Reflections on U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky's determination to censor Mary Miller's comments invoking Adolf Hitler's name to make a point, that the later was "right on one thing: whoever has the youth has the future."
A classical definition of evil is that it is the perversion of good, much like rust on metal. It cannot exist without being a leach, has to have something wholesome to hook itself onto in order to twist. Thus, an evil person has to have attributes of goodness (power, intellect, position) in order to even exist and do damage to self and others. In Western tradition, the devil was said to have incredible attributes that he uses for destructive ends. Similarly for the villain Adolf Hitler: What he said was right insofar as it went, as many other writers have said the same truism using slightly different phrasing.
Ought not Ms. Schakowsky assume the high road and give respect to another in one's stated profession? Doubly so for a first-year elected official? How would Ms. Schakowsky like it if a professional linguist or philosopher parsed her mistakes with razor-sharp accuracy for the times she has erroneously overstated something in the past?
Adolf Hitler's evil regime hurt a huge swath of humanity. But so did Josef Stalin and others. Are all evil persons hereby off-limits to quote in order to press home a point? Just where does Ms. Schakowsky's censorship end? Had Ms. Miller quoted Stalin, would she be just as irate?
Lastly, the chilling effects of government officials censoring others when the latter are making a point is quite scary. As in the medical field, a doctor's unintended therapy's bad consequences can overtake the very good that was intended.
When I think of important topics to discuss, politically and socially, I think of censorship especially reflecting on its endless ability to generate controversy.
Can censorship be too much or too little? For me, it really depends.
Is censoring people and content on social media outlets going to be beneficial in the long run?
I am not one to condone violence, and I think extreme and violent hate speech should not be permitted on social media platforms.
Even though I agree with the First Amendment and understand that censorship can be contradictory to that, I think it is important to censor unnecessarily threatening speech on social media.
While we cannot censor all hate speech, because it is a protected right, there are times where I think that speech can go too far.
Radical speech that I believe deserved censorship could be seen through the recent ban on former President Donald Trump from a variety of social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, due to his involvement in the Capitol riots.
Right-winged supporters of Trump thought those bans were a violation of the First Amendment.
This is simply not true because social media platforms can censor whoever they please and there is not a limit. These social media platforms are private companies, making decisions of their own free will.
Social media platforms are not owned by the government, and there is no law that prevents these platforms from regulating their content. A Twitter account is not a First Amendment right.
According to USA Today, advocacy groups called for Marjorie Taylor Greene a recently elected Republican representative from Georgia who has been a controversial figure lately to be removed from Facebook for telling dangerous lies.
Civil rights and other advocacy groups told Facebook in a statement that it allowed Greene to exploit its platform for many years without taking any action.
Greene has made many controversial remarks on social media, including that the Sept. 11 attacks were all a hoax.
The Georgia representative also liked many controversial remarks on Facebook and has worn facemasks that said Trump Won and Free Speech.
Even though the House of Representatives voted to have Greene stripped of her committee assignments, how does that prevent her from spreading misinformation?
Greene was temporarily suspended from Twitter but did that help anything? While she may have different political views than me, I think the lies she has spread through tweets and other social media platforms need to be removed because I believe her statements can be threatening and dangerous.
But is it necessary to censor everything? What should actually be censored and what is unnecessary?
Being censored isnt what we grew up on, but it was kind of forced upon us due to radical speech in the age of social media. While I agree that everyone's opinions are valid, some things said online are offensive and violent that they need to be censored.
The recent statement released by Penn States Black Caucus about the Zoom bombing during the spring Involvement Fair said anti-Semitic and white supremacist language was used as well as racial and homophobic slurs.
Penn State officials have condemned the Zoom bombing and an investigation is still ongoing. But does taking action against these criminals prevent anything from happening in the future?
According to Black Caucuss statement, these kinds of hateful attacks happen all the time in real life and online. Even though incidents like these have happened before and are still going on today, how can we aim for somewhat of a resolution?
I genuinely believe the Zoom bombing incident was disgusting, and while Penn State could not have anticipated it happening, I am glad there is an investigation that will hopefully bring those criminals to justice.
We can prevent some of these things from happening with a bit of censorship.
I dont think censoring everything is the answer to the worlds problems, but censoring violent, dangerous and discriminatory speech even though it is a right is the next step for productive politics and our social wellbeing as a whole.
If you're interested in submitting a Letter to the Editor, click here.
But on Monday night, social media app Clubhouse appeared to have been blocked in China just days after it became the go-to app for uncensored conversations on a host of sensitive issues banned on other platforms.
By Monday evening, many Clubhouse users in mainland China reported that when they tried to log onto the app, they received a red error message showing "a secure connection to the server cannot be made."
On Tuesday, the hashtag "Clubhouse" was also censored on Chinese social media platform Weibo, where it had been trending. People with mainland phone numbers reported no longer being able to receive text messages from Clubhouse, in effect blocking them from joining as invitation and verification codes are sent to a mobile phone to register a new account.
On Clubhouse, several chat rooms soon sprang up to discuss the blocking of the app. They were joined by hundreds of users, including some who said they were based in mainland China. Greatfire.org, a group which monitors internet censorship in China, also confirmed that the app had been blocked.
The ban, however, came as little surprise. With its political discussions drawing so much interest from mainland China, many users and observers expected it was only a matter of time before the app was blocked. While the censorship might deter new users, it is unclear how many existing users will be kept off the platform.
Susan Liang, a 31-year-old from Shenzhen, said she would continue to join Clubhouse chats on sensitive topics via a VPN because she didn't want to give up the frank and open discussions.
"It is too rare an opportunity. Everyone has lived under the Great Firewall for so long, but on this platform, we can talk about anything," she said. "It's like someone drowning, and can finally breathe in a large gulp of air."
But Liang expects some other users might be discouraged by having to use a VPN, as that technology has been increasingly targeted by Chinese government crackdowns. Any VPN not approved by the government is illegal.
Benjamin Ismail, an expert with Apple Censorship a project run by GreatFire.org said some users would be discouraged by the block but "it might not kill the app immediately" in China.
Popular political chat rooms
While the app first became popular in China among tech industry circles, its political chat rooms quickly drew newcomers eager for release from the tight censorship at home. As it grew in popularity, many Chinese also joined to discuss topics such as culture, lifestyle and celebrity gossip. But the space for free, inclusive political discussions was one of the rarest qualities of the app for Chinese-speaking communities.
One chat room hosted by Taiwan-based blogger Zola was running non-stop for almost 120 hours, joined by Chinese speakers in different time zones.
Another popular chat room invited young people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait to share their views and personal stories. The discussions started with lighthearted subjects but soon turned to politics, with users comparing the political systems of China and Taiwan and debating the prospects of unification.
Started Friday evening, the room soon attracted hundreds of people, and reached the upper limit of 5,000 listeners around midnight, according to Tan.
Several Han Chinese from Xinjiang also shared their experience of the security crackdown. A number of overseas Chinese broke down in tears describing the sense of guilt they feel over the alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang, while others defended Beijing's policies, and questioned accounts of abuse from the region.
Other users and outside observers expressed skepticism over how representative the groups engaging in these political discussions are of broad Chinese public opinion, pointing to the self-selecting nature of the participants, as well as the barriers to using Clubhouse itself which prevent it from being a completely public app.
"Political topics on the platform are not discussed as rationally as other topics like technology or culture," the paper said.
But even before the app was blocked, there were potential security concerns for users within mainland China. Accounts are also tied to users' mobile phone numbers, which in China are registered under owners' real names. Furthermore, it would be a relatively simple task for the Chinese authorities to infiltrate open chat groups on issues such as Xinjiang and record what is being said for future use.
Badiucao, a Chinese dissident artist based in Australia, said some Chinese users, especially those within China, might not have realized the potential risk before speaking out critically against the government's policies, even semi-anonymously.
"If they were typing their opinions out, they might have the time to think it over," he said. "But when they spoke in these real-time chat rooms, they might not be able to hold their tongue."
TikTok, the video-sharing social network, drove a lot of interest from consumers last year. It also piqued their interest in Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), according to new research.
The research by Brooklyn, NY-based security advisors Security.org found that interest in VPNs was directly correlated with newsworthy events.
The company measured the amount of web traffic in a day compared to the average web traffic of a week prior to the date and correlated this with significant events during 2020.
VPN technology is used for various reasons. It can be used to create a secure channel to communicate with the workplace protecting sensitive business information, to bypass government restrictions, or to hide activity from Internet Service Providers amongst others.
Almost one in 10 US adult VPN users cite whistleblowing, activism, or bypassing government or organization restrictions as a reason for use of VPN technology.
Security.org's research showed that interest in VPN technology tends to increase significantly whenever there is a newsworthy event that impacts travel, or internet usage, or impacts working from home environments.
On March 22020, the first deaths due to COVID-19 were reported, leading to an increase in VPN interest of 99 percent compared with average web traffic the week before..
On March 24 2020 when the postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics was announced, there was a 78 percent increase in consumers' VPN interest.
This was due to people looking to secure their at-home networks for the possibility of stay-at-home orders and working from home due to the pandemic.
On August 13, average consumer interest in VPNs increased by 74 percent when President Trump proposed a ban on TikTok in August 2020. Interest also spiked by 34% on September 20th - the day the TikTok ban was said to start.
When internet censorship is threatened, average consumer interest in VPNs increases, and consumers flock to buy routers like the GL.iNet Beryl router which has VPN software built in to the router.
A VPN will allow people to access the internet in countries where restrictions are in place. Countries with levels of internet censorship can bypass firewalls to get to otherwise-restricted content.
As restrictions on free content continue to grow, I think that more and more of us will switch to VPN technology. We can then ensure that we have the freedom to access the content we want to and to communicate as if there were no restrictions at all wherever we happen to live.
I would like to respond to Larry McDermott regarding freedom of speech and censorship.
It is a good idea to be aware of laws regarding slander and libel; one can get into a lot of financial trouble with careless or reckless speech. That being said I believe he should refresh his memory of the content of The Bill of Rights, First Amendment. Our Founders clearly valued freedom of religion and freedom of speech above all other Rights. It is also worth remembering that our Founders clearly understood that our Rights derived from our Creator.
We should write and speak as our founders intended, with courage, with forethought and intelligence. We should not look over our shoulders before we speak, being in fear of a government and a legal system that are more and more intimidating every day.
Censorship is always a tricky subject. Our nation has engaged in it during war time. It has been handled by the government and has always been regarded as a necessary evil to achieve our victory. Newspapers have used editorial discretion in publishing letters but there used to be newspapers of differing political viewpoints so that failure to be published in one did not necessarily preclude publishing in another.
Worth noting is that the phone company has never censored phone calls. The phone company has assisted law enforcement with wiretaps but has never on its own authority censored. Now we have communication giants, Facebook and Twitter deciding who can use their services and what their users are allowed to communicate. If FB and Twitter think individuals are a criminal threat, they should certainly contact appropriate law enforcement but otherwise it is not their business to control communication. My personal opinion is that they are monopolies which should be broken up as Bell Telephone was.
We Americans should remember that we are a free people, our problems come from an overbearing govt and people who value security over freedom.
You know that internet censorship is a real problem when the President of the United States has his social media account cancelled while a Middle Eastern dictator can post whatever he likes. Or when an emerging social media company is de-platformed by its web hosting service. Or when a Big Tech executive must be hauled before a panel of United States senators and lambasted for not allowing a major publication to post an article on its social media account because its critical of a particular presidential candidate.
Countless conservatives have had their social media accounts suspended or canceled by the predominately left-wing employees who make up Americas high tech elite.
How is it that America, where the right to free speech is the first item enshrined in the Bill of Rights, has gotten to the point where internet oligarchs have the power to silence someone for their political beliefs, under the guise of hate speech? It seems as though conservatives are facing a David vs. Goliath battle with Big Tech.
Well, NFRWarrior Sisters, we all know who won that battle.
With your voice and your wallet, you can let the titans of Big Tech know that censorship is unacceptable in a free society. We live in a nation that has allowed people such as themselves to become enormously successful, but it should not be at the expense of our rights. We can make a difference. Heres how.
1. Use Social Media to Call Out Tech Executives When They Censor a Conservative These companies - and all businesses - monitor their social media accounts regularly for customer feedback and are often quick to respond to complaints.
2. Utilize Alternative Social Media Platforms Competition is good for business, and Big Tech companies need to know that their customers can go elsewhere if they find their business practices unacceptable.
3. Own Stock in a Big Tech Company? Participate in their Annual Shareholder Meeting Even just owning one share of company stock grants you a seat at their annual shareholder meetings where investors can submit questions to their executives about their policies and practices.
4. Engage Rather Than Boycott Its better to engage the company as a continuing customer. If youre not a customer, then youre not on their radar, and the company therefore has no incentive to change their policies.
5. Support Small Businesses and Shop Locally Big Tech retailers have made record earnings during the COVID-19 pandemic while small businesses are struggling to survive. Please consider that when shopping online.
6. Always Keep Your Comments Polite and to the Point Youre more likely to get a response if you maintain a calm and professional attitude.
Technology is an important part of all our lives. Like any consumer, we want value for our money. Lets send a reminder to Big Tech that the right to speak ones mind is the cornerstone of freedom and as such, we as a free people are willing to take our business elsewhere.
The ongoing drive to impose online political censorship of the left has become clearer over the past week following remarks by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the social media platform was being depoliticized.
Speaking during a fourth-quarter earnings call with investors on January 28, Zuckerberg said the company was working on methods to reduce the amount of political content in News Feed. He said that Facebook was continuing to fine-tune how this works and we plan to keep civic and political groups out of recommendations for the long term and we plan to expand that policy globally.
While individuals, pages and groups have been ostensibly blocked, banned or deleted for violating community standards in the past, Zuckerberg said the ongoing efforts to turn down the temperature and discourage divisive conversation and communities would include groups that we may not want to encourage people to join even if they dont violate our policies.
Zuckerbergs remarks were in part a response to a letter he received on January 21 from Democratic Representatives Tom Malinowski of New Jersey and Anna Eshoo of California that blamed Facebook for presenting users with content most likely to reinforce their existing political biases, especially those rooted in anger, anxiety, and fear, and for using algorithms that undermine our shared sense of objective reality, intensify fringe political beliefs, facilitate connections between extremist users.
Malinowski and Eshoo praised Facebooks decision before the 2020 elections to stop recommending that users join political and social issue groups and denounced the lifting of these restrictions before the Georgia run-off election, which caused a spike in partisan political content and a decline in authoritative news sources in users newsfeeds.
While it may appear that Zuckerberg and the Democrats are responding to the storming of the US Capitol on January 6 by a fascist mob incited by Donald Trump in a coup attempt aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 elections, their choice of words is significant. They do not refer to the far-right, fascists, neo-Nazis, militia groups and others who include in their ranks leading members of the Republican Party, law enforcement officers and active and retired US military representatives.
The reference to divisive conversation, turning down the temperature, fringe political beliefs and extremist users, make it clear that the effort to shut down political dialogue on social media is aimed at silencing left-wing and socialist politics and preventing the working class from using Facebook to organize its struggles against the capitalist system.
In comments to Politico on January 29, Rep. Malinowski elaborated on his vision of political censorship when he said did not care about how the depoliticization of Facebook would impact political organizing of progressive and left groups on the platform, as long as these new rules apply to everybody equally. He added, Access to Facebook for campaigns is a nice thing to have, but it's not necessary for democracy to function. There are a lot of ways to reach voters.
A similar line of argument was advanced by the right-wing Wall Street J ournal in a major article published on January 31 entitled, Facebook Knew Calls for Violence Plagued Groups, Now Plans Overhaul.
After the Journal makes the lying claim that the Capitol riot was the product of hyper-partisanship, the article goes on to say that the proliferation of extremist groups on Facebook was to blame. Instead of focusing on a defeated President seeking to overthrow the US constitution by mobilizing a fascist mob against Congress, the Journal presents the views of Nina Jankowicz, a social media researcher at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., who wrote that Facebook groups were destroying American democracy.
That the real target of the effort to shut down Facebook groups is the political left comes out when the Journal says Facebook conducted an investigation in August 2020 of US groups tied to mercenary and hyperpartisan entities using platform tools to build large audiences. Most of the Groups were on the right end of the political spectrum, but Suburban Housewives Against Trump appeared near the top of the charts, too, the August presentation said. Conservative or liberal, the Groups shared a common thread: They had harnessed passionate super-users and Facebook recruitment tools to achieve viral growth.
Facebooks reduction of politics in the news feed policy has been identified as a far-reaching attack on democratic rights by free speech advocate Tim Karr, senior director of strategy and communications at the advocacy group Free Press. Karr told Politico that Facebook should be able to address concerns about amplification of the far-right without hurting civic-minded groups.
Facebook has the ability to fix its recommendation algorithm to exclude white supremacist, militia and conspiracy groups still in its midst, and to do it without harming well-intentioned organizations that are using its platform to organize, Karr said. This isnt rocket science.
It could not be clearer that the entire US ruling establishment is attempting to utilize the events of January 6 as justification for shutting down progressive, left-wing, anti-capitalist and socialist political organizations and publishers on social media platforms such as Facebook. The subsequent shutdown of groups, pages and accountsincluding the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) at the University of Michigan and leading members of the Socialist Equality Party in the USby Facebook that began on January 22 is part of this strategy.
Fear of growing opposition in the working class to government policiesespecially the response to the COVID-19 pandemicand against the rise of the fascist right is a critical aspect of the plans to shut down political discussion on social media and block algorithms from promoting left and socialist groups in the news feed of users.
Workers and young people must demand that socialist groups and political discussion about the threat of fascist dictatorship on social media be defended. No confidence can be placed in the Democratic Party to do anything about the danger to democratic rights represented by the January 6 attempted coup by Donald Trump and his supporters in the Republican Party.
The way to defeat the far right is not by shutting down political dialogue online but by utilizing these tools as instruments in the struggle to educate and organize the international working class in the struggle against the capitalist systemthe source of the fascist menaceand for socialism on a world scale.
One of the most popular arguments to despise horror films and related genres in their most violent and explicit incarnations is that they can inspire atrocities in real life. It's a thought as old as the films with Lon Chaney and remains in force to this day: just remember all the controversy generated by Joker and the Death Wish remake before their premieres.
If we talk about extreme measures against extreme films, what happened in the United Kingdom during the Margaret Tatcher years is fundamental. The explosion of the video market in the eighties changed the way of watching cinema forever. "Children can rewind and watch those scenes over and over again," says a character in Censor, a film set precisely in those years, when 72 movies on video, called video nasties, caused mass hysteria and harsh censorship.
Censor, the debut feature by British filmmaker Prano Bailey-Bond, joins the long tradition of cinema about cinema, this time from a very particular point of view: that of the censors. Enid (Niamh Algar) is responsible for deciding which images should be cut from some slasher/cannibal movie or, depending on the case, if they should be banned. Not all of her colleagues are as strict, one of them, for example, quotes Un chien andalou to defend a scene where someone's eye is gouged out, which Enid wants to remove.
But let's not get confused, she always tries to do her job in the best way, with responsibility and objectivity. It's evident that she doesn't like this type of cinema, usually made by men and with women as the main victims. She ironically calls them "masterpieces."This doesn't mean that she wants to censor everything, her seriousness allows her to differentiate between over-the-top gore and more realistic violence.
Enid can't overcome a trauma from her past: when she was a child, her sister Nina disappeared while they were strolling in a forest. Enid suffered amnesia, preventing her from contributing to the recapitulation of the events. Confronting the reality that developments in the case had stagnated, her parents decided to stop waiting for a miraculous happy ending, accepting that they would never see Nina again. When they receive the newly-issued death certificate, the parents took the opportunity to move on, even though Enid was unwilling to accept the terrible ending. Guilt still overwhelms the protagonist.
Censor explores that moment when fiction affects reality... at least in appearance. Although Enid is not a filmmaker, she's pointed out as one of the responsible people when the hysteria grows because the press connects the characteristics of a real crime with one of the horror films within the film: Deranged, notorious for a sequence in which a murderer eats the face of his victim, a scene approved by Enid and another colleague.
Likewise, the protagonist's harsh past increasingly controls her head. Reality reminds her of the tragedy: the killer supposedly inspired by Deranged declares to have amnesia and, in the midst of the scandal, she falls prey to guilt again. Fiction evokes her sister: another film within the film, Don't Go in the Church, appears to be directly based on Nina's disappearance. Not to mention when, playing detective, she discovers Asunder, a forbidden video nasty that shares a director with Dont Go in the Church andfeatures an actress that looks like her sister.
Censor creates its own mythology. It mitxes real movies for example, sequences from Abel Ferrara's The Driller Killer with fictional titles: Cannibal Carnage, a banned tape that video stores rent clandestinely (there's an extremely funny interaction between Enid and a clerk), derives from the Italian subgenre led by Cannibal Holocaust. These details make noticeablethe director's taste for genre cinema of that time. It's quite enjoyable.
Like other similar contemporary films Knife + Heart, to name one Censor draws on the genre cinema that it's referencing, specifically the giallo style. Dream sequences and saturated colors represent Enid's mind and her downward spiral on screen. Censor intersperses reality with the oneiric, bordering on the nightmarish, playing with the link between the real and the fictitious.
The film explores how her protagonist goes deeper and deeper into the world of video nasties (she meets a producer, "acts" in the sequel to Don't Go in the Church), as well as real-life violence and horror. Censor doesn't fall into nonsense; everything is linked to a personal trauma and her conviction that the creators of Dont Go in the Church are true criminals that leads to delirium.
Reality and fiction, even though they have an undeniable connection, are not the same. Censor remarks on it on several occasions, similar to the Canadian 1980 filmDeadline. We hear, for instance, that the amnesic killer didn't even know about the video nasty Deranged!
In its memorable and brutal climax, the separation is marked by the change in the aspect ratio of the images. At that point Enid no longer distinguishes. And when she finally seems to wake up from that "trance," she prefers fiction over the horrors of reality and imagines herself as a vengeful movie heroine.
She prefers the miraculously happy ending. She even believes that the demonization of video nasties worked, that they were all banned and consequently the evils of British society eradicated. Her last fantasy is a poignant and satirical comment that works for that time and today.
A version in Spanish of this review was also published at Cinema Inferno
That is all right. I had them on my list, too, a prominent public figure joked after learning that he had been blacklisted by a political opponent.
Who said this? Was it Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., after Simon and Schuster canceled his book deal because he challenged the Electoral College results from Pennsylvania, even though Democrats had similarly objected in 2001, 2005, and 2017?
Was it a Trump administration official responding to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs call to blacklist and deny them future employment?
Was it black conservative radio host Larry Elder after Hollywood censored his documentary Uncle Tom, whose IMDB rating of 8.9 surpasses 9 of the past 10 Oscar winners for Best Documentary?
How about someone responding to veteran journalist Katie Courics call to deprogram Trump supporters?
Or My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, after Twitter banned him along with thousands of conservatives, including former President Donald Trump? Or Newmax reporter Emerald Robinsons response to CNNs call to cancel Newsmax?
No. That is all right. I had them on my list, too, was the response of David Low, a prominent British cartoonist, when he learned in 1945 that his name was one of 2,300 Britons on Adolf Hitlers blacklist. Had Hitler captured England, the Gestapo was to arrest those on the list.
No sector of English society or political opinion was spared from Hitlers British blacklist. The Gestapo targeted Jews in England, members of Parliament, executives and employees of more than 170 British firms, dozens of university professors, members of 400 social clubs and organizations, and journalists at 35 media outlets.
Censorship and blacklisting are the hallmarks of an unfree society. The Third Reich seized power in Germany in 1933 and immediately began controlling newspapers, radio, and films through censorship. Books were banned and burned.
Censorship was also a tactic used by Soviet Russia. When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia in 1917, one of their first acts was to issue the Decree on Press to ban articles critical of their authority. Based on real-life experiences with censorship and other horrors in communist Russia, George Orwell wrote his book 1984 in 1949 to warn the West against totalitarianism. Today Chinas Communist Party uses the Great Firewall to block news and online information from its citizens.
Todays speech punishments by Twitter, Facebook, Hollywood, corporations, and book publishers against Americans are obviously not equal to the mass casualty horrors of totalitarian governments. A direct comparison is not the point here. Its to point out that certain tools are hallmarks of repressive societies that a society that aspires to be free should not emulate, even faintly.
Censorship and blacklisting are serious unjust cultural acts that increasingly filter Americans into second-class citizens based on their political viewpoints. The censorship and blacklisting that we are seeing in America right now is viewpoint discrimination. Censorship and blacklisting need to be fully rejected by American society before they become accepted cultural norms that make even worse injustices likely and more possible.
It was censorship that gave birth to free-speech advocacy in America and fostered the conditions for our nations unique First Amendment, which legally protects unpopular speech. After his brother was thrown in jail for publishing a newspaper in 1722the new social media of the eraBenjamin Franklin wrote a series of articles under a fake name, Silence Dogood.He had to hide his identity because he didnt truly have free speech.
His wise words are fitting for todays threats: Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
Censorship and blacklisting are narrowing Americans liberties and subduing the freeness of our nation today. We must hold the line and stop it now before the current climate of fear degrades into an even worse social and government climate in which previously unimagined restrictions become possible.
How can you help stop this vicious cycle from degrading further and refuse to do as you are told to do? Watch Larry Elders Uncle Tom. Sign up for updates from Hawleys new publisher (and one of mine), Regnery Publishing.
Use alternatives to Facebook, Twitter, and Google, such as Clouthub and DuckDuckGo. Encourage tolerance for different viewpoints at your workplace and hire conservatives. To counter Courics call to de-program, download, read, and share the 1776 Report. All these and more are strategies all of us can use to exercise our societys weakening free speech muscles.
WHEN THE news finally comes it triggers a range of emotions. Most people told when and where they will receive their first shot of covid-19 vaccine speak of their relief, delight, even their elation. One person danced around the room, another screamed a bit, yet another felt giddy. It feels, says one, that my lifes about to begin. But for some, there are other emotions in play: concern, fear, even anger.
Your browser does not support the
Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.
Almost as soon as biomedical researchers began working on vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid-19, people concerned with public health began to worry about vaccine hesitancy. It can sound trivial, even foolish, but it regularly costs lives. Hesitancy is a large part of the reason that few young Japanese women get themselves vaccinated against human papillomavirus, and thus are more likely than vaccine-accepting young women elsewhere to contract cervical cancer. Widespread hesitancy during worldwide campaigns against covid-19 could cost many lives, both among the hesitant and among their fellow citizens. Scott Gottlieb, who led Americas drug regulator, the FDA, from 2017 to 2019 (and who is also on the board of Pfizer, a vaccine-maker) argued in a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that the main challenge to vaccination efforts in America could soon move from supply and logistics to individual reluctance to be vaccinated.
In Britain, a country generally quite keen on vaccination, about 15% of those offered a covid jab so far have refused it. With 13m mostly elderly Britons vaccinated as of February 10th, that suggests almost 2m people who could have been vaccinated have not been. When, eventually, social distancing measures are reduced, those people will remain vulnerable to infection. What is more, that level of refusal, combined with the fact that children are not being vaccinated and that new variants of the virus are less tractable to vaccination, means the country may never see the herd immunity that population-wide vaccination programmes tend to aim forthe state in which people neither previously infected nor vaccinated are so few and far between that the virus is hard put to find them. And the level of refusal could grow in months to come; younger people, perhaps because they feel in less danger, seem less keen on the vaccine.
Hesitancy is promoted and spread by a hard core of proselytising anti-vaxxer voices whose misinformation and downright lies about microchips, infertility and damage to DNA have spread to the four quarters of the internet. They have been helped by large online misinformation campaigns run by China and Russia seeking to undermine confidence in Western vaccines. But hesitancy is a broader and more complex phenomenon than that. Some are worried, not opposed; some reject specific vaccines while accepting various others; some are adamant, some persuadable, some, in the end, willing to get vaccinated despite their reservations. People interpret vaccines in the light of their own experiences, relationships and trust in authority. Such subtleties make the molecular biology behind the vaccines seem simple in comparison.
There is nothing new about this complex set of fears. To introduce anything other than food into your body or blood is always likely to be an emotionally freighted experience. When Edward Jenner, a British doctor, began vaccinating people with cowpox to defend them against smallpox in the late 1790s there was immediate disquiet. Critics said the idea of vaccination was repulsive and ungodly; cartoonists showed people who had been vaccinated sprouting cows heads. But elite medical and political opinion fell in line. Thomas Jefferson was a fan. Napoleon vaccinated his armies, writing that Jenner...has been my most faithful servant in the European campaigns. In Sweden vaccination was compulsory in 1803, in Bavaria in 1807; both countries saw smallpox rates plummet.
In 1853 vaccination was made compulsory for all infants in England and Wales with parents who failed to comply liable to a fine or imprisonment. Opposition to this infringement on personal liberty promptly grew, even more so after the law was strengthened in the 1870s.
Victorian anti-vaxxers spread misinformation eerily similar to todays. In 1878 the National Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Reporter told its readers that vaccination could cause diseases including diphtheria, abscesses, bronchitis and convulsions. On the whole, it wrote, it is a greater evil to humanity than smallpox itself! In echoes of todays concerns about Big Pharma, the Reporter speculated that compulsory vaccination was a plot by the medical establishment and averred that faithful obedience to the sacred laws of health would provide superior protection. It is hard to put a sliver of organic carrot between this sanctimony and the notion that nasty viral pathogens can be warded off by raising children naturally and using alternative medicines.
Nevertheless smallpox vaccination became near universal. And then in 1977, 177 years after Benjamin Waterhouse, a Harvard professor and correspondent of Jeffersons, published his pamphlet A Prospect of Exterminating the Small-pox, it became obsolete. The disease was wiped out. No other human disease has yet followed it to oblivion, though polio is close. But many death tolls have been slashed.
Vaccinations have become the most successful public health measure in history. About 85% of one-year-olds around the world now receive all three doses of the combination vaccine that protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis. Public support for this is high; nine in ten people worldwide think vaccines are important for children. But there are variations. Support for childhood vaccination is lower in North America, Europe and Russia than in Africa, Asia and South America, and there are pockets where it dips dangerously. What is more, the success of long-running childhood vaccination campaigns does not necessarily translate into acceptance of novel vaccines for adults.
Towards the last quarter of 2020 polls on vaccine hesitancy spurred mounting concern among public health officials. In September a significant number of British people said they were unlikely to get one. A month later, in a STAT-Harris Poll in America, only 58% said they woulddown from 69% a month previously. Though Britain bounced back, other countries have seen worrying drops since (see chart 1).
But such polls come with caveats. One is what psychologists describe as the intention-behaviour gap; humans are sufficiently complicated that what they say and what they do can be very different things. A second is that polls are snapshots of a process in flux. Vaccine hesitancy is extremely fluid in time and space, subject to all manner of influences. A poll is an instantaneous map of temperatures, when what you need is a moving forecast.
One of the main vaccine-weather forecasters is Heidi Larson, a professor of anthropology, risk and decision science at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is also the founding director of the Vaccine Confidence Project, which monitors global concerns about vaccines. Looking at her latest survey of sentiment toward covid-19 vaccines in 32 countries Dr Larson sees storms brewing in Lebanon and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)two countries in which the political climate is tense.
Hesitancy in the DRC might seem surprising; novel vaccines recently helped quash an outbreak of Ebola there. But Dr Larson says that unlike Ebola, which people have had to live with for almost half a century, covid-19 is new and brings new distrust. Matre Donat, a lawyer in Kolwezi, a mining city in the south of the country, bears out that case. Here everyone thinks covid is a scam, he says, dreamed up by the whites, by Americans.
Dr Larson worries about this because she has found that, in general, concerns about vaccines that arise in Africa spread much more quickly than in higher-income countries: It is quite explosive. Last year a comment by a French doctor about using Africa as a testing ground for vaccines spread like wildfire across Francophone Africa. He apologised, but the damage was done. There are now reports of rising hesitancy, at least partly tied to trust in government, in South Africa and Nigeria, where plans are being laid to start vaccination.
Just as there is variation over time, so there is in space. Even in countries where there is a rush to get vaccinated, hesitancy can crop up in particular communities, particularly in marginalised groups: some groups distrust state authoritysometimes, given the history of medical experimentation, for sound historical reasons; some seek spiritual rather than temporal guidance on how to live their lives.
Naively, one might believe that education would be enough to change this. It is not. Take the reluctance of some American health-care workers to get vaccinated. This is not down to a lack of information or a failure to understand what vaccines offer. It can often reflect a lack of faith in their employers. As in many other parts of the world, nurses, long-term-care staff and others in similar jobs report feeling badly treated over the past year. They may have been put at risk of covid, or fallen ill, or struggled to obtain protective equipment. They will have seen a lot of death. They will mostly have done so on low pay. And they have either not succumbed to the disease or have survived it. This all disinclines them towards accepting the vaccines that their employers now want them to take.
A December survey of 16,000 employees of a health system in Pennsylvania revealed concerns about unknown risks and side effects. At the nadir 45% said they either did not want the vaccine at all or wanted to wait (see chart 2). One-fifth did not trust the rushed regulatory review. Others worried they were not actually at high enough risk for infection or disease. Hard refusals, though, soon began to wane.
In general, a feeling that the government is cutting corners seems to drive hesitancy up. When Donald Trump appeared to be trying to rush approval along before the election Americans became more hesitant. Concerns have risen in Indonesia and India at the same time as there have been controversies about aspects of government vaccination programmes.
Another factor in hesitancy is peer-group sentiment transmitted through social networks. Parents who choose not to vaccinate children have a much higher percentage of people in their social networks with similar views. The same will be true of people who intend not to get vaccinated against covid-19.
Understanding how the hesitancy weather changes offers ways to modify it. Some are well known to advertisers. People are encouraged by the sight of happy people eagerly lining up to receive vaccines, or by politicians, royalty and celebrities rolling up their sleeves. They may also respond to the notion that something is in scarce supply. Since scares about the H1N1 flu vaccine in 2009 the French have been very dubious about vaccination. But since realising that their country has few doses to offer, their opinions have been changing. To refuse is one thing; to be denied another. Marine Le Pen, a right-wing nationalist who had previously said she would wait and see before getting vaccinated now says she will do so, a decision which is expected to be influential (and which will better position her to attack Emmanuel Macron on the issue in next years election campaign).
The bad news about changing the weather in this sort of way is that it can quickly change back again. Vinay Nair, boss of Lightful, a tech firm that works in the charity sector to enhance its use of technology, says that because vaccine sentiment is dynamic, so the response to it has to be too.
It is also important to reach vaccine-hesitant communities directly rather than through the media. In 2017 Patricia Stinchfield, a nurse practitioner at the Childrens Minnesota Hospital, told Modern Healthcare, a magazine, about intervening this way among Somali-Americans in Minneapolis after their under-vaccinated community suffered a serious measles outbreak. We spend a great deal of time meeting imams in the community and ask them to partner with us. Even with the help of social-media campaigns aimed at younger parents, it is slow, painstaking work. But it is effective.
Unfortunately, help through social media is far from the norm. The Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a not-for-profit group, is tracking 425 anti-vaccine accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube that it says spread covid misinformation; they have 59.2m followers between them, and the number is rising rapidly. The organisation says that while a minority of these anti-vaxxers act on the basis of profoundly held beliefs, about four-fifths have a financial motive as well, or instead. Half are entrepreneurs with businesses that promote alternative or oddball remedies such as homeopathic immunisation or a bleach nebuliser with a 100% success rate. The other half are conspiracists who profit from the online-advertising revenue their sites attract and the merchandise they sell.
The work of these groups is a lot easier than that of public-health workers: fear and uncertainty are easier to foster than trust and confidence, and inaction easier to encourage than action. In October last year representatives of the CCDH were present at a private online conference held by influential opponents to vaccination who, it says, saw a historic opportunity to reach larger numbers of supporters, and drive long-term vaccine hesitancy. They outlined three basic tools with which to do so: sow doubt about the seriousness of the threat posed by covid-19; spread concern about the safety of the vaccines; stress the untrustworthiness of experts.
These three basic messages will be adapted with selective reportingmaking sure, for example, that Brazilians know that their president has said he will not be vaccinatedhalf-truths and lies. Ethnic minorities will be told that covid vaccines are unsafe for them, or part of a plot or experimentsomething that will resonate in communities that remember stories of this in the past. Young people will be told taradiddles about fertility. The religious groups will hear that vaccines are not halal or contain fetal material. (It is true that the vaccine produced by AstraZeneca is grown in a cell line derived from material taken from a fetus in the 1970s; it is also true that the pope has deemed the use of such cell lines morally acceptable.)
A recent study in Nature using data from 2019 created a network map of 1,300 Facebook pages carrying pro- and anti-vaccine messages and their followers. Anti-vaccine pages were more numerous, faster growing and increasingly connected to pages containing undecided users. If current trends continue, the researchers predicted, anti-vaccine views will dominate online discussion in a decade. A new preprint by many of the same authors reports that the strengthening of online bonds that has been seen during the pandemic has given conspiracy theories greater access to mainstream parenting communities.
On February 8th, in the teeth of ongoing criticism, Facebook said it would remove false claims related to covid vaccines (see article). Many think the move has come too lateand that to shift the balance of power decisively will require further action. Mr Nair believes that tech companies need to amplify positive messages, stories and campaigns
A mix of factors will challenge our plans to defeat covid-19, from new variants to supply issues. But vaccine hesitancy is a significant threat to population protection against covid-19, says Dr Larson. And after emotional contagion has taken hold it is difficult to tamp down. As the French experience with the H1N1 vaccine has shown, once widespread a negative impression about a vaccine can be hard to shift.
At the moment, people are leaving vaccination centres happily, and tweeting and posting about their good fortune and success. They proudly display the badges and stickers that show they have received the vaccine. For now, public health is winning. But continued good news cannot be taken for granted; in this struggle, fair weather has to be fought for, not counted on.
Dig deeper
All our stories relating to the pandemic and the vaccines can be found on our coronavirus hub. You can also listen to The Jab, our new podcast on the race between injections and infections, and find trackers showing the global roll-out of vaccines, excess deaths by country and the viruss spread across Europe and America.
This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "Broken arrow"
In an October 22, 2020, briefing, GAO informed Congressional staff that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) had made progress toward implementing its new electronic health record (EHR) system by making system configuration decisions, developing system capabilities and system interfaces, conducting end user training, and completing system testing events. However, GAO noted that the department had not yet resolved all critical severity test findings (that could result in system failure) and high severity test findings (that could result in system failure, but have acceptable workarounds), as called for in its testing plan. Specifically, 17 critical severity test findings and 361 high severity test findings remained open as of late September 2020. As a result, VA was at risk of deploying a system that did not perform as intended and could negatively impact the likelihood of its successful adoption by users if these test findings were not resolved prior to initial deployment. Accordingly, GAO recommended that VA delay deployment of the new EHR until the (1) critical severity test findings were closed, and (2) high severity findings were closed or otherwise addressed with workarounds.
VA deployed its new EHR system in Spokane, Washington, on October 24, 2020, with no open critical severity test findings and with 306 of the 361 high severity test findings closed (see figure). Of the 55 remaining, 47 had workarounds that were accepted by the user community, seven were associated with future deployments, and one had a solution identified at the time of initial deployment. VA's actions reflect implementation of GAO's October recommendations.
The Department of Veterans' Affairs Electronic Health Record Modernization Open Critical and High Severity Test Findings May 2020-October 2020
Nevertheless, as the department moves forward with deployment of additional capabilities at new locations, VA will likely identify new critical and high severity test findings. If VA does not close or appropriately address all critical and high severity test findings prior to deploying at future locations, the system may not perform as intended.
VA relies on its health information system the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA)to deliver health care to 9 million patients annually. VistA contains the department's EHR and exchanges information with many other applications and interfaces. However, VistA is a technically complex system, has been in operation for more than 30 years, is costly to maintain, and does not fully support VA's needs. In May 2018, VA contracted to acquire a commercial EHR system as part of its EHRM program over 10 years at a maximum cost of $10 billion.
GAO was asked to review VA's EHR deployment. This report discusses progress VA is making on implementing the new EHR system, among other topics.
To perform its review, GAO assessed VA's progress toward making system configuration decisions, developing system capabilities, developing system interfaces, completing end user training, and resolving system test findings. GAO also interviewed relevant officials.
GAO is making two recommendations, including that VA should postpone deployment of its new EHR system at planned locations until any resulting critical and high severity test findings are appropriately addressed.
VA concurred with the recommendations and described actions the department plans to take to address them.
For more information, contact Carol C. Harris at (202) 512-4456 or harriscc@gao.gov.
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) After complaints were made about the Eastfield Mall vaccination site, it looks a little different Thursday than it did earlier this week.
People have been happy with the changes at the site, which is now giving shots to a lot more people after the states move to get companions of seniors vaccinated.
A week ago, people 75 and older were waiting outside in the snow and cold temperatures before they could get inside for an appointment. There were also reports of it being extremely crowded, with little room to social distance.
Curative said theyve corrected these issues, and the site is running smoothly. Thursday people spoke highly of their experience.
Hermenia Grayson from Ludlow, got vaccinated as a caregiver, Its much better now. Its a better day, its warmer, they are moving people more quickly in and out. You can stay in the mall so you dont get have to get cold.
People now go inside the mall to wait for their appointment rather than outside. There is an entrance to the left of the former Macys building with arrows following the site inside the mall.
Curative staff will greet patients and call them in when theyre ready to administer the shot. They continue to ask people to enter the mall no earlier than 15 minutes before their time slot.
Last year's Akron Public Schools State of the Schools address took place in front of hundreds of people, with a buffet lunch andSuperintendent David James laying the groundwork for the community leaders to soon support a levy.
"What a difference a year makes," James said Thursday, in the same address one year later.
This one was held virtually, with just board members and a handful of district staff in the room, the event broadcast over YouTube.
A request for a levy has been tabled, possible for the next year or two, due to an influx of federal stimulus dollars meant to help offset costs of COVID-19. And in addition to highlighting the progress the district hasmade, James had to reflect on a tumultuous year of challenges through the coronavirus pandemic.
As it is his last State of the Schools address before he retires this summer, James also took the liberty of reflecting on his last 13 years as the district's leader, and 29 years with Akron schools overall.
"No leader can be everything an organization needs," James said. "Because over time, the organization changes and so does the leader. And with reflection, a leader will know when it is time to go, to turn over the role to another, so the organization can grow and achieve higher levels of performance."
As such, his speech didn't announce any new major initiatives or strategies, because soon he won't be the one executing him.
The district is also still at the beginning of its transition from remote-only learning to fully in-person, at least as an option for all students.
James recapped his plan to return everyone who wants to come back this year to their school building. His administration released the plan Monday night. It calls for students in kindergarten through second grade and students with significant special needsto come back March 15, and for everyone else to return March 22.
As long as the vaccine rollout stays on track, with all APS employees who want the vaccine able to get the first of two shots by the end of this weekend, they will have had enough time to build as much immunity as possible from the vaccine before returning to buildings.
"It is hard to believe that we have been virtual since March," James said."Yes, I do acknowledge that it is best for our students to be back to in-person school.However, I would like to point out that with 21,000 students, and nearly 4,000 employees it is very difficult to reconcile all of the risks, opinions and competing interests."
In the areas of progress, James touted the four-year graduation rate, which ticked up from79.8% to 80.2%.In the 2018-19, Akron students earned7,764 college credits while still in high school. In 2019-20, that increased to 9,297 credits earned.
As far as regrets for his tenure other than losing a cooking contest to a colleague in 2011 James said despite the 30-plus community learning centers built in the last 15 years, he wished he could have secured funding to replace the last five older school buildings in the district, some of which lack air conditioning.
He said he was also disappointed the state legislature did not take up the Fair School Funding Plan, which would have revamped the way schools receive money. Akron's CFO and Treasurer Ryan Pendleton was heavily involved with the initiative. James said he is hopeful it will circle back to the top of the list of priorities for the state in the near future.
But James also spent a great deal of his speech highlighting many of the partnerships the district has formed under his watch, including the more than 250 businesses and organizations that are invested in College and Career Academies.
"To everyone that I have met with, collaborated with, and even argued with, I say thank you," James said."Because through those discussions we have indeed made progress, and I believe the district poses a great opportunity for its next leader."
Contact education reporter Jennifer Pignolet at jpignolet@thebeaconjournal.com, at 330-996-3216 or on Twitter @JenPignolet.
This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan reporting project covering local election integrity and voting access. The article is available for reprint under the terms of Votebeats republishing policy.
Georgia lawmakers are set to begin debating election security measures proposed following unfounded allegations of fraud in the 2020 election.
The Senate Ethics Committee currently has more than 20 voting-related bills under its consideration, and Thursday the first four were assigned to subcommittees for a first round of vetting early next week.
Two of the bills center on the most contentious voting policy debates between Georgia Republicans and Democrats, who have vowed to fight any perceived threats to voter access. One proposal would require voters to submit photo identification or a drivers license number with an absentee ballot, although unlike another proposal it does not require voters to make a copy of their ID. The other would only allow Georgians to vote absentee with a valid excuse, eliminating the states current no-excuse absentee ballot system.
Republicans argue added security is necessary because of a lack of voter confidence in the system. This comes after many Republican elected officials supported unfounded claims of fraud after former President Donald Trump narrowly lost the state, despite repeated assurances from Georgias own Republican state election officials that the election was secure.
I think bottom line is we did not see any widespread or systematic fraud we didnt see any foreign interference, or changing of votes, reaffirmed Ryan Germany, a lawyer for the secretary of states office at a state election board meeting Wednesday.
Democratic officials have said such laws are unnecessary because there is no proof of fraud and they will discourage voters. Democrats have introduced their own legislation in the name of expanding voter access and encouraging high voter participation, including proposals for more ballot drop boxes, a permanent absentee voter list, and funding for more early voting in rural counties.
Slightly more than half of the bills in the Senate Ethics Committee were sponsored by Republicans, whose ideas center around placing additional restrictions on absentee voting and rolling back voting options that were expanded in response to the pandemic, like ballot drop boxes.
Another of the Senate bills scheduled for consideration next week would ban mobile polling locations, such as those used in Fulton County, except when original facilities are unusable. The other would establish the position of chief elections assistance officer in the secretary of states office to provide additional oversight to county elections departments, including the ability to suspend elections directors the state election board deems to be underperforming.
Other proposals that have already been introduced by Republicans in the Georgia Senate would eliminate ballot drop boxes, end the practice of automatically registering eligible voters when they apply for a drivers license, prevent third-party groups from distributing absentee ballot applications and give poll-watchers greater access to vote counting.
On the House side, the Special Committee on Election Integrity has also been assigned more than two dozen pieces of legislation in the first few weeks of the session, and on Tuesday passed its first bill onto the full House for a vote.
The bill would move the deadline to submit an absentee ballot application from the Friday before an election, to 10 days before an election. At the committee hearing, county election officials testified that as it stands, the law sets voters up for failure, because if voters wait until the Friday before an election, it is highly unlikely they will be able to receive a ballot and return it in time.
Senate Republican leadership is expected to release a comprehensive voting package next week that is expected to consolidate many of the partys priorities that have already been laid out in some of the above individual bills.
Policies that reduce waste, increase consumer choice and save families money should be a no-brainer and fortunately, more states are beginning to see it that way.
Thanks in large part to the advocacy of our national network and our coalition partners, 2021 is shaping up to be a big year for state legislation that guarantees consumers the right to fix their stuff. Fourteen states are considering right to repair bills this year, and the movement's new momentum has major implications for our country's waste crisis.
Americans throw out 416,000 cell phones per day, and only 15 to 20 percent of electronic waste is recycled. That could change if consumers were able to take their devices to the repair shop of their choice, rather than being forced to throw them away and buy new ones.
"We imagine a different kind of system, where instead of throwing things out, we reuse, salvage and rebuild," said Nathan Proctor, director of our network's Right to Repair campaign. "We know it works now it's time to win right to repair for all electronic products."
Read the full coverage.
Learn more about our Right to Repair campaign.
Photo: Our national network's Right to Repair director, Nathan Proctor, testifies at the Federal Trade Commission's "Nixing the Fix" workshop in July 2019.Credit:Metroid Video
Clearfield County Recreation and Tourism Authority members heard an update on the Lumberjack Chainsaw Carvers Festival schedule for May 22-23 as part of the More in May event scheduled at the Clearfield Driving Park.
The event partners the annual Groundhog Wine Festival on May 22 only with the Lumberjack Chainsaw Carvers Festival and the Food Truck and Craft Show event set for May 22-23. The Groundhog Wine Festival requires a paid ticket for admission. Admission is free to the Lumberjack Chainsaw Carvers Festival, the food truck and craft show.
Jones said Wednesday the schedule of carvers slated to appear over the two days is nearly full. Plans are for 20 carvers to participate. Each of the artisans will receive two eight-foot logs to create a masterpiece to be included in an auction. Each will also have other items for sale during the event.
We have 17 carvers signed up. There are only three spots left. We will take five more as a reserve, Jones said.
The Lumberjack Festivals hours on May 22 will be 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and May 23 from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. An auction featuring items crafted during the festival will be held at 3 p.m on May 23.
Im really excited about it, he told the authority. He said there will also be non-profit organizations participating.
Jones said at a previous meeting he is working with both Kenn Starr, coordinator of the Groundhog Wine Festival, and Clearfield County Fair Manager Greg Hallstrom, who is setting up the food truck festival and the craft fair. The three want to to offer a cohesive event.
We are pulling together to offer visitors a really nice event with lots of things to see, Jones said.
For additional information about participating or sponsoring the event, those interested should visit the website, http://www.lumberjackcarving.com or VCCs Facebook page.
Visit Clearfield County and the Clearfield County Recreation and Tourism Authority sponsored an inaugural Lumberjack Chainsaw Carvers Festival in June 2020. Last years festival featured four chainsaw-wielding artisans and was held on the lot adjacent to the VCC office beside Rural King.
Pennsylvania is closing in on 1.5 million inoculations, the state Department of Health reported Thursday.
The department reported about 335,000 people have completed the two-dose courses of Pfizer or Moderna products and nearly 1.5 million are halfway through.
Not all are Pennsylvania residents. The department reports that out-of-state residents have received 26,964 full and 80,359 partial.
There are no county and state lines with respect to receiving a vaccine. All avenues are available, if qualifying.
It's unknown how many Pennsylvania residents have crossed state lines to receive an inoculation. The state doesn't provide a breakdown for the number of vaccinations done at hospitals or nursing homes or retail clinics.
About 1,000 more Berks County residents entered or completed the vaccination process, the department said Thursday.
For the entire vaccination effort, a total of 10,758 residents have received both doses and 20,825 have received one, according to the state.
Last week, all the doses distributed to Berks outlets were listed as the Moderna product. The state has not yet listed the sites in Berks that are getting the vaccines this week, but the candidate sites are listed.
This map shows the eligible providers for vaccines in Pennsylvania:tinyurl.com/1gmxvajw. The state has instructed residents to contact the providers to determine if there is an opportunity for an inoculation.
Those without internet access can call 1-877-724-3258.
The state remains in Phase 1A vaccinations, which includes health care workers, nursing home residents and anyone age 65 and older or age 16 to 64 with these preexisting conditions: cancer, chronic kidney disease, COPD, Down syndrome, heart failure, coronary artery disease, cardiomyopathies, weakened immune system, obesity, pregnancy, sickle cell disease, smoking and Type 2 diabetes mellitus.
By the end of the week, the state expects that 2.44 million doses of the vaccines will have been allocated or received by providers. That's all doses. Each course counts as two doses.
There were 135 more COVID cases credited to Berks County in state Department of Health reporting on Thursday, raising the pandemic total to 34,009.
The seven-day average dipped to 129. The average smooths the uneven reporting of test results.
Each day's report is a look at statistics from the prior day, except for Monday, which is for Saturday and Sunday statistics.
The state reported the deaths of six more Berks residents Thursday for a pandemic total of 860. That was part of 115 total deaths of Pennsylvanians, and made the state pandemic total 22,860.
Overall, the state reported 3,978 additional cases for a pandemic total of 884,269.
In COVID hospitalizations, the state count fell 102 patients to 2,687, with a Berks component of 113. The strong downward trend statewide continued from nearly 6,400 patients a few days before Christmas.
Reading Hospital and Penn State Health St. Joseph updated their dashboards by midday Thursday to show 83 and 20 patients, respectively, for a combined total of 103, an uptick of two from Wednesday.
The county coroner's office on Thursday added three deaths for a new pandemic total of 835. All were Berks residents, and the age range was 79 to 97. Two were men.
The coroner's count includes 40 nonresidents who won't appear in the state report for Berks.
JOHNSTON Days after state officials met with White House staff to better understand why Iowa ranks lower than expected in getting allocations of the coveted COVID-19 vaccine, Gov. Kim Reynolds said Wednesday her administration continues its efforts to accelerate the rate of inoculations.
Iowa remains among the roughly half dozen states with the lowest vaccination rates in the nation. Approximately 9 percent of adult Iowans have received at least the first of two shots, according to federal data.
Reynolds said her administration is working with counties that are facing challenges distributing the vaccine, with pharmacies to ensure long-term care staff and residents are vaccinated and that any leftover doses are given to the state and now with Microsoft to develop a website where Iowans will, some weeks from now, be able to register for a vaccination.
Iowa currently is in phase 1B of the vaccine rollout, aimed chiefly at people older than 65 and several priority groups including teachers and first responders.
The program has not opened up yet to a broad section of the public.
Reynolds said a continuing issue is that Iowa is just not receiving as many doses of the vaccines as other states.
The biggest problem of all of this has been the amount of vaccine that we receive, Reynolds said Wednesday during a news conference at Iowa PBS studios. I dont care what kind of system you had in place, thats just not enough vaccines to really do what we needed to do. So as we see that ramp up, were going to continue to enhance and make our systems more efficient, more effective work with our partners and every day were seeing that get better and better.
Still, Iowa has administered just 68.2 percent of the vaccine doses it has received, according to federal data. That puts Iowa in the middle of the pack, with the 26th-highest rate among all states.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT
Reynolds said some counties distribution efforts have been slowed by inclement weather, and others by a lack of resources. She said the state is working to help any counties that need it.
Just in a week the amount of efficiencies that weve been able to put in place and the increase in the percentage of vaccines administered is good, Reynolds said. We can be better. Were working on it. But when you consider weather and what weve had to deal with were going to keep working on those numbers and were going to keep getting better at the process.
Reynolds previously raised concerns that Iowa is receiving fewer vaccine doses when compared with its population than other states.
Wednesday, Reynolds said she has discussed the issue with Gen. Gus Perna, head of the federal governments vaccine distribution program.
Iowas U.S. senators have jumped into the fray as well: Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst said they have called on the federal government to ensure Iowa is receiving its fair share.
In a letter Tuesday to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Grassley and Ernst asked the agency to release its weekly formula for state allocations to build confidence in the vaccine distribution process.
State officials have told local public health agencies they plan to change the way Iowa orders COVID-19 vaccine doses from federal officials after the U.S. vaccine allocation tracking system showed Iowas rankings in the number of allocations per capita among the worst in the nation are lower than actuality.
Iowa Department of Public Health officials sent a memo earlier this week to county public health departments informing them they will order doses allocated to the state sooner each week than they had.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT
However, state officials could not say whether this would result in shots reaching Iowans sooner, instead noting this helps streamline the allocation process for the states vaccine providers.
In the memo obtained by The Gazette, the department told local agencies that state officials met with White House officials last Friday over the states poor ranking. As of earlier this week, data from the CDC put Iowa at the bottom of states for vaccines administered per 100,000 population.
State officials indicated in the memo the poor ranking stemmed from the timing of the states vaccine orders. Doses became available for states to order through the federal system VTrckS on Thursday evening, but unlike most states, Iowa waited until a few days later to place an order.
According to the memo, this has caused a significant public misperception that Iowa is either not receiving or not ordering all available doses.
State officials waited days to orders because of inconsistencies Iowa experienced in federal allocation projections in December, the memo states, referring to shifting planning numbers from U.S. officials.
Starting this week, Iowa officials will now order COVID-19 vaccines on Thursday evening.
State officials noted that Iowa already orders every dose available to it.
DEDHAM, MA Dedham's police dog is living up to her name and proving to be a gem in the department. Ruby, the Dedham Police Department Community Resource Dog, is officially a licensed therapy dog and has successfully completed her public access test.
Ruby joined the department last year in January, through a Grant from the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office. She was named through a contest by the students at the Dedham Middle School. The DA's Office developed the grant program with students and children in mind, to provide a resource dog trained to help respond to trauma and stress, and to build relationships with local law enforcement.
Ruby is still working on her training but is also busy with her visits to Dedham schools.
"A lot of kids know her and love when she shows up in class," said Officer Sullivan, the School Resource Officer based out of Dedham Middle School.
Officer Jason Sullivan will take Ruby to each of the schools every week and have her interact with the students.
"Ruby has been a great ice-breaker and conversation starter with the kids and has helped to develop bonds with the Dedham Police," said Officer Sullivan.
Westergaard said the drop is likely due to a number of factors, including immunity among the more than half-million people in the state who have contracted the disease who may be protected for three to six months a wider adoption of preventative measures like wearing masks and social distancing, and better capacity by local health officials for contact tracing and containment after being overwhelmed by the November surge.
Were actually better able to respond to local clusters, to local cases, than we were before, he said, because weve really strengthened that muscle. Our local containment efforts have been improved over time so that when we do have cases we can do the things we needed to do.
According to Westergaard, its probably too early the vaccine effort to credit it with significantly lowering COVID-19 case numbers in the state. And he cautioned that the new variants could potentially fuel a new surge.
Were very vulnerable and we need to take the risk seriously that this progress could be undone because of novel variants, he said.
As of Tuesday, nearly 800,000 vaccine doses had been administered in the state, 174,000 of those being second doses, completing the vaccination process. More than a third of people 65 and older have received at least one dose.
According to the CDC, Wisconsin now ranks eighth among states for the rate of vaccines administered after recently being near the bottom of the pack. Officials have attributed the early slow start to several factors, including a large share of the states allotment from the federal government being reserved for the federal program for vaccinating nursing home residents and long-term care patients.
