Tag: pandemic

Israel To Conduct COVID “Genetic Scanning” For All Inbound Air Passengers

The world’s most “ultra-vaxxed nation” Israel is continuing to struggle to keep its coronavirus infections down, despite enacting some of the most stringent rules and requirements on its population, including rolling out one of the earliest versions of a vaccine passport to visit public venues, which has to be “updated” each six months or so based on a booster shot timeline. 

Now Israel will go so far as to conduct “genetic scanning” for travelers arriving in the country. It’s considered a huge and experimental high tech step in screening inbound passengers for coronavirus infections at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made the announcement at a meeting of his cabinet on Sunday, confirming plans to eventually deploy it at Ben Gurion. “We are working on a scanning system for everyone who comes into Israel,” Bennett said. The statements were reportedly not intended to be made public, but were leaked to local Israeli media.

“Israel will thus become the radar for the virus,” he added. However, no further details on how the ‘genetic scanning’ will work were given, nor whether there might be an opt-out mechanism. Thus a Covid passport, which Israel calls its “green pass” – may be linked to an eventual regimen of forced genetic testing at international travel points.

The technology, which will no doubt be hugely controversial given privacy concerns, is being discussed as part of Israeli efforts to keep further Covid variants from entering the country, as The Times of Israel describes:

Bennett expressed support for Social Equality Minister Meirav Cohen, who had warned that “the next variant will come to Israel through Ben Gurion,” saying the proposed genetic testing would help prevent that from happening.

Conventionally since the start of the pandemic airports have often monitored passengers’ temperatures with a quick and simple thermometer scan of their foreheads, but Israeli health officials are now seeking a method which might given greater certitude over whether someone has the virus or not, and especially whether they are carrying a variant.

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As vaccinated COVID hospitalizations soar, government blocks the one option that works

Any thinking person should be asking why our government is not doing more to make the monoclonal antibodies more available as people get sick with this virus at record levels. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been inundated with emails from people who say the testing requirements and limited hours of operations made them lose critical days in the battle against the illness. When you know the answer to this riddle, you will then comprehend why the same players are vociferously against any form of preventive and early outpatient treatment.

Until now, any discussion of treatment methods was dismissed by the trite argument, “Just get vaccinated and you will be fine.” That canard never properly addressed those who can’t get the vaccine, nor did it explain why there was a complete blackout on treatment even before the vaccines were widely available in January. However, now, with surging hospitalization rates among the vaccinated population, especially those most at risk of dying from this virus, the entire argument — and indeed strategy behind a vaccine-centric focus — is obsolete and needlessly killing thousands of people.

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Google as the Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’: Tech giant admits it’s preventing Australians from seeing certain videos that veer from accepted ‘facts’

If visionary writer George Orwell, author of “1984,” which gives a dystopian vision of the future, were alive today, he would be amazed at how utterly correct many of his predictions were about all-powerful central governments.

Such as the existence of a “Ministry of Truth,” whereby bureaucrats decide what the public can and cannot know in terms of ‘established facts’ — namely, no truths are permitted that run afoul of the central government’s narratives, even if they’re false.

Take what’s happening in newly authoritarian Australia as an example.

According to reports, Google officials have admitted preventing Australians from seeing certain videos because the platform’s engineers have adjusted algorithms to prevent those videos from showing up in searches.

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Senator Elizabeth Warren questions Amazon on why books that contain “misinformation” are listed as bestsellers

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has joined the call in asking Amazon to provide more details on its content moderation policies over what they see as the retailer’s failure to address what she says is the spread of COVID-19 misinformation in books.

Warren accused the tech giant of promoting books and other material containing COVID-19 misinformation.

“During the week of August 22, 2021, my staff conducted sample searches on Amazon.com of pandemic-related terms such as ‘COVID-19,’ ‘COVID,’ ‘vaccine,’ ‘COVID 19 vaccine,’ and ‘pandemic,’” Sen. Warren wrote in a letter addressed to Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy. “The top results consistently included highly-ranked and favorably-tagged books based on falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and cures.”

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Hot Mic Catches Israeli Health Minister Admitting Vaccine Passports Are About Coercion

Unaware that he was on a hot mic and being broadcast live on a TV station, Israeli health minister Nitzan Horowitz admitted that vaccine passports were primarily about coercing skeptical people to get the vaccine.

“Imposing “green pass” rules on certain venues is needed only to pressure members of the public to get vaccinated, and not for medical reasons, Israeli Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz said on Sunday, ahead of the weekly Cabinet meeting,” reports Jewish News Syndicate.

Unaware that his words were being broadcast live to the nation on Channel 12, Horowitz told Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked that not only should the green pass be removed as a requirement to dine at outdoor restaurants, but also, “For swimming pools, too, not just in restaurants.”

“Epidemiologically, it’s true,” said Horowitz, adding, “The thing is, I’m telling you, our problem is people who don’t get vaccinated. We need [to influence] them a bit; otherwise, we won’t get out of this [pandemic situation].”

The health minister went on to acknowledge that the system wasn’t even being enforced in most venues.

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‘We Need to Protect Kids from Parents’: House Democrats Rail Against Schools Requiring Parental Consent to Vaccinate Children

Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) said the government knows better than parents when it comes to vaccinating children against the Chinese coronavirus.

During a budget reconciliation markup meeting on Thursday, Yarmuth slammed an amendment sponsored by Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) that proposes that schools must obtain parent or guardian consent before vaccinating children.

He said in opposition to the amendment:

I know I’ll get in a lot of trouble for this, but I want to refer to the sponsor’s premise for the amendment, and the first words out of her mouth were, ‘parents know what’s best for their children.’ I think the evidence is compelling and overwhelming and widespread that they don’t.

The congressman, who is also chairman of the Budget Committee, further emphasized that he believes “a lot of parents are misinformed” which is “why we have, literally, tens of thousands of kids now in hospitals and suffering from this virus.”

“One of the reasons that we need to avoid steps like this is that we need to protect kids from their parents,” he said. [emphasis added] “That is the unfortunate state of the country right now. And for that reason and many others, I will oppose the amendment.”

When introducing her amendment for discussion, Miller said her proposal is squarely focused on the acquisition of parental consent prior to the provision of medical care to minors, and contended that “parents know what’s best for their children — not any governing body.”

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