😷 Long Island legislators prevent people from avoiding sickness 🏥 Mixing AI and poor infection control at hospitals
😷 Long Island legislators prevent people from avoiding sickness 🏥 Mixing AI and poor infection control at hospitals
Trickery, manipulation, and health misinformation.
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Fighting Mask Bans, Building Pandemic Solidarity. + Up-to-date info on how to stay safe from COVID. Tuesday August 20, 7:30 PM Pacific, Online on Zoom. Register: bit.ly/maskbanteachin. Captioning will be provided. For other questions or access needs, email liza at sdaction dot org
Suburban county on Long Island declares in law that “healthy” people do not have the right to protect their health.
Preventing prevention is bad.
“Unless someone has a medical condition or a religious imperative, people should not be allowed to cover their face in a manner that hides their identity when in public,” he said in a statement.
This means that if anyone decides that personal protective equipment might “hide identity”, people will not be allowed to use it for prevention purposes to protect themselves from viruses like covid, flu, air pollution, including toxic wildfire smoke, or if there’s an even more deadly pandemic or a disaster. These local legislators have decided that people who live in or visit their county do not have the right to avoid getting sick. And it creates a “Papers, Please” society if people need to prove they’re elderly or disabled or something. Does that sound like “freedom” to people?
The irony of course is the fact that N95 respirators are incapable of thwarting the latest facial recognition software used by government authorities and private corporations for law enforcement and marketing. It might impede some misguided vigilantes from recognizing someone in a low res photo on social media, which is for the best. In the moment, it doesn’t impede a crime to know who it is, a large percentage of violent crimes are committed by someone the victim knows after all. And N95 masks are not impeding the police, and medical masks just likely won’t embolden anyone the way a full Ronald Reagan Halloween mask might. So the whole argument for mask bans is built on a faulty premise.
This is hardly the end game. Conservatives are openly stating that they plan to deputize anti-vaxxers retired from the military to go on live streamed swatting raids of current and former public health officials.
🗞️ In the news
Nassau County lawmakers approve bill to ban masks in public By Eyewitness News WABC Tuesday, August 6, 2024 7:02PM The Republican majority passed the bill with all 12 voting in favor and seven Democrats abstaining.
Newsweek - Community Outraged By New Law Banning Masks After Anti-Semitic Attacks Published Aug 06, 2024 The New York Civil Liberties Union said the law could also infringe on people's freedom of speech. "Masks protect people who express political opinions that are unpopular," the group's Nassau County regional director Susan Gottehrer said. "Making anonymous protest illegal chills political action and is ripe for selective enforcement, leading to doxxing, surveillance, and retaliation against protesters." Democratic lawmakers introduced emergency legislation to amend the bill, but it did not make it onto the agenda prior to the vote.
Aug 5, 2024 Press Release NYCLU Condemns Nassau County Mask Ban With COVID-19 on the rise across Long Island, face coverings are critical to protecting the health of an individual, their family, and their community. Criminalizing masks forces those with disabilities or medical conditions, as well as their families and loved ones, to have to decide whether to segregate themselves from public life or endanger their health and even lives. The ban’s so-called health and religious exceptions are entirely inadequate: Nassau County police officers are not health professionals or religious experts capable of deciding who needs a mask and who doesn’t.
Nassau County bans masks in public. Here's what happens if you're caught with one By Adeja Shivonne Updated August 6, 2024 7:57pm EDT News FOX 5 NY The new law would ban facial coverings on public property for people over 16. The law also proposes that anyone caught with a mask could face up to a year in jail as well as a $1,000 fine.
Highly Contentious Mask Ban Passes In Nassau County Legislature One protester was arrested after injuring an officer during Monday evening's vote, police said. Jerry Barmash - Patch - Posted Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 10:15 am ET One main difference, the Republican version was approved, "Infringes on individual freedoms by broadly prohibiting mask use in public places, even if no crime was being committed," DeRiggi-Whitton said. The emergency bill would have only targeted "those who used masks during criminal activities, thus not infringing on the general public's right to wear masks for legitimate reasons."
Nassau Daily Voice - Nassau County Criminalizes Mask Wearing Amid Rise In Covid-19 Cases Lawmakers in a New York county approved a controversial bill criminalizing mask wearing amid a summer bump in COVID-19 cases. Michael Mashburn 08/05/2024 10:40 p.m. The group noted that there are already federal statues in place targeting people who mask themselves in order to engage in criminal acts. “There's no reason to open up New Yorkers to dangerous interactions with law enforcement, or in the case of people with disabilities, shut them out from society.” Monday’s vote came amid a summer rise in positive COVID-19 cases on Long Island, according to data from the New York State Department of Health. The NYCLU argued the mask ban could put residents’ health at risk.
Salon - Civil liberties group condemns Nassau County vote to ban masks in public The move coincides with a global surge in COVID-19 cases By Nicole Karlis Senior Writer Published August 6, 2024 2:05PM (EDT) “Nassau County’s mask ban is a dangerous misuse of the law to score political points and target protestors,” NYCLU said. “Barring people who speak out from protecting themselves and their identities puts their health and well-being in danger, particularly people with disabilities, people of color, and those with unpopular views.” The organization added: “With COVID-19 on the rise across Long Island, face coverings are critical to protecting the health of an individual, their family, and their community.” Those who violate the mask ban can face a fine of $1,000 or jail time.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there high levels of viral activity of the coronavirus in wastewater nationwide.
This is NOT fine
Healthcare AI is going to have hospitals mainlining health disinformation straight into patient care.
The Mystery AI Hype Theatre 3000 podcast quoted an article in Forbes about replacing healthcare workers with “AI nurse-bots” that "will be able to integrate real-time information from global health databases, ongoing clinical trials and medical conferences" - and what they're describing is absolutely not in compliance with any kind of healthcare safety regulations anywhere.
Hallucinating chatbot healthcare tech tools hopped up on medical conference hype. What could possibly go wrong? AI hype is so normalized that of course tech tycoons and private equity think that healthcare should run on hype filled apps and downsizing staff. CHLOE HUMBERT AUG 04, 2024 There are a lot of conferences, and a lot of things that go on at them. You don’t want life or death decisions made for you at the hospital based on some industry convention where there’s a panel with people spit-balling, or saying something snazzy, just to try to stand out in the crowd. And that’s before you even get to the fake science conferences whose purpose is “to give studies an air of scientific credibility while cashing in on millions of dollars in the process” according to a DEF CON 26 presentation from 2018. Or consider for a moment the possible inclusion of who knows what from some weirdo medical conference held by anti-vaxxers like the FLCCC convention that had presentations on so-called vaccine “shedding”, the preposterously false conspiracy fiction that vaccinated people transmit “gene therapy” to others, and had doctors pushing ivermectin as a covid treatment even though that’s been discredited and not a legitimate medical application. Who knows what dangerous papier-mâché nonsense will come out of a healthcare LLM trained on bullshit from strange MAGA trucker convoy politics from Qanon inspired medical conferences.
Nurses don’t think “integrating AI” is a good idea, and neither does the general public. But CEOs and executives in positions of power keep falling for this crap. It really says something, and I think it’s related to elite panic and how people in charge are the ones who tend to not act rationally when it matters.
WSU Insider - Using the term ‘artificial intelligence’ in product descriptions reduces purchase intentions July 30, 2024 By Eric Hollenbeck, Carson College of Business In the study, published in the Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, researchers conducted experimental surveys with more than 1,000 adults in the U.S. to evaluate the relationship between AI disclosure and consumer behavior. The findings consistently showed products described as using artificial intelligence were less popular, according to Mesut Cicek, clinical assistant professor of marketing and lead author of the study. “When AI is mentioned, it tends to lower emotional trust, which in turn decreases purchase intentions,” he said. “We found emotional trust plays a critical role in how consumers perceive AI-powered products.”
He(a)rd Scuttlebutt… pandemic grapevine 🍇🌱
AI and poor infection control standards at hospitals, what could possibly go wrong?
In the National Nurses United webinar about dangerous use of AI in healthcare. A nurse told the story about the AUTOMATED shift change report - which just makes a sheet - and doesn't allow handoff between the actual healthcare workers. The "automated sheet" - failed to show that the person coming in had NO IMMUNE SYSTEM, and had this nurse not looked in the patient's chart, the patient would've been put alongside the covid patient and the flu patient. Why is this happening anyway?
Non-infected patients should never be put with infected patients no matter what. It should be AGAINST THE LAW to put uninfected patients with covid patients. There should be a REQUIREMENT to protect people from infection in healthcare settings.
I have written all my representatives about this, please join me.
Health product misinformation sometimes comes via stock manipulation PR web posting.
The pump & dump fraudsters pushing unsupported claims are getting more brazen. And sometimes they outright post the company's stock symbol in their social media posts. When you see a stock symbol in a post, you should immediately be suspicious that the claims are questionable and are likely part of stock hype. Notice the post probably also contains buzzwords to tap into SEO and automated web monitoring for automated stock systems.
The disability woke-washing of vaccine misinformation.
Being actively against the promotion of vaccines is by definition anti-vax.
I’m not falling for tricky anti-vax woke-washing manipulative arguments, and you don’t have to either. There are many of us out here that see what’s happening with this on social media and in forums and groups online, and we think it’s tragic and sad, and gaslighting. I know that many people probably feel afraid to speak up about this, because anti-vaxxers can be very cruel and manipulative, create a hostile environment wherever they are challenged, and it even leads sometimes to verbal abuse or violent threats or possibly inciting violence. Anti-vaxxers resort to accusation in a mirror, slander, false accusations, and DARVO: attacking someone and then claiming the person being attacked is the offender, so onlookers get confused.
Often people are so emboldened to promote anti-vax talking points and aggressively attack people debunking anti-vax or promoting vaccines because they’re being paid to do so. There’s a lot of money sloshing around for anti-vax interests.
But the more of us stand up for what’s right, and stand up for science, the lower the cost of speaking up is. So thank you to those who speak up for science and vaccines, in the face of adversity, attacks, threats. Thank you. You are not alone.
“Democracy only works when social configurations are relatively balanced. When people are not drawn too much into weird cultish behaviors. And I actually developed a mathematical definition of a cult. Basically any sub social network for whom it has become so tightly wound up around itself that its local concerns override broader societal concerns.” - Dave Troy on The Cognitive Crucible podcast - #196 Dave Troy on Threats to Democracy - 25 June 2024