All the healthcare workers in Stavanger who actively participated in last weekendâs demonstrations there have been quarantined.
UK govt publishes contracts granting Amazon, Microsoft, Google and AI firms access to COVID-19 health data
UK government has published the contracts it holds with private tech firms and the NHS for the creation of a COVID-19 data store, just days after campaigners fired legal shots over a lack of transparency.
Available on the openDemocracy website, the contracts describe how the arrangements between the NHS and Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and AI firms Faculty and Palantir (which subcontracts to AWS) will operate.
Campaign groups Foxglove and openDemocracy, which brought the action, said that the documents show the tech firms were set to build data models for commercial purposes from NHS training data before being challenged.
Oh goodie.
It is not clear why the swabs will be scrapped
Brilliant journalism. Maybe itâs because itâs supposed to be a sterile factory floor and the Bloviator in Chief couldnât be bothered to wear the required face mask?
Via TPM:
Dropping all the restrictions except the biggie: borders remain closed.
My home state desperately wants to create a travel bubble with ANZ+Japan+S.Korea, but even with our quarantine we probably canât seal out the virus, especially since servicemen/women and their families are exempted from the quarantine for no rational reason, and the ginormous petri dish that is RIMPAC will still be held this year.
The resemblance is uncanny 
Also, 98.6% filter efficiency is a joke. You can get 3m 6500 series mask with a set of N100 (P3) and A2(organic vapor) filters for less than half the price and it will be useful not only for current crisis, but also for tasks such as sanding, painting and cleaning stuff with solvents. It also looks way cooler 
Tassie update:
Weâre now at 24 days with no new cases, and only one in the last month. There are two people still sick in hospital.
There were 226 Tasmanian cases in total (all of them either people who caught it overseas, close associates of people who caught it overseas, or medical personnel; we never had general community transmission) and thirteen people died.
For per-capita scaling purposes: the population of Tasmania is just over half a million people, about 40% of whom live in Hobart.
The co-op craft shop that I occasionally sell woodwork through closed at the beginning of the crisis; it reopened yesterday. Entering Tasmania still requires a strict two-week quarantine (i.e. the government sticks you in a hotel room and you arenât allowed to leave for any reason), but theyâre working on getting a reciprocal no-quarantine travel arrangement worked out with New Zealand.
today was the first day i had to deal with a âmask exemption.â customer carrying a piece of paper listing state guidelines, claiming that meant they could shop maskless.
first they pretend not to be able to talk, then later that they couldnât hear.
it took quite a lot of work to get them to leave. after giving them our storeâs number and email info they proceed to call, and yell, at another co-worker. which is funny when you canât talk or hear and youâre not using a tty service.
also multiple other calls about mask wearing, protests, and accusations of using white supremacist symbols in our store ( i wonât get into the details, it was clear they were trolling. )
itâs a grocery store yo. give us a break.
( possibly should be under âwrathâ - but there you go. )
But their FREEEEDUMBS⌠/s
This really sucks, and is kind of scary. Stay safe!
Good riddance. And: to little, to late.
Anecdote: had a neighbour, friendly middle-aged woman, address me on the street because I was wearing a bluetooth headset. She asked me if I wasnât worried about the radiation. She would be. Friendly discussion ensued, and a lot of misinformation, packed into questions like âwhat do you think about the scientific results regarding mobile phone radiation causing dropping insect and bird populationsâ came on, combined with expressed worries about 5G, bluetooth, and EM radiation in general. I tried explaining why a sunbath was more detrimental to her health than electromagenetic radiation caused by cell phones and the like, but she just countered any of my arguments with more questions, mostly in the line âbut donât you have doubts?â and âdo you known that website collecting all those studies?â.
It is unlikely that that person is on twitter. Or even understands what twitter is. But this shit filters down, or dwells up from the sewers of the web, contaminating very normal people. And it is unlikely a explanatory link below a tweet is changing any of that.
Aaaand here we go.
ETA: Hereâs the paper:
This is making the rounds.
JESUS CHRIST THIS IS SO STUPID
Look at these two photos and ask yourself if you think this photo is good evidence that there was more disease happening in October.
Hereâs a hint.
Quick! Get your paper submitted to a medical journal! Title: Hospital expansion causes pandemic outbreaks.
