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NYC Mandates Coronavirus Vaccine for High School Students Attending Prom
New York City’s high school seniors who are not vaccinated against the coronavirus (COVID-19) will have to miss out on one of the most highly anticipated night of their high school career.
In the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, proms have returned for graduating seniors — typically held in the spring from April to June — but currently only for those students who are fully vaccinated, the city Department of Education (DOE) confirmed.
“So I mean, my concern is — they can go to school, you can go eat in a restaurant, they can go to a wedding. Why can’t they go to a prom?” said Kelly McKay, a parent of a New Dorp High School senior.
McKay explained the hardships endured by her daughter to graduate high school and that she should be allowed to celebrate her accomplishment with her friends at prom. She also said students “shouldn’t be pressured” to get the vaccine.
Judge OKs Class Action Suit for Sailors Refusing Navy Vaccine Mandate
A federal judge has allowed a class-action lawsuit from U.S. Navy sailors claiming religious exemptions to the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate to move forward.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor’s Monday ruling also temporarily blocked the Navy from punishing or discharging approximately 4,000 sailors who have refused the vaccines on religious grounds.
O’Connor found that the sailors covered in the class action shared key similarities with a group of 35 sailors who had previously sued over the mandate — a group that he granted a preliminary injunction against being punished for refusing the vaccine in January.
Last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the scope of O’Connor’s earlier decision, ruling that the Navy could use vaccination status when determining deployment, assignments and operational decisions. Monday’s ruling does not contradict the Supreme Court‘s decision, allowing the Navy to take the same actions against sailors refusing the vaccine in the class action group.
‘Really Alarming’: The Rise of Smart Cameras Used to Catch Maskless Students in U.S. Schools
When students in suburban Atlanta returned to school for in-person classes amid the pandemic, they were required to mask up, like in many places across the U.S. Yet in this 95,000-student district, officials took mask compliance a step further than most. Through a network of security cameras, officials harnessed artificial intelligence to identify students whose masks drooped below their noses.
Remote learning during the pandemic ushered in a new era of digital student surveillance as schools turned to AI-powered services like remote proctoring and digital tools that sift through billions of students’ emails and classroom assignments in search of threats and mental health warning signs. Back on campus, districts have rolled out tools like badges that track students’ every move.
But one of the most significant developments has been in AI-enabled cameras. Twenty years ago, security cameras were present in 19% of schools, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Today, that number exceeds 80%. Powering those cameras with artificial intelligence makes automated surveillance possible, enabling things like temperature checks and the collection of other biometric data.
One of the Most Far-Reaching Vaccine Mandate Bills in California Will Not Move Forward
One of the most far-reaching vaccine bills introduced in the California Legislature this year will not move forward as planned, after the proposal to require all workers to be inoculated against COVID-19 was shelved on the eve of its first hearing.
Citing improved pandemic conditions and opposition from public safety unions, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) said she would hold Assembly Bill 1993, which would have required employees and independent contractors, in both the public and private sectors, to be vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition of employment unless they have an exemption based on a medical condition, disability or religious beliefs.
The move comes as a group of truck drivers protesting COVID-19 mandates around Washington, DC, has said it plans to head to California to oppose vaccine legislation in the Golden State. AB 1993 had been among the bills listed on the People’s Convoy website that the group planned to protest in California.
Adm. Giroir Hits Back at Fauci’s Comments on COVID Restrictions: ‘Eliminate This From Your Vocabulary’
Former White House Coronavirus Task Force member Admiral Brett Giroir said on “America’s Newsroom” Wednesday that Dr. Anthony Fauci is wrong to suggest COVID restrictions may need to be brought back. Fauci said Americans should be prepared for such actions in response to the Omicron BA. 2 sub-variant or future strains.
“Tony Fauci always likes to cover all of his bases, so he can’t be 100 percent wrong in the future. But we should not be talking about lockdowns, restrictions, anything with BA.2 or any variant we have on the horizon. We have vaccine immunity, we have natural immunity, we have antibodies, we have oral drugs, we have all this in our armamentarium and we’re in a really good place. Most Americans have immunity.
“And if you had Omicron, you’re certainly immune to the BA.2 variant, so we should not be talking about that. Secondly, we now know in retrospect that mandates really don’t work, so we don’t have the need for them, and they don’t really work. So I think Dr. Fauci needs to eliminate this from his vocabulary for near and long-term,” Admiral Brett Giroir said.
We Are so Over COVID
COVID-19 may not be done with us. But we sure as heck are done with it. That sentiment comes screaming off the page of a new Monmouth University national poll released this week.
Consider: More than 3 in 4 Americans (77%) support the relaxing of CDC guidelines on masking and social distancing in areas with low COVID rates. Roughly 3 in 4 (73%) also agree with the statement that “it’s time we accept that COVID is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives.”
Among that last group, more than 4 in 10 want there to be no future COVID regulations or mandates put in place. And according to a new AP-NORC poll, 44% of Americans said they often or always wear masks around people outside of their homes. That’s down from 65% in January 2022 and 82% in February 2021.
These numbers come even as Omicron subvariant BA.2 has become the dominant strain in the U.S.
Biden Crypto Executive Order Portends Dollar Destruction, Liberty Erosion
If you like what the Biden administration has done to the paper dollar, then you’ll love what it could do to a digital dollar. The odds of that perilous prospect becoming reality increased exponentially on March 9, when the White House introduced its “Executive Order on Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets.”
The order might not only foretell the further erosion of the world’s reserve currency — and with it the wealth, economic dynamism and power that currency underpins — but the further erosion of our liberties.
It calls for mobilizing the federal bureaucracy to regulate digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, and to prepare for the creation of a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC) — an electronic dollar one might hold in a digital account with the Federal Reserve.
How the Shanghai COVID Shutdown Will Be Used Against the West
China is in a mild panic, and I have a hunch it has little to do with COVID-19.
Their ridiculous, and failed, “zero-tolerance” COVID policy is magic thinking. But this magic thinking has led to yet another port shut down, this time in Shanghai. The target is not the Chinese longshoremen and lorry drivers, trying to keep them from catching a virus that might kill 0.5% of them. The target is the multinational American and European companies that are being pressured at home to decouple from China. The Shanghai lockdowns stifle supply chains heading to the U.S. and Europe, proving that China is “the indispensable nation.”
China is nervous that people here are thinking otherwise.
Volkswagen knows what the Shanghai shutdown means. It means supply constraints because everything is made in China, including some basic semiconductors used in automotive manufacturing. That leads to higher prices because things are harder to buy, harder to make. That hurts the U.S. economy.
Facebook Paid GOP Firm to Malign TikTok
Facebook parent company Meta is paying one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country to orchestrate a nationwide campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok.
The campaign includes placing op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets, promoting dubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook, and pushing to draw political reporters and local politicians into helping take down its biggest competitor.
These bare-knuckle tactics, long commonplace in the world of politics, have become increasingly noticeable within a tech industry where companies vie for cultural relevance and come at a time when Facebook is under pressure to win back young users.
Rise of the Five-Year-Old ‘TikTots’
Children as young as five use social media, despite most platforms having rules users must be over the age of 13.
An annual study into media habits, from Ofcom, highlighted the mini social-media mavens, with a third of parents of five- to seven-year-olds revealing their child had a social-media profile. Among the eight- to 11-year-olds who used social media, the most popular platform was TikTok, with one in every three having an account.
The report noted even younger children — TikTots as Ofcom dubbed them — were watching videos on TikTok, including 16% of the three- to four-year-olds. The survey also found 22% of parents of three- to four-year-olds and 38% of parents of eight- to 11-year-olds said they would allow their child to have a profile on social media before they reached the minimum age.
Meta Halts Plans for Mega New Data Center After Local Backlash
Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has halted its plans for a new data center in the Netherlands after intense opposition from the government.
“Given the current circumstances, we have decided to pause our development efforts in Zeewolde,” said a company spokesperson.
The “current circumstances” in question are local, provincial, and national governments raising a series of concerns over the massive project, which would have served much of continental Europe.
Data-Harvesting Code in Mobile Apps Sends User Data to ‘Russia’s Google’
Russia’s biggest Internet company has embedded code into apps found on mobile devices that allow information about millions of users to be sent to servers located in its home country.
The revelation relates to software created by Yandex that permits developers to create apps for devices running Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, systems that run the vast majority of the world’s smartphones.
Yandex collects user data harvested from mobile phones before sending the information to servers in Russia. Researchers have raised concerns the same “metadata” may then be accessed by the Kremlin and used to track people through their mobile phones.
