Day: April 1, 2021

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday tossed out a lawsuit accusing Facebook Inc. of violating a federal anti-robocall law.The justices, in a 9-0 decision authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, sided with Facebook in its argument that text messages the social media company sent did not violate a 1991 federal law called the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).The case highlighted the challenge for the justices in applying outdated laws to modern technologies. The ruling sparked calls for Congress to update the law, enacted three decades ago to curb telemarketing abuse by banning most unauthorized robocalls.”By narrowing the scope of the TCPA, the court is allowing companies the ability to assault the public with a nonstop wave of unwanted calls and texts, around the clock,” Democratic Senator Edward Markey and Democratic Representative Anna Eshoo said in a joint statement.The court ruled that Facebook’s actions — sending text messages without consent — did not fit within the technical definition of the type of conduct barred by the law, which was enacted before the rise of modern cellphone technology.The lawsuit was filed in 2015 in California federal court by Montana resident Noah Duguid, who said Facebook sent him many automatic text messages without his consent. The lawsuit accused Menlo Park, California-based Facebook of violating the TCPA’s restriction on using an automatic telephone dialing system.Facebook said the security-related messages, triggered when users try to log in to their accounts from a new device or internet browser, were tied to users’ cellphone numbers.”As the court recognized, the law’s provisions were never intended to prohibit companies from sending targeted security notifications, and the court’s decision will allow companies to continue working to keep the accounts of their users safe,” Facebook said in a statement.’A disappointing ruling’Sergei Lemberg, Duguid’s lawyer, said anyone could avoid liability under the law if they use technology like Facebook’s.”This is a disappointing ruling for anyone who owns a cellphone or values their privacy,” Lemberg added.In this instance, the lawsuit asserted that Facebook’s system that sent automated text messages was akin to a traditional automatic dialing system — known as an autodialer — used to send robocalls.”Duguid’s quarrel is with Congress, which did not define an autodialer as malleably as he would have liked,” Sotomayor wrote in the ruling.The law requires that the equipment used must use a “random or sequential number generator,” but the court concluded that Facebook’s system “does not use such technology,” Sotomayor added.Duguid said that Facebook repeatedly sent him account login notifications by text message to his cellphone, even though he was not a Facebook user and never had been. Despite numerous efforts, Duguid said he was unable to stop Facebook from “robotexting” him.Facebook responded that Duguid had most likely been assigned a phone number that was previously associated with a Facebook user who opted in to receive the notifications.A federal judge threw out the lawsuit, but in 2019, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived it. The 9th Circuit took a broad view of the law, saying it bans devices that automatically dial not only randomly generated numbers but also stored numbers that are not randomly generated.The National Association of Federally Insured Credit Unions said the decision “to narrowly interpret autodialers is a win for the credit union industry.””We have long fought for this clarity to ensure credit unions can contact their members with important, time-sensitive financial information without fear of violating the TCPA and facing frivolous lawsuits,” the association said in a statement.  
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Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, Thursday stressed the need for Germany to stock up on COVID-19 vaccine for possible repeat shots next year, and said the nation should do so with or without the rest of the European Union.Spahn made the remarks during a Berlin virtual news briefing on the countries COVID-19 vaccination program and to mark the opening of BioNTech’s plant in Marburg, Germany. He said the new plant provides Germany with an opportunity to plan for the possible need for additional doses of vaccine. Germany’s Merkel Says Europe Needs More Vaccine Independence Chancellor tells German lawmakers Europe must have enough COVID-19 vaccine for Europeans Spahn said at this point no one has been vaccinated for longer than a few months and no one knows how long protection will last, and there may be a need for third and fourth shots next year. He said Germany would be obtaining those vaccine doses on its own if EU members did not see the urgency. The health minister said BioNTech would be a logical source for that vaccine, as opposed to importing vaccine.  He said, “AstraZeneca is due to supply 15 million vaccine doses for Germany in [the second quarter of 2021]; BioNTech plans to supply 40 million doses. That shows that our main component is indeed BioNTech. And with that this factory in Marburg, as the production of BioNTech in general is very important to us in the vaccine campaign.” Spahn also announced it was stepping up its vaccination program, by administering vaccine through doctor offices. He said in the next week, 940,000 doses will be delivered to 35,000 practices around the country. By the end of April, he expects more than three million vaccine doses will be available for doctors to administer. Spahn said the move to allow doctors to deliver vaccine “will not be a big step yet, but it will be an important one,” as it will provide yet another structure through which more people can get vaccinated faster. 
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Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, Thursday stressed the need for Germany to stock up on COVID-19 vaccine for possible repeat shots next year, and said the nation should do so with or without the rest of the European Union.Spahn made the remarks during a Berlin virtual news briefing on the countries COVID-19 vaccination program and to mark the opening of BioNTech’s plant in Marburg, Germany. He said the new plant provides Germany with an opportunity to plan for the possible need for additional doses of vaccine. Germany’s Merkel Says Europe Needs More Vaccine Independence Chancellor tells German lawmakers Europe must have enough COVID-19 vaccine for Europeans Spahn said at this point no one has been vaccinated for longer than a few months and no one knows how long protection will last, and there may be a need for third and fourth shots next year. He said Germany would be obtaining those vaccine doses on its own if EU members did not see the urgency. The health minister said BioNTech would be a logical source for that vaccine, as opposed to importing vaccine.  He said, “AstraZeneca is due to supply 15 million vaccine doses for Germany in [the second quarter of 2021]; BioNTech plans to supply 40 million doses. That shows that our main component is indeed BioNTech. And with that this factory in Marburg, as the production of BioNTech in general is very important to us in the vaccine campaign.” Spahn also announced it was stepping up its vaccination program, by administering vaccine through doctor offices. He said in the next week, 940,000 doses will be delivered to 35,000 practices around the country. By the end of April, he expects more than three million vaccine doses will be available for doctors to administer. Spahn said the move to allow doctors to deliver vaccine “will not be a big step yet, but it will be an important one,” as it will provide yet another structure through which more people can get vaccinated faster. 
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The record-breaking sale of a digital artwork in March is part of a rush to invest in previously unmarketable things like basketball highlights, video game art, and even tweets. Making it possible are NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens. Matt Dibble explains.
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The World Health Organization says Europe’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts are  “unacceptably slow” in the face of a new surge of the virus and new, more contagious variants.  Dr. Hans Kluge, WHO’s European director, issued a statement Thursday urging the continent’s leaders to “speed up the process by ramping up manufacturing, reducing barriers to administering vaccines, and using every single vial we have in stock, now.”The number of new infections across Europe had fallen below 1 million just five weeks ago, but the global health agency says those numbers have since surged to 1.6 million new cases, with nearly 24,000 deaths. Dr. Kluge said barely 10% of people across Europe have received at least one dose of a vaccine, with just 4% fully vaccinated.EU Tightens Vaccine Exports to Ensure Supply for EuropeOfficials say more doses needed as pandemic worsens in EUEurope’s vaccination efforts have been hobbled by the troubled rollout of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, with France, Germany and Spain recently announcing they were limiting use of the two-dose regimen due to concerns it may be causing blood clots, although Emer Cooke, the executive director of the European Medicines Agency, said Wednesday the organization has found no scientific evidence to support such restrictions.  Dr. Dorit Nitzan, WHO’s regional emergency director for Europe, added that the new B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant first detected in Britain “poses a greater public health impact” because it is easily transmissible, meaning that “additional actions are required to control it.”The WHO’s concern over Europe was issued a day after French President Emmanuel Macron ordered the country into its third national lockdown in an effort to slow a third wave of COVID-19 infecting his country.Among the lockdown measures, Macron closed all schools for three weeks beginning Monday.Macron had hoped to avoid a lockdown and the effect it would have on the economy. However, the country’s death toll is nearing 100,000 and it has struggled with a vaccine rollout that has been slower than hoped for. A rise in cases is crippling intensive care units in areas hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.”We will lose control if we do not move now,” he said in a televised address to the nation.He also announced travel restrictions, beginning Saturday, for the whole country for at least a month.Across the Atlantic, Brazilian health officials say a new variant of COVID-19 recently detected in the South American country is similar to the one first discovered in South Africa.   Race to Produce COVID Vaccine May Cause Measles Jabs ShortageMeasles surged worldwide in 2019, reaching the highest number since 1996Wednesday’s announcement about the discovery of the new variant coincided with Brazil posting a new single-day record of 3,869 coronavirus deaths.  In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday that COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in the United States last year, and it boosted the overall U.S. death toll by nearly 16% from the previous year. During the White House COVID-19 Response Team briefing, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters the pandemic trailed only heart disease and cancer last year, accounting for about 378,000 fatalities, or 11% of all deaths in the country last year.  Also Wednesday, Pfizer said it had produced 120 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for the U.S.  The drugmaker is on track to deliver to the U.S. 200 million doses by the end of May and 300 million doses by the end of July, as they had vowed earlier this year.On Monday, Moderna said it had shipped 100 million doses of its vaccine to the United States, while Johnson & Johnson said it had delivered about 20 million shots to the U.S. in March.However, Johnson & Johnson reported Wednesday that 15 million doses of its one-shot vaccine were contaminated when workers at a manufacturing plant in Baltimore, Maryland accidentally mixed the ingredients from that vaccine with those from the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which hasn’t been approved for use in the United States. Meanwhile, Hong Kong says it will resume use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine next week following a brief suspension.  The city halted distribution of the vaccine last month after receiving word from German-based BioNTech about problems it discovered with the seal on a batch of individual vials.Officials in the Asian financial hub said Thursday it was reversing its decision after being informed by BioNTech there were no safety or quality problems with the batch of vaccines. 
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A man in Africa who developed Ebola despite receiving a vaccine recovered but suffered a relapse nearly six months later that led to 91 new cases before he died. The report adds to evidence that the deadly virus can lurk in the body long after symptoms end, and that survivors need monitoring for their own welfare and to prevent spread.Relapses like this one from the 2018-20 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo are thought to be rare. This is the first one clearly shown to have spawned a large cluster of new cases. The New England Journal of Medicine published details on Wednesday.Earlier this month, scientists said a separate outbreak that’s going on now in Guinea seems related to one in West Africa that ended five years ago. A survivor may have silently harbored the virus for years before spreading it.”The most important message is, someone can get the disease, Ebola, twice and the second illness can sometimes be worse than the first one,” said Dr. Placide Mbala-Kingebeni of the University of Kinshasha, who helped research the Congo cases.As more Ebola outbreaks occur, “we are getting more and more survivors” and the risk posed by relapses is growing, he said.Ebola outbreaks usually start when someone gets the virus from wildlife and it then spreads person to person through contact with bodily fluids or contaminated materials. Symptoms can include sudden fever, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, rash and bleeding. Fatality rates range from 25% to 90%.Relapse, not new infectionThe case in the medical journal involved a 25-year-old motorcycle taxi driver vaccinated in December 2018 because he’d been in contact with someone with Ebola. In June 2019, he developed symptoms and was diagnosed with the disease.For some reason, the man never developed immunity or lost it within six months, said Michael Wiley, a virus expert at Nebraska Medical Center who helped investigate the case.The man was treated and discharged after twice testing negative for Ebola in his blood. However, semen can harbor the virus for more than a year, so men are advised to be tested periodically after recovery. The man had a negative semen test in August but did not return after that.In late November, he again developed symptoms and sought care at a health center and from a traditional healer. After worsening, he was sent to a specialized Ebola treatment unit but died the next day.Gene tests showed the virus from his new illness was nearly identical to his original one, meaning this was a relapse, not a new infection from another person or an animal, Wiley said. Tests showed the man had spread the virus to 29 others and they spread it to 62 more.Previously, two health workers who got Ebola while treating patients in Africa were found to have the virus long after they recovered — a Scottish nurse in her spinal fluid and American physician Ian Crozier in his eyes. But those relapses were discovered quickly and did not spawn new outbreaks.They and the man in Africa all were treated with antibodies during their initial infections. Antibodies are substances the body makes to fight the virus but it can take weeks for the most effective ones to form. Giving them to Ebola patients is thought to boost the immune system, and studies suggest they improve survival. But the relapses have doctors concerned that such patients might not develop a strong enough immune response on their own and might be vulnerable to recurrences once antibodies fade. It’s just a theory at this point, the researchers stressed.Better monitoring for survivorsA few other viruses can lurk for long periods and cause problems later, such as the one responsible for chickenpox, which can reactivate and cause shingles decades after initial infection.The news about latent Ebola tells us “absolutely nothing” about the chance of something similar happening with the bug that causes COVID-19 because “they’re totally different viruses,” Wiley said.Dr. Ibrahima Soce Fall, a World Health Organization scientist, agreed.”We haven’t seen yet this kind of latency from people who survived coronavirus,” he said. Even with Ebola, “after six months, most of the patients completely clear the virus.”The biggest concern is better monitoring for survivors — there are more than 1,100 in the Congo alone, and the WHO recommends monitoring for at least two years.”We need to make sure that survivors are not stigmatized” and get the help they need so any relapses are treated quickly, Fall said.
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A joint report by the World Health Organization and China this week concluded it is “extremely unlikely” that COVID-19 escaped from a Chinese laboratory, despite the theory receiving renewed attention following the comments of a former top U.S. health official.The long-awaited WHO report released Tuesday said the lab leak theory was the least likely of four scenarios considered by a team of international experts who traveled to Wuhan, China earlier this year to investigate the origin of the coronavirus. The researchers determined that the virus most likely jumped from bats to humans, probably via a third animal that remains unidentified.That conclusion stands in contrast to the comments of Robert Redfield, who headed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Donald Trump. Redfield told CNN last week he believes COVID-19 emerged from a Wuhan lab, though he stressed it was “only an opinion.”Critics — most prominently senior members of the Trump administration but also others — suggest a lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology may have infected an employee, who then spread the virus to the public.No evidence of such an accident has been presented. But the lab leak theory persists, in part because of the absence of a definitive explanation for the emergence of a pandemic that has killed nearly 3 million people worldwide.Investigative prioritiesRedfield’s comments, along with Sunday’s episode of the 60 Minutes television newsmagazine, sparked fresh debate over whether the WHO team should have spent more time investigating the lab, located just a handful of kilometers from the site of the first reported coronavirus outbreak.The WHO team spent only about three hours at the institute, which studies bat coronaviruses. The team had limited access to records, samples, and employees, thanks to restrictions imposed by China. Instead, WHO researchers focused on a Wuhan market that sold wild and other animals, which the report says is the likeliest source of the coronavirus outbreak.Georgetown University virologist Angela Rasmussen, who was on the WHO team, challenges the notion that the group should have focused more on the lab leak theory. That kind of investigation, she insists, was outside the expertise of the WHO team, which was composed of virus experts, epidemiologists, and animal science researchers.“I mean, if the issue is getting to the bottom of a sequence of human events, then you need someone who investigates that,” Rasmussen tells VOA. “People who study viruses aren’t experienced at interviewing people or auditing freezer inventories or lab notebooks, or doing forensic investigations of any sort.”China responseChina, which helped pick the members of the WHO team, has strongly denounced the lab leak hypothesis. Instead, Chinese officials have at times suggested looking outside the country for the origin of the pandemic.But as he unveiled the report this week, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged the lab leak theory requires further investigation, “potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am ready to deploy.”Tedros, who was accused by Trump of being too close to China, also expressed relatively blunt criticism of Beijing. He accused China of failing to provide the WHO team full access to raw data on the earliest known COVID-19 cases.Rasmussen agrees with Tedros about the team’s lack of access. “I mean that’s clear,” she says. “I don’t think anyone has said they feel that they had unfettered access to everything they asked for. At the same time, there’s only so much you can do in two weeks.”A follow-up mission seems unlikely anytime soon. China’s top representative on the WHO team, Liang Wannian, said Wednesday that additional probes would only happen “as needed” and are currently “premature.”A tough diplomatic taskBut those conversations belong in the diplomatic, not scientific, realm, insists Rasmussen. She says the WHO trip was always meant to establish the groundwork for further investigations, which must involve working with China.“This will take years in any case,” she says. “And it will take a lot of diplomacy and high-level negotiation to get the kind of access that is needed.”Rapidly deteriorating Chinese ties with the West will likely complicate that mission. Another barrier: anger in some member nations, including the United States, toward the WHO itself.Trump, who called the WHO a “puppet” of China, pulled out of the world body in 2020. Biden rejoined the organization on his first day in office. Polls suggest U.S. voters now view the WHO along partisan lines.That could complicate future global health cooperation, including on the coronavirus pandemic, says Matthew Kavanagh, director for Global Health Policy at the Georgetown University Law Center’s O’Neill Institute.“We may not know the true source of the virus for years, if ever,” he says. “In the meantime, we need a stronger, more capable WHO, not one disabled by being caught in great power conflict.”
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