Police Use Contact Tracing And Big Tech To Identify Protesters

Countless warnings about how law enforcement could use contact tracing apps to monitor people have gone unheeded.
As BGR.com revealed, police are using contact tracing to identify protesters’ affiliations.

According to Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner John Harringon, officials there have been using what they describe, without going into much detail, as contact-tracing in order to build out a picture of protestor affiliations — a process that officials in the state say has led them to conclude that much of the protest activity there is being fueled by people from outside coming in.

A Twitter feed titled “Minnesota Contact Tracing” revealed how police are using contact tracing to identify and arrest protesters. “Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington says they’ve begun contact tracing arrestees.”
Recently, 100 human rights groups warned that an Apple/Google contact tracing app could be used as a cover to identify activists and minorities.

An increase in state digital surveillance powers, such as obtaining access to mobile phone location data, threatens privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of association, in ways that could violate rights and degrade trust in public authorities—undermining the effectiveness of any public health response. Such measures also pose a risk of discrimination and may disproportionately harm already marginalized communities.

So despite all assurances to the contrary, it appears that 100 human rights groups were right; law enforcement can and will use contact tracing to identify protesters.
As NBC News noted, contact tracers also use geofencing to help identify protesters.

“Geofencing” captures the social media posts of people entering a specific area. The technology locates any cellphones that cross into the area by locking onto their geolocation systems, and then records social media posts and sometimes other data from the phones.

Time exposed how the military (National Guard) uses a classified system called “Secret Internet Protocol Router” or SIPR to monitor protesters. (To learn about Perspecta Inc.’s role click here & here.)
Big Tech’s hands are dirty with federal money paying for new ways to monitor Americans.
A recent Business Insider article describes how police use Big Tech to monitor activists and protesters the moment they walk out their door.

Law enforcement agencies have made full use of high-tech surveillance tools as protests sweep the country following the death of George Floyd. A predator drone operated by Customs and Border Patrol circled above protesters in Minneapolis.

Buzzfeed News warns,

law enforcement has a wide breadth of surveillance technologies that could be used to monitor and target protesters — including controversial facial recognition software Clearview AI, license plate readers, body cameras, and video analysis tools.

Both of these articles reveal a frightening array of Big Tech surveillance devices being used by police nationwide.
Minneapolis police and the Minnesota Fusion Center are also using Clearview AI, BriefCam, Ring doorbell cameras, Axon police body cameras, ShotSpotter and license plate readers to create an intimate view of people’s lives.
BuzzFeed’s article also revealed how police use Arxys “Milestone” software which uses video detection and analytics to identify people.

The Minneapolis Police Department said in a surveillance white paper that it uses Arxys [Milestone] software — a video management tool that claims to offer “video motion detection” and “video analytics” — to analyze CCTV footage.

While both articles do a great job of revealing some of the ways law enforcement can monitor anyone, it really did not go into detail about how invasive Big Tech’s surveillance devices truly are.
Let’s say you use your smartphone for everything; texts, phone calls, pictures, music, etc. — if you also use Alexa or a NEST thermostat or any smart device in your home, these devices collect, store and transmit all that personal data, which police can use to identify a person. Police can also identify people who use a tablet or laptop, because like a phone they have an IP and MAC address.
If you use any of these devices to make online purchases, police can ask those companies to provide details of what you bought and when. Anytime you use a credit/debit or customer rewards card, someone is compiling a database of everything you purchased.
Let’s say you drive or take public transit, police can track your vehicle and they can use facial recognition to identify where you work or which bus or train stops you use.
If you drive or take an Uber or Lyft, chances are your personal information is being recorded and used to build a massive database of your comings and goings. From the moment you step outside of your home, your neighbor’s Ring doorbell or Flock cameras have identified you, your family and your vehicle.
And if they are any social distance snitches in your neighborhood, they have recorded you and reported you to police via Ring Neighbors or Nextdoor.
Thanks to Big Tech, a person’s everyday life is no longer private. Now everything we do is being recorded in real-time. Things like what and where you eat, who your friends and family members are, who your family doctor is or where you worship are all available to law enforcement.
Despite what Big tech, politicians and law enforcement say, AI and smart devices are being used to identify activists and protesters.
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/police-use-contact-tracing-and-big-tech-identify-protesters

Medtronic, Titan Medical in robotics development, license agreements

• Toronto-based company Titan Medical on Thursday announced development and licensing agreements with Medtronic for robot-assisted surgical technologies. Under the deals, Medtronic will gain access to some of Titan’s intellectual property, while Titan will be able to commercialize those technologies for its own business.
• Titan will receive payments totaling up to $31 million for Medtronic’s license to the tech, provided the company reaches certain milestones verified by a joint steering committee overseeing the work. However, Titan must separately raise $18 million of capital within four months of the development start date, slated for this month.
• The agreements announced Thursday were Medtronic’s second publicized robotics deal this year as it also works to launch a soft tissue robot with an eye to compete with Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci system.

It’s not the first time Medtronic has expressed interest in Titan’s work. The cash-strapped Canadian company suspended development of its single-port robotic surgery system in November due to funding issues. Titan claims its in-development Sport Surgical System will offer a cost-effective means to expand robotic surgery into more general abdominal, gynecologic, urologic and colorectal procedures.​ But getting to market has been a challenge. The company ended 2019 with a nearly $42 million loss and only about $1.3 million in cash.
To help with that effort, Medtronic in April provided a senior secured loan of $1.5 million to Titan. ​
In addition to the $31 million deal announced between the two companies Thursday, they also outlined a separate license agreement in which Medtronic has licensed certain robot-assisted surgical technologies in return for an upfront payment of $10 million. At the same time, Titan retains the rights to continue to develop and commercialize those technologies for its own business, according to the announcement.
Medtronic in February bought a British digital surgical tools developer for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition of Digital Surgery’s artificial intelligence, data and analytics offerings were meant to build out Medtronic’s surgical robotics business​ in its Minimally Invasive Therapies Group.
The Digital Surgery and Titan deals come as Medtronic continues to develop its own soft tissue robot dubbed Hugo.​
Medtronic CFO Karen Parkhill said on Wednesday at the Jefferies Virtual Healthcare Conference that the robotics platform has been delayed due to workforce disruptions from the pandemic. Because engineers are working on Hugo remotely, they have had limited access to the system hardware. Surgeons and OR professionals are not able to participate in lab testing due to travel restrictions, she said.
When Medtronic gave analysts a first look at Hugo more than eight months ago, the company said it expected a CE mark submission for the system in the first quarter of fiscal 2021, with approval coming in the second half of that fiscal year. The company anticipated an investigational device exemption in the U.S. the first half of fiscal 2021 with a projected launch in the fall of 2022. Now, the robotic effort is up in the air due to the COVID-19 work disruptions.
“Because of these delays, we haven’t given a new expected date but we’re working as fast as we can,” Parkhill said Wednesday.
At the same time, Parkhill emphasized Medtronic is looking for ways to accelerate testing and better enable engineers to remotely collaborate on Hugo as the company looks to “get back in the office as soon as we can.”
https://www.medtechdive.com/news/medtronic-titan-medical-robotics-development-license-agreements/579198/

COVID-19 driving adoption of virtual trials

A survey of clinical research professionals has found an acceleration in the adoption of  virtual studies during the coronavirus pandemic.
The poll of 114 triallists by clinical data specialist ERT found that 82% of them said their organisations are using virtual trial approaches which minimise the need for physical contact between patients and staff, up from 33% prior to COVID-19.
That could include tablets and smartphones for patient monitoring and communication, apps, and wearable sensor devices, for example, as well as social media engagement. Using this approach screening, visits and data transmission are managed electronically from remote locations, notes ERT.
The finding isn’t wholly surprising given that government-imposed stay-at-home orders have made recruiting patients via traditional methods and the usual process of visiting investigator sites a challenge.
Nevertheless, the increased adoption during the crisis suggests that even after it abates the shift to virtual – which some would argue has been fairly slow – may gather momentum. In the survey only 9% of respondents now said they see no need to take a virtual approach to clinical testing.
Relatively few (7%) of those polled were adopting an entirely virtual approach however, with 75% indicating they were incorporating “some virtual trial elements.”
According to the survey, the biggest issue keeping clinical trial workers awake at night is screening for new study subjects, with 79% of respondents saying they were “very or extremely concerned” about this issue.
They also said the primary issues that will impact trials in the next six to 12 months are trial management (32%) – covering start-up, capacity issues and monitoring for example – and patient recruitment and enrolment (25%).
Supporters of the virtual trial approach point to the benefits of not having to recruit patients close to a physical site, maintaining good communication with subjects, and allowing them to communicate their own safety and efficacy assessments. Automated, remote data collection can also be a big plus with some studies.
“There are many benefits to virtual clinical trials,” says Jim Mahon, head of strategy and marketing at ERT.
“They are safer and more convenient for patients and more cost-effective for sponsors and CROs. Patient recruitment is easier, drop-out rates are lower, timeframes are shorter, and endpoint data is more accurate,” he adds.

COVID-19 driving adoption of virtual trials

Author of Two Retracted COVID-19 Studies Once Bemoaned Misconduct

The Lancet today retracted a high-profile observational study about the use of hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 treatment after scientists raised questions and the paper’s authors were not able to access and vouch for its underlying data, which came from the company Surgisphere. The New England Journal of Medicine today also retracted a similar paper that drew on Surgisphere’s proprietary database of global hospital medical records, after it had asked the authors to provide evidence that the data are reliable.
Surgisphere’s CEO, Sapan S. Desai, MD, PhD, coauthored both papers. A look at his previous publications turns up warnings against research misconduct and multiple specialty-focused registry studies.
Desai’s oldest article indexed in PubMed is from 2011, and the research repository includes 66 total papers he authored or coauthored since then. That first paper, coauthored with Cynthia K. Shortell, MD, in the Journal of Vascular Surgery, is a call to arms for medical publishers and editors to resolve any potential conflicts of interest in order to protect the integrity of scholarship. Desai and Shortell write, “Without aggressive intervention by editors and publishers, the public’s confidence in scientific publishing will falter.”
Two years later, writing in Publications , Desai and colleagues took a close look at how the Journal of Surgical Radiology prevents publication fraud. They write, “The most serious cause of fraud in medical publishing is manufactured data that authors use to support high impact conclusions. The Journal of Surgical Radiology requests primary, de-identified data from authors and completes its own statistical analysis on the information. Co-authors are asked to review this data and sign off on its authenticity, with the belief that fraud is less likely to be perpetuated among multiple stakeholders than from a single author.”
Desai did not respond to a request for comment.
As early as 2012, Desai published research drawing on large registries of patient data, much of it dependent on the National Inpatient Sample, a US government database. Desai’s most-cited paper, with 274 citations according to Google Scholar, is a 2014 registry study that examined 11 years of data about aortic aneurysm repair in the United States, and concluded that endovascular aneurysm repair is safer than open aneurysm repair.
Other registry-based studies he coauthored provide management guidance in traumatic blunt carotid and blunt thoracic injury and show that African Americans develop more advanced venous disease at younger ages than Caucasians. In 2017 he coauthored a set of best practices for registry research about abdominal aneurysms using publicly available data sets. These other papers have fewer than a dozen citations each.
Desai also coauthored many case reports and treatment recommendations aimed at vascular surgeons. In March of this year he wrote a letter to the Annals of Vascular Surgery, calling for revisions to the ICD-10 codes related to aortic aneurysms. He listed his affiliation as the Vascular and Vein Institute of America in Chicago, but this institution does not appear in a Google search, a Chicago business directory, or nonprofit registries.

Anahita Dua, MBChB, now director of the Vascular Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, is a coauthor on 46 of Desai’s 66 papers in PubMed, which are principally case reports or analyses of government registry data. They began working together at the University of Texas Houston from 2012–2014, when Desai was a vascular surgery fellow and Dua was a research fellow. They have not collaborated during her time at Mass General. She declined to discuss her experience with Desai.
In 2013, Dua, Desai, and colleagues wrote a case report about a ruptured aneurysm in a carotid artery, in 2015 they described diagnosis and management of a ruptured popliteal mycotic pseudoaneurysm, and in 2018 they discussed management of groin complications after arterial bypass with a prosthetic graft. These papers have about a dozen citations, combined.
SreyRam Kuy, MD, now a surgeon for the Baylor College of Medicine and Department of Veter

Common Heartburn Drug for COVID-19 Symptoms?

Self-administered high-dose oral famotidine (Pepcid AC) was well tolerated and associated with improved patient-reported outcomes in non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients, a small case series found.
At daily doses ranging from 60 to 240 mg, the histamine-2 receptor antagonist widely used to suppress gastric acid production was linked to reduced severity across a range of symptoms 24 to 48 hours after starting treatment in 10 outpatients with a clinical diagnosis of COVID-19, reported Tobias Janowitz, MD, PhD, of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. Symptoms cleared within 14 days, the team said.

“Our findings support the rigorous evaluation of famotidine as a potential therapy and of the use of symptom tracking for non-hospitalized patients with COVID-19,” the researchers wrote in their study online in Gut.
The team cautioned, however, that for now the case series only suggests a benefit of famotidine, and it’s not clear how famotidine might work in COVID-19 — for example, whether it might incapacitate the virus in some way or perhaps alter a person’s immune response.
For example, the investigators speculated, famotidine could have a viral target, such as one of the viral proteases or a host therapeutic target involved in modulating the immunological response to the virus. Chinese researchers recently predicted the structures of proteins encoded by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus genome and identified famotidine as one of the drugs most likely to inhibit 3-chymotrypsin-like protease, the enzyme that processes proteins essential for viral replication.

In addition, a recent cohort study from New York suggested a beneficial effect of famotidine in hospitalized COVID-19 patients, reducing the risk of clinical deterioration leading to intubation or death.
Study Details
In the new study, the 10 consecutively enrolled patients — nine from the U.S. and one from Sweden — included six men and four women, and several racial/ethic groups: white, black, Hispanic, black-Hispanic, Asian, and South Asian. Patients ranged in age from 23 to 71, although most were middle-age.
Several of the patients had some severity-related lifestyle practice or comorbidity such as smoking, obesity, hypertension, or hyperlipidemia. Reported symptoms included body aches, fever, sweating, chest tightness, nasal congestion, and sore throat. The severity of five symptoms was quantitatively tracked by patients on a scale of 1 (least severe) to 4 (most severe).
All patients reported taking self-administered oral famotidine, with 80 mg three times a day the most frequent dose, and the average treatment period was 11 days (range 5-21).

In one case, a 44-year-old white woman with a medical history of epilepsy took famotidine 80 mg three times daily for 11 days starting 4 days after first experiencing symptoms of COVID-19. She reported that after feeling very unwell at the outset, within 1 day of the first dose of famotidine, she noticed marked improvement in her shortness of breath. This improvement was matched by an increase in her home-monitored pulse oximetry-measured oxygen saturation levels, which rose from 91-95% to 97-98%. Before starting the drug, she was febrile with a temperature of 37.8°C, but was afebrile by day 7 of treatment.
No adverse events emerged in seven participants, while one reported grade 1 dizziness and occasional racing heartbeat. Another had grade 1 dizziness, dry skin, and insomnia, and a third reported grade 1 gastrointestinal symptoms and temporary forgetfulness, all of which except for the last are listed side effects of the drug. No patient required later admission to the hospital.

Asked for her perspective, Yamini Natarajan, MD, of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who was not involved with the study, said the results support further investigation of the effects and the mechanism of action of this medication. She cautioned, however, that patients in non-blinded studies may be subject to the placebo effect and register improvement just by taking the medication, rather than the improvement being the result of the medication itself.
“This study is a case series, which means that there is no control, or comparison, group. As the authors themselves state, this study does not recommend widespread use of of famotidine for COVID, but it does suggest that further research should be done in a way that minimizes bias,” she told MedPage Today.
A randomized phase III trial has recently been launched to test the efficacy of high-dose intravenous famotidine three times daily in addition to hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients with COVID-19. Janowitz and co-authors also recommended an outpatient study of oral famotidine for symptom control, viral burden, disease outcome, and impact on long-term immunity and transmission.

Study limitations, the researchers noted, included the possible placebo effect, enrollment bias, and recall bias regarding symptoms, which may have affected the findings as in any non-blinded, non-controlled study, despite the attempt to minimize bias by asking non-leading questions, the team said. Furthermore, it is possible that improvements in symptoms might have been due to treatment-independent convalescence since the natural course of COVID-19 in patients not requiring hospital admission is not well characterized.

Disclosures

Janowitz and co-authors reported having no conflicts of interest.
Natarajan reported having no conflicts of interest.

Primary Source

Gut

Source Reference: Janowitz T, et al “Famotidine use and quantitative symptom tracking for COVID-19 in non-hospitalised patients: a case series” Gut 2020; doi:10.1136/ gutjnl-2020-321852.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/86893

Gottlieb On Fed Covid Vaccine Shortlist: ‘They Chose Very Novel Platforms’

The Trump administration is prioritizing five COVID-19 vaccine programs, but ex-FDA chief Dr. Scott Gottlieb said the White House needs to spread its bets.
The Trump administration is betting that five companies have the highest chance of producing a working vaccine against COVID-19. They are: AstraZeneca plc AZN 2.05%, Johnson & Johnson JNJ 1.32%, Merck & Co, Inc. MRK 0.61%, Moderna Inc MRNA 1.17% and Pfizer Inc. PFE 0.39%.
As part of the public-private partnership, the government will prioritize clinical trial access for these five companies, Gottlieb said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

The clinical trials will consist of 10,000 to 15,000 patients for each vaccine against a standard control arm of around 15,000 patients.
The White House selected three viral vector-based vaccines and two mRNA platforms, Gottlieb said. The mix does not include any “old-style technology,” which is surprising, he said.
“If you want to spread your bets, you probably want to spread your bets across different platforms,” Gottlieb said. “And they chose very novel platforms.”
Companies working on a vaccine that weren’t included in the White House’s five picks face an impediment moving forward, Gottlieb said.
Clinical trial access will be a “critical issue” into the fall season, and the five companies named by the White House will have top priority in finding patients, he said.
Companies may need to look outside of the U.S. to continue trials, but smaller ones don’t have the capacity to do so, the former agency head said.
“It’s going to be more challenging to move quickly for any of the other vaccine manufacturers.”
https://www.benzinga.com/government/20/06/16179215/ex-fda-chief-on-white-houses-coronavirus-vaccine-shortlist-they-chose-very-novel-platforms

Health Insurers Offer Premium Discounts

Anthem Inc. is joining the growing number of health insurers offering premium discounts, as the companies see savings from sharp drop-offs in surgeries and other types of care canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Anthem said it would provide $2.5 billion to customers, health-care providers and others in various forms, including premium credits of 10% to 15% in July for some individual policyholders and fully insured employers. The big insurer follows others including Premera Blue Cross, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Priority Health, as well as UnitedHealth Group Inc., that have given discounts to some customers.
“With the changes in health-care utilization as a result of Covid-19, we are returning value to our stakeholders through a number of mechanisms,” said Gail Boudreaux, the chief executive of Anthem, which is based in Indianapolis, Ind.
The industry is being pressured by some regulators. Outlays for claims have fallen in recent months as hospitals halted elective surgeries to brace for a potential coronavirus surge and many patients steered clear of other forms of care. The savings generally far exceed insurers’ costs related to Covid-19, the coronavirus illness.
“We just feel like they need to give the consumer a break,” said Mike Chaney, Mississippi’s insurance commissioner, who said he asked health insurers in his state to consider consumer rate reductions.
Auto insurers, which have also seen claims fall as stay-at-home orders kept people off the roads, have been more aggressive with discounts. The top 10 have all rolled out consumer-relief programs.
Health insurers are “not paying out much in the way of claims, and have an awful lot of premiums coming in,” said Mike Kreidler, the insurance commissioner for Washington state, who said his office had also reached out to encourage health insurers to offer financial breaks to customers. “This is one where I think insurers have a real moral responsibility.”
Insurers granting discounts said they also need to ensure they have adequate funds to handle expenses for the rest of the year. “Our costs dropped unexpectedly and substantially, and we believe we should essentially pay forward the premiums we had collected already,” said Jeff Roe, chief executive of Premera Blue Cross, based in Mountlake Terrace, Wash. But, he said, “we’re reserving some for the future.”
Analysts have said insurers’ second-quarter profits could be up sharply because of the plunge in costs. CVS Health Corp. said in early May that its Aetna unit had seen a 30% drop in the use of health-care services in April, for instance. In addition to disbursing some of the money to customers, health-care providers and others, insurers are likely to do discretionary spending in the second quarter where possible, said Matthew Borsch, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets.
“They don’t want to report windfall profits amid so much economic distress,” he said. “It just won’t look good.”
Health insurers not offering across-the-board premium discounts said they already see signs that health-care demand is ramping back up. Cigna Corp. said it was “tailoring funding arrangements to provide financial relief for clients,” including premium discounts and credits “where appropriate.” Aetna, which isn’t offering premium discounts, said that it is working with customers to “help reduce the financial burden many are facing” and that it has taken steps to support health-care providers.
By granting premium credits, health insurers are also likely reducing rebates that they could end up owing to consumers under the Affordable Care Act, said Larry Levitt, an official at the Kaiser Family Foundation. The law requires insurers to spend a certain share of premiums–80% for individual and small-business plans and 85% for large employers–on health care. If the spending ratio falls short, insurers owe rebates to customers, but rebates tied to 2020 plans won’t start flowing until the fall of 2021.
Joan Budden, chief executive of Priority Health, a Michigan insurer, said companies don’t yet know if they will owe an ACA rebate. “At the end of the year, we could be right at the ACA threshold and not required to give a rebate, but we’re giving this now,” she said. “We knew that our customers were struggling to maintain coverage.”

https://www.marketscreener.com/ANTHEM-INC-18740543/news/Health-Insurers-Offer-Premium-Discounts-30720415/