Economist Jeffrey Sachs called for an independent investigation of information held by U.S.-based institutions that could shed light on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sachs and his co-author, Neil Harrison, a Columbia University professor of molecular pharmacology and therapeutics, said that federal agencies and universities possess evidence that has not been adequately reviewed, including virus databases, biological samples, viral sequences, email communications, and laboratory notebooks. Sachs and Harrison also highlighted a tantalizing scientific detail that may be an indication that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, originated in a laboratory: a sequence of eight amino acids on a critical part of the virus’s spike protein that is identical to an amino acid sequence found in cells that line human airways.
K12 Students Privacy rights across the nation need you help. Wish you would direct someone to take on the K12 Department of Education.
THERE ARE NO CHIEF PRIVACY OFFICERS IN K-12 EDUCATION
The big biz of spying on little kids
Google’s Apps for Education contracts with schools suffer from gaping student privacy protection loopholes. School Administrators signed a contract that does NOT protect their students from data collection for the ultimate purposes of monetization as Google represents.
Who is senior-level official who is responsible for the organization’s privacy policies and data governance in your school district?
Teachers and School Districts MUST follow the law and protect children’s privacy!!!
Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems, or SLDS.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/slds/
That marked the entrance of big data into education, enabled by the leaps forward in the ability to store and process information on remote servers “in the cloud.”
Imagine being the school administrator when you realize that one of your student’s parents is in charge of privacy at the NSA and isn’t happy with your video recording policies for remote learning.
Rebecca “Becky” Richards joined the National Security Agency as its first Director of Civil Liberties and Privacy in February 2014. Her primary job is to provide expert advice to the Director and oversee NSA’s civil liberties and privacy activities. She is also responsible for developing measures to further strengthen NSA’s privacy and civil liberties protection.
There had been a short discussion of recording classes followed by an even shorter discussion of the fact that the school is in a two-party consent state. So I didn’t think much more of the discussion until this consent to record showed up quietly the Friday of Labor Day weekend, taunting me, poking at me, gnawing at me and eventually just outright leading me to the outrage that someone thought it was a good idea to write a legally compliant consent that had a threat at the end.
So, I decided to apply my day job as the civil liberties and privacy officer at the U.S. National Security Agency to my parenting job. Though not something I had expected, it seemed to me this was an important teachable moment for the school and kids about how to make thoughtful choices for privacy, civil liberties and teaching.
There may be times particularly with older children or adults during which recording the sessions makes sense, but when we are working with K-8 that needs are necessarily different. So I started a conversation with my school and refused to sign the consent.
I expressed concerns that the consent was very broad and protective of the institution but had no protections in place for the children. There were no stated controls on who would use the recordings or why they were being done beyond operational uses and instances when a child was having a one-on-one conversation with a teacher and no parent was available.
Classes were not recorded when they were in person, so why should they be now? Just because you can, does not mean you should. If there was a benefit to this, why did not we do it earlier during in-person classes?
What are the benefits of recording a class? Are they available for students and parents at a later date, if the material wasn’t understood, more review was needed or a child was out of class? Perhaps they are available for administration to review to improve teaching and/or provide feedback on the teaching or accountability for one-on-one meetings between the child and the teacher.
What are the risks of recording a class? Children may be less willing to participate, children become acclimated to always being recorded (or surveilled), a misstep in class is now caught on camera and available for all to see rather than it being a one-time misstep. Without proper access controls, those not normally in the class could access the sessions and take teaching and interactions out of context. These are “windows” into families’ private lives, into our homes, and potentially capturing others collaterally having nothing to do with the school. If it was just the teacher and audio of the students, that would be less intrusive but still concerning.
And alas, I always have to ask, “Is it muted?” Which is concerning, given I’m asking an 11-year-old if it is OK to talk in my own house. What precedent are we setting for our children for acceptable behavior?
While cellphones, cameras and recordings seem to be pervasive, they are not the full solution to concerns with what is happening in a school, class or society. They are one piece of the puzzle, and we need to treat them as such.
I appreciate that perhaps there wasn’t time to think through how these videos will be used, but it is incumbent upon the school to have this all thought through before starting the recordings.So I decided to provide them input on how they could use this policy as an opportunity to build trust through civil liberties and privacy protections and be more transparent.
Here are some of the examples of improved civil liberties and privacy protections I offered, which you may find helpful if you are finding that your kids’ classes are being recorded:
Videos are available for a shorter time (say one week) so that children in the class can review them in case they missed the class.
Only families who have children in the class can view the videos rather than the entire school.
If there is a one-on-one meeting with a child, perhaps this is recorded and then, upon review by the family, is deleted rather than being kept for long periods of time.
No recordings should be done for religious activities.
Clearly written notices describing the practices that will be taking place.
The school has been listening since I approached them and were very quick to respond that their intention wasn’t to record everything or surveil the students, but none of that was in the policy — it only protected the school and told parents that we couldn’t use the recordings for any purposes at all.
After a lengthy discussion with the school, they agreed to issue a policy that teachers will only record themselves, no student interactions; one-on-one interactions without a parent will be recorded and retained for seven days, and the parent will be asked to review to ensure there is no concerning behavior; no religious activities will be recorded; any recordings of parent meeting will start with a notification that the event is being recorded, and individuals should turn off their cameras if they do not wish to be recorded. This creates good civil liberties and privacy protections and transparency about the policy for all.
As we concluded the call, our head of school noted she appreciated the conversation and the outcome, but this was not anything covered in her training to be a teacher or school administrator.
It seems like it is time to start adding these to the curriculum for everyone.
Rebecca Richards is the director of civil liberties and privacy at the U.S. National Security Agency.
IAPP @PrivacyPros
We are the #IAPP, your global #privacy community & resource. Tweets generated from the IAPP social media team. For breaking news, follow
Why the Federal Reserve is throwing unprecedented sums of money in all directions on Wall Street.
The chart that tells you how all of today’s economic troubles are going to end is not the bar graph of new deaths from coronavirus in Italy versus deaths in the U.S. It’s the chart that shows the number of potential deaths among the banks and insurance companies that have gorged themselves on risky derivatives and serve as counterparties to each other in a daisy chain of financial contagion.
TRUMP AND MOSCOW MITCH
Mitch McConnell
hosts a weekly lunch with the *entire* @SenateGOP
GOP senators say they ‘don’t need to quarantine’ after lunch with Rand Paul: ‘We’ll be praying’
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul tests positive for coronavirus
Mitt Romney says senators had lunch on Friday with @RandPaul—who tested positive for #coronavirus—and “all of the senators” will seek advice as to whether they should self-quarantine.
Michigan governor blames GOP and ‘separation of church and state’ on failure to ban megachurch gatherings
RAND PAUL voted against COVID-19 Relief bill while exposing others to his own COVID-19 plague is the MOST despicable Rand Paul thing ever.
Rand Paul names alleged whistleblower at press conference after John Roberts blocks his question : Are there possible legal ramifications? “Paul lost the shield of the speech and debate clause,” Laurence Tribe says
Jon Stewart Eviscerates Libertarian (scum) Rand Paul for Blocking 9/11 Victim Funding: ‘It’s an Abomination’
If you have recovered, will you test positive?
Can People Who Recover from COVID-19 Become Reinfected?
Medical professionals believe positive coronavirus retests are more likely the result of errors in testing rather than reinfection. Scientists in and outside China agree that reinfection is a highly unlikely explanation for the patients who retest positive. They say testing errors are more likely to blame — either false negatives that resulted in patients being discharged too early, or false positives when they retested and were taken back into hospital. “If you get an infection, your immune system is revved up against that virus,” he said. “To get reinfected again when you’re in that situation would be quite unusual unless your immune system was not functioning right.”
Younger adults comprise big portion of coronavirus hospitalizations in U.S.
New C.D.C. data showed that nearly 40 percent of patients sick enough to be hospitalized were aged 20 to 54. But the risk of dying was significantly higher in older people.
BEST #TRUMP Folksong written by Woody Guthrie against his father the landlord Fred Trump Ballad “I Ain’t Got No Home” (Using the melody this Land is Your Land) http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Music/woodieguthrie.html
MOST CURRENT information on COVID-19 (primarily from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]), as well as guidance and resources for everyday disease prevention strategies. Any questions for the Department may be directed to CO******@**.gov
#K12Covid-19 DIRECTIONS FOR LIVING TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY
– SELF ISOLATE
* The nation’s top expert on infectious diseases said it would be
nice if a global-health unit that President Donald Trump scrapped
were still around.
* Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told House lawmakers, “It would
be nice if the office were still there.”
* Fauci said that the bottom line for the coronavirus outbreak in
the US is that “it’s going to get worse.”
IT IS HERE
IT IS IN YOUR TOWN
IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
*******************
Donald’s mom Mary Tells Donald to PROTECT OTHER PEOPLE !!!!!
–MONEY Spray Lysol on your paper money on both sides
-Spray your wallet
– Wash your coins
The Bank of Korea said it is putting currency notes through a high-heat process and then keeping them in a safe for 14 days, before releasing them back into circulation, according to a Reuters. That should be enough time to remove any trace of the virus, the bank said.
Routine procedures for disinfecting banknotes have been stepped up in the country. Those involve heating notes 150 degrees Celsius for a few seconds, a bank official told Reuters. Another way to kill germs is to expose the notes to ultraviolet light.
DON’T ACT LIKE PRESIDENT TRUMP
PROTECT OTHER PEOPLE – STOP HUGGING PEOPLE So far, Trump has had at least 4 direct contacts that Trump has had to people who have come down with Coronavirus. He needs to be tested. Donald Trump ‘s staggering and deadly incompetence on #coronavirus didn’t happen accidentally. Trump did not push for early testing ‘because higher numbers would harm his re-election chances. Trump and Pence are making a show of not being tested to cover up the fact that they’re artifically depressing the #COVID19 numbers by making tests scarce.
#TyphoidTrumpy
Here’s Trump with Brazilian President Bolsanaro, who just tested positive for #COVID19. Trump has also been exposed by Bolsanaro’s staff, someone at CPAC, and multiple GOP congressmen who are now in quarantine. Brazilian president and staff did not bring it with them. They contracted it while here. CPAC exposure came first. Trump and Pence are making a show of not being tested to cover up the fact that they’re artifically depressing the #COVID19 numbers by making tests scarce,
#coronapocalypse#SelfQuarantine
Trump is preventing states from broadening Medicaid coverage as an emergency response to the coronavirus. His anti-poor ideology takes precedence over public health. Trump administration blocks states from using Medicaid to respond to coronavirus crisis .
Trump fears coronavirus emergency declaration will cause him to lose the election – he cares about money and not people. The road to this moment was paved by the GOP’s decades-long war on government. Trump should declare an emergency, bringing in the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate and unleashing billions of dollars for struggling states. Moscow Mitch McConnell says he won’t look at House relief bill for coronavirus for another 12 days.
WASH YOUR HANDS AND SING HAPPY BIRTHDAY
– WHEN THE SONG IS DONE YOU ARE DONE
– WASH YOUR HANDS, UP TO YOUR WRISTS AND BETWEEN YOUR FINGERS
MAKE YOUR OWN HAND SANITIZER USE SOME KIND OF ALOE GEL AND RUBBING AlCOHOL 40% GEL TO 60% ALCOHOL OR IT WON’T WORK!
2/3 cup 99% rubbing alcohol to 1/3 cup aloe vera gel
Mix together in a bowl then pour into an empty bottle.
SELF ISOLATE
DON’T GO WHERE THERE IS A LOT OF PEOPLE
(PARADES – STADIUMS – THEATERS – FESTIVALS )
STAND AWAY FROM OTHER PEOPLE
SIT AWAY FROM OTHER PEOPLE
Incubation period for this virus is 5-12 days. It CAN be longer.
– YOU REALLY DON’T HAVE TO GO ANYWHERE TO DO ANYTHING DO NOT get stranded on a coronavirus-infected cruise ship no matter how low they price the trip.
– GO TO THE STORE WHEN LESS PEOPLE ARE AROUND
IF ANNE FRANK DID IT FOR 2 YEARS– YOU CAN DO IT FOR 2 MONTHS
Think of the Story of Anne Frank. She hid for 2 years in a three-story space entered from a landing above the Opekta offices on the Prinsengracht, where some of his most trusted employees would be their helpers.
PROTECT OTHER PEOPLE !!!!!
– WEAR A MASK OR WEAR A SCARF AROUND
YOUR NOSE AND MOUTH
PROTECT OTHER PEOPLE FROM YOU
– WHEN YOU COUGH OR SNEEZE
– YOUR OWN DIRTY HANDS
– don’t TOUCH YOUR MOUTH, NOSE or eyes
IF YOU DON’T OWN A MASK USE A SCARF
How To Wrap Face With Scarf/Dupatta In Just 1Minute // 5 easy ways to wear a scarf
DO NOT EXTRAPOLATE: WHO’s Dr Aylward warns that China has very “sophisticated health care” with not just tons of ventilators but also *ECMO* (see below). Very few countries can match China’s volume of beds+technology to save #COVID19 patients. Italy will be closer comparison.
Things you should *actually* buy ahead of time (Erm, not sure what the obsession with toilet paper is?): Kleenex, Acetaminophen (Tylenol) in 350 mg tablets, Ibuprofen (Advil) in 200 mg tablets, Mucinex, Robitussin or DayQuil/NyQuil, whatever your cough medicine of choice is.
If you don’t have a humidifier, that would also be a good thing to get. (You can also just turn the shower on hot and sit in the bathroom breathing in the steam). Also a good time to make a big batch of your favorite soup to freeze and have on hand.
If you have a history of asthma and you have a prescription inhaler, make sure the one you have isn’t expired and refill it/get a new one if it is.
You basically just want to prepare as though you know you’re going to get a nasty respiratory bug like bronchitis or pneumonia. You just have the foresight to know it’s coming.
For a fever over 101, alternate Tylenol and Advil so you’re taking a dose of one or the other every 3 hours. Use both cough suppressants and expectorants (most cough meds have both). Drink a ton, hydrate hydrate. Rest lots.
You should not be leaving your house except to go to the doctor, and if you do, wear a mask (regular is fine, you don’t need an N95). You DO NOT NEED TO GO TO THE ER unless you are having trouble breathing or your fever is very high and unmanaged with meds.
90% of healthy adult cases thus far have been managed at home with basic rest/hydration/over-the-counter meds.We don’t want to clog the ERs unless you’re actually in distress. The hospital beds will be used for people who actively need oxygen/breathing treatments/IV fluids.
If you have a pre-existing lung condition (COPD, emphysema, lung cancer) or are on immunosuppressants, now is a great time to talk to your PCP or specialist about what they would like you to do if you get sick. They might have plans to get you admitted and bypass the ER entirely.
One major relief to you parents is that kids do VERY well with coronavirus— they usually bounce back in a few days, no one under 18 has died, and almost no kids have required hospitalization (unless they have a lung disease like CF). Just use pediatric dosing of the same meds.
I’m always around via DM if you have questions, and if I don’t have the answer I’ll just tell you to call your doctor. 😉 But feel free to contact me any time. 😘
1/ Frequently clean hands by using alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water.
2/ When coughing and sneezing cover mouth and nose with flexed elbow or tissue – throw issue away immediately and wash hands.
3/ Avoid close contact with anyone that has fever and cough.
Up your Vitamin D 2000-5000 IU per day. Zinc lozengers because Zinc is good against viruses. It shortens the length of the infection.
Adding to the humidifier/shower: you can also boil water in a pot, put your head above it and a towel over your head. This will open airways, especially nose and it makes your throat less dry. It’s what I did when I had the flu but didn’t have a steamer.
Keep your chest & neck covered & warm at all times. Even in bed. Scarves & snoods are also useful for pulling up as impromptu masks.
Sciencey bit: Viruses replicate more readily at lower body temperatures. Cold is a risk factor.
Live-updating GIS dashboard that tracks the COVID-19. It will automatically update every couple hours as new data comes in by pulling info form the CDC, WHO, anda few other global health organizations. It is very powerful, visually interesting, and it really puts the situation in a spatial perspective. It was created by a student at Johns Hopkins.
++
MEANWHILE:
— While the world is focused on #COVID19, billions of #locusts invade East Africa & #Asia. State of emergency in #Somalia. A flight to #Kenya: 24000km² cloud, the equivalent of food for 84M people was devastated. (UN)
THE BUSINESS CASE FOR BITCOIN
This is why Bitcoin was created.
Federal Reserve just printed $500B
People’s Bank of China just printed $79B
European Union just printed $37B
South Korea just printed $10B
Bank of Japan just printed $2B
Britain just printed $39B
Italy just printed $8.4B
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K12, Ed TECH, Superintendents, Parents
TRUMP IS NOT A TRUSTED EXPERT 
TRUMP AND MOSCOW MITCH
GOP senators say they ‘don’t need to quarantine’ after lunch with Rand Paul: ‘We’ll be praying’
The Educational CyberPlayGround ® Inc.
DON’T ACT LIKE 
