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Daily Archives: October 6, 2021

Tracking covid-19 excess deaths across countries

The Economist – “In many parts of the world, official death tolls undercount the total number of fatalities. As COVID-19 has spread around the world, people have become grimly familiar with the death tolls that their governments publish each day. Unfortunately, the total number of fatalities caused by the pandemic may be even higher, for several reasons. First, the official statistics in many countries exclude victims who did not test positive for coronavirus before dying—which can be a substantial majority in places with little capacity for testing. Second, hospitals and civil registries may not process death certificates for several days, or even weeks, which creates lags in the data. And third, the pandemic has made it harder for doctors to treat other conditions and discouraged people from going to hospital, which may have indirectly caused an increase in fatalities from diseases other than covid-19. One way to account for these methodological problems is to use a simpler measure, known as “excess deaths”: take the number of people who die from any cause in a given region and period, and then compare it with a historical baseline from recent years. We have used statistical models to create our baselines, by predicting the number of deaths each region would normally have recorded in 2020 and 2021. Many Western countries, and some nations and regions elsewhere, regularly publish data on mortality from all causes. The table below shows that, in most places, the number of excess deaths (compared with our baseline) is greater than the number of covid-19 fatalities officially recorded by the government. The full data for each country, as well as our underlying code, can be downloaded from our GitHub repository. Our sources also include the Human Mortality Database, a collaboration between UC Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and the World Mortality Dataset, created by Ariel Karlinsky and Dmitry Kobak…”

New on LLRX September 2021

2021 Guide to Internet Privacy Resources and Tools – by Marcus Zillman How Can We Help To Free Legal Research From Algorithmic Bias? – by Stephanie Farne The legal regulation revolution – by Jason Furlong 4 strategies for energy and climate change breakthroughs at the UN summits – by Morgan Bazilian and Dolf Gielen Evidence… Continue Reading

Remote-working jobs: Disaster looms as managers refuse to listen

ZDNet: “A survey finds that executives are drawing up post-pandemic work policies without input from employees – who are willing to quit if their employers don’t deliver. Business leaders are “holding on to the remnants of the past” by failing to recognise fundamental shifts in the workforce – leaving them with a potential talent exodus… Continue Reading

Ransomware and Federal Law: Cybercrime and Cybersecurity

CRS Report – Ransomware and Federal Law: Cybercrime and Cybersecurity, October 5, 2021: “Ransomware attacks—the use of malicious software to deny users access to data and information systems to extort ransom payments from victims—are prevalent. A recent notable example is the May 2021 ransomware attack that temporarily shut down the Colonial Pipeline Company’s network, affecting… Continue Reading

Pinterest whistleblower launches resources to help tech employees speak out

Fast Company: “One day after the testimony of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, a group of civic organizations led by another well-known whistleblower—Ifeoma Ozoma, who spoke out about her employer, Pinterest, in 2020—is launching a new website that might help other tech employees come forward to speak about wrongdoing within their companies. As was made clear… Continue Reading

The Climate Crisis Will Change the Way We Eat

Vice: “The most compelling images of climate change—cracked, drought-devastated soil, raging wildfires, and flash floods—are all persistent reminders that the Earth is tunneling into the danger zone. But climate change is affecting us in more insidious ways, too. It may not feel like it, but our food is already grappling with its effects.  Extreme weather… Continue Reading

How the secrets of the Pandora Papers were freed

Wired: “The Pandora Papers have rocked the world. Since news organisations began publishing their explosive contents on October 3, the giant leak has dominated headlines and posed questions of some of the world’s most powerful people and their financial propriety.  Everyone from former UK prime minister Tony Blair to the King of Jordan have been… Continue Reading

Social Security: Selected Findings of the 2021 Annual Report

CRS In Focus: Social Security: Selected Findings of the 2021 Annual Report, October 5, 2021: “According to the recent report of the Board of Trustees of the Social Security Trust Funds, the program’s finances are in a similar, all be it marginally worse, position in 2021t o what they were in 2020. Under intermediate assumptions,… Continue Reading

Reuters Special Report How AT&T helped build far-right One America News

“As it lauded former President Donald Trump and spread his unfounded claims of election fraud, One America News Network saw its viewership jump. Reuters has uncovered how America’s telecom giant nurtured the news channel now at the center of a bitter national divide over politics and truth…OAN founder and chief executive Robert Herring Sr has… Continue Reading

The State of Climate Services 2021: Water

UN World Meteorological Service: “Water-related hazards like floods and droughts are increasing because of climate change. The number of people suffering water stress is expected to soar, exacerbated by population increase and dwindling availability. But management, monitoring, forecasting and early warnings are fragmented and inadequate, whilst global climate finance efforts are insufficient according to a… Continue Reading