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Why You Should Think Twice Before Sharing a COVID Diagnosis

Wired reported:

I know three people recovering from COVID at the moment. I know this because they told me. That might not seem like a big deal these days when a COVID diagnosis often slips off the tongue as easily as a mention of the common cold. But it matters a lot both to our collective right to privacy and an individual’s right to privacy, now and later.

​​In more modern times, we call the revelation of truthful private information “Publicity Given Private Life.” That tort makes it wrong to reveal another person’s private information: “sexual relations,” for example, “most intimate letters,” and, important here, “many unpleasant or humiliating illnesses.”

That’s why our new collective tradition of sharing COVID diagnoses has the potential to impact both law and individuals.

And based on the data that’s made available about any one of us — information from social media posts about our diagnoses or information from credit card companies about what we like to buy or information from geolocation data about where we like to go — data that could be shared with would-be employers and life insurance companies to name two, it’s not too much of a stretch to say that there are many who would be interested in such a diagnosis, perhaps now but maybe even especially later.

Board of Health Opts Against New School Vaccine Requirement

Associated Press reported:

The Washington State Board of Health has decided that COVID-19 vaccines will not be required for students to attend K-12 schools this fall. The Board of Health made the decision in a unanimous vote Wednesday, The Seattle Times reported.

Last fall, the board created a separate technical advisory group tasked with researching whether a COVID vaccine would meet all the scientific criteria needed to be added to the list of required K-12 immunizations.

The advisory group in late February voted to recommend against adding a COVID-19 vaccine to the list of school-required immunizations, citing a lack of vaccine data for school-aged kids and potentially unpredictable social impacts of imposing a mandate.

Instagram Amplifies Pro-Eating Disorder Content ‘Bubble’: Report

The Hill reported:

Instagram amplifies pro-eating disorder content to users in a way that fosters a harmful interconnected community that includes teen and underaged users, according to a report released Thursday by advocacy group Fairplay.

Instagram’s algorithm and data profiling tactics create a pro-eating disorder “bubble” on the platform that includes more than 88,000 unique accounts and reaches 20 million unique followers, according to the report.

“[Instagram] collects all of the data that it needs to sort of profile you as someone who’s interested in sort of pro-eating disorder content, and then creates this sort of world around you where it recommends that you follow these people, recommends that these people follow you, it recommends this content, it fills your feed with this sort of content — and that actually you can almost become trapped inside sort of pro-eating disorder bubble, even if you didn’t intend on doing that,” said Rys Farthing, author of the report.

Farthing said the prevalence of the content and the recommendations to users is not accidental on Instagram’s part — it’s built into the business model. The report estimates that Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, derives $2 million in revenue a year from the bubble, and $227.9 million from all those who follow it.

Hundreds in Chicago Police Department Still Not Vaccinated, Despite Wednesday’s Deadline to Receive the Shots

Chicago Tribune reported:

As the latest deadline for Chicago police officers to get the COVID-19 vaccine came and went Wednesday, the remaining holdouts in the department found themselves once again facing off with the city over who would blink first.

Under a court-ordered arbitrator’s ruling in February, the approximately 12,000 employees of the Chicago Police Department had until Wednesday to get the second shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, or the first shot of the Johnson & Johnson version.

As of Monday, 2,120 Police Department members remained unvaccinated; the city did not have more updated figures on Wednesday. But not all unvaccinated cops face losing their police powers as a result of failing to comply, as 1,439 of them have approved religious and medical exemptions.

A much greater number of department employees have been denied their exemption request: 3,254. And 571 are still waiting on a response to their applications.

California Says Asymptomatic People Exposed to Coronavirus Don’t Need to Quarantine

Los Angeles Times reported:

California is no longer recommending a five-day quarantine period for people who are exposed to the coronavirus but remain asymptomatic, a move that could potentially result in a relaxation of similar rules in Los Angeles County.

Doing so, officials say, would relieve the burden for employers and institutions to keep otherwise healthy people at home following exposure. The move also reflects a new pandemic reality, according to state officials — that slowly but steadily increasing vaccination rates and the availability of anti-COVID drugs are reducing the overall risk of California’s hospitals being overwhelmed in potential future surges.

Individual counties can keep rules in place that are stricter than the state’s if local health officials believe it’s necessary. Currently, L.A. County requires those exposed to the coronavirus who are either unvaccinated or not up-to-date with their first booster shot to quarantine for at least five days following their last exposure to an infected person.

Ex-FDA Chief: These Are the 2 Most Important Times to Mask up on a Plane

Forbes reported:

Yesterday’s decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to extend the federal mask mandate by two weeks was understandable, according to one of the nation’s most prominent health experts.

“At this point, I think we can lift the mandate,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday. “But I’m not surprised we extended it out a couple of weeks in a setting of a surge of BA.2 infections.” For at least the past two weeks, the highly contagious BA.2 subvariant of Omicron has been dominant in the United States.

“I think the bigger question is what do they do after the two weeks,” said Gottlieb. “There is some scuttlebutt that [the CDC] won’t lift the mask mandate entirely, but they’ll require passengers to wear masks when they come on to planes and when they come off the planes.”

For months, the mask mandate has been a bone of contention between the CDC and airlines. Last month, the chief executives of the seven U.S. airlines — Alaska, American, Delta, Hawaiian, JetBlue, United and Southwest — asked President Biden to end the mask mandate and drop the pre-departure testing requirement for international travelers coming to the U.S.

Italian in Shanghai Quarantine Shows Bleak Reality of Having COVID in China

Newsweek reported:

An Italian ex-pat living in Shanghai has shared his experience of getting COVID in China, with a video showing him being collected by authorities and taken to a quarantine center, where he has been since April 10.

Alessandro Pavanello was visited by authorities on April 9, with his video showing people in hazmat suits shouting at him to come downstairs and placing him on a bus. Quarantine centers have been set up in stadiums, convention centers and hotels. Footage and images shared on social media show chaotic scenes with cramped, sometimes unhygienic conditions.

“I’d say there must be around 1,000 people here,” Pavanello told Newsweek. “So far it’s been quite an unpleasant and stressful experience. The hygiene conditions are quite low — bathrooms that are quite dirty, close contact with people, no showers.”

Elon Musk Offers to Buy ‘100%’ of Twitter — Site ‘Needs to Be Transformed’

Newsweek reported:

Billionaire Elon Musk has issued an ultimatum to Twitter‘s chairman as he made a surprise offer to buy 100% of Twitter shares in a deal that values the social media company at around $43 billion.

The offer, which comes after the Tesla CEO bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter but decided not to take a seat on the board, sent Twitter shares surging by as much as 10% in pre-market trade. Musk’s decision not to take a boardroom seat gave him the flexibility to acquire more shares of the social media platform.

Musk, the world’s richest man, told Twitter’s chairman, Bret Taylor, that he believes under his leadership the social media platform’s potential could be unlocked.

“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk wrote in a letter made public by the SEC.

House Lawmakers Launch Investigation of Face-Scan Contractor ID.me

The Washington Post reported:

House lawmakers on Thursday launched an investigation into the efficacy and security of the identity verification contractor ID.me, after government agencies’ use of the software to identify people accessing tax records and unemployment assistance led to a rapid expansion of facial recognition in everyday American life.

In a sweeping ten-page letter addressed to ID.me chief executive Blake Hall, lawmakers requested that the company turn over detailed records about its contracts with federal, state and local governments, as well as answer questions about how it investigates potential inaccuracies in its systems.

Lawmakers write that they have “serious concerns” about ten federal agencies and 30 state governments contracting with ID.me, given questions about the accuracy of the facial recognition service and reports of long delays in using the service to access pandemic assistance.

Project Veritas Founder Says DOJ Secretly Forced Apple, Google to Provide Data

Fox News reported:

The Department of Justice forced both Apple and Google to provide data belonging to Project Veritas and its associates as part of its probe into the whereabouts of Ashley Biden‘s missing diary, founder James O’Keefe said.

O’Keefe announced that both tech giants came forward revealing they were hit with “nine secret subpoenas” to monitor “professional and private accounts” including the group’s security detail after it was previously revealed that Microsoft also received such orders from the feds. O’Keefe stressed that the data being collected by the DOJ includes “everything” from texts and emails to private photos as well as “information of our sources.”

Robert Reich: Former Trilateral Commission Member Goes Full Anti-Free Speech

Technocracy News reported:

We recently discussed the gathering of Democratic politicians and media figures at the University of Chicago to discuss how to better shape news, combat “disinformation” and reeducate those with conservative views. The political and media elite shared ideas on how to expand censorship and control what people read or viewed in the news. The same figures are now alarmed that Elon Musk could gain greater influence over Twitter and, perish the thought, restore free speech protections to the site.

The latest is former labor secretary under President Clinton, Robert Reich, who wrote a perfectly Orwellian column in the Guardian titled “Elon Musk’s vision for the internet is dangerous nonsense.” However, the column offers an insight into the anti-free speech mentality that has taken hold of the Democratic party and the mainstream media.

Musk is an advocate for free speech on the Internet. Like some of us, he is an Internet originalist. That makes him an existential threat for those who have long used “disinformation” as an excuse to silence dissenting views in the media and on social media.