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Governments Worldwide Offering Jab Incentives for Vaccine Skeptics

Governments Worldwide Offering Jab Incentives for Vaccine Skeptics

Since mass vaccination programs began rolling out worldwide, governments and private businesses have been offering incentives – including tax breaks, free airline tickets and even millions of dollars in lotteries – to entice vaccine skeptics to get vaccinated.

In some countries where covid-19 vaccines are available, offers of free airline tickets and apartments for the fully inoculated people are being given away.

It’s a gambit that probably can’t hurt – but it’s unlikely on its own to help communities reach herd immunity, which is when a high-enough percentage of the population achieves immunity from a disease, said Emily Largent, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I’m generally optimistic that we will see some increase, but it’s not going to get us to the high levels of vaccination” needed, Largent said. “Incentives are not going to move everyone who is holding out over the finish line.”

Freebies and financial incentives will probably work best for certain groups, such as young people who are interested in getting vaccinated but have not yet considered it a priority, Largent said. For populations “philosophically opposed” to getting vaccinated, however, financial incentives “could make them suspicious and reinforce concerns they have or introduce new ones,” she cautioned.

Efforts to increase vaccination rates

These programs also do not address “persistent information gaps” that have proved a barrier for inoculation among populations, particularly marginalized groups, that have questions about the science or where to get the doses, Largent said.

“Targeted education,” she said, is needed alongside creative initiatives. “We can’t let the fun things … distract us from doing all the other public health work that’s been going on.”

Efforts to increase vaccination rates in primarily high-income countries where shots are readily available are in sharp contrast to the lack of vaccine access faced by a majority of the world’s population.

In countries with better vaccine access, some sectors – including publicly funded ones – are employing creative means to lure the vaccine-hesitant while also gaining publicity for their products.

Property developers and philanthropic foundations in Hong Kong have teamed up to offer a one-bedroom apartment worth $1.4 million, as well as 20 cash prizes equal to $12,890, in a lottery open only to vaccinated residents. Registration opens June 15, the South China Morning Post reported, and the winner will be announced Sept. 8.

The Airport Authority said it will give away 60,000 airline tickets to city residents and airport employees who have been fully inoculated by the end of September. Hong Kong civil servants, as well as employees at private businesses such as HSBC bank, are being offered a day off work per vaccine dose taken.

Continued vaccine skepticism

Vaccine uptake in Hong Kong has been sluggish, with only about 15 percent fully vaccinated, according to the New York Times. Organizers of the real estate raffle said bookings were filling up in the hours after the lottery was announced, the South China Morning Post reported.

Still, mistrust of the government is high, complicating official efforts, while reports of adverse reactions to the vaccines have circulated widely in Hong Kong, where both the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Chinese-made Sinovac shots are available.

In Serbia, citizens who had received one or two doses by May 31 could get a one-time payment of about $30 – about 5 percent of the average monthly salary.

“We have considered how to reward people who have shown responsibility and decided to grant additional financial support to those who have been vaccinated,” President Aleksandar Vucic said in early May, Euronews reported.

Vucic said he would not make the vaccine mandatory but called it “irresponsible and selfish” not to get vaccinated, Euronews reported. Last month, he said public sector workers who were unvaccinated and caught the virus would no longer be eligible for sick days.

About a quarter of the Balkan country’s citizens are fully vaccinated, a number higher than the European Union’s average. Still, the government has struggled to keep up interest amid continued vaccine skepticism.

Offering enticements before vaccine shots

Last month, some top gyms in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates’ commercial hub, offered two weeks of free access to vaccine skeptics who get fully vaccinated. The UAE has some of the highest vaccination rates in the world, but, despite a plethora of doses, has faced waning interest among the still unvaccinated.

Israel initially offered vaccinated residents a “green pass” – state-issued documentation indicating they had been fully vaccinated. The pass holders could easily access restaurants, clubs, gyms, weddings and other venues, while those without had to take frequent coronavirus tests to gain entry.

Public adherence to the system, however, waned over time, and Israel scrapped the green pass this month, with few people in the highly vaccinated country wearing masks or taking other precautions against the virus.

In the Philippines, where vaccine skepticism was high even before the coronavirus outbreak, some communities are trying to get ahead of hesitancy by offering enticements to people before shots are available. The mayor of a small town in the Ilocos Sur province is planning to raffle off a plot of land with a house in December, when he expects vaccines to be available for his community, the Straits Times reported. Elsewhere in the country, malls serving as vaccination sites are offering free parking and banana fritters, according to the Straits Times.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

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Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

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Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

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Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

trump

Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

trump

Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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