Wednesday, July 15, 2020
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.
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.
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