CDC Employees Call Out Agency’s ‘Toxic Culture of Racial Aggressions’
A New Understanding of Herd Immunity ; Roger Stone Can Be Tried Again ; and More Picks
A New Understanding of Herd Immunity ; Roger Stone Can Be Tried Again ; and More Picks 7/16
A New Understanding of Herd Immunity (Bethany)
The author writes, “What we seem to need is a better understanding of herd immunity in this novel context. The threshold can change based on how a virus spreads. The spread keeps on changing based on how we react to it at every stage, and the effects compound. Small preventive measures have big downstream effects. In other words, the herd in question determines its immunity.”
Toxic Hand Sanitizers Have Blinded and Killed Adults and Children (Mili)
From Ars Technica: “In an updated safety warning, the [Food and Drug Administration] identified five more brands of hand sanitizer that contain methanol, a simple alcohol often linked to incorrectly distilled liquor that is poisonous if ingested, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin. The newly identified products are in addition to nine methanol-containing sanitizers the FDA identified last month, which are all made by the Mexico-based manufacturer Eskbiochem SA de CV.”
North Carolina City Approves Reparations for Black Residents (Dana)
The authors write, “In an extraordinary move, the Asheville City Council has apologized for the North Carolina city’s historic role in slavery, discrimination and denial of basic liberties to Black residents and voted to provide reparations to them and their descendants. … The unanimously passed resolution does not mandate direct payments. Instead, it will make investments in areas where Black residents face disparities.”
Berkeley Becomes First City in US to Approve Plan to Remove Police From Traffic Stops (Chris C.)
The author writes, “The new plan … is aimed to curtail racial profiling, citing the names of people who died at a routine traffic stop across the country.”
German Regional Police Chief Forced Out Over Force’s Far-Right Links (Reader Jessica)
The author writes, “Udo Muench took early retirement after it emerged that police computers were used in unauthorized searches for details of two prominent personalities, including a far-left politician, who subsequently received threatening letters and emails.”
Roger Stone Can Be Tried Again (Russ)
The authors write, “If Stone wants to earn the finality he so obviously craves, he should try the same approach used by other convicted criminals: Come clean, and tell prosecutors what they want to know about the crimes in which he was involved.”
Beetles Carrying Tiny Backpack Cameras Stream Footage to a Smartphone (Chris C.)
From New Scientist: “A tiny camera that hitches a ride on the backs of beetles can wirelessly live-stream footage from a bug’s eye view. Shyam Gollakota and his colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle have developed a small, steerable camera that can be fixed to beetles to transmit footage from their surroundings in real time. The camera uses Bluetooth to send footage to a smartphone at a resolution of 160 by 120 pixels, and at a rate of between one and five frames per second.”
