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In Wichita, Kansas, nearly half of the roughly 10,000 employees at aircraft companies Textron Inc and Spirit AeroSystems remain unvaccinated against COVID-19, risking their jobs in defiance of a federal mandate. "We're going to lose a lot of employees over this," said Cornell Beard, head of the local Machinists union district. Many workers did not object to the vaccines as such, he said, but were staunchly opposed to what they see as government meddling in personal health decisions. The clock is ticking for companies that want to continue gaining federal contracts under an executive order by Democratic President Joe Biden, which requires all contractor employees be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Dec. 8. That means federal contract workers need to have received their last COVID-19 shot at least two weeks before the deadline to gain maximum protection, according to U.S. government guidance. Opposition to the mandate could potentially lead to thousands of U.S. workers losing their jobs and imperil an already sluggish economic recovery, union leaders, workers and company executives said. At a rally last week outside Boeing property in Auburn, south of Seattle, many of the three dozen workers gathered in driving rain said they would rather be escorted off Boeing property on Dec. 8 than take a vaccine. Others said they would pursue early retirement. "The mandate is illegal, immoral and impractical," said one veteran Boeing program analyst who attended the rally.
Note: This CBS article highlights 2,000 New York City firefighters opposed to the vaccine mandate. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
Pfizer reported that earnings and sales more than doubled in the past quarter, and it raised its outlook for results the full year, thanks greatly to its Covid-19 vaccine. The company reported adjusted earnings of $7.7 billion, up 133% from a year earlier. Revenue soared to $24.1 billion, up 134%. Both easily cleared results forecast by analysts. The vaccine business alone was responsible for more than 60% of the company's sales, as vaccine revenue rose to $14.6 billion from only $1.7 billion a year earlier. The company said its Covid vaccine sales accounted for $13 billion of that revenue. Revenue outside of its Covid vaccine business was up a far more modest 7%. This year, the Covid vaccine has brought in revenue of $24.3 billion. And Pfizer said it expects a total of $36 billion from the vaccine for all of 2021 – nearly $12 billion more in revenue the final quarter of the year. And it said based on contracts it now has signed it expects revenue $29 billion from the Covid vaccine in 2022. The company said it now expects full-year 2021 revenue of between $81 billion to $82 billion, up $2 billion from its earlier guidance. It also raised its earnings per share outlook by about 3% to 5% above what it had been expected to earn. About 67% of the total US population has had a least one dose of a Covid vaccine, and 58% are fully vaccinated, according to data tracked by the Mayo Clinic.
Note: Explore hundreds of personal stories of severe vaccine injury and death that are being strongly suppressed by government and the major media. An MD's excellent research reveals that the government knew about and actively suppressed safe, effective, low-price treatments for COVID and targeted physicians who prescribed them. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines and Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.
"Little Amal," a 9-year-old Syrian refugee girl, has big, expressive eyes and loves jumping in puddles as she travels on foot to the UK in search of a new home. But Amal isn't just any girl – she's a giant puppet more than 11 ft. tall. She's the centerpiece of The Walk, a traveling arts festival. It's the latest project by London-based theater company Good Chance, in collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company. For the past three months, Amal and the crew have travelled from the Syrian-Turkish border to the UK in an effort to bring hope to the plight of refugees. Today, they reached Manchester, England, completing a 5,000-mile journey through more than 65 cities, towns and villages. Through accompanying events along the route, like installations and performances, it was important that the walk recognize the range of Amal's experiences – not just one of hardship, but resilience too, Zuabi says. "I don't want anybody to feel sad for refugees. I want people to see themselves when they see a refugee. And that's why puppets are gorgeous. Because a puppet doesn't exist until you give it life. You need to go 'she is a refugee' and the minute you treat a refugee like this, you go 'he is me. They are us.'" Even Amal's size at 11 ft. – or 3.5 meters – is deliberate. To Zuabi, visibility is the first step towards empathy. He says "to see that people are moved by a small gesture she does in the middle of a street, and suddenly you look around and people are wiping their tears – that's very, very beautiful to see," Zuabi says.
When the pandemic hit, America needed someone to turn to for advice. The media and public naturally looked to Dr. Anthony Fauci - the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Unfortunately, Dr. Fauci got major epidemiology and public health questions wrong. Reality and scientific studies have now caught up with him. By pushing vaccine mandates, Dr. Fauci ignores naturally acquired immunity among the COVID-recovered, of which there are more than 45 million in the United States. Mounting evidence indicates that natural immunity is stronger and longer lasting than vaccine-induced immunity. Under Fauci's mandates, hospitals are firing heroic nurses who recovered from COVID they contracted while caring for patients. While anyone can get infected, there is more than a thousand-fold difference in mortality risk between the old and the young. When confronted with the idea of focused protection of the vulnerable, Dr. Fauci admitted he had no idea how to accomplish it, arguing that it would be impossible. Instead, Dr. Fauci has pushed vaccine mandates for children, students and working-age adults who are already immune - all low-risk populations - causing tremendous disruption to labor markets and hampering the operation of many hospitals. Schools are major transmission points for influenza, but not for COVID. Considering the devastating effects of school closures on children, Dr. Fauci's advocacy for school closures may be the single biggest mistake of his career.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
The Environmental Protection Agency has withheld information from the public since January 2019 about the dangers posed by more than 1,200 chemicals. By law, companies must give the EPA any evidence they possess that a chemical presents "a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment." Until recently, the agency had been making these reports – known as 8(e) reports, for the section of the Toxic Substances Control Act that requires them – available to the public. But since 2019, the EPA has only posted one of the reports to its public website. During this time, chemical companies have continued to submit the critical studies to the agency, according to two EPA staff members with knowledge of the matter. Since January 2019, the EPA has received at least 1,240 reports documenting the risk of chemicals' serious harms, including eye corrosion, damage to the brain and nervous system, chronic toxicity to honeybees, and cancer in both people and animals. PFAS compounds are among the chemical subjects of these notifications. Not only has the agency kept all but one of these reports from the public, but it has also made them difficult for EPA staff to access, according to the two agency scientists, who are choosing to remain anonymous. The substantial risk reports have not been uploaded to the databases used most often by risk assessors searching for information about chemicals. They have been entered only into an internal database that is difficult to access and search.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
At least $1.7bn of funding will be given directly to indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) in recognition of their key role in protecting the planet's lands and forests, it will be announced at Cop26 today. The governments of the UK, US, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands are leading the $1.7bn (Ł1.25bn) funding pledge, which is being announced as part of ambitious global efforts to reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030, with campaigners cautiously hopeful that this conference of the parties (Cop) could be the first to properly champion indigenous peoples' rights. Tuntiak Katan, a leader of Ecuador's indigenous Shuar people who serves as general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, said: "We are happy with the financing announcement, but we will be watching for concrete measures that will reveal whether the intent is to transform a system that has directed less than 1% of climate funding to indigenous and local communities. What matters is what happens next." Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, said the aim was to give IPLCs more of a voice in policymaking and discourse. It is hoped more funding will follow. Walker said: "It's a first step, it's a down payment." The money will support IPLCs' capacity to govern themselves collectively, assist with mapping and registration work, back national land reform and help resolve conflict over territories. It will continue until 2025.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
After more than a year of lockdowns, with limited access to nature, Magdalena Begh was delighted when her six-year-old daughter came home from forest school and informed her she had found three rat skeletons. Since Alia and her sister Hana, nine, started going to the Urban Outdoors Adventures in Nature after-school club in north London in June, they have used clay, learned about insects and made campfires, marmalade and bows and arrows. They are part of a wave of children across the UK who have joined forest schools since the start of the pandemic. Of more than 200 forest schools surveyed by the Forest School Association (FSA), about two-thirds said demand for their services had increased since March 2020. Among the reasons cited were increased awareness of the benefits of the outdoors, especially in relation to stress and anxiety, Covid safety, and dissatisfaction with the school syllabus after months of pandemic homeschooling. Forest schools, which centre around unstructured play, exploration and intrinsic motivation, arrived in the UK in 1993. Inspired by the outdoors culture – or friluftsliv – of Scandinavia, sessions are usually held either entirely or mostly outdoors and are intended to supplement, rather than replace, traditional education. State schools are increasingly putting on forest school sessions for pupils within the school day because they are considered to be beneficial to mental and physical health, behaviour and academic attainment – as well as being relatively "Covid-proof".
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
When Daunte Wright was killed last spring by a police officer in Minnesota after being pulled over for expired registration tags, the case drew national attention. So have several other seemingly avoidable deaths of motorists. Now, a New York Times investigation reveals the scope of such cases across the country – and why traffic stops for minor offenses can escalate into fatal encounters. Over the last five years, The Times found, the police killed more than 400 drivers or passengers who were not wielding a gun or a knife or under pursuit for a violent crime. Traffic stops – which are often motivated by hidden budgetary considerations because of the ticket revenue they generate – are the most common interactions between police officers and the public. Yet the police consider them among the most dangerous things they do. Presumption of peril has been significantly overstated, but it has become ingrained in police culture and court precedents – contributing to impunity for most officers who use lethal force at vehicle stops. In case after case, officers avoided criminal liability when they claimed to have acted in self-defense. In the roughly 400 deaths, five officers were convicted. Nearly two dozen cases are still pending. While prosecutors deemed most of the killings justifiable, local governments paid at least $125 million to resolve legal claims in about 40 cases.
Note: Another NY Times article on this is available here. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.
New Jersey rocker Jon Bon Jovi and Canadian singer Bryan Adams canceled separate appearances on Saturday night after testing positive for COVID-19. They join a number of artists who have contracted the virus despite vaccination. "Jon is fully vaccinated and feeling fine," wrote Bon Jovi's publicist. The musician was scheduled to perform at a three-night "Halloween weekend getaway." Concertgoers, who were asked to provide proof of vaccination or a negative test result, had already filed into the venue when the announcement was made. Adams was slated to perform a Tina Turner tribute at Saturday night's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction but canceled his appearance after contracting COVID-19. COVID-19 vaccines, including those manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, have waned in efficacy over time, and as more breakthrough cases occur, the music industry is experimenting with solutions to keep up the momentum and maintain the safety of artists and workers on tour. System of a Down were scheduled to perform Oct. 22 and 23 with Korn, Helmet and Russian Circles at Banc of California Stadium until frontman Serj Tankian announced he had contracted a breakthrough case. The shows were postponed to Feb. 4 and 5. English hitmaker Ed Sheeran was scheduled to perform Nov. 6 on "Saturday Night Live" – but the singer announced on Instagram last week that he will do only virtual performances and interviews after testing positive for COVID-19.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
President Biden and the other national leaders gathered for the Group of 20 summit formally endorsed a new global minimum tax on Saturday, capping months of negotiations over the groundbreaking tax accord. The new global minimum tax of 15 percent aims to reverse the decades-long decline in tax rates on corporations across the world, a trend experts say has deprived governments of revenue to fund social spending programs. The deal is a key achievement for Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who made an international floor on corporate taxes among the top priorities of her tenure and pushed forcefully for swift action on a deal. Nearly 140 countries representing more than 90 percent of total global economic output have endorsed the deal. The minimum tax will be coupled with a broader change to global taxation intended to prevent countries and companies from undercutting the new floor. Under the pact, corporations trying to evade taxation by shifting profits to low-tax countries will face a "top-up" tax, which would require them to pay the difference between the tax haven's tax rate and the 15 percent minimum tax rate of the companies where they are headquartered. Supporters of the deal are also optimistic companies will not move to relocate their headquarters abroad, in part because so much of the world has committed to the new minimum. Treasury officials have said new "enforcement provisions" will impose tax penalties based in countries refusing to join the deal.
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Almost 40 years after his death following a bar brawl in Key Biscayne, Ricardo Morales, known as "Monkey" – contract CIA worker, anti-Castro militant, counter-intelligence chief for Venezuela, FBI informant and drug dealer – returned to the spotlight Thursday morning when one of his sons made a startling claim on Spanish-language radio: Morales, a sniper instructor in the early 1960s in secret camps where Cuban exiles and others trained to invade Cuba, realized in the hours after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963 that the accused killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been one of his sniper trainees. Morales also told his two sons that two days before the assassination, his CIA handler told him and his "clean-up" team to go to Dallas for a mission. But after the tragic events, they were ordered to go back to Miami without learning what the mission was about. The claims ... add to one of the long-held theories about the JFK assassination – that Cuban exiles working for the CIA had been involved. But the claims also point the finger at the CIA, which some observers believe could help explain why President Joe Biden backed off last week on declassifying the remaining documents in the case. Morales Jr. said his father told them he did not know of the plans to assassinate Kennedy. "He knew Kennedy was coming to Dallas, so he imagines something is going to happen, but he doesn't know the plan," he said. "In these kinds of conspiracies ... nobody knows what the other is doing."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the JFK assassination from reliable major media sources.
For eight-year-old Toby, who is deaf, watching films or TV on streaming platforms can sometimes be a bit pointless - because so many of them don't have sign language versions. "We have captions but they don't really do anything for him because it goes quite fast. He would just watch and not get much from it," his dad Jarod Mills [said]. But now, Toby has some help thanks to an app developed by a 17-year-old A-level student. Mariella Satow, who has dual UK-US citizenship, lives in the UK but has been stuck in New York since summer 2020 because of Covid travel restrictions. In that do-something-new phase of lockdown, Mariella created a signing app called SignUp. She got the idea when she was teaching herself American Sign Language (ASL) - one of hundreds of sign languages used across the world. Mariella wanted to watch TV shows to help her learn, so was disappointed to discover how few had signed versions. It's taken a year for Mariella to develop the technology, with lots of help from ASL teachers and the deaf community. The app is available in the US as a Google Chrome extension - with an interpreter appearing in a box once the film starts playing. It only works on Disney Plus films at the moment, because that's where Mariella thought she could help the most children. Jarod, who works in Kentucky at a school for deaf children, says it was "exciting" watching Toby use Mariella's invention. "The app creates a level playing field," he says. "Kids are getting that understanding and information like any hearing child does."
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring disabled persons news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Ten days after 9/11, Rais Bhuiyan was shot at point blank range by a white supremacist. The near-death experience inspired him to set up World Without Hate, dedicated to breaking the cycles of violence. "As a result of the shooting, I ... lost my home, my job, my sense of security and my fiance," [said Bhuiyan]. "I focused on rebuilding my life slowly getting into restaurant working as a waiter. Many kind and caring Americans came forward to help redo my life. Forgiving my attacker was a multiple-step process. I realized by executing him we were simply losing human life without dealing with the root cause. I began to see him as a human being like me, not just as a killer. And I remember what it feels like to be on the brink the death, begging to God for a second chance. I learned about the verse in the Holy Koran chapter 5, verse 32 where it says that saving a life is like saving the entire mankind and taking a life is like taking the life of entire mankind. I was extremely convinced I needed to go the extra mile to save the life of the man. When we launched our global campaign to save the life of my attacker he heard from his lawyer that's one of his victims was running a campaign to save his life. And he told his lawyer, I do not believe it, I never said sorry, I never apologized and destroyed their lives, especially his life, and now he forgave me and is running a campaign to save my life, he was released to tears, he said I don't deserve that, I'm someone unforgivable. He wrote a letter to me from death row and in one paragraph this is what he said, that my stepfather taught me some lessons that I should have never learned. So when he learned about our campaign he went to tremendous transformation and talked about world peace, mercy, justice, peace, hate crimes and how he was wrong, what went wrong in his life, and how he ended up killing people. He was in peace before he was executed."
Note: Watch Bhuiyan's powerful 17-min PBS interview. For more, watch our latest 20-min video on what can transform a divided world, where you'll hear the powerful words and stories from those at the edge of death, leaders who reached across deep divides, and even a former neo-Nazi who left hate. Explore more positive stories like this on human interest stories and near-death experiences.
Singapore is looking into an "unusual surge" of 5,324 new infections of COVID-19, the city-state's health ministry said, its highest such figure since the beginning of the pandemic, as beds in intensive care units fill up. Ten new deaths on Wednesday carried the toll to 349, after 3,277 infections the previous day, while the ICU utilisation rate is nearing 80%, despite a population that is 84% fully vaccinated, with 14% receiving booster doses. While nearly 98.7% of the past month's 90,203 cases had no symptoms, or only mild ones, about 0.2% of those had died, and 0.1% each were being monitored closely in intensive care units (ICU) or were critically ill and intubated there.
Note: If the vaccines are effective and Singapore is 84% vaccinated, why are they experiencing the highest surge ever of cases and why are their ICU's 80% full? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
In the introduction to "The Spoils of War," an extraordinary new book by Andrew Cockburn, he makes a straightforward assertion about the U.S. military. "War-fighting efficiency has a low priority," he writes, "by comparison with considerations of personal and internal bureaucracies. ... The military are generally not interested in war, save as a means to budget enhancement." Cockburn suggests that the Pentagon and the corporations that feed off it have generated the largest and most byzantine bureaucracy in human history, filled with innumerable fiefdoms far more focused on besting their internal rivals than outside enemies. Today's generals ... while their days away plotting how to join the board of General Dynamics six hours after their retirement party. They spend 98 percent of their time jockeying for wealth and power within the organization, and at most a residual 2 percent attempting to do what the organization purportedly exists to accomplish. "People say the Pentagon does not have a strategy," he quotes a former Air Force colonel as saying. "They are wrong. The Pentagon does have a strategy. It is: â€Don't interrupt the money flow.'" If you're still not convinced, the proof of this unpalatable pudding is in the eating. Consider America's just-concluded 20-year war in Afghanistan. As the Taliban took over the country in days, it might have seemed that the whole thing was a colossal failure. But if you check your portfolio of defense contractor stocks ... you'll see that, in fact, it was an incredible success.
Note: War profiteering is an old game. Read decorated general Smedley Butler's 1935 book War is a Racket to see how little has changed. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Last year, on the roof of a parking lot at Google's headquarters, engineers from X–Alphabet's "moonshot factory"–set up a panel to begin its first tests. The design, called an atmospheric water harvester, pulls in outside air, then uses fans and heat from sunlight to create condensation, producing clean drinking water drip by drip. In a new paper published today in Nature, the team calculates how much this type of device could potentially help give more people access to water that's safe to drink. Globally, as many as one in three people still drink unsafe water that can spread diseases. The study found that 1 billion people who currently don't have safe drinking water live in places where the device would function well. Because larger water infrastructure projects, like desalination plants, take many years to plan and build, the small devices could help fill the gap in the meantime. "This can leapfrog a lot of that and go directly to the source with a small device that's solar powered," says Jackson Lord, lead author of the paper. Alphabet ... wanted to be able to produce water at a cost of just one cent per liter. The team saw a path to reach 10 cents per liter, but not as low as one cent–so X decided to stop working on the project. But because the design could have a meaningful impact even at 10 cents, it's now opening up its data, prototypes, software, and hardware documentation ... so anyone can use the intellectual property and keep moving the work forward.
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Except for initial hot spots like New York City, many ERs across the U.S. were often eerily empty in the spring of 2020. Terrified of contracting COVID-19, people who were sick with other things did their best to stay away from hospitals. Visits to emergency departments dropped to half their normal levels, according to the Epic Health Research Network, and didn't fully rebound until the summer of 2021. But now, they're too full. Even in parts of the country where COVID-19 isn't overwhelming the health system, patients are showing up to the ER sicker than they were before the pandemic, their diseases more advanced and in need of more complicated care. Months of treatment delays have exacerbated chronic conditions and worsened symptoms. Doctors and nurses say the severity of illness ranges widely and includes abdominal pain, respiratory problems, blood clots, heart conditions and suicide attempts, among others. But there's nowhere to put them all. Although the number of ER visits returned to pre-coronavirus levels this past summer, admission rates, from the ER to the hospital's inpatient floors, are still almost 20% higher. Less acute cases, such as people suffering from health issues like rashes or conjunctivitis, still aren't going to the ER as much as they used to. Instead, they may be opting for an urgent care center or their primary care doctor. Meanwhile, there has been an increase in people coming to the ER with more serious conditions, like strokes and heart attacks.
Note: Could it be that part of the reason for this flood of ER patients is side effects of the COVID injections? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.
The White House said Friday it would delay the release of long-classified documents related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy. President Joe Biden wrote in a statement that the remaining files "shall be withheld from full public disclosure" until December 15 next year - nearly 60 years after Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas in 1963. In 2017, former president Donald Trump released several thousand secret files on the assassination, but withheld others on national security grounds. The White House said the national archivist needs more time for a review into that redaction, which was slowed by the pandemic. Mr. Biden also said the delay was "necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations" and that this "outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure." A 10-month investigation led by then-Supreme Court chief justice Earl Warren concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine who had lived in the Soviet Union, acted alone when he fired on Kennedy's motorcade. But the Commission's investigation was criticized for being incomplete, with a Congressional committee later concluding that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy." U.S. law requires that all government records on the assassination be disclosed "to enable the public to become fully informed." The National Archives has released thousands of documents to the public as part of the ... JFK Act.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the JFK assassination from reliable major media sources.
The National Institutes of Health has stunningly admitted to funding gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at China's Wuhan lab – despite Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly insisting to Congress that no such thing happened. In a letter to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) on Wednesday, a top NIH official blamed EcoHealth Alliance – the New York City-based nonprofit that has funneled US funds to the Wuhan lab – for not being transparent about the work it was doing. NIH's principal deputy director, Lawrence A. Tabak, wrote in the letter that EcoHealth's "limited experiment" tested whether "spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model." Gain-of-function research refers to viruses being taken from animals before they are genetically altered in a lab to make them more transmissible to humans. The admission from the NIH official directly contradicts Fauci's testimony to Congress in May and July, when he denied the US had funded gain-of-function projects in Wuhan. As recently as last month, Fauci was accused of lying about gain-of-function research after documents, obtained by the Intercept, detailed grants given to EcoHealth Alliance for bat coronavirus studies. [A] grant proposal detailed in the trove of documents was for a project titled "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence," which involved screening thousands of bat samples, as well as people who worked with live animals, for novel coronaviruses.
Note: CNN in this video put tough questions to a top NIH director about lies made by Fauci regarding gain-of-function research. And why did the NIH change this original webpage so that in the changed webpage the entire section on gain-of-function research is deleted and the title changed? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
About 18 months ago, in the lockdown summer of 2020, I started to argue that the Government's response to Covid is driven not so much by medical science or epidemiology, but instead by the psychological insights of behavioural scientists. Controversial "nudge theory" lies at the heart of Westminster's response. It refers to sneaky attempts to prime, prepare and prod us into their desired mindset and course of action, without us ever realising we are being coerced. Once nudge is seen, it can't be unseen. This week, the Government may have overplayed its hand. On Tuesday, Professor Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College epidemiologist whose modelling was used as the basis for the UK's lockdown policy, made an illuminating comment on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "Nobody likes having their freedoms curtailed by measures but it's prudent to be cautious," he told presenter Sarah Smith, "and wearing masks certainly helps that: it reminds people we're not completely out of the woods yet." It was a startling admission, if we needed one, that masks are as much about psychology as they are about preventing infection. They act as a social cue, to use the language of behavioural scientists, nudging us into vigilance. These psychological cues are carefully calibrated, more so than many realise. In a document drawn up by the "Nudge Unit" ... scientists examine the success of Slovakia's mass testing programme, looking at how we could replicate that success in the UK.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.
Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.