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Andrew Wiggins Says He Wishes He Didn’t Get COVID Vaccine: ‘I Didn’t Like That It Wasn’t My Choice’
At the start of the 2021-22 season Golden State Warriors forward Andrew Wiggins held out until the last possible moment to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Wiggins’ refusal against getting the vaccine would’ve caused a problem for the Warriors, as the San Francisco Department of Public Health had an order requiring COVID-19 vaccination for all participants age 12 and older at large indoor events.
The former No. 1 overall pick eventually decided to receive the vaccine, and he went on to help Golden State win a championship. But now, just over a month removed from hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy, Wiggins says he regrets the decision.
“I just don’t like putting all that stuff in my body, so I didn’t like that and I didn’t like that it wasn’t my choice. I didn’t like that it was either get this or don’t play.” This is the same sentiment Wiggins had early in the season after receiving the vaccine, saying he was “kind of forced” to get it.
DC Schools Require COVID Vaccine for Students 12 and up
Students ages 12 and older will be required to get the COVID-19 vaccine to attend Washington, DC, schools in the fall.
The Office of the State Superintendent of Education announced that beginning in the 2022-23 school year, student immunization requirements include the coronavirus vaccine for all students of an age for which there is a vaccine fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Currently, this includes students 12 and up, according to a news release.
The requirement was detailed in a law that the DC Council voted to approve last year. It was the first legislation of its kind in the DC region.
Mark Zuckerberg to Testify to Federal Court on Facebook Data Scandal
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg will be deposed for six hours in a lawsuit about the social media giant’s handling of consumer data as plaintiffs in the case continue to press the company for information.
A joint case statement in the U.S. District Court Northern District of California San Francisco Division filed on Tuesday shows that the Meta CEO will make a deposition in the lawsuit involving consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica collected information from millions of Facebook users in the 2010s without their consent and the company assisted in the presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump. It is also being accused of interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom.
The litigation relates to Facebook’s data-sharing policies with app developers and is a consolidated case for pre-trial purposes, bringing together several civil cases from a variety of defendants.
Critics Worry Government Surveillance of HIV May Hurt More Than It Helps
Molecular surveillance is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s HIV cluster detection and response program. It uses different kinds of surveillance data, including genetic changes in the virus, to identify networks of HIV transmission and tailor interventions to emerging outbreaks. HIV changes quickly, the CDC says, and finding similar viral strains in people can be a sign of rapid transmission.
Cluster detection and response is a pillar of the federal government’s 2019 plan to cut new HIV infections in the country by 90% by 2030. Late last year, the Biden administration renewed its commitment to the program and then pumped an additional $115 million into the effort.
But molecular surveillance has met considerable opposition since it was rolled out nationally. Service providers, health equity advocates and people living with HIV worry the risks of the approach outweigh the benefits, and their concerns have gotten louder as awareness of the tool grows.
Some have called for the practice to stop until federal health officials address concerns about patient consent, data security, and the potential for HIV criminalization.
Will the BA.5 COVID Strain Force New Mask Mandates?
The new COVID-19 variant, called BA.5, has been rapidly spreading across the country and is now estimated to make up more than 60% of new cases, according to the CDC. It is highly transmissible, compared to previous variants, and seemingly more resistant to prior vaccinations and immunities.
These factors are making people think differently about wearing masks, which experts say are still an effective way to curb the spread of the virus. Los Angeles County, for example, will likely reinstate an indoor mask mandate at the end of the month due to rising COVID-19 cases.
Canada Faces Call to Scrap Vaccine Passport App After Elderly Man Without a Smartphone Is Threatened With Fine
There is growing discontent in Canada with the official government-mandated ArriveCan app that contains mandatory travel and health information, the use of which is required for entry into the country.
And although Canadian authorities say that its goal is to keep travelers safe and “modernize cross-border travel,” ArriveCan is increasingly a source of frustration to those forced to use it, and many are now calling for it to be abandoned.
The app was introduced during the COVID pandemic as a public health measure but is now morphing into one way to implement the digital ID agenda, critics are warning, and those in power in Canada are not really protesting this claim.
A recent incident is very telling of the app’s negative impact. An 86-year-old disabled man was last weekend threatened with a $5,000 fine because he didn’t use the app.
Disinformation Governance Board Is Officially Killed — But What Comes Next?
In a rare and perhaps fleeting victory for those trying to slow America’s slide into dystopian authoritarianism, the Department of Homeland Security on Monday said it has concluded: “There is no need for a Disinformation Governance Board.”
The news comes just under three months after the existence of the board first came to public attention. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced its creation at an April 27 House budget hearing — igniting a firestorm of opposition to what critics derisively labeled the “Ministry of Truth.”
House Panel Set to Advance Privacy Bill, Striking a Long-Awaited Grand Bargain
For years, lawmakers have avoided making tough calls about what data privacy protections Congress should give consumers and how they should be enforced. That’s finally changing.
On Wednesday, a House panel is expected to greenlight a watershed privacy bill that strikes compromises on a series of major issues that have long vexed negotiators. It would mark the first time a consumer privacy bill has made it out of committee, a historic feat.
Most notably, the proposal brokers a bipartisan compromise by overriding most state privacy laws, as Republicans have sought, in exchange for granting consumers a right to bring lawsuits against violators, which Democrats have called for.
The bill appears to address concerns by children’s privacy advocates about a loophole that could let companies dodge scrutiny for serving targeted ads to children and teens if firms didn’t know it was happening. The updated bill only applies that more-limited standard to smaller firms. Larger companies could be held accountable if they knew or should have known about it.
Twitter-Musk Takeover Dispute Heading for an October Trial
Tesla CEO Elon Musk lost his fight to delay Twitter’s lawsuit against him as a Delaware judge on Tuesday set an October trial, citing the “cloud of uncertainty” over the social media company after the billionaire backed out of a deal to buy it.
Twitter is trying to force the billionaire to make good on his April promise to buy the social media giant for $44 billion — and the company wants it to happen quickly because it says the ongoing dispute is harming its business.
The Most Popular Period-Tracking Apps, Ranked by Data Privacy
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, tens of thousands of Americans have turned to their smartphones to share information and assess their app libraries. Legal experts have warned that people seeking abortion care have become critically vulnerable to privacy threats, especially those who reside in states where “bounty hunter” laws incentivize private citizens to file civil complaints against them.
As a response, many people have sought out more dependable and secure ways to track their menstrual cycles via period-tracking apps, despite a recent flurry of tweets urging users to delete them en masse.
What really makes a period-tracker app safe to use? To find out, we analyzed the privacy policies of the 5 most popular period-tracking apps in the U.S.: Flo, Clue, Stardust, Period Calendar and Period Tracker (these earned the highest number of downloads in 2022, according to AppMagic).
TechScape: Suspicious of TikTok? You’re Not Alone
What’s the problem with TikTok? It’s a harder question to answer than it seems. The social video app, which has joined Facebook/Instagram, YouTube and Twitter in the list of societally important social networks, is frequently spoken about with an air of suspicion, and it’s not hard to guess why: the app’s Chinese roots loom large in the conversation.
So I was interested to read a report that attempts to look at the general suspicion of the service. Published on Monday by the Australian-U.S. cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0, it is based on a teardown of TikTok’s Android and iOS apps.
Thomas Perkins, the report’s author, offers a dizzying list of data the TikTok app can access while it’s running, including the device location, calendar, contacts, other running applications, wi-fi networks, phone number and even the SIM card serial number.
The most alarming finding in the report is an unexplained connection to a server that Perkins locates in mainland China, run by Guizhou BaishanCloud Technology Co Ltd.
