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CARPAY: Two Years Later, Ontario and BC Medics Still Need Vaccination Proof
For some healthcare professionals, the need for proof of vaccination remains a job requirement. Years after our governments first closed schools and locked down our society and economy in March 2020, some governments in Canada continue to wage a fanatical war against COVID-19. And as of April 2024, thousands of doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers in BC are still prevented from returning to work because of their personal medical decision in 2021 not to get injected with the COVID vaccine.
Today, hospitals in Ontario refuse to hire qualified nurses who chose not to get injected in 2021. Meanwhile, the BC and Ontario governments complain publicly about a shortage of healthcare workers. Is it ideology? Or is it pure vindictiveness that would cause the BC and Ontario governments to prevent qualified healthcare professionals from working in 2024? Perhaps both? Where is the science?
Absent any evidence the COVID-19 vaccine stopped viral spread, thousands of Canadians were nevertheless forced into unemployment over a legitimate personal decision not to get injected with a brand-new vaccine that in the fall of 2021 was still in clinical trials.
Terminated employees were denied EI benefits. Students were kicked out of universities and colleges. Millions of Canadians were denied their right to participate in sports, eat in restaurants, enjoy movie theatres, use gyms, visit their elderly parents in nursing homes and travel outside of Canada.
What is inexcusable today is the vindictive, ideological insistence by the Ontario and BC governments that doctors and nurses cannot return to work, in April 2024, over exercising their Charter right to bodily autonomy.
COVID Subcommittee Chair Asks Top Science Journal Editors to Testify on Relationship With Federal Government
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, issued letters to the editors of three major science journals on Tuesday, asking them to testify on the relationship between their publications and the federal government.
Wenstrup sent letters to the editors-in-chief of The Lancet, Science and Nature science journals requesting their testimony for a hearing on April 16. The hearing will be titled “Academic Malpractice: Examining the Relationship Between Scientific Journals, the Government, and Peer Review.”
In his letters, Wenstrup stated that the hearing would be to examine “whether these journals granted the federal government inappropriate access into the scientific review or publishing process.”
These journals were in contact with top White House health officials like Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins according to Freedom of Information Act requests, Wenstrup wrote. He did not cite any specific reports or studies in his letters to the editors-in-chief.
A search for research articles containing the term “COVID-19” on the websites of the three science journals results in nearly 19,000 results.
Ministry of Truth: Hawaii Lawmakers Call for Set Standards for Ethical News Sources
Lawmakers in the U.S. state of Hawaii are trying to get a journalist association there to come up with and adhere to a new “process” that would make sure their sources are “ethical and objective.”
This week, the resolution was passed by the Judiciary Committee with no votes against or abstainees and is now headed for adoption by the Senate. The resolution was introduced by Senator Chris Lee, and explained as a way to “help” the public understand who might be spreading “misinformation.”
But, not everyone shares his stance, with one obvious point of criticism being that government bodies shouldn’t be the ones with the power to “anoint” one news source as reputable over another.
That, opponents of such trends in general would say, brings a society closer to having a “ministry of truth” than flourishing democratic authorities.
A New Book Has Amplified Fierce Debate Around Teens, Mental Health and Smartphones
A new book has embroiled the academic community in a heated debate over whether spending time on smartphones affects young people’s mental health and, if so, how.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation,” published last week, argues that the smartphone-driven “great rewiring of childhood” is causing an “epidemic of mental illness.” He suggests four ways to combat this: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, no phones in schools; and prioritizing real-world play and independence.
“I call smartphones ‘experience blockers,’ because once you give the phone to a child, it’s going to take up every moment that is not nailed down to something else,” Haidt told TODAY.com, adding, “It’s basically the loss of childhood in the real world.”
Researcher Jean Twenge, author of “Generations” and “iGen,” said there’s a “reasonably robust” consensus among academics that smartphones and social media are at least partially linked to the rise in teen depression, self-harm and loneliness.
NYC’s Government Chatbot Is Lying About City Laws and Regulations
If you follow generative AI news at all, you’re probably familiar with LLM chatbots’ tendency to “confabulate” incorrect information while presenting that information as authoritatively true. That tendency seems poised to cause some serious problems now that a chatbot run by the New York City government is making up incorrect answers to some important questions of local law and municipal policy.
A new report from The Markup and local nonprofit news site The City found the MyCity chatbot giving dangerously wrong information about some pretty basic city policies. To cite just one example, the bot said that NYC buildings “are not required to accept Section 8 vouchers,” when an NYC government info page says clearly that Section 8 housing subsidies are one of many lawful sources of income that landlords are required to accept without discrimination.
The Markup also received incorrect information in response to chatbot queries regarding worker pay and work-hour regulations, as well as industry-specific information like funeral home pricing.
Further testing from BlueSky user Kathryn Tewson shows the MyCity chatbot giving some dangerously wrong answers regarding the treatment of workplace whistleblowers, as well as some hilariously bad answers regarding the need to pay rent.
As International Travel Grows, so Does U.S. Use of Technology. A Look at How It’s Used at Airports
The Belgian family of four was on their fourth trip to the United States. They had been dreading the long line at passport control when they entered the country but had heard about a new app they could use to ease their way and decided to give it a shot. Within minutes, they had bypassed the long line at Washington Dulles International Airport and were waiting for their luggage.
As travel continues to boom following coronavirus pandemic-related slumps, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is expanding the use of technology like the Mobile Passport Control app the De Staercke family used in an effort to process the ever-growing number of passengers traveling internationally. And with events like a rare solar eclipse, the Olympics in Paris, and summer holidays still driving international travel, those numbers don’t look set to drop anytime soon.
Marc Calixte, the top CBP official at Dulles, said possibly by the end of summer the airport will be opening so-called E-Gates where passengers using Global Entry can use the app, bypass an officer at a booth, and instead go to a gate where their photo is taken and matched to their passport, and, assuming no red flags arise, the gates open and they pass out of the customs and passport control area and are on their way.
Further, on the horizon, Blackmer said the agency is exploring a concept called smart queuing, where the app assigns passengers to certain lines depending on the information they have entered into the app, such as whether they have goods to declare.
The Next Pandemic Is Coming. Will We Be Ready?
In March, officials from 194 countries came together to agree on a global plan to deal with a threat known as “Disease X”. The ominous code name refers to the as-yet unknown illness expected to one day ravage the world in a repeat of COVID-19 — or perhaps inflict even worse damage.
This fear has now driven nine rounds of painstaking international negotiations on the text of the world’s first pandemic treaty, which must be nailed down before the World Health Organization’s decision-making annual assembly meets in May. The accord is aimed at helping governments, institutions and populations avoid the mistakes of the COVID crisis — but getting there is causing deep divisions.
The accord has revived criticisms from people who are suspicious of multilateral institutions. They question the WHO’s fitness for purpose and point to concerns about its pandemic performance, such as the time it took to fully embrace the crucial point that COVID-19 spreads through airborne transmission. In its defense, the WHO says its thinking evolved with the evidence and that it always advised people to be cautious.
Such critiques have already shaped the treaty. It has a special clause listing powers it will not confer upon the WHO, such as “to ban or accept travelers, impose vaccination mandates or therapeutic or diagnostic measures, or implement lockdowns.”
Judge Dismisses Scott Jensen’s First Amendment Lawsuit Against the State Board of Medical Practice
Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen’s discrimination lawsuit against the state Board of Medical Practice has been dismissed by a federal judge. Jensen failed to provide any examples of other physicians being treated differently when they were targets of complaints, Judge Jerry Blackwell wrote in his order from last week. He also failed to show that the board investigations had impeded his free speech, the judge said.
The former senator and candidate, who practices family medicine, noted that Blackwell dismissed the case without prejudice, meaning that Jensen can refile with additional information — something Jensen said is already in progress. “My life has been turned upside down,” he said.
In his federal lawsuit, Jensen claimed the complaints and board inquiries placed a “cloud of constant uncertainty” over his gubernatorial campaign, according to court documents. He said the inquiries amounted to “weaponization of a government agency” and an “ideologically driven, politicized government censorship apparatus which retaliated against its opponent based on the content of the message he espoused.”
By the fall of 2020, two claims had been filed and dismissed by the board. In the following years, Jensen continued to criticize the government’s handling of COVID-19 mandates and vaccine requirements. He urged civil disobedience against masks and vaccine policies. He vowed to reshape the board if re-elected. Jensen lost to Gov. Tim Walz.
Children’s Privacy Must Be a Priority on Social Media, Says the UK
Social media and video-sharing platforms need to make children’s privacy online their priority, urged the U.K.’s data protection body.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has set out its strategy for the upcoming year to help service providers better address potential privacy and security risks for children across their platforms. This focuses on default privacy settings, geolocation data, targeted ads, recommender algorithms, and parental consent for children under 13.
“Children’s privacy must not be traded in the chase for profit,” said John Edwards, U.K. Information Commissioner, in an official announcement. “How companies design their online services and use children’s personal information have a significant impact on what young people see and experience in the digital world.”
It isn’t enough, in fact, for parents to protect their kids’ digital lives with VPN services and other security software. Even when parental controls are active, children can still be exposed to serious data harm or other threats by simply accessing a social media or video-sharing app.
For instance, these platforms are infamous for heavily tracking users’ location data. This can expose everyone, but even more so the youngest, to real physical threats.
Amazon Fresh Kills ‘Just Walk Out’ Shopping Tech — It Never Really Worked
Amazon is giving up on the cashier-less “Just Walk Out” technology at its Amazon Fresh grocery stores. The Information reports that new stores will be built without computer-vision-powered surveillance technology, and “the majority” of existing stores will have the tech removed. In the early days, Amazon’s ambitions included selling Just Walk Out to other brick-and-mortar stores. The problem was that the technology never really worked.
As it says on the tin, Just Walk Out was supposed to let customers grab what they wanted from a store and just leave, skipping any kind of checkout process. Amazon wanted to track what customers took with them purely via AI-powered video surveillance; the system just took a phone scan at the door, and shoppers would be billed later via their Amazon accounts.
A May 2023 report from The Information revealed the myriad tech problems Amazon was still having with the idea six years after the initial announcement. The report said that “Amazon had more than 1,000 people in India working on Just Walk Out as of mid-2022 whose jobs included manually reviewing transactions and labeling images from videos to train Just Walk Out’s machine learning model.”
