Ex-Harvard Medical School faculty member warns COVID-19 herd immunity is ‘wishful thinking'

https://www.foxnews.com/health/clay-ackerly-coronavirus-herd-immunity-wishful-thinking

A Washington D.C.-based internist and former Harvard Medical School faculty member has claimed the idea that herd immunity may slow the coronavirus pandemic is "wishful thinking" after a 50-year-old patient was infected for a second time with COVID-19.

"During his first infection, my patient experienced a mild cough and sore throat," Dr. Clay Ackerly explained in an opinion piece for Vox. "His second infection, in contrast, was marked by a high fever, shortness of breath, and hypoxia, resulting in multiple trips to the hospital.

"It is possible, but unlikely, that my patient had a single infection that lasted three months," Dr. Ackerly added. "Some Covid-19 patients (now dubbed 'long haulers') do appear to suffer persistent infections and symptoms.

"My patient, however, cleared his infection — he had two negative PCR tests after his first infection — and felt healthy for nearly six weeks."

 

Israeli Data Show School Openings Were a Disaster That Wiped Out Lockdown Gains

https://www.thedailybeast.com/israeli-data-show-school-openings-were-a-disaster-that-wiped-out-lockdown-gains

The assessment of Israel’s trajectory has direct bearing on the heated debate underway in the United States between President Donald Trump, who is demanding a nationwide reopening of schools for what appear to be largely political reasons, and health authorities who caution it could put the wider population at risk.

Importantly, on May 17 in Israel it appeared the virus not only was under control, but defeated. Israel reported only 10 new cases of COVID-19 in the entire country that day. In the U.S., the debate often is about reopening schools where the disease is not only not in decline, but surging.

On Sunday, for instance, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, “There’s nothing in the data that suggests that kids being in school is in any way dangerous.” But that is not the case in Israel, where the data from June, the last month for which there is a full set of statistics, appear all too clear.

Galia Rahav, who chairs the department of infectious diseases at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv, said in an interview that “what happened in schools is just too much gathering, day after day, and kids come home and infect mom and dad. The top numbers of new infections were in kids.”

Due to the large number of infections among children, she noted, “the average age of an Israeli with COVID-19 has gone down to between 20 and 39,” while infections in citizens over 65 have held steady. In Jerusalem, the Israeli city with the highest rate of infection, most of the people with COVID-19 are under the age of 35.

Article 10: Freedom of expression

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/human-rights-act/article-10-freedom-expression

 Are there any restrictions to this right?

Although you have freedom of expression, you also have a duty to behave responsibly and to respect other people’s rights.

Public authorities may restrict this right if they can show that their action is lawful, necessary and proportionate in order to:

• protect national security, territorial integrity (the borders of the state) or public safety
• prevent disorder or crime
• protect health or morals
• protect the rights and reputations of other people
• prevent the disclosure of information received in confidence
• maintain the authority and impartiality of judges

An authority may be allowed to restrict your freedom of expression if, for example, you express views that encourage racial or religious hatred.

Trump’s Warped Definition of Free Speech

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/trumps-warped-definition-free-speech/612316/

 Palin’s remarks were widely ridiculed at the time. The First Amendment, commentators on the right and the left pointed out, protects the freedom of speech, not the freedom from criticism. You have the right to speak, and others have the right to praise, mock, or ignore you as they see fit.

 

As absurd as it may sound, Palin’s bizarre interpretation of the First Amendment has now been adopted by the president of the United States. On Tuesday, the social-media company Twitter added a label to one of the president’s tweets, which falsely declared that mail-in ballots would be “substantially fraudulent,” urging users to “get the facts about mail-in voting.” Twitter did not ban Trump from the platform, or censor his tweet, although it would have been fully within its rights to do so, and in accordance with its own terms of service. It merely appended additional context showing that the president’s claim was false.

In retaliation, Trump signed an executive order yesterday afternoon directing the federal government to “reconsider the scope” of Section 230, a provision of federal law that shields companies from liability for content posted by their users. The First Amendment was explicitly written to protect the right of citizens to express opposition to their leaders; it says that Congress “shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” But to the president, criticism of his falsehoods is a violation of his free-speech rights. This position reverses the purpose of the First Amendment, turning an individual right of freedom of expression into the right of the state to silence its critics.

 

This should be obvious, but if your freedom to speak depends on the president approving of what you say, then you simply don’t have freedom of speech. The Trumpist defense of state censorship of social media is that if you do not want your kneecaps broken, then you should make sure you pay the protection money. Twitter is hardly the first media company to face this kind of extortion from the president; as my colleague David Graham points out, Trump has attempted to use the authority of his office to silence criticism from the Washington Post, CNN, members of the White House press corps, and even ESPN.

Journalist Bari Weiss skewers New York Times in her resignation letter

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-07-14/bari-weiss-new-york-times-resignation

“Bari Weiss never actually got fired, she is in fact quitting because she’s mad that all the people at the Times who don’t like her *didn’t* get fired. But they’ll still turn this into some kind of crusade to protect people from firing,” tweeted comedian Arthur Chu. “Which is at least consistent, because Bari Weiss herself LOVES trying to get people fired.”

“To say I’m against cancel culture is massive understatement but there is a difference between criticism and getting someone fired. @bariweiss quit, she wasn’t fired. She quit because people hurt her feelings. Seems snowflakey to me. You can’t cancel other people’s speech, either,” tweeted “The Young Turks” host Cenk Uygur.

Judith Miller: Rise and fall of New York Times writer Bari Weiss — a victim of far-left intolerance

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/new-york-times-bari-weiss-judith-miller

Weiss’s departure was quickly hailed by her many critics within and outside of the paper on social media, among them Glenn Greenwald, who has called her a “hypocrite” for her alleged efforts to suppress Arab professors while in college, and for her defense of Israel and some of its controversial policies as a newspaper writer.

TYT Reacts To Bari Weiss' Resignation

Trump Gives Subdued, Rambling Campaign-Style Speech In Rose Garden | The 11th Hour | MSNBC

Arizona Teacher Dies As Trump Pushes For School Re-Openings | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC

Unemployed Should ‘Find Something New,’ Urge Heirs to Fred Trump’s Fortune

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/find-something-new-trump-donald-ivanka-unemployment.html

The White House has started a new campaign urging Americans who have bad jobs or no jobs to “Find Something New.” Ivanka Trump, who has spearheaded this initiative, explains, “There has never been a more critical time for Americans of all ages and backgrounds to be aware of the multiple pathways to career success and gain the vocational training and skills they need to fill jobs in a changing economy.”

Statistically speaking, in fact, you probably will not find something. The labor market is suffering two simultaneous crises: a pandemic that directly prevents a lot of economic activity from taking place and a broader failure of demand rippling through the rest of the economy. The more than 10 percent of working-age adults unable to find regular work are jobless not because they lack the skills for the needed jobs but because there is not enough demand for labor.

 

Ivanka Trump, White House Blasted For ‘Tone Deaf’ Campaign Telling The Unemployed To Find Jobs

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2020/07/14/ivanka-trump-white-house-blasted-for-tone-deaf-campaign-telling-the-unemployed-to-find-jobs/#63dc86935275

Multiple social media users pointed out that the “Find Something New” campaign launched on the anniversary of Bastille Day, a turning point in the French Revolution that led to the dissolution of the country’s monarchy. Those same users also likened Ivanka Trump’s involvement with the campaign to Marie Antoinette’s infamous “Let them eat cake” remark—and the storming of the Bastille was a pivotal event that led to her eventual beheading.

Poway Chabad Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein pleads guilty to tax fraud

https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/poway-chabad-rabbi-yisroel-goldstein-pleads-guilty-to-tax-fraud-635092

 The rabbi who lost a finger in a shooting attack on a Chabad synagogue in Poway, California, in 2019 pleaded guilty to tax fraud.

 

Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein pleaded guilty Tuesday in a scheme in which donors contributed to his synagogue but then got most of the money back, enabling the donor to claim a tax deduction. A charging document detailing the scheme was unsealed in federal court in San Diego, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The scheme resulted in more than $6.2 million in fraudulent donations, resulting in a $1.5 million loss to the federal government. Goldstein could face up to five years in prison.

Understaffed and underpaid: Israeli nurses prepare to strike

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/understaffed-and-underpaid-israeli-nurses-prepare-to-strike-635084

 Israeli nurses are preparing to go on a nationwide strike amid a severe shortage of medical workers and an explosion in the number of COVID-19 patients after the country reopened and many people tossed aside their masks.

Israel is in the thick of its second wave of infections and is averaging more than 1,600 new cases daily this week.

 

Katyal: Trump Botched His Attempted Erasure Of The Mueller Investigation With Stone’s Commutation