Israel Authorizes Use of Phone Tracking Tech To Contain Spread of Omicron Covid Variant (reuters.com) 70
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Rights groups petitioned Israel's top court on Monday to repeal new COVID-19 measures that authorize the country's domestic intelligence service to use counter-terrorism phone tracking technology to contain the spread of the Omicron virus variant. Announcing the emergency measures on Saturday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the phone tracking would be used to locate carriers of the new and potentially more contagious variant in order to curb its transmission to others. Israeli rights groups say the emergency measures violate previous Supreme Court rulings over such surveillance, used on-and-off by the country's Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency since March, 2020.
A senior health ministry official said on Sunday that use of phone tracking would be "surgical" in nature, only to be utilized on confirmed or suspected carriers of the variant. The surveillance technology matches virus carriers' locations against other mobile phones nearby to determine with whom they have come into contact. Israel's Supreme Court this year limited the scope of its use after civil rights groups mounted challenges over privacy concerns. Further reading: Omicron Covid Variant Poses Very High Global Risk, Says WHO
A senior health ministry official said on Sunday that use of phone tracking would be "surgical" in nature, only to be utilized on confirmed or suspected carriers of the variant. The surveillance technology matches virus carriers' locations against other mobile phones nearby to determine with whom they have come into contact. Israel's Supreme Court this year limited the scope of its use after civil rights groups mounted challenges over privacy concerns. Further reading: Omicron Covid Variant Poses Very High Global Risk, Says WHO
Fuck that bullshit (Score:1, Troll)
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In fairness, it is surgical. A little bit here, a little there. Before you know it, nothing's left.
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In an alternative world. (Score:2, Troll)
Announcing the emergency measures on Saturday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the phone tracking would be used to locate carriers of the new and potentially more contagious variant in order to curb its transmission to others.
Ah the world was a better place when people voluntarily tested and quarantined themselves instead of society forcing them to do so. Ah well...
Re:In an alternative world. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's like people *want* to be on ventilators and die "free".
Find and isolate these people so they cannot infect others.
Re:In an alternative world. (Score:5, Insightful)
Stigmatising the unvaccinated is not justified.
Why?
If they were vaccinated, they would likely not get sick, or it would not be life-threatening if they did.
They would also not face the threat of becoming permanently disabled from the long-term effects (my wife is in this group from an infection she got before the vaccines were available).
Frankly, I have no sympathy for those who choose to expose themselves to these risks. They're making things worse for the rest of us.
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Stigmatising the unvaccinated is not justified.
Your paper's entire thesis is that the vaccinated can transmit disease so we shouldn't blame unvaccinated. However, the fact that they make other people ill isn't the only problem. Even in countries with high vaccination rates, 90% of patients that get sent to ICUs are unvaccinated, very often younger patients. That means that not only do they cause huge costs and load to society, they also endanger the remaining 10% of ICU patients who get worse service because of their selfishness. There are a very few
For a change (Score:2, Funny)
Re: For a change (Score:3, Insightful)
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Florida also doesn't count cases for non residents, which make up a good chunk of the population.
Re:Until you get rid of the Democrats (Score:5, Informative)
Florida has one of the highest death rates from Covid overall for the duration of the pandemic, ranked 9th here. [worldometers.info]
If you look at a map of current transmission rates, [cdc.gov] you'll see that most of the low rates are in warm climates.
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That is due to the older population of Florida and them basically getting it over and done with. Currently Florida has the lowest case and death rate in the US. Period. No masks. No mandates.
South Floridian here. You are full of shit.
Here in South Florida we have mask mandates, which are approved by the majority of the population. Who cares what rural counties think about bs freedumb anti-mask slogans. The bulk of the population (and economy) is in South Florida and other metro area, high density areas that 1) bore the brunt of the pandemic and, 2) issued their own mask mandates (which DeadSantis in his infinite wisdom decided to challenge for dumb political capital.)
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More lies. What part of south Florida are you talking about and what mask mandates are you talking about? Masks are not even required in Miami fade and broward schools now
Broward. And although masks are optional now, we had those mandates for months. We had mandates for months also in 2020. That's not fiction. That is what helped contain the spread, not the bs spewed by DeSantis from up there in Tallahassee.
Why are you lying when people reading can verify facts via a simple Google search?
A single google search as you mentioned shows the timelines of mask mandates in South Florida. We only lifted mask mandates in school on late October. We have them for the entire school year.
And still people wear them. Most of us in South Florida aren't morons. Keep drinking your freedumb kool-aid.
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As of right now:
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Re:Until you get rid of the Democrats (Score:4, Interesting)
Meanwhile Florida is free from constant fear and resilient against extreme government controls.
Floridian here, you don't know what you are talking about.
Here in South Florida, we diligently follow mask and social distance practices, and it is how we have managed to combat COVID. It is DeSantis who pretends to be "small government" while denying our freedom to issue our own local mask ordnance (to the point of cutting funding and salaries to our school boards.)
Y'all red counties can choke on your freedumb kool-aid.
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You don't have the freedom to force others to wear them
Hurr durr mah freedumb. You can't enroll kids in public schools without vaccination, etc, etc. It is constitutional to issue indoor mask mandates during a pandemic.
Think of it, what sort of an stupid position you take that masks is the freedom hill you want to die for. This is the thing that responsible citizens are supposed to do, and if it weren't because of you morons, we wouldn't need the government to step in to protect public health policy.
You might as well argue the state doesn't have a right to
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Incorrect. People are not wearing masks or social distancing in south Florida even though south Florida has some of the highest rates in the state. You can confirm my facts yourself. The parent poster is lying intentionally for political reasons. You should ask yourself why these people continue to lie in the face of easily verifiable facts.
Bullshit. Just go to any Publix or Walmart in Broward County (where I live) and you will see people wearing masks. Even though masks are now optional in schools, most kids still wear them (I have two kids, one in elementary and one in middle school.)
Anyone here in Florida can confirm it. And poll after poll shows that over 65% of the population support some sort of mask usage. What's next? Do we need to film and post a video or something? Fuck off.
I don't get it. (Score:4)
Initially we were told lockdowns are necessary to flatten the curve and give the healthcare system time to prepare, but what's the goal now?
It's not like this variant is going to be contained in Africa, at best the spread is going to be delayed by a few weeks, so what's the goal that's worth suspending civil liberties and incurring economic damage for?
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It means antifa is going to have to go back to their parents basements again for a very long time.
Until the next nazi attack?
Also, you should use aspirin for headaches. Native Americans have been using it safely for thousands of years.
Aspirin has side effects just like everything else. The "native" Americans didn't know everything.
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What "nazi attack?" Nazis have not been a threat for over 75 years.
There is no fascism to be against.
Antifa == Communist. Always has.
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What "nazi attack?" Nazis have not been a threat for over 75 years.
If it claims to be a nazi, and uses the nazi symbolism, and still wants to kill the jews, it's a nazi. No "neo" is necessary. And Nazis continue to be a problem in the US and Germany, among other places.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Informative)
Initially we were told lockdowns are necessary to flatten the curve and give the healthcare system time to prepare, but what's the goal now?
It's not like this variant is going to be contained in Africa, at best the spread is going to be delayed by a few weeks, so what's the goal that's worth suspending civil liberties and incurring economic damage for?
0) This is not yet a lockdown; the aim at present is to do other measures such as international travel restrictions so that we don't have to do actual lockdowns and close businesses. For example, places that currently don't have mask mandates might end up in lockdown but if they have time to start enforcing mandates they can prepare to use masks instead of having to lockdown.
1) The right measures give is time to work out what it's actually like. we haven't yet experienced patient recovery so only an idiot would say whether it's a worse or better variant ; milder or more serious at this point. In one month time we will know much more about how serious a problem we have.
2) Slowing infection gives time to prepare vaccines ; at least moderna is proposing to update their booster shot. This will take weeks or months. Even a few days delay can save thousands of lives.
3) Delay can allow us to clear out hospitals if needed. In the UK we've been running quite hot. If we stopped delta spread now then there would be more ICU places free when omicron does finally arrive.
In a sense it's still flattening the curve. Just that Omicron is a new curve just starting.
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In the Netherlands they've found 2 earlier cases than last weekend. It's been going around already... Likely it's merely not yet detected in the UK.
We already detected it a couple of days ago and have even community spread in Scotland. Possibly in a week or two travel restrictions with South Africa will make no difference since we will already have out of control spread at a high level, but even at this stage having fewer outbreaks to trace makes a massive difference and allows more effort to be put into tracing those cases we do find. The point is not to give in until the point where you know it's making no difference. If you only manage to find 50%
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In theory its to again flatten the curve and to give time for evidence to be collected on how severe the illness resulting from the newer variant is and perhaps to give MRNA time to tweak their vaccine.
In reality nobody knows. Its all reactive. You have some leadership acting under the misguided notion people want to see them 'do something' even if that something destroys their livelihood again! You have a big group leaders that just wants to do things because they can. You have a bunch of religious nutcase
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The lockdown did help flatten the curve, If you look at New York state, which was one of the first states to get hit, it had a much higher spike than other states that came in later that realized that it needed to lock down sooner in its infection spread.
A key part of the flatten the curve was to find a way to delay for a Vaccine to be made. Now that we have a vaccine the goal now is to get enough people to take it. However, people had been fed misinformation, been radicalized into thinking that the vac
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And it may very well have been the right choice given a novel situation with a lot of unknowns, but we're two years into this and a lot more is known, the healthcare system is a lot better prepared.
I actually live in Israel, anyone who was going to get the vaccine got it, got a second dose and a third dose (well, excluding children, who only recently got cleared for vaccination and the vaccinations are in progress), it just seems to me delaying tactics won't help with this particular aspect of things, and m
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> so what's the goal that's worth suspending civil liberties and incurring economic damage for?
Unchecked power. Imagine the totalitarianism wishlist. They're going down it one by one and blaming the virus because humans are easily frightened.
Despite the fact that each new power has done nothing (or made things worse) they will move on to the next item on the list, claim that their previous power did work but you can't measure it because it would have been worse without that power, and not relinquish that
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Lets get a modern marvel of technology, which allows us to communicate with the world, and have a vast array of information at our fingertips, costing us a substantial chunk of our salary, to disable all communication and only use the features of a device that would have been considered new 20 years ago.
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Or they do it like the Chinese. You want public services, transportation or entry into many businesses? You'll whip out your phone so we can scan it. It had better be turned on and connected to the network. Or no soup for you!
So (Score:2)
"If you're going to build a tracker like this, you have to log all accesses in uncorruptible ways with offsite redundant log backup, to prevent tracking of political enemies," he said and no one continued to listen.
Should Be More Worried About (Score:2)
Suspected by whom, exactly? And based on what? (Score:2)
“...phone tracking would be ‘surgical’ in nature, only to be utilized on confirmed or suspected carriers of the variant.”
Yeah, right. I'm sure no vaccine mandate / quarantine mandate / mask mandate protestors will be designated by government officials as “suspected” carriers. That just wouldn't be kosher.
Which leads to the questions: “Suspected by whom, and based on what tangible evidence from what medical authority?”
This is a reprieve ... (Score:2)
Omicron variant is very mild. (Score:2)
According to reports from where it originated.
My understanding is: there has never been a effective vaccination for the common cold because the corona virus mutates so easily. Maybe the same is true for covid?
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