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COVID Lockdowns Damaged Speech and Mental Development of Children, Teachers Say
COVID-19 restrictions have damaged children developmentally in ways that might be irreparable, teachers say.
From early childhood to high school, children rely on facial expressions, social interaction, conversation with new people and friendships to develop mentally.
Children denied social interaction don’t grow mentally in the same way. When governments closed in-person schooling for months, cracked down on activities like play dates and ordered families to stay home it plunged children into painful isolation.
Now, teachers across America say the lockdown generation lags behind those raised in normal years. Older children have fewer friends and slower minds, while some of the youngest don’t feel the urge to make friends at all.
Using Artificial Intelligence to Predict the Next COVID Variants
As pharmaceutical companies struggle to keep up with the rapidly mutating coronavirus, a startup in Cambridge, Mass., says it can help them by using artificial intelligence to predict future variants.
Apriori Bio models the ways a virus might change and predicts how it will behave. The company says it’s harnessing that information to design “variant-proof” vaccines and treatments that can fight current and future strains — and provide an early warning to governments, sort of like a hurricane alert, to guide the public health response.
After honing its technology, called Octavia, for more than two years, the fledgling company is formally launching with $50 million in funding from Flagship Pioneering Inc., the incubator behind Moderna Inc.
We spoke with co-founder Lovisa Afzelius, a computational chemist — and Pfizer Inc. veteran — who serves as Apriori’s chief executive officer. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.
U.S. CDC Plans to Improve International Air Contact Tracing Data Collection
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will take steps to improve the collection of international air passenger contact information to better monitor public health risks after a report found the current data system “needs substantial improvement.”
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Monday said, “limitations in how CDC collects and manages air passengers’ contact information — including CDC’s use of an outdated data management system — hinder the agency’s ability to monitor public health risks and facilitate contact tracing.”
Beginning in November 2021, the CDC required all airlines to collect contact tracing information from all international air passengers.
GAO recommended CDC redesign or adopt a new data system “to more effectively facilitate contact tracing for all air passengers and conduct disease surveillance for air travel.”
Healthcare Workers Who Challenged the COVID Vaccine Mandate in Maine Are Identified
Lawyers for a group of Maine healthcare workers suing Gov. Janet Mills over the COVID-19 vaccine mandate have filed an amended complaint identifying the workers.
The lawsuit also names Maine Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew and Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Nirav Shah as defendants.
The original complaint, filed in August 2021, simply identified the workers as Jane and John Doe’s. They claimed the mandate violated their religious beliefs.
Last week, a judge ordered that the group release their identities or else the lawsuit would not move forward.
Deadline Has Passed — and Nearly 2,700 Texas Guard Troops Have Refused COVID Shots
San Antonio Express News via Houston Chronicle reported:
Enough soldiers in the Texas Army National Guard to almost fill a brigade have been put on notice: Get your coronavirus shots or get out of uniform. And more than a few appear headed toward the exits.
The deadline for National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers to comply with the Pentagon’s coronavirus order passed June 30, with 86% of the Texas Army National Guard and 92% of the Air National Guard vaccinated. The holdouts will not be allowed to participate in training starting this month, under a policy that bars refusals from attending drill weekends, the required annual two-week summer training and a variety of schools.
The guard said it does not give exact numbers on personnel strength, but with around 17,300 soldiers and 3,300 airmen, that means 2,422 soldiers and 264 members of the air guard are not vaccinated, a total of 2,686.
The guard said Thursday that 1,045 who have applied for exemptions are still awaiting approval.
Victoria Defies Health Advice for Mask Mandate as New COVID Wave Worsens Nationwide
The Victorian government has ignored health advice calling for mask mandates in schools, early childhood and retail settings amid a warning that hospitalizations during the current wave of COVID and flu infections may exceed earlier peaks.
As COVID reinfection rates rise nationwide, Victoria on Tuesday joined Queensland in encouraging residents to don masks without requiring them to do so.
Victoria’s health minister, Mary-Anne Thomas, confirmed she rejected advice for a mask mandate from the state’s acting chief health officer, Prof Ben Cowie.
Hong Kong Leader Defends Health Code Plan to Combat COVID
Hong Kong leader John Lee on Tuesday defended the city’s plan to implement health codes that would more accurately restrict the movements of inbound travelers and those infected with COVID-19, dismissing concerns that the system could be used as a political or social control tool.
Lee, who spoke at a regular news conference, said the health code plan is part of the city’s objective to adopt “precise strategies to minimize the scope of restrictions.”
He was speaking a day after the city’s health chief unveiled plans to implement a health code system in which those infected with COVID-19 would receive a red code, while those under hotel quarantine would receive a yellow code. Those who receive such codes will have their movements restricted.
Celebrate Prime Day by Deleting the Data Amazon Has on You
Many of us spend a lot of time interacting with Amazon’s apps and services — speaking to its smart speakers, watching videos on its streaming platform, ordering items online — and all of those interactions leave a digital trail behind. If you want to view, download and maybe delete any of this data, these are the steps you need to follow.
As you might expect, there are a lot of different aspects to this and a lot of different screens you need to go through — you might not need to follow all of these steps, depending on what Amazon services you’re signed up for and what you want to know.
At the very least, though, it’s important to know how much data is being collected on you.
It’s also worth reading through the Amazon privacy policy, which outlines exactly what gets collected and how it’s used (Amazon stores your address so it can send you packages, for example). This is the agreement and the bargain you’re getting into if you want to use all of Amazon’s digital offerings, so make sure you’re comfortable with it before agreeing to it.
Children’s Rights Groups Call out TikTok’s ‘Design Discrimination’
Research examining default settings and terms & conditions offered to minors by social media giants TikTok, WhatsApp and Instagram across 14 different countries — including the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia and the U.K. — has found the three platforms do not offer the same level of privacy and safety protections for children across all the markets where they operate.
The level of protection minors receive on a service can depend upon where in the world they happen to live, according to the new report — entitled: Global Platforms, Partial Protections — which found “significant” variation in children’s experience across different countries on “seemingly identical platforms.”
The research was conducted by Fairplay, a not-for-profit that advocates for an end to marketing that targets children.
TikTok was found to be particularly problematic in this regard. And, alongside the publication of Fairplay’s report, the company has been singled out in a joint letter, signed by almost 40 child safety and digital rights advocacy groups, calling on it to offer a “Safety By Design” and “Children’s Rights by Design” approach globally — rather than only providing the highest standards in regions like Europe, where regulators have taken early action to safeguard kids online.
FTC Warns Tech Companies Against Misusing Health Data, Following Biden’s Executive Order Protecting Abortion Access
Tech companies and data brokers that misuse or misrepresent how they handle Americans’ personal data, including reproductive health information, may find themselves on the hook with the Federal Trade Commission, the agency warned this week.
On Monday, the FTC renewed its vow to investigate or sue companies that use Americans’ digital data in unfair or deceptive ways, following an executive order by the Biden administration that explicitly called for it and other agencies to consider steps to protect abortion-seekers.
Since the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, civil liberties experts have warned that Americans’ extensive digital footprints could give away whether they have visited an abortion clinic or sought information on how to access an abortion, prompting questions about the security of that data.
In particular, the FTC said, regulators will closely scrutinize corporate claims that Americans’ data has been or will be “anonymized,” in light of substantial research showing that it can be trivial to reverse-engineer a person’s identity from anonymized datasets. The FTC said it has also sued companies in the past for collecting more data than consumers have consented to provide or that retain user data for indefinite periods of time.
TikTok ‘Pauses’ Privacy Policy Switch in Europe After Regulatory Scrutiny
TikTok has agreed to pause a controversial privacy policy update in Europe, which had been due to happen tomorrow, and would have meant the platform stopped asking users for their consent to be tracked to receive targeted advertising, TechCrunch has learned.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), TikTok’s lead privacy regulator for the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), said the “pause” follows “engagement” between the oversight office and the tech giant yesterday.
“Further to engagement with the DPC yesterday, TikTok has now agreed to pause the application of the changes to allow for the DPC to carry out its analysis,” a DPC spokesperson told TechCrunch.
