in the U.S.
Judge Orders Twitter to Give Elon Musk Former Executive’s Documents
Twitter Inc. (TWTR.N) needs to give Elon Musk documents from a former Twitter executive who Musk said was a key figure in calculating the amount of fake accounts on the platform, according to a Monday court order.
Bot and spam accounts on Twitter have become a central issue in the legal fight over whether Musk, who is Tesla Inc’s (TSLA.O) chief executive, must complete his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company.
Twitter was ordered to collect, review and produce documents from former General Manager of Consumer Product Kayvon Beykpour, according to the order from Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the Delaware Court of Chancery.
Beykpour, who left Twitter after the social media company agreed in April to be acquired by Musk, was described in Musk’s court filings as one of the executives “most intimately involved with” determining the amount of spam accounts.
Amazon Accuses FTC of Harassing Executives Including Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy
Amazon has accused the U.S. Federal Trade Commission of harassing its top executives, including founder Jeff Bezos and chief executive Andy Jassy, as part of a probe into the e-commerce group’s Prime membership scheme.
Since March 2021, the regulator has been investigating whether Amazon uses deceptive techniques to lure customers into signing up for Prime, the subscription service that offers free delivery and other benefits at a cost of $139 a year.
The FTC is also examining whether Amazon unfairly complicates the process for customers who want to cancel their membership.
The company called for the FTC to “quash or limit” the demands, which it alleged served no other purpose other than to “harass Amazon’s highest-ranking executives and disrupt its business operations.”
Space Junk Is Unregulated, Harmful and Putting People at Risk
Along with a rising number of space missions by government agencies and private industry, comes a fresh set of problems for Earthlings: potentially dangerous space junk.
A recent study published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy concluded: “that current practices have on order a 10% chance of one or more casualties over a decade.” In other words, according to researchers from the University of Victoria and the University of British Columbia, there’s roughly a one-in-ten chance that the next decade will witness falling space junk kill someone.
But that’s just a small part of the problem the study outlines.
Chinese Internet Giants Hand Algorithm Data to Government
Chinese internet giants including Alibaba, Tiktok-owner ByteDance and Tencent have shared details of their algorithms with China’s regulators for the first time.
Algorithms decide what users see and the order they see it in — and are critical to driving the growth of social media platforms. They are closely guarded by companies.
In the U.S. Meta and Alphabet have successfully argued they are trade secrets amid calls for more disclosure.
