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States have authority to fine or jail people who refuse coronavirus vaccine, attorney says

As drugmakers race to develop a vaccine against the coronavirus, several legal questions are emerging: could the government require people to get it? Could people who refuse to roll up their sleeves get banned from stores or lose their jobs?

The short answer is yes, according to Dov Fox, a law professor and the director of the Center for Health Law Policy and Bioethics at the University of San Diego.

“States can compel vaccinations in more or less intrusive ways,” he said in an interview. “They can limit access to schools or services or jobs if people don’t get vaccinated. They could force them to pay a fine or even lock them up in jail.”

Fox noted authorities in the United States have never attempted to jail people for refusing to vaccinate, but other countries like France have adopted the aggressive tactic.

The legal precedent dates back to 1905. In a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the court ruled Massachusetts had the authority to fine people who refused vaccinations for smallpox.

That case formed the legal basis for vaccine requirements at schools, and has been upheld in subsequent decisions.
“Courts have found that when medical necessity requires it, the public health outweighs the individual rights and liberties at stake,” Fox said.

In 2019, New York City passed an ordinance that fined people who refused a measles vaccination.

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Black Man Executes White Child in Broad Daylight in North Carolina Neighborhood

A white five-year-old boy was shot in the head and killed in broad daylight in a North Carolina neighborhood after it was alleged that he had ridden his bike into a neighbor’s yard.

Cannon Hinnant, 5, was riding his bike with his sisters in a Wilson, NC, neighborhood on a summer’s day, outside his father’s house, when his young life was cut short.

Hinnant, according to family members, rode his bike onto the neighbor’s yard, prompting Darius N. Sessoms, 25, to shoot him in the head at point blank range. His sisters, 7 and 8, saw their brother get shot.

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We Need a Principled Anti-Lockdown Movement

Shell-shocked is a good way to describe the mood in the U.S. for a good part of the Spring of 2020. Most of us never thought it could happen here. I certainly did not, even though I’ve been writing about pandemic lockdown plans for 15 years. I knew the plans were on the shelf, which is egregious, but I always thought something would stop it from happening. The courts. Public opinion. Bill of Rights. Tradition. The core rowdiness of American culture. Political squeamishness. The availability of information. 

Something would prevent it. So I believed. So most of us believed. 

Still it happened, all in a matter of days, March 12-16, 2020, and boom; it was over! We were locked down. Schools shut. Bars and restaurants closed. No international visitors. Theaters shuttered. Conferences forcibly ended. Sports stopped. We were told to stay home and watch movies…for two weeks to flatten the curve. Then two weeks stretched to five months. How lucky for those who lived in the states that resisted the pressure and stayed open, but even for them, they couldn’t visit relatives in other states due to quarantine restrictions and so on. 

Lockdowns ended American life as we knew it just five months ago, for a virus that 99.4-6% of those who contract it shake off, for which the median age of death is 78-80 with comorbidities, for which there is not a single verified case of reinfection on the planet, for which international successes in managing this relied on herd immunity and openness. 

Still the politicians who had become dictators couldn’t admit such astonishing failure so they kept the restrictions in place as a way of covering up what they had done. 

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Neck gaiters may actually increase COVID-19 transmission, study finds

The U.S. hit another grim milestone on Monday with more than 5 million Americans now infected with the coronavirus. Although there is a push to increase testing and develop a vaccine, experts continue to suggest that if all Americans wore masks, the pandemic could be brought under control “within weeks.” In the spirit of that mission, a new study published in Science Advances is shedding light on which masks are most effective — and which may actually be hurting the effort to curb COVID-19.

The analysis, carried out by researchers at Duke University School of Medicine, relied on an “optimal measurement method” that uses a laser beam and cellphone camera to track the number of droplets that emerged from an individual while he or she wore a mask. Of the 14 masks, the two that proved least effective were a bandanna and what the researchers refer to as a neck fleece, also known as a neck gaiter.

The most secure mask, the N95, led to a droplet transmission of below 0.1 percent. But handmade cotton and polypropylene masks, some of which were made from apron material, proved beneficial, showing a droplet transmission ranging from 10 to 40 percent. One mask, which was knitted, released a higher number of droplets, with up to 60 percent droplet transmission. But none of the masks compared with the neck fleece, which had 110 percent droplet transmission (10 percent higher than not wearing a mask).

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After Multiple Ft. Hood Soldiers Murdered, 2 More Soldiers Arrested in Child Trafficking Sting

The Fort Hood military base in Texas has come under extreme scrutiny in recent months, as numerous dead soldiers were found on or around the base. This week, the base was in the news again after two Fort Hood soldiers were caught up in a child trafficking bust. The soldiers were among nine Texas residents who were arrested during a two-day child sex trafficking sting in Killeen, the city where the base is located.

“The overall goal of this joint effort was to locate and arrest subjects who were willing to make overt efforts to pay minors to engage in sexual acts,” police spokeswoman Ofelia Miramontez said, according to KWTX.

Miramontez said that social media exchanges between the men running the organization and undercover agents showed that they knowingly traded money, drugs, and alcohol “for sexual acts with girls they believed were 15 or 16 years of age.”

The men arrested include Anthony 25-year-old, Xavier Antwon of Fort Hood, 40-year-old Javier Perez, of Austin, 21-year-old Brian Harley Flynn, of Temple, 25-year-old Brandon Anthony Lee, of Killeen, 42-year-old Dustin Edward Johnson, of Lott, 30-year-old Timmy Jones Jr., of Fort Hood, 39-year-old Shaun Paul Moore, of Kempner, 28-year-old Rakeem Jamal Nelson, of Killeen, and 32-year-old Pierre Jean, of Killeen.

This news comes on the heels of another sex trafficking bust that took place last month in which 6 Fort Hood soldiers were arrested in a sex trafficking sting. It also comes after a string of suspicious and outright violent and gruesome deaths of soldiers.

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