News Information and Media Site: Britney Spears is officially free from her father's control

THE BIG STORY

Doctors are attacking COVID vaccines and promoting bogus cures — and getting away with it

(BuzzFeed News)

From questioning vaccines to touting unproven treatments like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, a small number of doctors have established themselves as some of the highest-profile purveyors of false information on COVID-19.

But while state medical boards can suspend or revoke the licenses of doctors who endanger public health, BuzzFeed News could not find a single example of a doctor who has been disciplined to date for spreading vaccine disinformation.

Currently, around 2,000 Americans die of COVID-19 every day, and most of them are unvaccinated. Public health advocates are urging state medical boards to take action against doctors who are contributing to hesitancy or open hostility toward COVID vaccinations.

"We see the effects of disinformation firsthand because we see the victims of disinformation campaigns that come into our emergency departments," Taylor Nichols, an emergency room doctor in Sacramento and one of the founders of the nonprofit No License for Disinformation, told BuzzFeed News. "This is personal for me."

STAYING ON TOP OF THIS

Britney Spears is finally free from her father's control after more than 13 years

#FreeBritney activists at a rally held during a hearing on the future of Britney Spears' conservatorship on Sept. 29, 2021, in Los Angeles. (Chelsea Guglielmino/Getty Images)

It's official: A judge granted Britney Spears' request to immediately suspend Jamie Spears as conservator of her estate, a role he has filled since the conservatorship's creation in early 2008. At a hearing set for Nov. 12, the judge will consider whether to terminate the conservatorship altogether, based on a separate petition filed by Jamie Spears.

Outside the courthouse on Wednesday, #FreeBritney activist Megan Radford told BuzzFeed News that the amount of progress in Spears' case in recent months felt indescribable.

"But the job isn't done, and we'll be here until the job is done," she said.

SNAPSHOTS

A senior justice department official who resigned in protest under Trump is returning. Joel McElvain, a 20-year veteran of DOJ, left in 2018 after the Trump administration decided to stop defending the Affordable Care Act.

Lori Loughlin's return to acting after serving prison time for the college admissions scandal has sparked a huge debate about white privilege and accountability. Loughlin served two months in prison after she and her husband were arrested for bribing their daughters' way into USC. She's set to appear in a Hallmark Channel special premiering in December.

A former Olympic swimmer who wore his Team USA jacket to the Capitol riot pleaded guilty to a felony. He was identified by prosecutors in part by the Nike jacket, which officials noted bore the white-and-red Olympic patch on its front left side.

These photos show the timeless appeal of travel and tourism. Wow, people have really been trying to climb the pyramids since at least the 1800s.

THE OTHER HOSPITAL CRISIS

They found swastikas on their hospital. Still, they're coming in to save lives.

Swastika graffiti on the walls of a hospital in McCall, Idaho, made national headlines this month as a stunning example of backlash against pandemic first responders. It's an incident that speaks to the rise in threats and violence healthcare workers are facing because of COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracies that continue to fuel people's anger against the medical community.

In November, National Nurses United reported that about 20% of the 15,000 nurses surveyed said they had experienced increased workplace violence amid COVID. In Branson, Missouri, hospital staff have been issued panic buttons following an increase in assaults caused in part by angry patients. Infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci has been the subject of death threats and his daughters now have security guards trailing them.

Paddy Kinney, a McCall physician, told BuzzFeed News that the swastika graffiti has him wondering how the US will contend with the competing ideologies of individualism and community during the COVID-19 crisis moving forward.

"This isn't going to be the last issue we have to face like this as a country and as a community and as a people. We've got an entire future ahead of us of these big decisions and sacrifices and diseases and pandemics," he said.

"Where are we going to be as a people? Where are we going to fall out?"

NAP DRESS NATION

The cult of the Nap Dress

(Amanda Lanzone for BuzzFeed News)

To its fans, Nap Dresses are like Pringles: You can't have just one.

Since its launch in August 2019, the Nap Dress, created by direct-to-consumer brand Hill House, has become one of the biggest word-of-mouth clothing items to ever come out of Instagram. According to Hill House, its average customer owns three or more. Once customers buy their first dress, they said, they have gone on to buy more in different colors and for every season.

But there's something deeper beneath the obsession besides blind consumerism, writes Stephanie McNeal. People who have embraced the "grandmillennial" aesthetic that the dress embodies say that by dressing in ruffles, hair bows, and flowy florals, they are reclaiming their femininity and shaking off the male gaze in a way that is incredibly empowering.

Participating in online groups of like-minded people, they said, is therefore not just about a hobby of collecting dresses, but about community — something they have sorely needed over the past year and a half.

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