The morning meeting with Al Tompkins is a daily report by Poynter on story concepts and other contexts timely to journalists, written by senior professor Al Tompkins. Check in here to have it delivered to your inbox every morning of the week.
To no one’s surprise, COVID-19 cases are emerging in the United States.
(New York Times COVID-19 Tracker)
I took The New York Times’ newest COVID-19 tracker and drew a red line on it to point out that today’s COVID-19 hospitalization numbers are almost exactly the same as a year ago. They are also where the summer wave was.
(New York Times COVID-19 trackers with a line drawn through Al Tompkins)
There doesn’t seem to be a style for hospitalizing other people with COVID-19. There are hotspots scattered across the country. Arizona and New Mexico have a significant pipeline of positive COVID-19 test results.
You’ll probably remember that about a month ago, the CDC added a new color to the flu map because three states experienced very high outbreaks much earlier than usual. Now, that same purple color lights up states from coast to coast.
(CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION)
My friends, it turns out that we are heading for a twist of fate due to the flu. Look at flu hospitalizations on the far left of the chart below. Know what’s coming in the coming weeks. Usually late in December is when the genuine momentum begins. This can be a great; Again, can it be that everyone who is going to become inflamed is inflamed now and has some immunity beyond time?Will we have a top peak or just a past top peak?
(CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION)
Select a jurisdiction based on the latest local flu information.
(Courtesy of CDC)
A new study recently published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine indicates that exercise may improve how COVID-19 vaccines work.
CNBC summarized the findings:
Researchers found that vaccinated people who were more productive in the face of serious consequences, such as hospitalization, after COVID-19 infection followed those exercise guidelines:
Participants in this organization were 2. 8 times less likely to spread the severe effects of COVID-19 than other people who rarely exercise. Or, in simpler terms, their vaccines were 25% more effective at protecting them from those effects than other sedentary people.
Even before vaccines were available, researchers concluded that other people who walked or trained before getting sick with COVID-19 would likely be hospitalized after becoming inflamed.
Gas charges are falling rapidly, and one of the biggest underlying charges of everything you buy is also declining. Shipping boxes, the large metal boxes you see on ships, trains and trucks, are much less expensive to transport around the world. The Washington Post reported, “The cost of shipping a popular 40-foot container from China to the U. S. West Coast is the cost of shipping a popular 40-foot containerUU. es of $1935, more than 90% less than its peak of $20,586 in September 2021, according to online freight marketplace Freightos. “
Chicken prices, which hit all-time highs during the pandemic, are falling. Chicken wings, for example, are down 43% from their peak.
Used car costs are also falling. Used-car auction company Manheim says used car costs have fallen 15 percent this year.
(Cox Auto Inc. )
To put that $46,212 figure in context, Cox Auto says, “The value of the board is 7% higher than it was a year ago and is still the best compared to subsequent years. In September 2020, the average record was worth $38,662. In September 2019, before the pandemic, $37,110.
It’s a “wow”: the average value has gone up $9,000 since before the pandemic, and I can’t find anyone saying it’s happening. Because stocks are high, there may soon be incentives. Luxury cars sell well and the most fuel-efficient cars sell well.
The Transportation Security Administration is already testing facial scanning generation at a dozen and a half airports and next year the program could expand nationwide, according to the Washington Post.
You’ve probably used facial ID generation before if you’ve traveled abroad in recent years, or if you’re employing the Clear program to scan TSA lines like I have. TSA experts tell the Post that facial popularity software matches your face to face on your official ID, and that match is much more accurate using the software than when humans verify the match. But, says the Post, the TSA rarely says how facial popularity gets wrong.
This can be especially uncomfortable when it comes to other people of color.
Post’s tale says:
Research has shown that the facial popularity rule set might be less accurate in identifying other people of color. A study published by the Federal National Institute of Science and Technology in 2019 found that Asians and African Americans were up to a hundred times more likely to misidentify than white men, depending on the set of rules and type of research.
San Francisco has banned facial popularity technology altogether, but it’s unlikely that any city will simply prohibit the federal government from doing anything.
State-of-the-art airports include: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Boston Logan International Airport, Baltimore-Washington Thurgood Marshall International Airport, Washington Ronald Reagan National Airport, Denver International Airport, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, Wayne County Metropolitan Airport, Gulfport Airport- Biloxi International Airport, Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport, Harry Reid Las Vegas International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, Orlando International Airport, Miami International Airport, Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, San Jose International Airport and Salt Lake City International Airport.
The day may come, the TSA says, when you will no longer want to bring your ID because your face scan will be your ID. But it’s hard to see how this would be imaginable unless the government kept a record of your ID, as it already does with your passport photo. The TSA says it doesn’t stick to facial scanning to create a knowledge base. The Post reported that scanned correspondence is overwritten as soon as the next setting is entered. However, according to the TSA, he maintained the knowledge for up to two years in order to “evaluate” the effectiveness of the system.
The TSA says passengers can request that a face camera be turned off and that a TSA agent make the connection. We will see if there are court cases of other people exercising this right and then being evaluated for that.
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