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Daily Archives: July 8, 2020

Federal workers are returning to the office

Washington Post – Some members of Congress say they shouldn’t be. “With the number of coronavirus cases increasing across much of the country, leading members of Congress on civil service issues are challenging orders by federal agencies for teleworking federal employees to return to their regular worksites. “I think we have to press the pause button immediately,” Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), chairman of the House Government Operations subcommittee, said in an interview. “There is no data that could make one comfortable that it is safe to return fully to work and to the status quo. In fact, all of the data suggest the opposite.” Senators representing Maryland and Virginia will send a letter Thursday morning to the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management warning against premature reopenings that could lead to new coronavirus cases…“Reopening too quickly by ending maximum telework threatens to erase the progress made against the virus and endanger the health and safety of federal employees and everyone else in an agency’s region through increased community spread,” says the letter, signed by Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Mark R. Warner (D-Va.)…”

Jacqueline Simon, policy director of the American Federation of Government Employees, though, testified that “there should be no reopening unless and until federal agencies have the full capacity to test, protect, trace, and inform their workforces, and unless and until genuine, objective data on the status of the pandemic shows it has subsided.”…

Mounting Evidence Suggests Coronavirus is Airborne but Health Advice Has Not Caught Up

Nature: “…Converging lines of evidence indicate that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, can pass from person to person in tiny droplets called aerosols that waft through the air and accumulate over time. After months of debate about whether people can transmit the virus through exhaled air, there is growing concern among scientists about this… Continue Reading

Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 School Reopening Checklist

“The COVID-19 School Reopening Response Checklist is a tool to assist school and district leaders and other key stakeholders in the decision-making process as they navigate school reopening. It emphasizes areas in need of attention from an equity and ethics perspective. The decision makers can use the Checklist to systematically assess their needs and resources… Continue Reading

Johns Hopkins University tracker analyzes school reopening plans across the country

JHU Tracking State and National School Reopening Plans – “This interactive state tracker curates school reopening plans by state, as well as guidance documents by non-governmental organizations, along six operational criteria: 1) Core Academics; 2) SARS CoV-2 Protection; 3) Before/After School Programs, including Athletics, Childcare, and Extracurriculars; 4) Building Access & Student Transportation; 5) School… Continue Reading

Thousands of contracts highlight quiet ties between Big Tech and U.S. military

NBC News: “Over the past two years, thousands of tech company employees have taken a stand: they do not want their labor and technical expertise to be used for projects with the military or law enforcement agencies. Knowledge of such contracts, however, hasn’t been easy for tech workers to come by. On Wednesday, newly published… Continue Reading

New IHME Forecasts Show More Than 200,000 US Deaths by November

“In its first projections of COVID-19 deaths out to November 1, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington is forecasting more than 200,000 deaths in the United States. The forecast shows 208,255 deaths (with a range of 186,087 to 244,541). Those numbers drop to 162,808 (157,217 to 171,193), if… Continue Reading

Audit Finds Facebook’s Decisions Were ‘Setbacks for Civil Rights

The New York Times – “An independent audit faulted the social network for allowing hate speech and disinformation to thrive — potentially posing a threat to the November elections. Auditors handpicked by Facebook to examine its policies said that the company had not done enough to protect people on the platform from discriminatory posts and… Continue Reading

Winners of the 2020 Audubon Photography Awards

Audubon.org: “Every spring, the judges of the Audubon Photography Awards gather at Audubon’s headquarters in Manhattan to review their favorite images and select the finalists. But as with much of life in 2020, this year’s awards had to be handled differently due to pandemic-related travel, work, and social-distancing restrictions. So, for our 11th annual awards,… Continue Reading

Study – Google, Amazon funnel at least $25 million to coronavirus conspiracy sites

Why is ad tech paying US$25 million to COVID-19 disinfo sites? – Household brands are inadvertently funding disinformation sites to spread COVID-19 conspiracies, thanks to ad tech companies that do not effectively screen the sites to which they provide ads services.  New research from the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) shows that Google, Amazon and other… Continue Reading