WHO’s early coronavirus response raises awkward questions about Beijing relationship

2020/04/04 Leave a comment

Good in-depth article:

In the early afternoon of Jan. 31, the lead World Health Organization representative in Beijing held a video briefing to update diplomats on the spread of a deadly new virus – and to laud China for everything it was doing.

Only a day before, the WHO had declared a “public-health emergency of international concern” over the deadly new coronavirus that causes COVID-19, after an initial outbreak in China’s Hubei province began to spread around the world. The WHO also said no restrictions on travel or trade were necessary.

On the video briefing, the WHO’s top man in China, Gauden Galea, praised the Chinese virus response. Then he went a step further, calling on other countries not to step out of line with the WHO recommendations, a key concern for Beijing, which was furious that countries were beginning to close their borders to Chinese travellers.

Any United Nations member country “will have to scientifically justify” any measure that “goes beyond UN recommendation. This justification will be made public,” Mr. Galea said, according to notes of the meeting made by one of the participants and seen by The Globe and Mail.

It amounted to a warning from the WHO, said the person, whose identity The Globe is not disclosing because the source is not authorized to speak publicly. And it was directly in line with messages from Beijing, which in subsequent days said it “deplored” countries that ignored WHO recommendations and enacted travel bans that, according to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, “sowed panic among the public” and “gravely disrupted” trade.

Now, with the virus rapidly spreading across Canada, new questions are being asked about the WHO’s relationship with China and whether the organization has sought to curry favour with Beijing – for access or money – in ways that have undermined the reliability of its advice.

In 2003, the WHO vocally criticized Chinese leadership for covering up the initial spread of the virus that caused SARS. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the organization has pointedly refused to denounce China’s concealment of information, even after it became clear that authorities in China had muzzled doctors.

In mid-January, the WHO said it had no evidence of person-to-person transmission of a virus that has subsequently shown a remarkable ability to spread through communities. And the WHO has relied on Chinese official data even when their veracity have been called into doubt – most recently by the U.S. intelligence community, which believes China deliberately manipulated numbers to mask the severity of its COVID-19 toll.

The trustworthiness of the WHO is a particular concern for countries like Canada, where public-health leaders have sought to follow WHO recommendations despite internal warnings about the reliability of information coming from China. On Thursday, Ms. Hua sought to deflect concern, saying, “China has been giving open, transparent and timely updates to the world.” Rather than listen to those accusing China of a cover-up, she said, “we should listen to the WHO.“

But concern about the relationship between the WHO and China has grown more intense as the virus pandemic claims tens of thousands of lives, bringing new attention to early failures in detection and containment. The WHO cannot work in China without Beijing’s support, and the organization has won praise for its more recent advocacy of strong measures to counter COVID-19.

Still, Mr. Galea’s admonition in late January only added to worry that the WHO was prioritizing the interests of China over those of other countries.

The WHO, in a statement, said Mr. Galea in the January briefing “referred to the sovereign right of all countries to take the measures they see fit.” But to some in attendance, his admonition only added to worry that the WHO was prioritizing the interests of China over those of other countries.

“National governments didn’t get warned as urgently as perhaps they could have by World Health officials about the severity and potential for non-containment of the virus,” said Andrew Lakoff, an anthropologist of science and medicine at University of Southern California Dornsife. A key question now is: ”What did the WHO know and why didn’t they earlier and more urgently warn other member states?” he said.

Andrew Cooper, a professor at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ont., who studies global health governance, is blunt: For WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “his priority is to maintain good relations with China.” Beijing has provided more cash than Washington to the WHO COVID-19 response. But China remains far from the largest contributor to the WHO, giving less than 10 per cent of what the United States provided last year.

Beijing, however, has made concerted efforts to increase its influence at key international organizations, and the WHO missteps on COVID-19 have brought that into striking relief.

The “evident bias” in favour of China at the WHO “matches the weakness of other UN organizations in the face of China’s powerful campaigning,” François Godement, senior adviser for Asia at the Institut Montaigne, wrote in a recent internet post. Once China itself began to act decisively against the virus, the WHO became a valuable clearinghouse for information, he wrote. But a key question for the WHO remains “how to lessen the impact of a relentless authoritarian regime.”

Canada has publicly expressed confidence in the WHO. Canadian Health Minister Patty Hajdu initially said Canada would follow WHO advice to avoid travel bans, saying “there isn’t evidence” for their effectiveness. It was not until March 18 that Canada closed its borders to most foreigners.

On Thursday, Ms. Hajdu said “there is no indication” that China has falsified data about virus infection and death rates, and accused a reporter of “feeding into conspiracy theories” for questioning the accuracy of Chinese data – and the WHO information that relies upon China.

Chinese authorities have themselves admitted that, until recently, their numbers of confirmed cases did not include people without obvious symptoms. Even in China’s tightly controlled media, numerous questions have been raised about the accuracy of China’s numbers, particularly after photos from coronavirus epicentre Wuhan showed large numbers of boxes containing cremated remains.

It’s a question that has been raised at the highest levels in Canada, too.

Beginning in late January, the Prime Minister’s Office received internal warnings questioning the reliability of China’s reporting on the spread of the virus epidemic, according to a person with knowledge of the information shared internally. The Globe is not identifying the person because they are not authorized to make public comments.

Canada had long since lost some of its own ability to independently scrutinize information coming from China. Under David Butler-Jones, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer between 2004 and 2014, the Public Health Agency of Canada stationed a representative in Beijing – a medical doctor with a specialization in public health.

“It’s a way of getting an earlier heads up … so that if something is developing, we can get good intelligence on it early and get ahead of it,” Mr. Butler-Jones said in an interview. But the doctor who occupied that post left Beijing in 2015 and has not been replaced, leaving Canada with no one in such a position in China during the spread of COVID-19.

“For me, it’s frustrating,” Mr. Butler-Jones said. The position was in China “for good reason.”

Still, other sources of information underscored the threat. One was Taiwan, a region still plagued by memories of the Chinese cover-up of the SARS epidemic nearly two decades earlier. Taiwan, shut out of the WHO at the insistence of China, was ill-disposed to believe Beijing’s early assurances on the new coronavirus.

“We don’t trust anything related to new outbreaks from China,” said Chang-Chuan Chan, dean of the college of public health at National Taiwan University.

Taiwan began inspecting passengers arriving from Wuhan on Dec. 31, and sent a technical team to the virus-stricken city on Jan. 13 to 14. The delegation, which also included experts from Hong Kong and Macau, was controlled in what it could see, and denied access to the seafood market that is believed to be at the epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak. But the Taiwanese experts came away convinced that “there is already person-to-person transmission,” Prof. Chan said.

This was out of step with the WHO, which issued a tweet on the night the Taiwanese left Wuhan saying “preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission” of COVID-19.

The WHO acted “on the basis of available information,” said spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic, citing a statement from Chinese authorities on Jan. 14 that “there is no evidence to date of a highly contagious virus.”

The close partnership between Beijing and the WHO has continued, with some of the organization’s key leaders showing a striking deference to Chinese priorities, including Bruce Aylward, the Canadian doctor who led a WHO mission to China in February.

He attracted global attention last week when he disconnected a video interview with a Hong Kong journalist after being asked about Taiwan, which Beijing considers its territory. (“The question of Taiwanese membership in WHO is up to WHO member states, not WHO staff,” the organization said in a statement this week. On Thursday, the Hong Kong government said broadcaster RTHK “breached the One-China Principle” with the interview.)

Mr. Aylward’s mission provided another opportunity for co-operation between the WHO and China, which provided 12 of the 25 people on the delegation. Chinese involvement extended to the final edits of the subsequent report, including over which specific language was used.

“There was a bit of wording manipulation, but not the sentiment,” said Dale Fisher, a professor of medicine at the National University of Singapore, and one of the delegates. For example, “we wanted to call it a ‘dangerous’ pathogen, and they felt the word ‘dangerous’ could be linked to bio-terrorism.”

The final report calls COVID-19 “a new pathogen that is highly contagious, can spread quickly, and must be considered capable of causing enormous health, economic and societal impacts.”

The report is effusive toward China, whose virus response it calls “exceptional” and whose people it praises for a deep commitment to “collective action in the face of this common threat.”

All members of the delegation “contributed to the writing, intense discussions and finalization of the report and fully concurred with the final content and language,” said Mr. Jasarevic, the WHO spokesperson. “No major or even minor finding of the mission was not included in the final report.”

Dr. Fisher dismissed criticism that the WHO was too sunny in its report from the mission. ”Everything we saw and everything we learned has completely been replicated elsewhere,” he said, pointing to findings about the ratio of mild, severe and critical cases that have been similar in other countries. “If you’re asking me could it have been any better, my answer is no,” he said.

And it’s not fair to fault the WHO for the failures of other governments to respond, particularly after the severity of the virus became clear in Wuhan, said Bilahari Kausikan, an international affairs specialist who previously served as ambassador-at-large for Singapore.

The United States “wasted time denying that this was a serious issue,” he said. “You can’t blame the WHO for that. You can’t blame the WHO for the Europeans having a terrible, nonchalant attitude toward the whole thing.”

Source: WHO’s early coronavirus response raises awkward questions about Beijing relationship

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Trump gambles on immigrant workers during coronavirus

2020/04/04 Leave a comment

Reality and economic interests at play:

The Trump administration is still soliciting immigrants for specific jobs despite droves of Americans filing for unemployment.

It is urging medical professionals to contact a U.S. embassy to move their application process along, cognizant of the coronavirus pandemic sweeping America.

It is easing requirements for immigrants to get jobs as farm workers, landscapers and crab pickers, aware that industries, including those that fill grocery store shelves, could be hurt if they couldn’t hire foreign employees.

And until facing criticism this week, it had been moving ahead with a 35,000-person increase in the number of seasonal workers in part for expected job openings at resorts and golf courses after the pandemic releases its grip on the economy.

Activists are irate that Trump hasn’t backed down more. But business leaders say it’s needed to stabilize a cratering economy.

Indeed, Trump faces immense pressure to prop up the economy — both during and after the coronavirus outbreak. And he’s adopting an approach the business community has long pushed: Recruit workers for perennially empty jobs, even if they’re not American workers. Business leaders say that even during the coronavirus crisis, foreign workers are critical to companies that might be unable to find enough unemployed Americans willing to take certain jobs, especially if those people can collect more money via jobless benefits.

“There’s still a need for these types of workers,” said one business industry representative in touch with the administration.

But the move poses political risks for the president, with hard-line immigration activists baffled that Trump would choose a moment of financial peril — with unemployment skyrocketing and a reelection campaign around the corner — to turn to foreign workers.

“It’s reprehensible,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates more immigration restrictions. “Specifically importing workers into jobs unemployed Americans would be doing is absurd.”

A Department of Homeland Security official said the administration’s moves were surprising given the “soaring unemployment rate.” A record-shattering 6.6 million people filed for their first unemployment benefits last week, as scores of industries have fully shuttered during the pandemic.

In response to pressure from opponents, the Trump administration did backtrack on some of its plans, pausing the approval of 35,000 more seasonal worker visas, pending further review. But the other moves remain in place for now.

Trump made cracking down on immigration the centerpiece of his 2016 campaign, promising to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico and deport millions of migrants who arrived in the country illegally. In his inaugural address, he promised to rebuild the country with American labor. “We will follow two simple rules: buy American and hire American,” he said.

Since the pandemic began, the administration has restricted foreign visitors from China, Europe, Canada and Mexico, and postponed hearings for immigrants wanting to remain in the U.S. More broadly, it paused visa processing for those that aren’t being granted exemptions.

But it has also begun easing the process for companies looking to hire foreign workers, altering some paperwork requirements, including allowing electronic signatures and waiving the physical inspection of documents.

The administration even talked about boosting the number of visas offered to wealthy immigrants who invest money in the U.S., though interest in that has cooled on Capitol Hill, according to the business leader.

DHS is expected to extend visas that are expiring but can’t be renewed because federal offices are closed, according to the business group representative. Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf confirmed this week that he is considering that, among other changes.

“We’re looking at a … variety of different options that I think we will have soon, and it will be very beneficial,” he said.

The White House and DHS did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump touted the importance of agricultural visas on Wednesday in response to a question at a news conference at the White House.

“We want them to come in,” he said. “We’re not closing the border so that we can’t get any of those people to come in. They’ve been there for years and years, and I’ve given the commitment to the farmers: They’re going to continue to come. Or we’re not going to have any farmers.”

NumbersUSA, which supports immigration restrictions, has been railing against the changes for days on social media and in alerts to supporters, specifically calling out Wolf, who once lobbied for an association that wanted to keep a visa program for foreign workers.

“@DHS_Wolf is going to admit tens of thousands of foreign guest workers in the coming month to satisfy the corporate lobby,” it posted on Twitter this week. “These guest workers will be dispersed across the entire U.S. putting Americans out of work and hampering efforts to control the coronavirus.”

The business community, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, had been pushing for temporary slots for immigrants coming to the U.S., saying companies were struggling to fill jobs as unemployment has fallen. It continued lobbying even after the coronavirus, according to the business industry representatives.

“Many immigrant workers are currently helping our nation fight the spread of Covid-19,” said Jon Baselice, the chamber’s executive director of immigration policy, citing medical professionals, scientists and agricultural workers. “Their contributions to our national well-being are critically important to our safety and security until we flatten the curve on this pandemic.”

Immigrant advocates have joined in the call for not restricting foreign labor during the current pandemic.

“It’s never been more clear that the American economy depends on immigrants and immigration,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group. “This is a community that is currently contributing on the front lines and is also able to come in and meet gaps in the labor force.”

Immigrant advocates have cautioned that being on the front line during coronavirus puts these foreign laborers in harm’s way. The issue made headlines after a video surfaced of farm workers laboring close to each other without proper protective gear. María Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of the Latino political organization Voto Latino, said immigrants who don’t speak English well might not understand confusing guidelines about how to protect themselves against the virus.

Despite Trump’s campaign vow to reduce immigration, the number of immigrants with temporary visas has steadily increased during his presidency, reaching 925,000 in 2018, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

While there is no cap for the total number of temporary workers, there are annual limits on several of the dozen-plus visa categories. More than 1 million immigrants are allowed into the United States each year on a permanent basis, but only a fraction — 140,000 — come through employment categories.

Companies also request many more foreign worker visas than are approved. On Thursday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that companies initially were requesting 275,000 visas in fiscal 2021 for skilled workers in specialty occupations. Those visas, dubbed H-1B, are capped at 85,000 annually.

The Trump administration has also worked to prioritize visa processing for medical workers, given America’s resource-strained health system.

Last Thursday, the State Department encouraged medical professionals seeking a work or exchange visitor visa to contact the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate for a visa appointment. Hours later, after some criticism, the department clarified that the person must already have an approved visa petition.

The State Department later announced it would also waive interviews for some temporary worker visas, saying the program is “essential to the economy and food security of the United States and is a national security priority.”

The prioritization for some workers comes amid a broader suspension of visa services at embassies and consulates around the world. But the Trump administration created a carveout after a push by members of Congress and agriculture groups, who already had been coping with a worker shortage and the fallout from Trump’s trade wars.

Separately, DHS had announced before the pandemic that it planned to allow an additional 35,000 workers into the country on non-agricultural seasonal worker visas as it tried “to strike a careful balance that benefits American businesses and American workers.”

The visas, dubbed H-2B, have been regularly used for workers in the landscaping, housekeeping and construction industries, and had been capped at 66,000. DHS has added additional visas in that category for the past three years.

The administration discussed reversing the decision, according to two people familiar with the situation, but moved forward last week with the plan. Employers expected to be able to hire workers within weeks, according to the business industry representative.

But after criticism, DHS reversed course yet again. “DHS’s rule on the H-2B cap is on hold pending review due to present economic circumstances,” the department tweeted.

Source: Trump gambles on immigrant workers during coronavirus

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Access-to-information systems across Canada slowed by COVID-19

2020/04/04 Leave a comment

ATIP is not the most responsive at the best of times and my experience suggests a further slowing down. Some of the delays may be legitimate given some of the requested records may be hard to access when working remotely:

An international human rights organization is calling on all levels of government in Canada to continue answering access to information requests — and prioritize ones that relate to government accountability.

As governments across the country move to offer essential services only due to COVID-19, some are warning of delays in processing access to information requests, while others have stopped accepting new requests entirely.

It means the public has one less tool to understand how those in power are making decisions during a public health crisis.

“We’ve got, on the one hand, this incredible need for accountability and on the other hand, the institutions of accountability are operating well below their normal levels,” Toby Mendel, executive director of the Halifax-based Centre for Law and Democracy, said in an interview.”So, it’s a cocktail for lack of accountability and at this time, the importance of access to information is much, much greater than ever.”

The Access to Information Act allows applicants who pay $5 to ask for documents ranging from expense reports to briefing papers from government bodies in Canada.

‘Canadians will expect a comprehensive picture’

Last week, the federal information commissioner urged federal agencies and departments to “take all reasonable measures to limit the impact on individuals’ right to access.”

She followed it up with a statement on Thursday, reminding public bodies about their obligation to document decisions and actions, even with many people working from home.

“When the time comes, and it will, for a full accounting of the measures taken and the vast financial resources committed by the government during this emergency, Canadians will expect a comprehensive picture of the data, deliberations and policy decisions that determined the government’s overall response to COVID-19,” commissioner Caroline Maynard wrote in the statement.

But some institutions in the already-clogged federal system are halting access to information requests indefinitely.

“The Access to Information and Privacy Office has decided to put all access and privacy requests on hold until the situation returns to normal,” Public Services and Procurement Canada wrote in an email to an applicant last week.

The email didn’t say what part of the legislation allows it to put requests on hold indefinitely or how it would define “normal.”

A spokesperson for Public Services and Procurement Canada didn’t answer those questions, but said it “is prioritizing support for the government’s response efforts, as well as critical services, including administering pay and pensions, and maintaining building safety as part of its service continuity.”

Toronto not accepting new requests

The access to information system is not just slowing down at the federal level.

CBC News surveyed five cities — Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax, Vancouver and Calgary — and found their approaches to access to information during COVID-19 vary.

Calgary, Ottawa and Vancouver say they are continuing to answer requests as usual during the pandemic while trying to minimize delays.

Toronto, Canada’s largest city, says it has “temporarily suspended the intake of any new [freedom of information] requests” so staff can “prioritize COVID-19 response activities.”

“It is not currently feasible to deploy staff resources to conduct the searches necessary to locate records in order to respond to new requests,” City of Toronto spokesperson Beth Waldman wrote in an email.

Waldman said transparency and right to information are still a priority, citing the city’s press briefings and “other communications to the public” during the pandemic. She didn’t specify when the city will start accepting new requests again.

After two weeks of mass closures and aggressive physical distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19, public health experts watch closely to see if Canada is taking steps towards flattening the curve. 3:08

Earlier this week, the Halifax Regional Municipality’s website said it wasn’t accepting new requests for information or routine disclosure requests, where people can request information that’s already been released.

After CBC News asked why that was the case, the website was changed to say the municipality would accept requests, but applicants should expect delays “as municipal staff are working remotely and will not be in a position to search for records responsive to the request.”Provinces are also handling the situation differently.

The New Brunswick Ombud’s Office has granted an extension to public bodies, giving them until May 29 to complete active requests.

But in Newfoundland and Labrador, public bodies are getting indefinite extensions, according to a letter sent to an applicant in March.

“The extension is approved for the time until government returns to normal operations,” the letter says, adding that the extension was approved by the province’s access to information and privacy commissioner.

‘Scrutiny from outside makes things work better’

Mendel said public bodies have been too quick to say they can’t handle processing requests.

“It is not appropriate for bodies to simply say we’re not processing requests anymore,” Mendel said.”We have laws across the country. They set rules for the processing of requests and those rules must either be formally limited by a legal process or they must be obeyed.”

While he said it may be reasonable for public bodies to restrict employees from going into offices and looking for physical files, he believes public institutions should prioritize requests that deal with government accountability, including those from journalists and opposition politicians.

“Scrutiny from outside makes things work better,” said Mendel.

His organization has recently launched a tracker that examines how governments across the globe are handling access to information during a pandemic.

“In Brazil, for example, they sought to suspend the operation of the act and the Supreme Court said, ‘No that’s not legitimate, that is a key accountability institution,'” Mendel said.

“You can see that when the proper rule of law system is being applied to these measures, it doesn’t just allow governments to act as they might wish arbitrarily. ”

Crisis could push access to information to modernize

Organizations that already struggled to respond to access to information requests will likely make access to information “an even lower priority” during a pandemic, according to Jason Woywada, executive director of the British Columbia Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.

“That does lead to concerns because those are the same institutions that likely require the highest degree of oversight to improve their processes and operations,” he said.

But it also could push the country’s access to information systems to modernize.

Woywada supports that, as long as it’s done in a way that doesn’t put privacy at risk.

Nova Scotia learned that the hard way in 2018, after it was forced to shut down its online freedom of information portal after a privacy breach.

More than 7,000 documents, including hundreds with highly personal information, were downloaded in March 2018, but the breach wouldn’t be detected until a month later.

“The key consideration there is making sure that security is maintained and making sure that the privacy is maintained for the information of the individuals that is being used online, that we aren’t seeing a sudden increase in data breaches,” Woywada said.

Source: Access-to-information systems across Canada slowed by COVID-19

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Worries grow that discrimination against Chinese Canadians is getting worse as pandemic continues

2020/04/04 Leave a comment

Despite efforts by political leaders and others. Unfortunately, there will always be some who will use the pandemic for racism and discrimation against Chinese Canadians (concern over the behaviour of the Chinese government is, of course, legitimate and warranted):

Avvy Go knew things were going to get bad in January.

The Toronto lawyer who works with the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic said once China was identified as the epicentre of COVID-19, she was concerned about anti-Asian discrimination growing in Canada.

“Since then we’ve been hearing more and more stories about Chinese Canadians experiencing discrimination in the workplace, or just being called names while they’re just on the street out shopping,” Go said.

“Yes, it has gotten worse. More and more people are talking about what they’ve experienced.”

Go said much of what she’s hearing wouldn’t rise to the Criminal Code definition of a hate crime.But the RCMP is encouraging anyone to report discriminatory acts even if they seem minor.

Reporting racist or hate-motivated incidents can still help police identify trends and potentially stop escalation, said RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Caroline Duval

“Investigating hate-motivated crimes and incidents falls under the mandate of the local police of the jurisdiction where the criminal activity takes place,” Duval said Tuesday.

“Reporting hate-motivated incidents, no matter how minor they may seem, can help police better target crime prevention efforts in the communities. It can also identify trends and prevent a possible escalation towards violence.”

In a recent intelligence report, the FBI warned local police across the U.S. that hate crimes against Asian American communities could “surge” during the pandemic. It didn’t help that President Donald Trump has taken to referring to COVID-19 as the “China virus.”

“The FBI assesses hate crime incidents against Asian Americans likely will surge across the United States, due to the spread of coronavirus disease,” read the report, written by the FBI’s Houston office and obtained by ABC News.

“The FBI makes this assessment based on the assumption that a portion of the U.S. public will associate COVID-19 with China and Asian American populations.”

ABC reported that the assessment noted an increase in hate crimes across the U.S.

The RCMP has not issued any warnings about a potential rise in hate crimes targeting Asian Canadian communities. A spokesperson for the Toronto Police Service said there has been no increase in reported hate crimes targeting Canadians of Asian.

“(But) hate-related occurrences often go unreported to police so I’m not sure our numbers would accurately reflect the possible lived experiences for some members of the community,” said police spokesperson Meaghan Gray.

Evan Balgord, the executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, told the Star Thursday that most of the chatter in white nationalist and far-right extremist online circles has focused on baseless theories, like COVID-19 being a bioweapon or a plot by the United Nations.

But Balgord said the conversations have strayed into racist tropes or racially-charged statements, like the desire for more Chinese to die from the virus.

“We have seen members of far-right movements in Canada brag about harassing Chinese people in real life,” Balgord said.

The Chinese Canadian National Council’s Toronto Chapter has created an online forum where people can chronicle any racially-motivated abuse. Justin Kong, the chapter’s executive director, said there have been reports of “intensifying anti-Asian racism, this renewed Sinophobia.”

Kong said there are segments of the community who no longer feeling safe going to public places.

“We wanted to make sure people had a place to share their experiences, and we wanted to collect those experiences …and make sure the voices of communities who are discriminated against, East Asian Canadians, Chinese Canadians, are heard,” Kong said.

Kong is calling on authorities to do more to support Chinese Canadians during the pandemic.

“We’re hoping the government … takes a stance on this and speaks out against racism, and also puts in real policies to fight that racism,” Kong said.

“Especially in this heightened moment.”

Source: Federal PoliticsWorries grow that discrimination against Chinese Canadians is getting worse as pandemic continues

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The Racial Time Bomb in the Covid-19 Crisis Pre-existing health conditions leave one group particularly vulnerable.

2020/04/03 Leave a comment

While Canadian universal healthcare will ensure that racial disparities in death rates should be less than in the USA, expect to see some differences and hopefully the data is being collected on COVID-19 victims beyond age and gender:

Early Monday morning the email arrived. The subject line began, “ALARM AT THE GATE,” written in all caps. Someone had died. That is always what that phrasing means.

The message came via a group email list maintained by the fraternity I joined in college some 30 years ago.

A younger member, a rising chef in his 30s, had died. As the email read, he passed away “due to immune system complications resulting from contracting the Covid-19 virus as a Type-1 diabetic.” He was in Detroit, which has emerged as a hot spot for the virus.

This was the third death I’d heard about of someone with a connection to my college or a friend who went there. All relatively young, all black men, all diabetics. The two others were in New Orleans, another emerging hot spot.

I recalled an arresting article I’d read from “Undark,” a Knight Foundation-funded, science-oriented digital magazine in Cambridge, Mass. (I’m on the advisory board of the magazine.) As the article pointed out, the virus may prove most devastating in the South because of “poorer health, curbed health care access and skepticism of government.”

What the article doesn’t state outright, but I read in the subtext, was that the virus is more likely to be deadly to black people. Most black people in America still live in the South. The states with the highest percentage of black people are in the South.

We may be waiting for a racial time bomb to explode with this disease.

In the early days of the virus, the relatively few cases on the African continent, I believe, gave black people in America a false sense of security, that black people may be somehow less susceptible to it.

But that is not true, and African-Americans should not look to Africa as the model. Even as researchers worry about Africans’ vulnerabilities — some being the same issues that exist in the American South — African countries also have advantages that America and, in particular, African-Americans don’t.

As Berkeley economist Edward Miguel explained, “The median age in a lot of countries is 20 or 18, much younger than in Europe, and it appears that young people who are infected are often asymptomatic or just get a cold.” The median age in the United States is 38. Furthermore, some African nations have a medical infrastructure experienced in dealing with pandemics, and in many cases people still live in rural areas.

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How Census Is Building a Citizenship Database Covering Everyone Living in the U.S.

2020/04/03 Leave a comment

Interesting read on how the US Census bureau is working on getting greater precision on citizenship using statistical modelling. Whether this will provide greater precision than the American Community Survey remains to be seen, as well as protections to ensure privacy and anonymization:

While the 2020 decennial count is underway, the Census Bureau is working on a separate effort to identify the percentage of the U.S. population that has legal citizenship. The result will be a Census-owned database of every person living in the U.S. with a statistical “citizenship estimate” linked to each individual.

The Trump administration initially pushed to include a citizenship question on the 2020 survey of America. However, in June of last year, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to prevent the administration from asking the question, citing poor justification for its inclusion.

A month after the ruling, President Trump signed Executive Order 13880, requiring the bureau to produce data on the citizen voting-age population, or CVAP, by the end of March 2021, and mandating relevant agencies share databases to help Census achieve that end.

Next year, the bureau will release a publicly-available statistical modeling of citizen and non-citizen populations throughout the country, anonymized using a cutting-edge masking system. The effort will also create a dataset with a citizenship estimate for every person in the U.S., which—by law and by practice—should never be seen outside of the Census Bureau.

In an internal document obtained by Nextgov, bureau officials note the Census Unedited File—which is used to determine apportionments, including congressional representatives—will not contain any citizenship data. Instead, the bureau will create a separate micro-data file, or MDF, with the best citizenship estimate associated with each census respondent.

That micro-data file, along with the Census Edited File—an updated version of the CUF that corrects and backfills missing information—will be put through the 2020 Disclosure Avoidance System, “which will do the final record linkage and place a confidentiality protected citizenship variable on the same MDF as will be used to produce the redistricting data,” according to the documents.

While the citizenship status of individuals will not be made public, Census will be publishing CVAP tables that break down citizenship estimates at the block level—the most granular level of census data. Those tables are scheduled for release by March 31, 2021.

However, keeping that amount of public data anonymized is no simple thing. With surprisingly few bits of correlated data, a once-anonymous person can easily be identified. This becomes much easier when coupled with information publicly available on the internet, such as social media profiles.

To prevent criminals and other malicious actors from reverse engineering identities, Census is employing a new disclosure avoidance system for all 2020 census data shared publicly.

“Our decision to deploy a modernized disclosure avoidance system for the 2020 census was driven by research showing that methods we used to protect the 2010 census and earlier statistics can no longer adequately defend against today’s privacy threats,” John Abowd, Census’ associate director for research and methodology and chief scientist, and Victoria Velkoff, chief of the American Community Survey Office, wrote in an October 2019 blog post explaining the new system developed by cryptographers and data scientists.

The new differential privacy system injects “noise” into the datasets by using an algorithm that makes targeted changes to the data to prevent outside actors—malicious or otherwise—from reverse engineering identities.

Census has been using various forms of differential privacy—also known as formal privacy—since 2008, though never at the scale it will be used for on 2020 census data. In the past, Census only added uncertainty to select statistics with a high risk for deanonymization to avoid adding so much noise that the statistics become unreliable.

For the coming count, uncertainty will be added to entire published datasets using state-of-the-art mathematical models.

“The new method allows us to precisely control the amount of uncertainty that we add according to privacy requirements,” Abowd and Velkoff wrote. “And, by documenting the properties of this uncertainty, we can help data users determine if published estimates are sufficiently accurate for their specific applications. In this manner, we can determine the data’s ‘fitness for use.’”

With the public datasets anonymized, it will be up to Census to protect the raw data.

While the disclosure avoidance system is designed to ensure personal data remains anonymous, Robert Groves, provost of Georgetown University, who led the Census Bureau during the 2010 decennial count, said two things will ensure the raw, nonanonymized database is never used to target individuals: law and culture.

Groves, in an interview with Nextgov after reviewing the documents, cited a legal provision known as “functional separation.”

“Once you enter a statistical agency environment, it’s a one-way street,” he explained. “As soon as that Homeland Security dataset enters behind the firewall of Census, the laws of Census apply. It’s no longer a Homeland Security dataset, in a sense. It is controlled by the Census Bureau. And, under the Title 13 law, it is absolutely crystal clear that the combined dataset never exits Census with individual person records on it. Only statistics can exit.”

That protection extends to the highest levels.

“Even if it’s requested by the president, it’s absolutely illegal,” Groves confirmed when asked. “And even if it were an executive order directing Census to do this, the statute would trump the order.”

Beyond the law, Groves said the culture of statisticians and public servants working at the Census Bureau would make it almost impossible for the data to leak out unnoticed.

“If there’s anything I believe most strongly, it’s if there’s any illegal act that is proposed or promulgated, the staff at the Census Bureau would call [reporters] within 30 seconds. They are devoted to supplying the country statistical information under the law,” he said, adding that that devotion is rooted in necessity.

“The reason those laws exist is if individual records were freely given for enforcement procedures from the decennial census, then the cooperation from the public with the census is decimated,” Groves said. “These statistical agencies work with a social confidence—a trust with the public that the laws will be followed—and the laws were established to enhance that trust.”

Estimating Citizenship

While the Census Bureau won’t be able to ask each individual in the U.S. about their citizenship status, leveraging access to data held by other agencies will enable statisticians to match census respondents with information they have shared with the government to build a “best citizenship” estimate for each individual.

The bureau has been working on the algorithm to produce that estimate since April 2018 and planned to finalize the “final specifications and modeling details” before the end of March, according to an internal document.

The bureau did not respond to repeated requests for comments and updates on the status of that work or a comprehensive breakdown of which federal databases are actively being shared for this work.

However, the document offers a look into the main databases being used and the additional data sources most likely to be tapped.

Bureau officials believe about 90% of the U.S. population will be covered by data from two sources: the Social Security Administration’s Numerical Identification System, or Numident, which stores Social Security numbers; and, the IRS’ Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, or ITINs, which are used as a substitute for those without Social Security numbers. Approximately 94% of SSN records include citizenship information.

However, if officials determine these sources are not sufficient, agencies control a host of other datasets that could be added to the mix, including databases managed by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the departments of State and Housing and Urban Development, and Homeland Security Department components like U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In the briefing document, Census officials said additional data from Homeland Security, State and other departments “are expected to provide the [personally identifiable information] that enables record linkage for much of the balance of the resident population.” However, that comes with a caveat: “Provided that the PII on the 2020 Census is as reliable as it was in 2010.”

DHS released a privacy impact statement in December outlining how it would share information with Census, though bureau officials did not respond to requests for confirmation that the DHS databases have been accessed or integrated into the citizenship estimates.

That data will be quantified using the finalized algorithm to produce a best estimate for citizenship.

“For a single person, they’ll collect multiple data sources on citizenship. Inevitably, those sources won’t agree. Then, the question is what do you do to estimate the best response for citizenship for that particular person. They will estimate that with modeling across the various databases,” Groves said. “They’ll also use the same sort of model if, despite all their efforts, for you they can’t find a record that you’re a citizen or you’re not a citizen, they will impute your citizenship to that model.”

Groves said we won’t know how accurate those estimates are until well after the fact.

“No one’s ever done this before,” he said. “No one, at this point, I think it’s fair to say, knows what the quality of the resulting estimates will be. We just don’t know that. We’ll know it after this, through evaluation studies. But this is just a good-faith statistical effort.”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of track record on this,” he added. “These datasets, to my knowledge, have never been assembled the way they’re trying to assemble them.”

Source: How Census Is Building a Citizenship Database Covering Everyone Living in the U.S.

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Israel Faces Challenges In Fighting Coronavirus In Ultra-Orthodox Communities

2020/04/03 Leave a comment

Like fundamentalists and equivalents of other religions:

Some devout Orthodox Jewish communities have been slow to follow lockdown orders in Israel, helping drive a surge in coronavirus cases that officials are struggling to contain.

Known in Israel as Haredim, or those who tremble in awe before God, ultra-Orthodox Jews make up about 12% of Israel’s population — but they account for as much as 60% of Israel’s COVID-19 cases in major hospitals, according to estimates. More than 6,000 Israelis have been infected and at least 31 have died.

This week marked a turning point for the community’s leadership, after a senior rabbi finally urged his followers to obey government stay-at-home orders. Many in the ultra-Orthodox community only follow the orders of rabbis, not health officials, and for weeks, many ignored government bans against large weddings and prayer services. Many do not own smartphones or TVs, leading authorities and volunteers to employ alternate methods to get the word out about infection prevention.

“Do not hold a prayer gathering! Do not gather for study in synagogues and seminaries! Anyone who defies doctors’ and health officials’ orders to protect against coronavirus is considered as if plotting murder and you must turn him in to authorities!” was the recorded announcement by the ZAKA emergency response organization, whose volunteers drove through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods this week, broadcasting the warning from loudspeakers.

“Now I see a mother and a child crossing the street going into a shop,” ZAKA’s David Rose, himself ultra-Orthodox, told NPR by telephone from the car. “Some people are not aware of how severe this plague is going around.”

“Murderers,” screams a poster plastered in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, addressed to those who defy government orders to close synagogues and schools.

Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, a deputy mayor of Jerusalem, helped organize the posters in a private capacity.

At a recent meeting at City Hall, she says, “One of the elderly ultra-Orthodox members of the city council said, ‘You’re asking us to do everything against what our sages tell us to do.’ It’s been very, very difficult with the ultra-Orthodox community because it’s just asking them to go against everything they know and everything they are.”

The community turns to rabbinic texts on Jewish law for guidance on life’s challenges — but the plagues and calamities of the past were never tackled through isolation. And social distancing is anathema to the Orthodox Jewish communal way of life.

Many in the community are impoverished and families can include as many as seven or eight children, all living in two- or three-bedroom apartments. To prevent the virus from spreading easily at home, authorities are preparing hotels to quarantine healthy relatives of those infected with COVID-19 in the community.

The virus is also hitting ultra-Orthodox communities in the U.S., but in Israel, the crisis highlights a long-running friction between the government and the community’s leaders, some of whom initially dismissed the government’s coronavirus lockdown orders.

“Israel is a Jewish state on the one hand, but it doesn’t espouse the version of Judaism that Haredi society would like to see going on,” said ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Yehoshua Pfeffer of the Tikvah Fund, an educational foundation. “Some of the Israeli regulations and laws are seen to be inhibited or restrictive of the Haredi way of life.”

As the virus hit the country last month, Israeli Health Minister Yaakov Litzman — raised in Brooklyn, New York, and himself ultra-Orthodox — tried to convince rabbis not to allow Jews in quarantine to attend public synagogue gatherings for the Purim holiday. But up until this week, he also permitted prayer gatherings to continue — even though about a quarter of Israeli cases of infection were contracted in synagogues, according to his own health ministry. Now he himself has contracted the virus.

With virus cases rising, Haredi newspapers in Israel ran photos of community members who died in New York, London, Paris and Israel, and the community’s attitude shifted.

This week, a leading Haredi rabbi, Chaim Kanievsky, changed his mind and said his followers should self-isolate and those who ignore the government lockdown should be considered as plotting murder. The mayor of the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, begged residents last weekend to stop prayer gatherings. His wife got the virus.

Some ultra-Orthodox Israelis are still skeptical. Yoel Krois, who lives in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighborhood, an ultra-Orthodox enclave, said he is keeping his family inside more but doesn’t trust the government’s infection statistics.

“Whoever is a bit sick or elderly must be careful and should not leave the home, and no one should visit them,” Krois said, “but forbidding young people from buying something on the street or praying, that’s already going too far.”

Some ultra-Orthodox Jews shouted “Nazis!” as police marched through a Jerusalem neighborhood this week, handing out large fines — some over $1,000 — to those ignoring the stay-at-home orders. To impose the restrictions, police set up checkpoints at entrances to some ultra-Orthodox areas and used drones to enforce the rules, even deploying stun grenades to disperse a crowd.

“If they would have been closed three weeks ago, the way that we asked them to, we would be seeing much, much fewer numbers today,” Hassan-Nahoum, Jerusalem’s deputy mayor, told NPR. “They came too late into this.”

Source: Israel Faces Challenges In Fighting Coronavirus In Ultra-Orthodox Communities

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‘It was like Nazis had walked into your living room’: Anti-Semitism group’s Zoom meeting crashed with hateful messages

2020/04/03 Leave a comment

Sigh… Always need to review security settings but deplorable that some people hold these beliefs and zoombomb:

Andria Spindel was at her Toronto home participating in a video meeting on how to stop anti-Semitism when she heard a voice from her computer say “Sieg Heil.”

The executive director of the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation says she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“It was otherworldly. I don’t know how to describe it,” Spindel said. “For a moment there, I actually couldn’t think where I was. This wasn’t my webinar. Where was I? What had happened?

“It was like Nazis had walked into your living room.”

It’s unclear how someone might have infiltrated the foundation’s meeting on the Zoom video-conferencing web platform. The link to access the meeting had been sent to the group’s master list, which includes about 3,500 people and may have been posted on social media. What is clear to Spindel is that people are exploiting technology to spread hate, and with so many people working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom has become a popular target.

Jewish organizations have also proven to be a target of what is being referred to as “Zoombombing,” in which malicious individuals crash video conferences to spread hateful and offensive content. In just the past week, the BBC, Jewish News Syndicate and news site Forward.com have all reported separate incidents of Jewish organizations’ Zoom meetings being disrupted by uninvited guests spreading anti-Semitic content.

Spindel said it highlights an urgent need for the company to address security concerns and for organizations and individuals who may not be technologically savvy to make sure they’re not ignoring any security vulnerabilities.

It was Monday when Spindel was hosting the web seminar, which had the theme of anti-Semitism as a virus that needs to be stamped out. Suddenly, she noticed rude and misogynistic comments in the chat channel. She started hearing strange background noises and marching music. Then the N-word flashed across the screen.

“That’s when I realized immediately something terrible is happening … and then, within seconds, you hear yelling, and screaming and the screen changing and somebody says ‘Sieg Heil.’”

She said she watched in horror as other participants of the web seminar reacted in shock.

“I actually thought I heard crying,” Spindel said.

She wasn’t able to immediately stop the meeting, because that function had been assigned to the guest speaker. They were eventually able to end the meeting, which had about 45 people participating.

But the damage was done. There was concern the infiltrators might have been able to steal email lists and contacts, something Spindel says a security expert has told her is possible, but unlikely.

“Do these people know who you are? … You have to sit back and say, ‘Oh my God, it’s just on my screen.’”

Retrospectively, she said the incident highlighted the prevalence of anti-Semitism in the world and the need for her organization to continue the work that it does.

Michael Mostyn, the CEO of Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith Canada, said the organization continues to see a rise in anti-Semitism from year to year, although there was a bit of an anomaly in 2018.

Emerging forms of technology, such as social media platforms, offer those who spread hate anonymity and extended reach, Mostyn said. The crashing of a video-conferencing application such as Zoom is just another way that anti-Semitism is adapting in 2020, he added.

“It’s the morphing of anti-Semitism to modern forms of communication. … Unfortunately, those bigots and hatemongers are taking advantage of the situation and are using it to spread hate.”

Mostyn said anti-Semitism is often deeply rooted in conspiracy theories. Anti-Semitic tropes frequently portray Jewish people as a shadowy cabal with undue influence over the world. Misinformation about the source and spread of COVID-19 has been rife during the coronavirus pandemic, and anti-Semitism has been a factor, Mostyn said.

“The Jewish community has been tied into many of these conspiracy theories with respect to COVID-19,” he said.

Zoom has published several blog posts since March 20 outlining privacy and security best practices, with one titled “Keep the party crashers from crashing your Zoom event.”

In a statement, the company said it has made recent changes to tighten security, such as updating the default screen sharing settings for education users so teachers are the only ones who can share content by default. They also encouraged users to review their security settings.

“We are deeply upset to hear about the incidents involving this type of attack. We take the security of Zoom meetings seriously and for those hosting large, public group meetings, we strongly encourage hosts to review their settings, confirm that only the host can share their screen, and utilize features like host mute controls and ‘Waiting Room,’” a Zoom spokesperson said.

Spindel said the incident made her research the application to avoid similar incidents in the future. She recommends organizations using Zoom for their meetings look at disabling screen sharing, assign more than one moderator and reconsider having an open chat room that anyone can join.

She added that next week is Passover and many families will be holding virtual gatherings.

“This could be so upsetting, you’re sitting at your family dining room table by yourself … and this suddenly happens,” Spindel said. “So everybody needs to take precautions.”

Source: ‘It was like Nazis had walked into your living room’: Anti-Semitism group’s Zoom meeting crashed with hateful messages

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Citizenship is a tough mountain to climb, especially under Trump

2020/04/03 Leave a comment

Good overview of some of the additional hurdles, including increased fees. But of note that the backlog dates from Obama:

Gaining citizenship is a long, expensive and complicated process — one that has gotten more so under the Trump administration.

As the system currently stands, it can take 10 years or more for a person who entered the United States on a visa to become a citizen. Just getting a green card can take at least five years. Becoming eligible to apply for citizenship as a permanent resident after that? Another five years.

If you get to that stage, you then fill out the N-400 form, submit it with a $640 filing fee and then ready yourself for the civics test, biometric appointment and potential further vetting. After clearing those last hurdles, you are home free — a bona fide U.S. citizen.

Except, for an increasing number of people, that process never really takes off.

Around 700,000 applications for citizenship remained pending at the end of 2019 — and wait times have doubled over the past two years to almost three years, according to a September report by the Colorado State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

“The substantial delay to naturalization created by the backlog negatively impacts voting rights, civil rights, and the administration of justice,” the report’s authors write.

A backlog results when the number of applications coming in exceed the ones processed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staff, who are tasked with adjudicating immigration benefits. Citizenship applications tend to spike before general elections, so throughout history, there have been crests and troughs in backlogs as the agency tries to catch up to the fluctuating heap of incoming applications.

The most recent uptick in pending applications started during the Obama administration. According to Eric Cohen, executive director of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, technological updates instituted by the administration — meant to speed the processing along — actually led to delays due to unforeseen bugs. According to a 2017 report to Congress, the electronic platform initially faced “multiple technical problems, which negatively impacted processing times.”

The 2016 election year saw more applications than expected, as people rushed to apply before candidate Donald Trump could fulfill anti-immigration promises as president, so despite the technical hiccups demand continued to rise.

“It is my understanding that they underestimated the bump [in applications],” says Cohen, whose organization oversees the New American Campaign, a coalition of 150 organizations that provide legal help with naturalizations.

“The Trump effect was more profound than expected.”

The number of pending applications actually doubled under the Obama administration, from around 300,000 in 2010 to around 700,000 in early 2017, when Trump took office. Fast forward two years, at the end of fiscal 2019, when the administration boasted about its processing progress.

“The men and women of USCIS continue to administer our nation’s lawful immigration system, processing a large number of applications and requests while naturalizing 833,000 new U.S. citizens, an 11-year high,” Ken Cuccinelli, then serving as the acting director of USCIS, touted in an end-of-the-year email.

But on the back end, delays compound the backlog, critics say.

The failure to resolve them is partly the result of a tepid response on the part of the Trump administration to the surge in naturalization applications, according to some.

Cohen mentions two other contributing factors causing delays: more interviews and additional vetting, even in cases where neither are needed. He says he has heard stories of people vetted during the asylum process, then again when they sought to obtain their green cards, and then once more during the citizenship process. One elderly Iranian woman was so distraught during the final vetting that she broke down and withdrew her application, Cohen says.

“By doing super vetting, what you’re doing is discouraging people from applying, you’re giving people a really hard time during their interview process, and you’re taking much longer — 50 percent-plus longer,” he says. “Therefore, you’re doing fewer and fewer applications. So there are a lot of these bumps in the road that are there, I would say, purposely.”

USCIS maintains that it is “completing more citizenship applications, more efficiently and effectively — outperforming itself as an agency,” a spokesman said via email, and that “many factors relating to an individual’s case can affect processing times.”

In addition, the administration has put up what critics call the “second wall” — seemingly small rule changes, fee hikes and additional paperwork requirements that altogether make naturalization much more burdensome and prohibitive.

The one proposal advocates are most concerned about is a regulation that would, among other things, increase citizenship application fees from $640 to $1,170, and fees for green card applications from $1,225 to $2,195. It also would eliminate all fee waivers for these applications.

In a comment on the regulation, the National Partnership for New Americans, a group that helps immigrants naturalize, writes that the increase would leave tens of thousands of immigrants it serves unable to undergo naturalization.  It is “undermining the civic and economic benefits that are a direct result of welcoming and naturalizing millions,” the organization writes.

“The agency is proposing to do this during the exact same time that citizenship application fees are beginning to rise in anticipation of the presidential election of 2020.”

Source: Citizenship is a tough mountain to climb, especially under Trump

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Fox’s Fake News Contagion The network spent too long spraying its viewers with false information about the coronavirus pandemic.

2020/04/02 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Kara Swisher. Applies more broadly than COVID-19 but particularly dangerous during a pandemic:

You can relax, Sean Hannity, I’m not going to sue you.

Some people are suggesting that there might be grounds for legal action against the cable network that you pretty much rule — Fox News — because you and your colleagues dished out dangerous misinformation about the virus in the early days of the crisis in the United States. Some might allege that they have lost loved ones because of what was broadcast by your news organization.

But lawsuits are a bad idea. Here’s why: I believe in Fox News’s First Amendment right as a press organization, even if some of its on-air talent did not mind being egregiously bad at their jobs when it came to giving out accurate health data.

And, more to the point, when all is said and done, my Mom will listen to her children over Fox News. One of us — my brother — is an actual doctor and knows what he is talking about. And the other is a persistent annoyance — that would be me.

I’m a huge pest, in fact. “I’m going to block your number, if you don’t stop,” my mother said to me over the phone several weeks ago from Florida, after I had texted her the umpteenth chart about the spread of coronavirus across the country. All of these graphs had scary lines that went up and to the right. And all of them flashed big honking red lights: Go home and stay there until all clear.

She ignored my texts, so I had switched to calling her to make sure she had accurate information in those critical weeks at the end of February and the beginning of March. She is in the over-80 group that is most at risk of dying from infection. I worry a lot.

But she was not concerned — and it was clear why. Her primary source of news is Fox. In those days she was telling me that the Covid-19 threat was overblown by the mainstream news media (note, her daughter is in the media). She told me that it wasn’t going to be that big a deal. She told me that it was just like the flu.

And, she added, it was more likely that the Democrats were using the virus to score political points. And, did I know, by the way, that Joe Biden was addled?

Thankfully, Mom had not gone as far as claiming the coronavirus is a plot to hurt President Trump — a theory pushed by some at Fox News heavily at first. While she has been alternately appalled and amused by the president, and often takes his side, she is not enough of a superfan to think that he is any kind of victim here.

So, she kept going out with friends to restaurants and shopping and generally living her life as it always had been. “What’s the big deal, Kara? Stop bothering me,” she said over the phone. “You’re the one who is going to get sick, if you don’t stop working so much.”

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