Makes sense or not…
Tag: coronavirus
HOMELAND SECURITY WORRIES COVID-19 MASKS ARE BREAKING FACIAL RECOGNITION, LEAKED DOCUMENT SHOWS
WHILE DOCTORS AND politicians still struggle to convince Americans to take the barest of precautions against Covid-19 by wearing a mask, the Department of Homeland Security has an opposite concern, according to an “intelligence note” found among the BlueLeaks trove of law enforcement documents: Masks are breaking police facial recognition.
The rapid global spread and persistent threat of the coronavirus has presented an obvious roadblock to facial recognition’s similar global expansion. Suddenly everyone is covering their faces. Even in ideal conditions, facial recognition technologies often struggle with accuracy and have a particularly dismal track record when it comes to identifying faces that aren’t white or male. Some municipalities, startled by the civil liberties implications of inaccurate and opaque software in the hands of unaccountable and overly aggressive police, have begun banning facial recognition software outright. But the global pandemic may have inadvertently provided a privacy fix of its own — or for police, a brand new crisis.
Are official figures overstating England’s Covid-19 death toll?
Matt Hancock has announced an urgent review into how Public Health England (PHE) counts Covid-19 deaths after discovering what appeared to be a serious issue in how rates are calculated.
Following the health secretary’s move on Friday, Yoon K Loke and Carl Heneghan, of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, wrote in a blogpost: “It seems that PHE regularly looks for people on the NHS database who have ever tested positive, and simply checks to see if they are still alive or not. PHE does not appear to consider how long ago the Covid test result was, nor whether the person has been successfully treated in hospital and discharged to the community.”
A Department of Health and Social Care source summed this up as: “You could have been tested positive in February, have no symptoms, then be hit by a bus in July and you’d be recorded as a Covid death.”
The Pandemic Is a Lucrative Revenue Opportunity for Incompetent Politicians
The federal government’s response to COVID-19 has been a hot mess, and state and city officials haven’t done much better. But if there’s one thing at which governments have excelled during this crisis, it’s been collecting fines from anybody who steps out of line.
Whatever else it is, the great pandemic of 2020 has turned into a revenue-collection opportunity for officials who demonstrate little competence at anything other than squeezing their unfortunate subjects.
UK gov’t (finally) admits Covid statistics are inaccurate
The UK’s Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, has announced an “urgent review” of procedure for recording Covid19 deaths.
It turns out the British government may have been over-reporting deaths from Covid19.
Who knew, right?
This follows the “news” that Public Health England (PHE) have been recording Covid19 as the cause of death for anyone who has ever tested positive for the virus.
Choose wisely…
Investment consultants who advise on trillions scored taxpayer loans
R.V. Kuhns & Associates Inc, an investment consulting firm that advises on $2.5 trillion in retirement plans and other assets, sent a message of confidence in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing this spring, as COVID-19 wreaked destruction across America’s economy. The firm, it said, stood ready to “to maintain all the services we provide.”
The Portland, Oregon-based company, known as RVK, disclosed in the filing that it had been helped by some extra cash: a forgivable loan of between $2 million and $5 million from the Small Business Administration’s pandemic relief fund.
Wearing mask causes “stress and anxiety” for people with claustrophobia
To mask or not to mask, that is the question for many before leaving the safety of their home during the global pandemic.
But for some, the decision to wear a mask isn’t as simple as yes or no. For some, it’s a full-on battle with their mental health.
What the actual fuck?
Wuhan lab admits to having three live strains of bat coronavirus on site
The Chinese lab eyed as a potential source of COVID-19 has admitted having three live strains of bat coronavirus on-site — but insisted none are the source of the global pandemic.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has since 2004 “isolated and obtained some coronaviruses from bats,” its director Wang Yanyi said in an interview that aired Saturday, according to Agence France-Presse.
“Now we have three strains of live viruses… But their highest similarity to SARS-CoV-2 only reaches 79.8 percent,” Yanyi said, referring to the coronavirus strain that causes COVID-19.
Hellbound and Down 
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