Source: Harris outlines strategy to fight root causes of migration | TheHill
All posts by nedhamson
Covid-19 vaccine: Can employers and the government legally require it? – Vox
In 1902, the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, faced a smallpox outbreak. In response, the local health board ordered the city’s residents over the age of 21 to be vaccinated against this disease. Violators faced a $5 fine.
After a local pastor was fined for violating this vaccine mandate, he appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court told him to pound sand in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905).
“The liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint,” Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote for the Court. He added that “there are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good.”
Under Jacobson, state and local governments — though not necessarily the federal government — may mandate vaccines for nearly all of their residents.
Under Jacobson, moreover, states should be free to order everyone within their borders to be vaccinated against Covid-19, although it’s far from clear whether the federal government could do the same.
Of course, there is no guarantee that the Roberts Court, which is eager to impose limits on public health officials and not especially bothered about overruling precedents, will follow Jacobson if a state does enact a vaccine mandate. But there is good reason to believe that it will. Even Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of the most conservative members of the current Court, recently described Jacobson as a “modest” decision that “didn’t seek to depart from normal legal rules during a pandemic.”
The bottom line, in other words, is that, under existing law, numerous institutions within the United States may require their employees — and, in some cases, their citizens — to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
Your boss probably can require you to get vaccinated
Employment relationships in the United States are typically “at-will,” meaning that an employee can be fired at any time and for any reason, even if that reason is completely arbitrary. If you have an at-will relationship with your employer, your boss can fire you because they don’t like your haircut. Or because they don’t like what you had for breakfast last Tuesday.
Or, for that matter, because you refuse to get a Covid-19 vaccine.
The general rule, in other words, is that your employer can fire you for any reason unless some outside legal force — a federal or state law, or maybe an individual or collective bargaining contract between you and your employer — intervenes to give you additional job security. And there is no federal law prohibiting employers from requiring nearly all of their employees to get vaccinated.
Source: Covid-19 vaccine: Can employers and the government legally require it? – Vox
HIPAA, the health privacy law, explained – Vox
Is it a HIPAA violation for your employer to require vaccines?
No.
Nor is it a HIPAA violation for them to ask for proof that you have been vaccinated, though many people seem to think that providing or even soliciting any sort of health information automatically becomes a HIPAA issue.
Employers do have to keep their employees’ vaccination statuses confidential, but that’s because of the Americans with Disabilities Act — not HIPAA, which, again, doesn’t apply here.
All this is to say that if you go to Starbucks (not a covered entity) and refuse to wear a mask because you say you have a health condition, it is not a HIPAA violation if the barista asks you what that condition is, nor is it a HIPAA violation if Starbucks refuses service to you.
If your doctor were to walk into that Starbucks and broadcast your health information to anyone within earshot without your permission, that would be a HIPAA violation. It would also be a good time to consider changing doctors. Fortunately, HIPAA allows you to request your medical records and bring them to a new provider. And if someone else happened to record your doctor’s outburst and put it on TikTok, that’s not a HIPAA violation, even though it does include information that was once protected by HIPAA.
Tokyo logs 3,300 daily coronavirus cases amid surging infections
The Tokyo metropolitan government confirmed 3,300 daily coronavirus cases Friday as the capital, where the Olympics are being held, is experiencing a surge in infections.
The figure compares with 3,865 marked Thursday when it reported a record figure for the third straight day.
The capital’s seven-day rolling average of cases has risen to 2,501.4 per day, up 80.5 percent from the previous week.
The central government has placed Tokyo under a fourth state of emergency, mostly relying on a cooperative public and not imposing a hard lockdown as in some countries, from July 12.
Source: Tokyo logs 3,300 daily coronavirus cases amid surging infections
Anatomy Of An Insurrection
First I would like to think the mindless horde for the insurrection of 06 January because it gave me the chance to use an under used diploma in Political History…..where I look at the history of this country the founding and the years forward onto the present.
Since the very beginning the fires of insurrection have been with us….first it was a slow simmer while the country came together politically but not physically and the flame of dissension was turned up to a boil that lead to the American Civil War….after the insurrectionists were beaten down the flame returned to a simmer….the reason for the insurrection was never extinguished and the simmer continued while the country slowly returned to some sort of political unity.
In the 20th century the flames were once again raised and this time by Reagan…..his demonization of the poor with his tagline of ‘welfare queens’ started…
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Medical Falsehoods and Social Media
Darwin is working hard these days. It’s not just with the Covid vaccine. Current research on social media shows that it is being used to spread either false or misleading treatment ideas regarding diets and cancer, some of which if followed would be fatal.
- A study of articles published on WhatsApp found that only 13.6% of them were accurate and could withstand regulatory scrutiny. The remainder represented false or exaggerated claims with no factual basis.(1)
- A newly reported study from the University of Utah covers items regarding cancers published on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and Pinterest in 2018 and 2019. Of the 200 articles identified, 30.5% contained harmful information encouraging readers to act in ways that would be detrimental to health. (2) This study finds that Pinterest tends to have more accurate information than the other sources.
What we are seeing in fact is a resurgence of the “patent medicine” business…
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Day 59/67 of GED in Five Months, elements of an argument, and elements of a molecule
Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better
We use words every day, which many have different meanings in different contexts. Pros, cons, and rebuttals are elements of a basic argumentative essay, while hydrogen and helium are basic chemical elements. Language is important, and shouldn’t it be?
Today’s reading starts looking at one of the basic tools of understanding the world around us:
“The Periodic table characterizes the known elements in increasing order of atomic number. It starts on the top right hand corner with Hydrogen and continue from left to right which then repeats in the horizontal row below the last element. This is not just a list of elements it is organized in very different ways like properties and atomic mass. At first glance the periodic table may seem disorganized with only a couple elements on the top row and a block on the last row but it is very specific in the way that they…
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Cerrado desertification: Savanna could collapse within 30 years, says study
One of the world’s biodiversity hotspots and a vital source of much of Brazil’s water, the Cerrado biome may collapse in less than 30 years if agribusiness keeps advancing at its current frenetic pace. That is the key finding of a primary research article presented by 12 Brazilian scientists and recently published in Global Change Biology.
The tropical savanna, which lies south and east of the Amazon rainforest, is an immense biome covering 2 million square kilometers (772,000 square miles), or an area the size of Mexico, and inclusive of all or parts of 10 Brazilian states.
Source: Cerrado desertification: Savanna could collapse within 30 years, says study
U.S., Argentine investors tied to illegal land deals, deforestation in Brazil
The Amazon Rainforest
Information on the Amazon rainforest – Earth’s largest tropical forest – including charts, pictures, and statistics.
Source: The Amazon Rainforest
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