Day archives: December 9th, 2020

Your state’s Covid-19 epidemic, explained in 4 maps

Vox – These maps show how your state is doing. Updated Dec 9, 2020, 2:00pm EST: “America’s national Covid-19 epidemic continues, with the US’s daily new cases still higher than most developed nations and the country recently surpassing 287,000 deaths due to the disease. At the state level, things can look even worse than the …

Subjects: Health Care

Infected after 5 minutes from 20 feet away: South Korea study shows coronavirus’ spread indoors

LA Times [paywall / Free via Yahoo News]: ” Dr. Lee Ju-hyung has largely avoided restaurants in recent months, but on the few occasions he’s dined out, he’s developed a strange, if sensible, habit: whipping out a small anemometer to check the airflow. It’s a precaution he has been taking since a June experiment in …

Subjects: Economy, Health Care, Knowledge Management, Medicine

Archive, Historians, CREW Sue White House, Seek to Preserve Presidential Records During the Transition

National Security Archive – “The National Security Archive, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the American Historical Association, and the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington today filed suit against President Donald Trump in his official capacity, seeking to enforce the Presidential Records Act and prevent any destruction of records during the …

Subjects: Censorship, Congress, Courts, E-Government, E-Records, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation

Rep. Johnson’s Bipartisan Bill Making Federal Court Records Free to Public Passes House

“Rep. Hank Johnson (GA-04), chairman of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet, today announced The Open Courts Act of 2020, H.R. 8235, which would modernize the federal judiciary’s court records systems and eliminate the paywall (called PACER) that currently forces the public to pay more than $140 million each year to access …

Subjects: Congress, Courts, E-Government, E-Records, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation

Individual Retirement Account Ownership: Data and Policy Issues

CRS report via LC – Individual Retirement Account (IRA) Ownership: Data and Policy Issues December 9, 2020 (51 pages) “…Congress has provided various tax incentives to encourage individuals to save for retirement. Tax incentives exist for employers to offer retirement plans and for employees to participate in these plans, as well as for individuals to …

Subjects: Congress, Economy, Financial System, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation

Why Do Banks Share Your Financial Information and Are They Allowed To?

GAO WatchBlog  – In a word: yes. If you’ve ever applied for a loan, you know that banks and credit unions collect a lot of personal financial information from you, such as your income and credit history. And it’s not uncommon for lenders to then share your information with other vendors, such as insurance companies …

Subjects: E-Commerce, Economy, Financial System, Government Documents, Internet, Legal Research, Privacy

A Political Obituary for Donald Trump

The Atlantic –  The effects of his reign will linger. But democracy survived. “To assess the legacy of Donald Trump’s presidency, start by quantifying it. Since last February, more than a quarter of a million Americans have died from COVID-19—a fifth of the world’s deaths from the disease, the highest number of any country. In …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Congress, Courts, Economy, Education, Environmental Law, Financial System, Food and Nutrition, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Health Care, Legal Research

2020 In Photos: A Year Like No Other

The New York Times: “Certain years are so eventful they are regarded as pivotal in history, years when wars and slavery ended and deep generational fissures burst into the open — 1865, 1945 and 1968 among them. The year 2020 will certainly join this list. It will long be remembered and studied as a time …

Subjects: Knowledge Management

CDC guidance on ventilation interventions

Ventilation – “CDC recommends a layered strategy to reduce exposures to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This includes using multiple mitigation strategies with several layers of safeguards to reduce the spread of disease and lower the risk of exposure. While it may not be necessary to apply every consideration to be protective, implementing multiple …

Subjects: Environmental Law, Government Documents, Health Care