Massachusetts pondering updating their COVID stats only once a week

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is apparently considering dropping the frequency of COVID dashboard updates to weekly, and I am not impressed:
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Yeah. Riiiiight.

It wasn't that many weeks ago - May 5, in fact - that most of the state hit case and hospitalization rates bad enough that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considered seven counties to have high community level, meaning indoor masking recommended for everyone. The state's reaction? Crickets.
The next week, May 12: Eleven counties at high. The state's reaction: Silence.
The week after that, May 19: Ten counties at high. The state's reaction: Jack shit.

The Baker Administration clearly does not give a rat's ass about COVID at this point. Maybe, if things get bad enough that the hospitals collapse again, Baker will care.

Maybe.

But I'm not betting on it at this point.

Local COVID-19 updates

I have no idea how much longer this will be a daily feature, since Massachusetts is thinking about scrapping its daily updates in favor of once-a-week. But for now ...

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Deaths are up compared to yesterday, which is very bad news (especially as yesterday's report supposedly covered four days of data). Cases are down in raw numbers, but are up compared to averaging yesterday's total across the four days it covered. Also, cases are still over a thousand, which still sucks. Hospitalizations are also up compared to yesterday, which just plain isn't good. The seven-day averages are a mixed bag, as those for cases and deaths are down while those for hospitalizations and percent-positive are both up. Percent-positive is back over seven percent.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's data API for community transmission was last updated on July 5, and is showing six counties in Massachusetts with high community transmission and eight with substantial. That'd be great news, as Massachusetts has been at constant high transmission levels for months now - except that today's COVID Data Tracker website is showing all fourteen counties in Massachusetts having high community transmission as of July 6. Obviously the data flows at CDC aren't quite what I'd hope for.

The town of Acton's current Google Data Studio dashboard is showing 23 active and 3,658 cumulative cases as of July 5. In the most recent "newsflash style update" at 7PM on December 21, 2021, the town reported 1538 cumulative cases with 89 individuals in isolation, 1417 recovered and 32 fatalities.

Justice Mary Sue?

Something I never expected to see: The original Star Trek Mary Sue fanfic, "A Trekkie's Tale" by Paula Smith, now the appendix to an amicus brief in docket number 21-869, "Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., Petitioner v. Lynn Goldsmith, et al." at the United States Supreme Court. The case in question regards what appears to be a change in the way the Second Circuit handles claims of "fair use" of copyrighted material, which has potentially significant implications for fanfic in particular.

I am not a lawyer; I just follow some on Twitter, including the lead author of this brief, Mike Dunford.