Wow, just wow... You can't even place internet cookies on an EU computer without permission here. Could be this is some leftover from 9/11. When Bush gave extended power to authorities to track the culprits. Perhaps it has never been rescinded?
I found an article that explains what they did:
https://www.kansascity.com/news/coronavirus/article243694062.html
Apparently, they put an option in place for tracking but you both have to give it permission to track you and download an app that would do so. So, while it is strange, it is not tracking anything unless you activate it.
So, this is some of the info on what has been happening recently from an iPhone perspective. Much of this just happened with the past 3 days too. Apparently my state is one of the few that will support this feature right now.
https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/01/how-to-turn-on-off-covid-19-contact-tracing-iphone-ios/
@tgraf66 Totally agree. I don't trust Trump. I wouldn't trust Pfizer. I worked on a Pfizer-funded study while a researcher at Harvard Medical School and it was a shoddy study designed to convince policymakers to allow them to continue making billions with their antibiotics. That was decades ago, and if anything, the situation in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry and the federal oversight is worse now for public health. I can't speak for Moderno.
But pharmaceutical companies need to be tightly monitored because they have been shown to place their profits above human health. The FDA is also influenced by the pharmaceuticals and has been shown to be more lax than its European counterparts. With Trump in charge, and now refusing to be part of the WHO vaccine effort, I also wouldn't trust the CDC any more either. This is a sorry state of affairs.
I guess we have to go to Canada for a safe vaccine? Or wait until the vaccine news looks better and quarantine.
I think Trump's plan is to fast track clinical trials and the ultimate clinical trial will be an experiment on the American people.
Here is information from Apple about the COVID Tracking app.
Welp, @triciact and @tgraf66, they say "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world" meaning running the world begins at home. But running the rest of the world, we ain't there yet. Our current situation totally reflects what happens when men rule the world. My Sis, who is ex military and nearly got mobilized for the Iraq War, said, referring to Sadaam Hussein, "Geez, if women were in charge, we would have just found someone to go over and poison Sadaam instead of starting a f***ing war!"
Since this is the Covid-19 sub-forum, ladies, I'll add, don't forget to mask up, maintain social distance, and wash your hands. A fascinating recent article (link below) from UCSF summarized several studies that showed that wearing a simple surgical or cloth mask was extremely efficient in preventing severe COVID cases. Examples came from healthcare workers, a cruise ship, a seafood processing plant, and a Tyson chicken processing plant, showing that when cases were transmitted despite mask wear, a large proportion were mild or asymptomatic. In the seafood and chicken processing plants, nearly 95% of cases were asymptomatic. And asymptomatic is as good as it gets with Covid!
https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/07/418181/one-more-reason-wear-mask-youll-get-less-sick-covid-19
Interesting confluence of biology and computer science in this article:
New COVID Theory Thanks to Supercomputer
Wearing a mask can potentially reduce the severity of the infection
I hope it's okay to post a link to a YouTube video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DANEqOPcDwc
In the video description there are links to references, arcitlces and medical studies that support wearing a mask not only to protect others but to protect yourself from a more severe infection.
@fajm. Thanks for posting Paul Campbell who has an International reputation for excellent medical reporting. I like what he is saying, except I had thought wearing a mask kept me protected, and now I see it isn't really for that at all. When I shop for groceries, I double mask, thinking I'm protecting myself but maybe not so much as protecting others from me.
We started Paul Campbell back in January when someone, maybe it was @lovendures, discovered him for us. He's been one of the most articulate and reliable sources on covid from the beginning.
(The YouTube issue on this site is that we ask people to stick to reliable sources, so we don't end out passing along disinformation)