Georgia students threatened with suspension for exposing unsafe COVID-19 practices

Students at North Paulding HIgh face suspensions for posting on social media

Students at a Georgia high school are being threatened with suspension if they expose the school for its lack of adherence to COVID-19 protocols.

Read More: Barron Trump’s school bans in-person learning amid COVID-19

CBS46 reports that Paulding High School students will face consequences if they reveal that mandates like social distancing and wearing masks to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus are being ignored. The controversy erupted this week after a viral photo showed a crowded hallway of students that didn’t appear to be wearing face coverings.

(Credit: social media)

The predominantly white suburb of Atlanta has labeled wearing a mask a “personal choice” despite the surge of coronavirus cases in Southern states. There has been an ongoing debate about whether schools should be re-opened amid the pandemic.

North Paulding opened Monday. They warned the student body that there would be consequences if more pictures of the school were shared on social media. CBS46 obtained a recording of the warning.

“Anything that’s going on social media that’s negative or alike without permission, photography, that’s video or anything, there will be consequences,” the recording from North Paulding principal Gabe Carmona warned.

An anonymous student told the outlet that they were being punished for raising concerns about the virus and its impact.

“It just sounded like they were trying to cover up the fact that they were putting people in unsafe conditions,” the student who recorded the announcement said.

I was just sent audio of the Principal of North Paulding High School announcing that there will be "consequences" for anyone who posts video or audio of the school which depicts the school in a negative light. #NorthPauldingHighSchool pic.twitter.com/lKbuXJhCQd

— 🇯🇲Black🇭🇹Aziz🇳🇬aNANsi🇹🇹 (@Freeyourmindkid) August 6, 2020

North Paulding student Hannah Watters, 15, told Buzzfeed that she received a five-day suspension at home for sending out a tweet.

“Day two at North Paulding High School. It is just as bad. We were stopped because it was jammed. We are close enough to the point where I got pushed multiple go to second block. This is not ok. Not to mention the 10% mask rate,” she posted.

Read More: Student, staffer at Indiana schools test positive for COVID-19 as schools reopen

The school informed her she’d violated the school of conduct.

“The policies I broke stated that I used my phone in the hallway without permission, used my phone for social media, and posting pictures of minors without consent,” she told Buzzfeed.

Watters and her family planned to fight the suspension over what she believes is the school “ignorantly” opening back up this school for face to face learning.

“Not only did they open, but they have not been safe,” she said. “Many people are not following CDC guidelines because the county did not make these precautions mandatory.”

Another student, who chose not to be identified, also confirmed their suspension. Paulding County Schools has chosen not to comment on the disciplinary actions.

Instead, they have defended the viral photo by insisting it was a snapshot in time for the 2,000 students who attend the school and that they were in contact for less than 10 minutes.

However, many are not convinced that officials are doing all they can to ensure the health and well being of students and staff who returned to the school on Monday.

Sources told Buzzfeed that there has been an outbreak at Paulding and that football players and teachers have been infected with the virus.

“That was exactly one week ago, so we are all waiting to see who gets sick next week,” a North Paulding teacher told BuzzFeed News.

Read More: Pence ‘wouldn’t hesitate’ to send his kids back to school amid COVID-19

Those who choose not to go to school face suspension or expulsion.

“It’s the hallway situation that has me most paranoid,” one student said. “There’s a lot of people in the hallways, and you can’t do nothing about it, so it’s scary.”

Teachers also won’t be informed if they’ve been exposed until contacted by the state.

“A lot of us are terrified,” a teacher said.

Amy Westmoreland, a nurse at the school, quit and shared her resignation letter with Buzzfeed.

“Masks are not a ‘personal choice’ during a pandemic. I cannot return knowing I am not supportive of your decision to open so quickly and not at least mandate masks.”

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The Feds Want These Teams to Hack a Satellite—From Home

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Israeli Hackers Develop Tech to Combat Domestic Violence

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Sen. Bernie Sanders calls for tax on billionaires' gains during the pandemic

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Manhattan experiencing surplus of unsold apartments as sales contracts plunge

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Wealth management is picking up momentum, boosting fee income: Analyst

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The Best Linux Distributions for Old Machines

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When the chemical industry met modern architecture

Just months before starting her PhD, Jessica Varner and her partner bought a small house built in 1798. Located on tidal wetlands along Connecticut’s Patchogue River, the former residence of an ironworker had endured over two centuries of history and neglect.

As Varner began to slowly restore the house — discovering its nail-less construction and thin horsehair plaster walls, learning plumbing skills, and burning oyster shells to make lime wash — she discovered a deep connection between her work inside and outside academia.

For her dissertation in MIT’s History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art program, Varner had been investigating how the chemical industry wooed the building and construction industry with the promise of “invisible,” “new,” and “durable” synthetic materials at the turn of the 20th century. In the process, these companies helped transform modern architecture while also disregarding or actively obscuring the health and environmental risks posed by these materials. While researching the history of these dyes, additives, and foams, Varner was also considering the presence of similar synthetics in her own new home.

Coming into closer contact with these types of materials as a builder herself gave Varner a new perspective on the widespread implications of her research. “I think with my hands … and both projects began to inform each other,” she says. “Making and writing at the same time, I’m amazed how much this house is a part of the work.”

The reverse proved true as well. Next year Varner will launch the Black House Project, an interdisciplinary artist-in-residence space on the Connecticut property. Artists who participate will be asked to engage with a seasonal theme relating to the intersection of history, environment, and community. The inaugural theme will be, “building from the ashes,” with a focus on burning and invasive species.

A personal chemical history

The chemical industry has a longer history for Varner than she even initially understood: She comes from a long line of farming families in Nebraska, a state with a complex relationship with the agricultural-chemical industry.

“That was just our way of life and we never questioned it,” she says of the way farm life became entwined with the chemical necessities and economic hardships of American industrial agriculture. She recalls spraying herbicide, without a mask, on thistles on the farm after her family received government letters threatening daily fines if her family did not remove the plant. She also remembers how their farm, and much of the region, depended on seeds and other products from DeKalb.

“Coming from a place that depends so much on the economy of an industry, there are nuances and deeper layers to the story” of modern agriculture, she says, noting that the subsistence farming and often industrial farming go hand in hand.

At MIT, Varner has continued to probe beneath the surface of how chemical products are promoted and adopted. For her thesis, with the help of a Fulbright scholarship, she began digging through the chemical companies’ corporate archives. Her research has revealed how these companies generated research strategies, advertising, and publicity to transform the materials of the “modern interior and exterior.”

Underneath a veneer of technological innovation and promises of novelty, Varner argues, these companies carefully masked their supply chains, adjusted building codes, and created marketing teams knowns as “truth squads,” which monitored and reshaped conversations around these products and growing concerns about their environmental harms. The result, she writes in her dissertation, was “one of the most successful, and toxic, material transformations in modern history.”

Bridging activism and academia

Varner has a long-running interest in environmental activism, from the conservation and restoration efforts in her home state, to vegetarianism, to studying glaciers in Alaska, to her current conception of the Black House Project. “At every point I feel like my life has had environmental activism in it,” she says.

Environmental concerns have always been an integral part of her studies as well. After her undergraduate education at the University of Nebraska, Varner went on to study architecture and environmental design at Yale University, where she studied the debates between climate scientists and architects in the 1970s. Then she headed to Los Angeles as a practicing architect and professor.

Working with as a designer with Michael Maltzan Architecture while teaching seminars and studios on at the University of Southern California and Woodbury University, she realized her students had bigger, historical questions, such as about the origin of sustainability catchphrases like “passive cooling,” “circular economy,” and “net-zero.” “There were deeper questions behind what environmentalism was, how you can enact it, how you know what the rules of sustainability are, and I realized I didn’t have answers,” Varner says. “It was taken for granted.”

Those questions brought her to MIT, where she says the cross-cutting nature of her work benefitted from the Institute’s intersection with chemistry and engineering and history of technology. “The questions I was asking were interdisciplinary questions, so it was helpful to have those people around to bounce ideas off of,” she says.

This fall, Varner will return to MIT as a lecturer while also working with the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. At EDGI, she is the assistant curator for the EPA Interviewing Working Group, an ongoing oral history project chronicling the inner workings of the EPA and the way the organization has been affected by the current administration.

“I’m excited to get back in the classroom,” she says, as well as finding a new way to take her academic interests into a more activist and policy-oriented sphere at EDGI. “I definitely think that’s what MIT brought to me in my education, other ways to carry your knowledge and your expertise to engage at different levels. It’s what I want to keep, going forward as a graduate.”

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Issa Rae, HBO partner for Black TV history documentary

‘Seen & Heard‘ will explore the groundbreaking ‘but often unacknowledged’ contributions of Black artists and storytellers.

Issa Rae has been tapped by HBO to executive produce a two-part documentary about the history of Black television.

The project, titled Seen & Heard, will explore the groundbreaking “but often unacknowledged” contributions of Black artists and storytellers, Deadline reports. 

“Black people have such a rich, but often unacknowledged history in Hollywood,” said Rae. “We have defined American culture and influenced generations time and time again across the globe. I’m honored to pair with Ark Media to center and celebrate the achievements of those who paved a way for so many of us to tell our stories on television.”

Read More: Issa Rae, Jordan Peele to partner for ‘Sinkhole’ film after Universal wins screen rights in 7-figure deal

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The doc is described as offering “cultural commentary about representation in black storytelling and feature interviews with actors, showrunners, writers, celebrities and other notable influencers as well as verité-driven segments and inventive use of archival material. The featured participants will reflect on their own experiences watching African Americans represented on television yesterday and today, while sharing insights into their current creative endeavors, personal experiences, and inspiration, providing a window into the larger evolution of Black storytellers across television history.”

Seen & Heard will be directed and produced by Phil Bertelsen, who helmed Netflix’s six-part doc series Who Killed Malcolm X?

Rae will serve as EP alongside Montrel McKay of Issa Rae Productions, Jonathan Berry and David Becky of 3 Arts Entertainment and Ark Media’s Rachel Dretzin and Esther Dere.

In related news, Issa Rae and Jordan Peele are teaming up to bring, “Sinkhole,” an original story by Leyna Krow, to movie screens, theGRIO previously reported.

Sara Scott, Universal Pictures’ Senior Vice President of Production, will oversee the development of this film.

According to Deadline, Universal studios offered a low-seven-figure deal to Rae and Peele for the screen rights to the short story. The company beat out more than 10 studio bidders and multiple talent and filmmaker packages for the opportunity.

Sinkhole was originally written by Krow in 2011 and centers on a couple’s purchase of a new home that has a strange sinkhole in the backyard.

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Iowa governor restores some ex-felons voting rights with executive order

Anyone currently serving a prison sentence for a felony conviction will not be able to vote.

Iowans with felony convictions who have served their sentences can now participate in the upcoming presidential election.  

On Wednesday, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed an executive order granting most ex-cons who have completed their felony sentences the right to vote, CNN reports.

“When someone serves their sentence and pays the price our justice system has set for their crime, they should have their right to vote restored automatically, plain and simple,” said Reynolds at the state capitol in Des Moines.

Her order excludes felons convicted of first- and second-degree murder, attempted murder, fetal homicide and some sex crimes, according to the report. These individuals are still required to apply to the governor’s office to have their voting rights restored. 

Read More: Despite virus threat, Black voters wary of voting by mail

According to the executive order, felons must “complete any prison probation, or parole, or special sentence” before they can register to vote.  The order does not require them to make financial restitution to their victims. 

“This is a cause on which so many Iowans have worked on,” Reynolds said Wednesday morning in her office, while flanked by local leaders and legislators. 

Iowa was the last state with a lifetime ban on voting for convicted felons, unless they petitioned the governor for the restoration of their rights. 

“We absolutely encourage people to take this day and register,” said Betty Andrews, president of the Iowa-Nebraska NAACP. “Now our work is to make sure that people are registered and understand as of today they don’t need to do paperwork, they don’t need to do anything like that. As of today they are allowed to vote.”

Mark Stringer, the executive director of the ACLU of Iowa, praised Reynold’s order. 

“Iowa no longer is the only state in the country to permanently and for life ban its citizens from voting following any felony conviction,” Stringer said in a news release. “We’re relieved that the Governor’s order does not make eligibility to vote dependent on how much money a person has, that is, it’s not contingent on paying off fees and fines or other associated debts.”

The order will reportedly restore the voting rights to an estimated 40,000 people.

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NJ woman who broke elderly woman’s leg over mask request arrested

Surveillance video shows the woman assaulting the elderly lady, tossing her like a rag doll to the ground.  

The New Jersey woman who was caught on surveillance camera assaulting an elderly woman over a face mask dispute has been arrested. 

25-year-old Terri Thomas was arrested in Hackensack, NJ for aggravated assault after viral video was released showing her attack on a woman with a cane at a STAPLES. An earlier report on theGrio noted that Margot Kagan was using a copy machine when a woman with a mask pulled down below her mouth approached a machine next to her. 

Kagan asked the woman to put on her mask. It is unclear what the response was, but the two exchange words. 

Read More: Customer throws woman, breaks her leg after being told to wear mask

The interaction turns violent when Thomas assaults Dewitt, tossing her like a rag doll to the ground.  

“The suspect became angry and yelled at the victim, who picked up her walking cane and pointed it directly at the suspect, coming within inches of the suspect’s chest. The woman then yelled at Kagan, violently threw her to the ground, and left the store,” said Capt. Darrin DeWitt from the Hackensack Police Department.

Kagan tells local media that she was asking Thomas to be responsible and was disheartened by the exchange.

“The woman on one side of the plastic dividers had a mask, but here, below her mouth,” Kagan said from a hospital bed at HUMC.

She insists that she only said, “You should really put a mask on.”

Kagan recently had a liver transplant, and the incident with Thomas reportedly left her with a fractured left tibia.

Over $4,000 has been raised on a GoFundMe to help Kagan cover medical expenses.

According to the campaign, “Ms. Kagan has school aged children in the district. We are hoping to raise money to help with any of her medical bills associated with this, and any additional help the Kagan family may need during this very difficult time.”

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Jurnee Smollett on Jussie, Hollywood and ‘no longer asking for a seat at the table’

The ‘Lovecraft County’ actress shared her experiences with inequal pay and sexual harassment

Now starring in HBO’s upcoming Lovecraft Country, veteran actress Jurnee Smollett is coming into her own as a Hollywood powerhouse who no longer feels the need to apologize.

Smollett has been acting since she was a child, starring in Full House, Eve’s Bayou, Friday Night Lights, Birds of Prey and WGN’s groundbreaking show Underground. Despite her success, the 33-year-old has considered leaving Hollywood because the glittery façade doesn’t match up to reality.

“This business can be maddening,” she says in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

Read More: Jussie Smollett is willing to ‘fight or die’ to be cleared of hoax charges

“For all its liberalism, I’ve been in these spaces where these very powerful people do the fundraisers and write the checks for the Black or brown kids’ scholarships, and then I know for a fact they go back into their staff meetings and they’re all white.”

She says those efforts are often performative and do little to change attitudes or practices.

“If you do that, you’re a hypocrite, and you’re not actually anti-racist,” Smollett maintains.

She had no use for posting Black squares in solidarity for Black Lives Matter after the tragic deaths of African Americans, especially George Floyd.

“Oh, the rage,” she declares, “the rage I feel in my body.”

Read More: Hollywood still struggling to diversify in writers’ rooms

Smollett is also angry that her brother Jussie, the former Empire star, is still viewed with suspicion. He says he did not stage the now-infamous 2019 racist and homophobic attack that caused a media furor and she believes him.

(Photo by Leon Bennett/Getty Images for Essence)

“It’s been f**king painful,” she says.

“One of the most painful things my family’s ever experienced — to love someone as much as we love my brother, and to watch someone who you love that much go through something like this, that is so public, has been devastating. I was already in a very dark space for a number of reasons, and I’ve tried to not let it make me pessimistic. But everyone who knows me knows that I love my brother and I believe my brother.”

During that time, she was separating from her husband of almost a decade, musician Josiah Bell, with whom she shares a 3-year-old son, Hunter.

Jurnee with her mother and siblings (Instagram)

Read More: Tiffany Boone, Simone Missick and other Black women in Hollywood perform ‘A Black Woman Speaks’

Her family name may have been mired in scandal and she may have been dealing with heartache but fortunately, none of it affected her professionally.

Lovecraft Country, a horror, sci-fi, period mashup set during the Jim Crow era from Jordan Peele, J.J. Abrams and Underground‘s Misha Green, debuts on HBO on Aug. 16.

“We’re telling the story of heroes that go on a quest to disrupt white supremacy, and it’s maddening that in the year 2020 it’s still relevant,” she says.

Before she started the project, the actress reached out to showrunners to make sure she was paid her value after learning she was paid less than her co-star, Aldis Hodge, on Underground even though they were both leads on the WGN show.

The slight reminded her of an executive questioning how she styled her hair for the role.

Jurnee Smollett-Bell speaks at the Children’s Defense Fund California’s 28th Annual Beat The Odds Awards at Skirball Cultural Center on December 6, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Gabriel Olsen/Getty Images)

 “This was a project about enslaved people. There’d be no way for me to straighten my hair, which is what he was suggesting — a hot comb didn’t exist,” she says. “There are just so many ways in which this industry will try, subliminally or overtly, to erase your Blackness.”

Smollett is now very vocal in how she expects to be treated.

“And I don’t apologize,” she says. “I’ll be like, ‘Listen, this fake-ass sexual harassment meeting that we’re having, I’m going to raise my hand now and let you guys know that the standards that they’re setting are bare minimum.'”

This is the confidence she didn’t possess in her twenties. Lovecraft Country is the first set where she says she has not felt sexually harassed or undermined. After all the years she’s put in, Smollett is grateful that change is coming to the industry.

“And we’re no longer asking for a seat at the table,” says Smollett. “We’re building our own motherf**king table.”

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Trump calls Obama’s eulogy at John Lewis funeral ‘terrible’ and ‘angry’

The former president condemned the GOP’s repeated false claims that voting by mail will lead to mass voter fraud.

*During his appearance on Fox News on Wednesday, President Donald Trump slammed Barack Obama’s eulogy for civil rights icon John Lewis, calling it “terrible” and “angry.”

“I thought it was a terrible speech. It was an angry speech,” Trump said when asked if he thought the eulogy seemed like a campaign speech, The Hill reports. “I thought that speech was very inappropriate, very bad,” he added.

In the eulogy at Ebenezer Baptist Church last week, Obama cited challenges to voting, police brutality and the need for protest, theGrio previously reported. He urged people to be “more like John” and get into “good trouble.”

Read More: Trump evades paying respect to John Lewis: ‘He didn’t come to my inauguration’

ATLANTA, GEORGIA – JULY 30: Former President Barack Obama gives the eulogy at the funeral service for the late Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) at Ebenezer Baptist Church on July 30, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Alyssa Pointer-Pool/Getty Images)

Obama also said Lewis needed to be honored by revitalizing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and called for Election Day to become a national holiday.

“If politicians want to honor John,” he said, “there’s a better way than a statement calling him a hero.”

Obama added, “Let’s honor him by revitalizing the law that he was willing to die for.

The former president also condemned Trump’s repeated false claims that voting by mail will lead to mass voter fraud.

“Even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations, and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws, and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision,” Obama said. “John Lewis devoted his time on this Earth fighting the very attacks on democracy and what’s best in America that we are seeing circulate right now.” 

Trump told Fox News that Obama’s speech highlighted the angry side of his persona that people don’t get to see. 

“He lost control and he’s been really hit very hard by both sides for that speech,” Trump said. “That speech was ridiculous.”

Read More: Trump says he may suspend evictions with executive order

(Photo from 2013 by Riccardo S. Savi/Getty Images for U.S. Postal Service)

Lewis died last month at age 80 after a battle with cancer. 

In 2011, Obama awarded Lewis the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is one of the two highest honors that can be given to a civilian. 

Obama was not the only former president in attendance for the televised goodbye to the civil rights icon. Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were on hand to pay their final respects.

Trump did not attend the funeral, and he noted during a recent Axios interview that Lewis “didn’t come to my inauguration.”

“He didn’t come to my State of the Union speeches,” Trump added. “And that’s OK. That’s his right. And, again, nobody has done more for Black Americans than I have.”

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The Census Bureau Says Less Than 9% of US Companies are Using AI! Really?

Summary:  Less than 9%?  What this study really shows and what we should take away from it.

 

Wow.  Less than 9%!  Can this be true?  Well according to a large scale survey study conducted by the US Census Bureau it’s actually a little worse than that since the 9% applies to a basket of advanced technologies some of which don’t involve AI, like RFIDs.  So what’s the story?

Turns out the Census Bureau has a mandate to survey US businesses about their use of technology.  This report of their most current work was presented in July at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference.  There are several twists to this story but the main one is how do we reconcile this result with the many other surveys we all read that say that between 20% and 33% are implementing AI ‘at scale’ and that a much larger percentage are right behind.  Even that estimate dates back to surveys conducted in 2018 and based on current literature you’d have to believe adoption is much, much higher.

 

About the Census Survey

The “2018 Annual Business Survey (ABS)” (survey data from 2017) sought to answer the degree to which US companies were adopting advanced technologies.  They first queried about ‘digitization’ figuring that was a precursor to all advanced technologies, then about ‘cloud computing’, and finally about a basket of ‘advanced technologies’ some of which relate to AI and some which don’t.

The advantage the Census has over other surveys we’ve seen is that response is legally required.  They mailed out about 850,000 surveys and received 583,000 responses or almost 69%.  That’s much better than the 20% or 30% response rates of large business surveys we’ve reported in the past.  This actually lets them project out over the entire US business population with some statistical accuracy without the curse of respondent bias.

The first twist, and it’s unclear why they elected this, is that the survey includes only “all private, non-agricultural sectors of the economy”.  So the exclusion of public companies immediately excludes at least the largest 4,000 or 5,000 US companies, who logically, are leaders in AI adoption.

So the results of this survey are a kind of trickle down story about what the rest of us are doing, with most responses from very small companies.

• 1 to 9 employees        75%
• 10 to 49 employees    20%
• 50 to 249 employees    4%
• 250+ employees           1%

Unfortunately without access to the raw data we can’t further refine their findings to look at least at the largest of this group.

And the findings about ‘advanced technologies’ relate to these categories which fall within AI:

• Machine Learning      8%
• Voice Recognition      5%
• Machine Vision          7%
• Robotics                    3%
• Natural Language      2%
• Automated Vehicles   8%

Versus these categories which don’t relate to AI according to the definitions given with the survey:

• Touchscreens           9%
• RFID                         1%
• Augmented Reality    8%

If you’ve been quick to add these up, you’ll see the AI category totals a little over 10% but this includes overlaps.  The real answer to utilization of AI is likely much smaller and more like 6% across this group.

 

Do Survey Respondents Even Recognize AI?

We’ve written in the past about how difficult it is to measure adoption.  There’s no end of organizations conducting surveys.  If a large company has implemented a chatbot in one operation do we give them credit for adoption (as many surveys do)?  Do the folks who respond to these surveys know what’s going on in other parts of their companies if those organizations are large and dispersed?

In smaller companies like those surveyed you’d expect them to know if, for example, their operation used a robot.  However so much of AI is now buried in applications these companies may be using they may be completely unaware. 

A further confounding factor is that the survey specifically asked the respondents about the use of these technologies in “the production of goods and services”.  Were they sophisticated enough in their understanding to include or exclude the many types of AI found in support systems like HR and finance that heavily incorporate machine vision and NLP.  Probably not.

 

What’s the Degree of Adoption?

The survey did allow the respondents to provide some information about the degree to which they had adopted these technologies expressed as percentage ranges over their entire company.

 

What’s the Takeaway?

There are several.

Despite AI companies wanting to know about market size and penetration, the traditional voluntary survey of large companies suffers from low response rates and respondent bias making any statistical conclusions no better than guesses.

In smaller companies respondents are unlikely to have sufficiently deep understanding of AI applications to actually spot all the places AI may already be at use in applications.

In large companies the specific respondents answering surveys are unlikely to be completely aware of all the AI applications planned or used throughout a large dispersed corporation.

Particularly in large companies, do we give credit for AI adoption if there is one chatbot in customer service or one ML model embedded in a purchased-in recommender.  The real metric ought to be total spend, internal and external on AI.

Increasingly, AI is disappearing into the infrastructure of all sorts of applications we purchase where users may be completely unaware.  Computer vision, chatbots, NLP, and even ML algos are increasingly embedded in all sorts of day-to-day applications.  It’s no longer relevant to ask about AI on the assumption that there has been a specific in-house project to develop and deploy an application that has captured significant attention and development effort.

Finally, of real concern is what government policy makers may make of this.  Focusing AI policy or allocating resources to this end of the market without understanding the shortcomings of the survey may seriously misallocate funding and efforts. 

It’s too much to hope that we’ll see an end to these ‘AI Adoption’ surveys.  AI is here.  You may not recognize all the activities you undertake that use AI, but that’s a good thing.  As a smaller private company it’s not necessary to make a conscious decision to adopt AI.  The vendors who provide your apps and services will see to that.

 

 

Other articles by Bill Vorhies.

About the author:  Bill is Contributing Editor for Data Science Central.  Bill is also President & Chief Data Scientist at Data-Magnum and has practiced as a data scientist since 2001.  His articles have been read more than 2.1 million times.

Bill@DataScienceCentral.com or Bill@Data-Magnum.com

 

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Chicago Public Schools reverse stance, will teach remotely in the fall

The school system decided to keep kids home instead of risking a coronavirus spike

This week, Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest school system, has announced that the coming school year will be conducted entirely via remote learning for all students.

Read More: Nurse brawls with Chicago subway passenger who blames health care workers for coronavirus

According to a local NBC affiliate, Wednesday morning CPS CEO Janice Jackson and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot made the announcement at a news conference, stating the district had made the decision in efforts to mitigate risk to both students and faculty in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The decision to begin the 2020-2021 CPS school year remotely during the first quarter is rooted in public health data and the invaluable feedback we’ve received from parents and families,” Lightfoot explained in a statement announcing the decision.

This came just hours after reports surfaced the night before that the district realized it would need to move away from its previously announced hybrid model.

Chicago’s mayor announced that the nation’s third-largest school district will not welcome students back to the classroom, after all, and will instead rely only on remote instruction to start the school year https://t.co/e2DY5qIlzK

— TIME (@TIME) August 5, 2020

READ MORE: Pence ‘wouldn’t hesitate’ to send his kids back to school amid COVID-19

“As a district, we value parent feedback and we cannot overlook that a large percentage of parents have indicated they do not feel comfortable sending their students to school under a hybrid model for the start of the school year,” Jackson conceded in a message of her own.

“I understand the uncertainty this pandemic has caused our parents, especially communities of color who have been disproportionately impacted. We are making every possible effort to provide a high-quality remote learning experience in the fall, utilizing live, virtual instruction for every student, every day, and we are committed to ongoing engagement and communication with parents.”

A source close to the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) reported to CNN that the Chicago Teachers Union had planned to convene their House of Delegates early next week to discuss taking a strike vote to demand remote learning for Chicago Public Schools.

Read More: Newly promoted Chicago police chief dies by suicide in department facility

This latest development has most likely stopped plans of a possible strike from the CTU.

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Airline promises travelers a free funeral if infected with COVID-19

Emirates says that they will handle funeral expenses if any passenger is infected on their flights

As COVID-19 continues to affect the travel industry airlines are looking for creative incentives to get passengers to fill their seats. But one airline is raising eyebrows after it decided to start offering to cover medical expenses – and even funeral costs – for any travelers infected during their flights.

READ MORE: Michelle Obama reveals ‘low-grade’ depression on podcast episode

According to Forbes, Emirates Airlines’ new policies stipulate that if one of its passengers is diagnosed with COVID-19 during a trip taken with them, the Dubai-based carrier will cover their medical expenses, up to €150,000 – which comes out to approximately about $176,000 USD.

An Airbus A380-861 operated by Emirates takes off from JFK Airport on August 24, 2019 in the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

They will also cover $118 per day for quarantine costs such as a hotel room, for up to two weeks. And in worst-case scenarios, Emirates will also offer approximately $1,765 to a passenger’s loved ones to go towards funeral costs. 

This unconventional insurance policy is automatically activated with ticketing, effective immediately, and carries no additional fees for passengers.

😳✈️😵⚰️
In A Twist On Loyalty Programs, Emirates Is Promising Travelers A Free Funeral If Infected With Covid https://t.co/nTEXCJWEPk

— Don Cheadle (@DonCheadle) August 5, 2020

Forbes writer Avi Dan opines, “The premise of insurance for medical bills or quarantine is brave. It’s bold and cuts to the heart of the reluctance to travel. It doesn’t skirt the emotions surrounding COVID-19 but tackles them head-on. However, the fact that the insurance includes death coverage could be problematic. It could encourage the kind of mental imagery that an airline normally wouldn’t want associated with its brand.”

Dan also notes that the key to the success of this unprecedented approach is in its execution, warning that if the policy is mishandled it could do irreversible harm to the company’s reputation.

READ MORE: Twitter suspends Donald Trump Jr.’s account for spreading COVID-19 misinformation

But given that on average airlines are only flying planes at 20-30% capacity and many times have to cancel flights to some airports entirely, this seems to be a risk that Emirates is willing to take if it’ll have a positive impact on their bottom line.

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Banned protesters send #ZimbabweanLivesMatter viral

The social media campaign tapping into the anger of the global #BlackLivesMatter phenomenon.

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NBA player Lou Williams regrets strip club meal

The Clippers guard says that he probably could have made a better decision

Clippers guard Lou Williams became the first casualty of the NBA “bubble” when he went to Atlanta’s Magic City to have what he says is his usual meal after traveling there for the funeral of a longtime mentor.

Read More: WNBA players sport ‘Vote Warnock’ tees in opposition of Atlanta Dream co-owner

But he also says that the backlash to the incident was overblown. He was still processing the death of someone he considered family and because of it maybe didn’t think his decision through as much as he should have.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 28: Lou Williams #23 of the LA Clippers smiles during a timeout in the game against the Denver Nuggets at Staples Center on February 28, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

As reported by ESPN, Williams, 33, acknowledged in his first post-game press conference after he was isolated per quarantine protocol that he didn’t make the best choice.

“In hindsight, I think as far as the public safety issue goes, I probably could have made a better-quality decision,” Williams, the league’s reigning Sixth Man, said. “I was a little naïve in that aspect. I went somewhere after a viewing of somebody I considered a mentor, somebody I looked up to, first Black man I seen with legal money in my life.”

Williams, who grew up in Georgia, had an excused absence from the team to attend the funeral of Paul G. Williams, a friend’s father. He defended going to the club, which was close to the viewing, as a place he frequents all the time when he’s in town.

But I digress. I went home to see a man off to his final resting place that was a giant in my life. I don’t want that to get lost in all this attention. So again, LONG LIVE THE GREAT PAUL WILLIAMS SR. back to my quarantine so I can join the guys soon. Peace

— Lou Williams (@TeamLou23) July 27, 2020

“It’s been documented how much I talk about this place, how much I eat there,” Williams said. “I just did something that was routine for me. I frequent that place at that time of day, 5:30, 6 in the afternoon.”

He explained his thought process.

“At the time, I thought I was making a responsible decision. After looking back on it, with everything going on in the world, the pandemic, maybe it wasn’t the best-quality decision. I chalk it up as that, take my L and keep moving,” he said.

The legendary strip club that has been featured in multiple music videos is a popular one for Atlanta-based celebrities. Williams is such a frequent customer that the club’s lemon pepper BBQ wings are named for him.

He says the trip was a quick “in and out” but that description was refuted by a Magic City dancer who told the Los Angeles Times she was one of the club’s dancers who performed for him.

“He tipped very well,” a dancer named Aries told the Times.

The club reopened in June after a mandated closing due to the COVID-19.

Williams had to quarantine for 10 days upon his return to the NBA “bubble” at Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando, Florida where the NBA season restarted last month.

He missed the first two games of the Clippers season and is one of several Clippers players who had excused absences for personal issues, including Patrick Beverly and Montrezl Harrell, who lost his grandmother.

Lou Williams #23 of the LA Clippers during warm up before a preseason game against the Denver Nuggets at Staples Center on October 10, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

Though the NBA bubble has gone off mostly without a hitch, Williams says that it doesn’t mean that real-life issues don’t puncture it in certain situations.

“I truly was grieving two weeks ago. I was really going through something. I was thrown under the bus, you know what I’m saying?” Williams said to the media.

“All the attention turned to Magic City because it’s a gentlemen’s club. I feel like if I was at a steakhouse or Hooters or whatever, it wouldn’t be half the story.”

He pleaded for understanding.

Read More: Odell Beckham Jr. says it doesn’t make sense to have an NFL season

“I pray and I really hope these fans understand what Trez (Montrezl Harrell) is going through while he’s away, so when he come back, people don’t have a lot to say. Pat went through the thing with his family. I went through my thing. We’re having real-life issues in the world,” he said.

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Instagram Launches Reels, Its TikTok Clone, in the US

The company is wooing creators with features they know and love, on a platform President Trump doesn’t publicly hate.

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Former Facebook Manager Attacks Black America: Obama was President So Stop The Victim Mentality, Says No To Reparations

A former Facebook manager posted a video on his YouTube channel blasting Black America, the George Floyd protesters and the call for reparations.

His name is Patrick Shyu, and according to his LinkedIn page, he was the tech lead for Facebook from 2018 to 2019. He was also tech lead at Google from 2014 to 2018 and prior to that, launched an apps and games company called Avalancia.com. Shyu claims he was fired from Facebook according to his channel, TechLead Show, which claims to have 30,000 followers.

“This isn’t about equality…people want privilege and you just start playing the victim and blaming other people,” he rants.

“You take on the victim mentality and start saying the world owes me something,” he continues before insisting that there have been other races in the U.S. who have suffered just as much, or if not more, than Black people.

“Black people have it pretty good,” he insists. “We had a Black president, in the NBA it’s all Black people, have these blockbuster movies like ‘Black Panther’ with an all-Black cast…”

He goes on to ask, where are the Asians, Native Americans, the Italians and why aren’t they dominating such fields as music, sports, film, like Black people?

When it comes to reparations, he remarks that “the Japanese were war prisoners” so they had it worse than Black people who were slaves.

He adds of slavery, “That was the past, let it be…now we want our children to pay for that.”

Mojola Balogun (@moebee2) posted Shyu’s video on Twitter and said, “This is a former Google and Facebook software engineering manager. These are his views on BLM and racism in the US. At top tech companies, Black people consistently make up less than 3 percent of engineers. Why is diversity and Black retention so low? Because these are our managers.”

Of course, Balogun’s tweet caught a lot of people’s attention.

JamesHRH (@jameshrh) responded, “This PoV is simplistic & quite common among highly analytical, engineering types. Bounded inputs. But your argument about cause is, frankly, just wrong. SV is 3 percent Black bc Black students are 4 percent of engineering graduates: https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf19304/digest/field-of-degree-minorities That’s where you start the fix.”

Kristine (Sato) Phillips (@ksato_phillips) tweeted, “#Facebook is comprised of managers just like him. They also come in white female form as well. I wrked there in HR for 3 yrs & was racially discriminated & harassed to the point where I had to file a workers comp claim & now have chronic #PTSD. FB only has 1.5 percent in tech roles”

This article was originally written by Ann Brown for The Moguldom Nation.

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Kentucky Restaurant Owner Says Black Lives Matter is Using Mafia Tactics

A Louisville, Kentucky, restaurant owner is accusing local Black Lives Matter activists of threats and mafia tactics after demanding downtown business owners hire Black employees.

According to The Hill, several business owners in the city’s NuLu district received a list of demands which included hiring Black workers to fill a minimum of 23% of positions. The list also demands a minimum of 23% of purchases of inventory to be made from Black retailers and mandatory diversity and inclusion training twice a year.

Fernando Martinez, owner of La Bodeguita de Mima, said after a protest on July 24 protesters told him he “better put [the list of demands] on the door so your business is not f—ed with.”

“There comes a time in life that you have to make a stand and you have to really prove your convictions and what you believe in,” Martinez wrote in a Facebook post. “… All good people need to denounce this. How can you justified (sic) injustice with more injustice?”

Members of the Cuban community and friends of the restaurant rallied in support of the restaurant Sunday afternoon.

Activist Phelix Crittenden, who works with the local Black Lives Matter chapter, said the list wasn’t meant to be a threat but intended to draw attention to the displacement of Black residents after a housing project was demolished in the early 2000s.

Like many areas that have gone through gentrification — such as Oakland, Brooklyn, and Atlanta, — the project was replaced with mixed-income housing, with only 41 of the 635 displaced families returning.

“NuLu is flourishing,” Crittenden told The Hill. “To see that literal line in the sand, as soon as you cross the street, it’s very disturbing. NuLu doesn’t reflect the community they sit in and claim to incorporate and serve.”

The Black Lives Matter movement has seen a resurgence of protests and demands of action after the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.

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A New Hotline Offers Free Anonymous Support for Gamers

The Games and Online Harassment Hotline launched Tuesday as a resource for anyone to talk about the emotional issues that emerge all over the industry.

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An '80s File Format Enabled Stealthy Mac Hacking

The now-patched vulnerability would have let hackers target Microsoft Office using Symbolic Link—a file type that hasn't been in common use in over 30 years.

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Cameroon attack: ‘It will mark my spirit for the rest of my life’

The killing of 22 people, including many children, inspired artist Kobe Williams to use sand for art.

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Your Income Predicts How Well You Can Socially Distance

America's rich used to move around more than the poor. When Covid landed, that flipped: The wealthy now work remotely, while essential workers toil.

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Can Killing Cookies Save Journalism?

A Dutch public broadcaster got rid of targeted digital ads—and its revenues went way up.

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Inside the Courthouse Break-In Spree That Landed Two White Hat Hackers in Jail

When two men were hired to break into Iowa judicial buildings, they thought it was just another physical security audit—until they were charged with burglary.

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How to Automatically Build and Configure Custom Docker Images with Dockerfile – Part 3

This tutorial will concentrate on how to build a custom Docker image based on Ubuntu with Apache service installed. The whole process will be automated using a Dockerfile. Docker images can be automatically built

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How to Install, Run and Delete Applications Inside Docker Containers – Part 2

Following the previous Docker article, this tutorial will discuss how to save a Docker container into a new image, remove a container, and run an Nginx web server inside a container. Requirements How to

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Coronavirus: Bringing Covid-19 news to Senegal's deaf community

Student Naomie Koffie's summaries of the news in sign language have won praise from the president.

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Install Docker and Learn Basic Container Manipulation in CentOS and RHEL 8/7 – Part 1

In this 4-article series, we will discuss Docker, which is an open-source lightweight virtualization tool that runs at top of Operating System level, allowing users to create, run and deploy applications, encapsulated into small

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Marcel – A More Modern Shell for Linux

Marcel is a new shell. It is similar to traditional shells in many ways, but it does a few things differently: Piping: All shells use pipes to send a text from the output of

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How to Install Security Updates in Ubuntu

One of the easiest ways to protect your Ubuntu systems is by keeping up to date software on them. Therefore applying updates frequently is an important part of maintaining secure systems. In this article,

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Ta-Nehisi Coates to guest edit Vanity Fair September issue

The best-selling author is working with the editorial and creative teams on a special issue that will explore art and activism in America.

Renowned journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates has been tapped to guest edit the September issue of Vanity Fair.

“There’s no one better suited than Ta-Nehisi to illuminate this urgent moment in American history—to answer the question, why is this time different?” said the publication’s editor in chief Radhika Jones. “We are honored to collaborate with him on this project, bringing together the writers, artists, and icons whose work pushes us toward a more just world.”

Coates, a best-selling author, is working with the editorial and creative teams to oversee every process of the production for a special issue that will explore art and activism in America, per Vanity Fair. 

Read More: HBO to adapt Ta-Nehisi Coates’ ‘Between the World and Me’

“I’m honored to be partnering with Radhika and the entire Vanity Fair staff on this project,” said Coates. “Equally, I’m humbled that so many of this country’s best writers and artists have agreed to participate. The moment is too big for any one of us to address alone.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates will guest-edit V.F.’s September issue—a special edition exploring art, activism, and power in 21st-century America. The issue will also feature more than 40 prominent creators, including Ava DuVernay, Bomani Jones, Jesmyn Ward, and more. https://t.co/w3EZMifCY9

— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) August 4, 2020

The issue features more than 40 influencers and artists, including Ava DuVernay, Zerina Akers, Jason Bolden, Quil Lemons and more.

In related news, a stage production of Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” his prize winning book about racism and police violence, is being adapted by HBO for a special this fall.

An earlier report on theGRIO noted that the program will feature readings from “Between the World and Me” and will be directed by Apollo Theater Executive Producer Kamilah Forbes.

“I’ve been working with Kamilah for almost as long as I’ve been a writer,” Coates said in a statement. “I can think of no one better to put ‘Between the World and Me’ on screen and no better home for it than HBO.”

Coates’ book, published in 2015, is structured as an open letter to his adolescent son about what to expect as a Black person living in the United States.

The September issue of Vanity Fair hits newsstands September 1.

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“Junior republics,” a unique concept in the history of American childhood

Around 1900, the famed Baedeker’s travel guide began listing a new tourist sight in Freeville, New York: the “George Junior Republic,” a miniature United States run by kids.

The invention of philanthropist William R. George, the “junior republic” was mostly occupied by impoverished or immigrant teenagers from New York City, acting as politicians, judges, police officers, journalists, and other workers, in their own separate civic world. George thought this would instill American democratic values in Freeville’s young residents.

“This interesting experiment seems to work well, and a visit to Freeville rivals in sociological interest that to Ellis Island,” the Baedeker’s guide stated.

Indeed, “George’s idea caught on like wildfire,” says MIT Professor Jennifer Light. Soon junior republics were springing up around America, with modified versions introduced into schools, playgrounds, and settlements. In an era when popular entertainment included “living villages” — reconstructions of settings from Cairo to Native American encampments, complete with their inhabitants — Americans were enchanted by the concept of a participatory virtual experience of adult life for kids.

Now the junior republic movement is the subject of a new book by Light, “States of Childhood: From the Junior Republic to the American Republic, 1895-1945,” published this month by the MIT Press. In it, Light — who is the head of MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society; the Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology; and a professor in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning — illuminates the history of this influential but forgotten movement and reminds us that, long before the invention of computing, Americans were intrigued by the educational possibilities of virtual worlds.

“George lived at a time when many kids were still part of the labor force, but reformers were pressing to send them to school and adult-supervised recreational activities instead,” Light says. “Junior republics offered a middle ground where they could role-play adult jobs inside child-only settings to prepare for their future lives.”

Double life

A reform-minded businessman working in New York City, George founded a “fresh air camp” in Freeville in 1890. Five years later, he gathered 150 young people to start the full junior republic, with limited adult supervision. The participants passed laws, debated women’s suffrage — George was ambivalent about the idea, but thought it was good for girls to anticipate it — and created an elaborate simulacrum of civic life that included a currency system and hotels like “the Waldorf,” named after New York City establishments. George cultivated attention, receiving what Light calls “overwhelmingly positive” reviews from journalists and public officials.

Freeville soon generated imitation villages — and even more related programs in schools. A friend of George’s named Wilson Gill developed “school republics” in New York City classrooms. These patterned student governments after local governments — with mayors, police, and street cleaning departments — and emphasized that what mattered most for kids was the role-playing experience, not their environment. That meant junior republics did not all have to be built anew, and many programs focused on creating a “double life” for kids to enjoy adult-like experiences while being protected from actual adult life.

This focus on role-playing also meshed with the ideas of some prominent thinkers. Psychologist G. Stanley Hall, an admirer of George, emphasized in his work how much children at play are imitative of adults; the famous educational theorist John Dewey, who advised Gill, was an advocate of “learning by doing.” All told, this constellation of views enhanced the popularity of the junior republic concept, in any physical form. If kids loved to pretend they were adults, the thinking went, why not turn their play into an educational experience?

“It was a challenge to get independent republics going,” Light observes, “so after 1900 the main trend was for schools and youth-serving institutions to integrate republics into their programming. They were incredibly popular.”

Over time, the junior republic idea kept evolving. Public officials, seeing kids’ efficacy as police, judges, and health inspectors inside child-only societies, subsequently organized junior police squads, junior juvenile courts, and junior sanitary inspectors — making city streets the settings for elaborate role-playing games in which kids arrested peers, adjudicated cases of juvenile delinquency, and kept their neighborhoods clean. During World War I, children in junior republics and related programs directed attention to the war effort, growing food, making hospital supplies, and sewing clothing for refugees. In the 1920s and 1930s, schools and police departments deployed children for traffic management near schools.

“We conventionally understand the transformation of childhood to be a straightforward story of kids being removed from the labor force and public life,” Light says. “But many of these programs assigned kids to keep order in public streets! And, there was tremendous economic value in role-playing of all kinds, even as people called it educational or recreational.”

Just as women’s work was (and is) often unpaid, Light notes, a similar dynamic unfolded with kids, well into the 20th century. “There are some interesting parallels to the digital economy as well. On platforms like Facebook it’s users who generate economic value, but we call this having fun rather than work, and don’t expect to get paid.”

Echoes today

The junior republic movement outlasted George (who died in 1936), but eventually lost momentum. As Light observes, the rise in material wealth in the U.S., a shift to consumer culture, and the expansion of mass media changed how children played.

“Film, radio, and television became increasingly central in kids’ lives,“ Light says. “Educators turned away from role-playing to adapt these newer technologies to their learning objectives.”

Today, Light says, “Nobody has heard of the junior republics.” Still, she notes, their legacy has endured: “Student newspapers, teen courts, Model United Nations, and Boys and Girls State — all these things had ties to the republic movement.”

And we still encounter discussions about simulation and learning that resemble those from a century ago, Light notes. Today those questions may surround things like online activites and the gamification of learning, but they are not new.

“It’s fascinating to discover a national conversation about the educational possibilities of role-playing and virtual worlds that’s 125 years old,” she says.

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Masks mandates have major impact, study finds

The research described in this article has been published as a working paper but has not yet been peer-reviewed by experts in the field.

Masks reduce the spread of Covid-19. But just how much of an effect do they have? A study co-authored by an MIT professor finds that if the U.S. had introduced a uniform national mask mandate for employees of public-facing businesses on April 1, the number of deaths in the U.S. would likely have been 40 percent lower on June 1.

“It is a very effective policy that includes relatively little economic disruption,” says Victor Chernozhukov, a professor in the Department of Economics and the Statistics and Data Science Center at MIT, and one of the authors of a paper detailing the study’s results. “We found it produced a considerable reduction in fatalities.”

Among other findings about the ongoing pandemic, drawing on the timing of state policy announcements, medical data, and Google mobility data, the study also shows that in the same timeframe, total Covid-19 cases in the U.S. would have likely been 80 percent higher without the stay-at-home orders implemented by the vast majority of states.

Additionally, the researchers evaluated how much the reduction in people’s movement — such as commuting and shopping trips — has followed specific state policies, and how much has stemmed from personal decisions to stay home more often. Their conclusion is that each factor accounts for about half of the decline in physical movement during the pandemic.

The paper, “Causal Impact of Masks, Policies, Behavior on Early Covid-19 Pandemic in the U.S.,” has been posted on the MedRxiv preprint server and as part of the  Covid Economics paper series by the Center for Economic Policy Research in London. The authors are Chernozhukov; Hiroyuki Kasahara, a professor at the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia; and Paul Schrimpf, an associate professor at the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia.

State variation creates room for study

To conduct the study, the economists took advantage of the fact that many U.S. states have implemented mask mandates at different times this year. By examining the before-and-after trajectories of cases and deaths, the study was able to identify the impact of the mask mandates.

To be sure, states also differ from each other in numerous ways that may influence the spread of Covid-19, including demographic factors such as the age and health of state residents; population density; additional state-level policies curbing the spread of Covid-19; and self-directed changes in population movement, in response to the pandemic. The study also accounted for the fact that Covid-19 testing increased during this time.

“The results hold up,” Chernozhukov says. “Controlling for behavior, information variables, confounding factors — the mask mandates are critical to the decline in deaths. No matter how we look at the data, that result is there.”

Specifically, after accounting for those circumstances, the researchers estimated that mask mandates would have produced a 40 percent reduction in deaths, nationally. That finding had a 90 percent confidence interval, which describes the likely range of estimated outcomes. That means mandated mask-wearing would have reduced U.S. fatalities by anywhere from 17,000 to 55,000 from April 1 through June 1.

The 80 percent reduction in cases the researchers attributed to stay-at-home orders also had a 90 percent confidence interval, implying that those policies reduced the overall number of cases by anywhere from 500,000 to 3.4 million between April 1 and June 1.

Accounting for movement

In assessing the relationship between public policy and the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, the researchers used Google Mobility Reports data to assess a related question: To what extent does people’s behavior respond to state policy mandates, or to what extent does it stem from “private” or self-directed decisions, based on other information about the public-health situation?

The Google data included mobility measures showing the prevalence of visits to public transit, grocery stores, other retail establishments, and workplaces. Ultimately — again based on the timing of changes in mobility patterns in relation to state-level stay-at-home directives — the researchers concluded that adherence to government mandates accounts for about half of the observed reductions in travel.

“We compute that the policies played an important role, but also that the private responses of people played an equally important role,” Chernozhukov says. “It’s a combination of the two.”

The researchers note that they could not measure the effects of all important policy decisions on the reduction of Covid-19 transmission. Consider the school closures that occurred almost nationwide in mid-March: Because the timing of that policy change was so similar across the country, it is very difficult to estimate its effects. If some states had left their schools open longer, it would be easier to quantify what difference the closures made.

“We couldn’t reliably answer that question with our data because the school closures happened almost in one week, with very little variation,” Chernozhukov observes.

However, given that many states have continued changing their policies after June 1, with significant variation in state-level mask policies and economic reopening plans, the scholars say they are continuing to study the subject, and plan to release more findings about it in the near future.

“We are continuing to analyze these issues, and we hope to produce another paper that focuses on the effects of mask mandates during the reopening phase,” Chernozhukov says.

from MIT News https://ift.tt/31hxYG4
via Gabe's Musing's