Florida accused of push for 'roads to nowhere' under cover of pandemic

Florida accused of push for 'roads to nowhere' under cover of pandemic: Opponents of Florida’s largest highway construction project in decades say officials are exploiting the coronavirus pandemic to advance three new unwanted toll roads that would destroy more than 50,000 acres of rural landscape and pave hundreds of  miles through ecologically fragile wetlands and wildlife corridors.

 

A diverse coalition of opposition groups fighting the state’s so-called m-cores project insists the 330 miles of new highways planned for south-west, central and north Florida at an estimated cost of $26.4bn are not needed, and wanted the process halted at least until in-person public hearings could resume to evaluate the proposals.

 

The state, however, has pressed ahead with online meetings, appointing  taskforces it requires to make recommendations to Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, by 15 November.

The GDPR Catch-22 in the Dutch COVID-19 contact-tracing app

The GDPR Catch-22 in the Dutch COVID-19 contact-tracing app: First of all, the government should not be a controller for data processing in the app and between users’ phones. After all, the last thing a democracy would want is the appearance of the government being present inside citizens’ phones.

COVID Public Opinion Study Finds Continued Disapproval for Government Executives

UPDATE: COVID Public Opinion Study Finds Continued Disapproval for Government Executives: The twelfth survey conducted by the multi-university COVID-19 Consortium for Understanding the Public’s Policy Preferences Across States (...) found a continued disapproval for how governors have handled the COVID-19 pandemic, and an ever so slight increase in approval for the President’s handling of the pandemic.

Use of fear has brought about 'the greatest invasion of personal liberty in our history'

Use of fear has brought about 'the greatest invasion of personal liberty in our history': Lord Sumption told Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson: “If you are going to inaugurate the greatest invasion of personal liberty in our entire history, even including wartime measures, if you dare to do that, then you have to move straight into justification mode.

“The government has now found itself trapped in a position where, first of all, it has to exaggerate the extent of the problem in order to justify its past actions.“And secondly, by exaggerating the scale of the problem, it is contributing to the difficulty that it now faces in persuading people to go back to school and back to work, because naturally what people ask is, well, what has changed since?”

What can be done about the infectious spread of misinformation and disinformation

The COVID-19 infodemic: What can be done about the infectious spread of misinformation and disinformation: Misinformation can be information that is false or inaccurate, whether deliberately or inadvertently so. Disinformation refers to information that is intended to mislead, whether or not the information is literally true. Misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19 fall into several categories

How Likely is a Second wave?

How Likely is a Second wave? Evidence presented in this paper indicates that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 pandemic as an event in the UK is essentially complete, with ongoing and anticipated challenges well within the capacity of a normalised NHS to cope. The virus infection has passed through the bulk of the population as a result of wholly natural processes and evidence indicates that in the UK and other heavily infected European countries the spread of the virus has been all but halted by a substantial reduction in the susceptible population. This has occurred because the level of infection required to introduce enough immunity into the population to reduce the reproduction number (R) permanently below 1 occurred at markedly lower infection rates and loss of life than had been initially anticipated. The evidence presented in this paper indicates that there should be no expectation of a large scale ‘second wave’ with smaller localised outbreaks when the virus contacts pockets of previously uninfected populations.

Terá o “vírus chinês” chegado também a Portugal?

Terá o “vírus chinês” chegado também a Portugal?: Portugal decidiu fechar as escolas quando tínhamos cerca de 80 novos casos/dia e vai abri-las de novo quando teremos cerca 400. Porque é importante abrir as escolas – mas alguém tem que gerir os riscos associados a essa abertura. Fechámos as fronteiras com Espanha na primavera e mantemo-las abertas no verão, quando no país vizinho se observam cerca de 10.000 novos casos/dia. Regozijamo-nos com abertura do corredor turístico inglês, sabendo que acolhemos turistas de um país onde se observam 3000 novos casos/dia. Porque o turismo é importante para a nossa economia – mas alguém terá que multiplicar-se para responder a mais este desafio. Proibimos festivais e iniciativas afins até finais de Setembro, mas a lei que o fez permite exceções de carater político, religioso ou social. Porque é importante sermos flexíveis – mas alguém terá que gerir os riscos associados a esta permissividade.