Boston.com

MIT student pranks Harvard with fake dating ‘app’

When a new Harvard-specific dating app popped up with a comprehensive survey promising a marriage match, many students were quick to offer up their personal information. Turns out it was just a prank, but when the MIT student behind it saw how successful it had been, he decided to make it legit.

In mid-October, a site called “Harvard Marriage Pact” circulated campus, inviting students to fill out a matchmaking survey with wide-ranging questions, The Harvard Crimson reported. It was modeled off “Marriage Pact,” a service launched at Stanford and active on 64 campuses, including Tufts University, that matches students with “backup” spouses. (So far, the service has made 93,834 matches and 1 “actual freaking” marriage.)

Students filled out the survey and waited for a match — promised by Oct. 15 — but the site and social media disappeared after the people behind the original “Marriage Pact” sent a cease and desist.

“We tried to reach out, all kinds of different ways,” Liam J. McGregor, who runs Marriage Pact, told the Crimson. “We told them, ‘Hey, we love the enthusiasm, but this is not okay.’”

According to the Crimson, the site reappeared on Oct. 31 as ExExEx, and those who filled out the survey got their matches.

The site was created by MIT undergrad Liam Kronman, and an unidentified second contributor, Jason Seo, according to the website. In a statement to the Crimson, Kronman said he wrote the survey as a funny experiment. 

“One afternoon I thought, ‘how many Harvard students could I convince to fill out a long questionnaire to find the love of their life in less than a week?’” Kronman wrote. “We had no intention to match people or use their data maliciously (we maintain the latter). Instead we wanted to send out a joke match.”

It might have started as a joke, but Kronman ended up matching respondents using an algorithm he wrote based on the “stable marriage problem.” The idea behind his service — which someone could glean from the name — is that your ex’s ex’s ex is your perfect match.

Students seem into it, and not super concerned about the data they shared.

“I don’t know that any of the data that I would have given would be incriminating, or if it did come out, that it would be a big deal,” first year Will McKibben told the Crimson.

“The freshman class group chat was like, ‘This is a scam,’” first year Bethany Wiebold told the Crimson. “We got scammed — they took our info and ran with it.”

Still, she’s messaged with her match and would fill out a survey again.

“The concept is very, very interesting,” Wiebold said. “I’d probably use it.”

Rep. Moulton shares experience of trying to get families out of Afghanistan

At a Veteran’s Day town hall Congressman Seth Moulton spoke about his experience flying to Afghanistan in August before the military withdrawal.

The idea for the veteran town halls was conceived by journalist Sebastian Junger, Moulton said, but it really originated with Native Americans.

“[They] recognized the value of warriors sharing their experiences with the communities they serve,” he said. “By allowing veterans the time and space to share these stories, we’re supporting the true purpose of this event: closing the divide that can exist between veterans and the rest of the community.”

On Thursday, Moulton continued his tradition of hosting a Veteran’s Day town hall, this time in a digital forum broadcast online. In 2015, Moulton worked with Junger to put on the first veteran town hall in the nation in Marblehead, Mass. in the historic Abbot Hall. Now, town halls are held across the country, he said, and there’s now a push to create national infrastructure to continue the tradition.

Veterans, including State Reps. Jon Santiago and Jerry Parisella, were invited to speak about their experiences, and Moulton shared his experience working to get allies out of Afghanistan.

“I am fortunate to be in a position as a veteran to at least have some influence over the process,” he said. “I haven’t felt like the White House has always listened to me, but I’ve been out there, I have a position on the Armed Services Committee… We’re pursuing over 4,500 cases in our office. Other veterans out there don’t have those avenues of influence, they’re just doing whatever they can to help their friends.”

Moulton said there was a night leading up to the withdrawal when he decided he’d get four families through the gate before dawn.

“By the time the sun rose on the east coast, I’d only succeeded in getting one,” he said. “After hundreds of text messages, WhatsApp and Signal messages, phone calls, talking between desperate Afghans outside the airport and some heroic Americans on the inside — trying to talk them through the chaos — I only got one of four, and I felt like a failure. Then this airman who had literally taken this family over the wall — this heroic Afghan journalist, his wife, and two little girls about the same age as mine — and he sent me a picture of them. I said, ‘you know what, it’s all worth it.’”

Though some people criticized his trip to Afghanistan, Moulton said he was doing his job to provide oversight, as a member of Congress.

“We were able to help some of the many veterans across the country, getting some of their allies through the gate,” he said. “Marines had to wade out into this desperate sea of humanity…to try to find our friends, to grab them by the hand, put their kids on their backs, and literally haul them to freedom. It’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve never been more proud to be an American than I was at Abbey Gate.”

Could the jury weigh lesser charges for Kyle Rittenhouse?

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Prosecutors in Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial could ask the jury to consider lesser charges when it gets the case, a move that could secure a conviction for some crime but take a possible life sentence off the table.

Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger has struggled to counter Rittenhouse’s self-defense arguments during the Illinois man’s trial, raising questions about whether his office overcharged Rittenhouse. Daniel Adams, a former Milwaukee County assistant district attorney who isn’t involved in the trial, described Binger’s case as “incredibly underwhelming.”

“He’s got nothing,” Adams said. “I just don’t understand it. What are we doing here? We’re all kind of scratching our heads.”

Rittenhouse shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz during an August 2020 protest against police brutality in Kenosha, a city in southeastern Wisconsin that’s not far from Rittenhouse’s hometown of Antioch, Illinois. Rittenhouse was 17 years old at the time.

Binger’s office, led by Democratic District Attorney Michael Graveley, charged Rittenhouse with multiple counts less than 48 hours after the shootings.

Rittenhouse faces one count of first-degree intentional homicide in Huber’s death, which carries a mandatory life sentence. He also faces one count of attempted first-degree intentional homicide for wounding Grosskreutz and one count of first-degree reckless homicide in Rosenbaum’s death. Both charges are punishable by up to 60 years in prison.

Rittenhouse case

He’s also charged with two counts of first-degree reckless endangerment for firing at an unknown man who tried to kick him in the face and allegedly disregarding that a reporter was standing behind Rosenbaum when he shot him. A reckless endangerment charge requires prosecutors to show Rittenhouse put someone in harm’s way with an utter disregard for life. It carries a maximum 12-year prison sentence.

Prosecutors also charged Rittenhouse with a misdemeanor count of being a minor in possession of a firearm. That’s punishable by up to nine months behind bars.

Prosecutors or defense attorneys can ask Judge Bruce Schroeder to inform jurors as they begin deliberations to consider finding Rittenhouse guilty of lesser charges in lieu of the original counts. The judge would then have to weigh whether the evidence the jury had seen supports those lesser charges before instructing the jury to consider them.

Assistant District Attorney James Kraus told Judge Bruce Schroeder on Thursday that prosecutors were still finalizing their request for lesser included charges. But he said they planned to ask the judge to tell the jury to consider lesser counts in Huber’s death and the Grosskreutz shooting.

He said prosecutors were leaning against seeking lesser charges on the reckless endangerment counts and in Rosenbaum’s death but might ask Schroeder to include a so-called provocation instruction. Such an instruction would ask the jury to consider whether Rittenhouse provoked the men into attacking him. If the jury finds he did, that would negate self-defense.

But multiple witnesses have described Rosenbaum as angry and out of control that night, saying they heard him threaten to kill Rittenhouse if he got him alone and challenging other armed people at the protest to shoot him. Video shows Rosenbaum chasing Rittenhouse across a parking lot before Rittenhouse shoots him.

Bystander video of Huber running up to Rittenhouse and hitting him in the head with a skateboard as he apparently reaches for Rittenhouse’s gun has also hurt Binger’s case.

Binger called Grosskreutz to the stand on Monday. Grosskreutz testified he thought Rittenhouse was going to kill him, but on cross-examination he acknowledged that he ran up to Rittenhouse and pointed a pistol at him a split-second after Rittenhouse shot Huber.

“That’s a pretty clear case of self-defense,” said Paul Bucher, a former Waukesha County district attorney who isn’t involved in the case. “When he has a handgun (and) was in the process of pointing it, that would give me great pause as to whether I’d even charge that.”

Rittenhouse testified Wednesday that Rosenbaum threatened to kill him twice, that Huber hit him with the skateboard twice before he shot him, and that Grosskreutz pointed his pistol at him after first raising his hands in a “surrender” gesture.

Rittenhouse said he did what he had to do to protect himself. He cried as he began to describe how Rosenbaum chased him down.

Adams said prosecutors most likely will seek second-degree versions of the intentional homicide charges. Such charges could apply if jurors determined that Rittenhouse sincerely believed his life was in danger but used an unreasonable amount of force, University of Wisconsin-Madison criminal law professor Cecelia Klingele said. Second-degree reckless endangerment could apply if jurors found that he put someone in harm’s way but did so without showing utter disregard for human life, she said.

Second-degree intentional homicide carries a maximum 60 years in prison. The maximum sentence for second-degree attempted intentional homicide is 30 years. Second-degree reckless endangerment, meanwhile, carries a maximum prison term of 10 years.

A life sentence wouldn’t be an option if prosecutors sought convictions on lesser charges, but they would give jurors the flexibility to convict him of something, said Adams.

“It gives the jury negotiation room,” he said. “They think something bad happened but they’re not convinced the level of force was necessary. And that gives prosecutors two kicks at the cat.”

Bucher said Rittenhouse’s team also could ask jurors to consider second-degree versions of the charges in hopes of avoiding a life sentence.

But Binger has already “muddled” the case with multiple charges and asking jurors to consider even more counts risks confusing jurors further, Bucher said.

“As a prosecutor, you charge more counts than necessary because you don’t have a strong case,” he said. “You know the old saying, throw as much as you can against the wall and see what sticks. It’s confusing for me. Imagine what it’s like for the jury. You almost need a statute book to go through all this.”

Watch: Bruins can’t hold multiple leads, fall to Edmonton 5-3

The Bruins fell to the Edmonton Oilers 5-3 Thursday night at TD Garden after failing to hold three separate leads (1-0, 2-1, and 3-2).

Watch highlights below:

Kellogg’s files lawsuit against its striking cereal workers

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The Kellogg Co. has filed a lawsuit against its local union in Omaha complaining that striking workers are blocking entrances to its cereal plant and intimidating replacement workers as they enter the plant.

The company based in Battle Creek, Michigan, asked a judge to order the Omaha chapter of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union to stop interfering with its business while workers picket outside the plant. The workers in Omaha and at Kellogg’s three other U.S. cereal plants have been on strike since Oct. 5.

“We respect the right of employees to lawfully communicate their position in this matter. We sought a temporary restraining order to help ensure the safety of all individuals in the vicinity of the plant, including the picketers themselves,” company spokeswoman Kris Bahner said Thursday.

The president of the Omaha union declined to comment on the lawsuit Thursday.

Kellogg’s lawsuit comes after a vehicle struck and killed a United Auto Workers member last as he was walking to a picket line to join striking workers outside a John Deere distribution plant in northwest Illinois. An Iowa judge issued a temporary restraining order against Deere workers in Davenport limiting their demonstrations to four picketers at a time.

Kellogg’s said in its lawsuit that union members have been physically blocking the entrance to the plant as semitrucks and buses try to enter and leave.

The company also said in the lawsuit that people picketing outside the plant have threatened the lives of people working at the plant including “threatening that an individual’s wife and young children will be assaulted (including sexually) while he is away from home working with Kellogg.”

Two days of contract talks earlier this month failed to produce an agreement. Earlier this week, Kellogg’s launched a PR campaign trying to sell workers on its latest offer because the union declined to put the deal up to a vote. But the company said Thursday that its offer to the union had now expired, and no additional talks have been scheduled.

Business

Ken Hurley, the head of labor relations at Kellogg’s, said in a video the company posted on its website that Kellogg’s has tried to address the union’s main concerns about its two-tiered pay system, wages and benefits in its offer.

“We have made every attempt to build a bridge toward a new agreement, but those efforts are met with rejections and more unrealistic demands,” Hurley said in the video. “We urge the union to reconsider its approach and agree to engage in real bargaining for a contract to get our employees back to work and back to their lives.”

Union officials told workers after those contract talks that they couldn’t recommend Kellogg’s offer because it was full of concessions.

The Kellogg’s strike includes roughly 1,400 workers four plants in Battle Creek; Omaha; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Memphis, Tennessee, that make all of Kellogg’s brands of cereal, including Frosted Flakes and Apple Jacks.

The company has said that it has restarted production at all of the plants with salaried employees and outside workers, and it is now hiring new employees at the plants. CEO Steven Cahillane also told investors earlier this month when the company reported a $307 million quarterly profit that Kellogg’s stockpiled cereal beforehand to help weather the strike.

Workers at Kellogg’s and other companies feel emboldened this year to strike in the hope of obtaining a better offer because of the ongoing worker shortages.

Besides the Kellogg’s strike, more than 10,000 Deere workers remain on strike after rejecting two different offers from the tractor maker.

Employees are also less willing to compromise this year after working long hours during the coronavirus pandemic to keep up with demand over the past 18 months.

Earlier this year, about 600 food workers also went on strike at a Frito-Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas and 1,000 others walked off the job at five Nabisco plants across the U.S. At meatpacking plants across the country labor unions have been successfully negotiating significant raises for employees.

Celtics reportedly ended Ben Simmons trade talks when 76ers demanded Jaylen Brown

The Celtics were predictably uninterested in continuing trade conversations with the 76ers when they demanded Jaylen Brown in exchange for Ben Simmons, according to The Athletic‘s Shams Charania.

On Thursday morning, Brad Stevens told 98.5’s Toucher and Rich that he reached out to Brown to make sure his star wing wasn’t concerned about recent swirling rumors. The Celtics were never going to budge on a deal that moved Brown for Simmons for many reasons, not least of which being Brown’s production as a scorer (significantly higher than Simmons) and his cheaper contract (Brown is in the second year of a four-year, $106 million deal while Simmons is in the second year of a five-year, $177 million deal).

Still, Sixers GM Daryl Morey set a high — and perhaps prohibitive — price for Simmons, and the conversation between the two teams leaked. The NBA media game of telephone ensued: After Charania reported the Sixers demanded Brown, other outlets made it sound like the two teams were discussing a deal.

Per Charania, that wasn’t the case.

“Jaylen Brown and Damian Lillard and Bradley Beal, those are the types of players that Daryl Morey and Philadelphia have prioritized to go get a guy like Ben Simmons,” Charania said on the Pat McAfee show. “So yes, the Celtics did engage the Sixers on Ben Simmons and have conversations, but those conversations weren’t something the Celtics wanted to acquiesce to.

“When it comes to Jaylen Brown, they didn’t want to move Jaylen Brown for Ben Simmons. So unless Philadelphia gets more realistic, they are not going to get what they want.”

Charania noted that the Celtics were the team that engaged the Sixers regarding Simmons, but as soon as it became clear Morey wanted Brown in exchange, the Celtics pulled back.

“When it came to Philadelphia being hard-charged on getting Jaylen Brown in any scenario, yeah, I think it ended being like, ‘We’re not listening,'” Charania said. “Again, there’s really not a deal construct. Marcus Smart, guys like that, that’s not going to fulfill what Philadelphia is looking for and what they wanted.”

Charania added that he doesn’t anticipate a resolution for Simmons any time soon. A three-time All-Star, Simmons averaged 14.3 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 6.9 assists last season.

Brown is averaging 25.6 points per game on 49.3 percent shooting, including 39.7 percent from 3-point range.

McDonald’s CEO faces growing criticism after gun victim text

CHICAGO (AP) — The CEO of McDonald’s faced increasing criticism and calls for resignation Thursday following text messages he sent to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot where he seemed to blame the deaths of two Black and Latino children killed in gun violence on their parents.

McDonald’s President and CEO Chris Kempczinski sent texts to Lightfoot in April after meeting with her and referred to shootings that killed two children earlier this year: 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams, a Black girl who was shot in a McDonald’s drive-thru lane, and 13-year-old Adam Toledo, a Latino boy who was shot by Chicago police.

“With both, the parents failed those kids which I know is something you can’t say. Even harder to fix,” Kempczinski wrote.

Business

The exchange was made public on social media late last month following a Freedom of Information Act request from Michael Kessler, an American activist living in Canada, who said he was looking into an Oregon police matter and working with Chicago-based transparency group Lucy Parsons Lab.

Chicago organizations have been protesting for days, saying the messages were racist, ignorant and out-of-touch. Jaslyn Adams’ mother has demanded an apology from the CEO, who is white. And U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois called this week for Kempczinski to be removed.

“This is a deplorable message, and one that is completely unacceptable for the CEO of a powerful multinational corporation — let alone a corporation that markets aggressively to communities of color and publicly proclaims that ‘Black lives matter’ — to espouse,” the Chicago Democrat said in a statement Wednesday.

A coalition of community groups amplified their demand for Kempczinski to resign Thursday by protesting outside the McDonald’s where Jaslyn Adams was killed. The coalition, which called attention to other racial discrimination complaints the company has faced, called on the fast-food giant to create a $200 million fund over four years to improve life in Chicago, among other things. The group included immigrant rights activists, labor groups and churches.

Earlier this month, Kempczinski sent a note to McDonald’s corporate employees in the U.S., saying he was thinking through his “lens as a parent and reacted viscerally,” according to The Chicago Tribune.

“But I have not walked in the shoes of Adam’s or Jaslyn’s family and so many others who are facing a very different reality,” he said. “Not taking the time to think about this from their viewpoint was wrong, and lacked the empathy and compassion I feel for these families. This is a lesson that I will carry with me.”

McDonald’s declined to comment Thursday.

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Follow Sophia Tareen on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sophiatareen.

What NFL experts are predicting for Sunday’s Patriots-Browns game

Odell Beckham, Jr. would have been great in New England. 

Two years ago. 

In 2021, with a rookie quarterback learning his way through the NFL? The Patriots would have been desperate to add the diva to the mix. 

There’s no denying that Mac Jones could use more weapons at wide receiver, but the headache that is OBJ, who signed with the Los Angeles Rams on Thursday, would have been too risky. Remember Tom Brady’s increasing obsession with getting the ball to Randy Moss in the receiver’s final years with New England? It’s a similar process that began happening between him and Rob Gronkowski, sometimes to the detriment of the team. 

Brady managed to get away with a lot of the looking in one direction, and away from those outside of the Brady Camp. But Jones? Did the Patriots really want to give him the problem that OBJ would, no doubt, have become when he didn’t get the ball 10 times a game? 

For a team that prides itself on its running game and even distribution of the ball on offense, how does OBJ even fit? 

He would have been great here, when Brady was still at the helm. 

For Jones, OBJ would have likely been more of a deterrent to progress than he would have been a propellent. 

This week’s predictions 

Globe staff: Five out of six pick New England (-2.5). 

Joe Giglio, NJ.com: Browns (+1). “In a toss up game, I’ll take the point and back the more experienced quarterback.”

Pete Prisco, CBS Sports: Patriots 27, Browns 21. “The Browns are playing back-to-back road games and put a lot into winning a big division game last week at Cincinnati. The Patriots are back home for the first time in three weeks after winning two road games. Their defense is playing much better and they will do a solid job of putting the game on Baker Mayfield with the possibility Nick Chubb is out. Mac Jones will do enough on offense to get the victory.”

CBS Sports staff: Six of eight pick New England (-4). 

Michael Hurley, CBS Boston: Patriots (-1.5). “Everyone on both teams is either injured, dealing with COVID, or wanted by the FBI. (Mac Jones, you are under arrest for grabbing Brian Burns’ leg in the football game.) Kind of tough to make a sound judgment either way, but the Patriots are playing some good football these days.” 

Frank Schwab, Yahoo! Sports: Browns (+1.5). “Breaking a big rule here and buying into something we saw last week. The 2021 NFL is a week-to-week league and nothing seems to stick. Still, I liked what I saw from the Browns. I don’t know how this happened, but I finally believe it: The Browns are a better offense without Odell Beckham Jr. Much better. And Baker Mayfield is a much better quarterback without OBJ. I think they get a big win here.” 

ESPN staff: Six out of nine go with the Pats. 

Jimmy Kempski, Philly Voice: Browns (+2). “The Odell Beckham news cycle is crazy to me. Who cares where he lands? He’s a baby, he isn’t good anymore, and the Browns are better off without him. In this matchup, the Browns are the more talented team, and the home field mystique at Gillette Stadium over the last two decades probably had more to do with the Patri*ts having the best quarterback ever, plus some occasional cheating. That’s all it was. They’re 1-4 at home this season.” 

Vinnie Iyer, Sporting News: Browns 23, Patriots 20. “The.Browns got their complete groove back in Cincinnati. The Patriots did dispatch Carolina to match records with this week’s opponent, but they are stil very dependent on big defensive plays and the run to win games. The Browns will run hard on New England’s front with Nick Chubb and defensively force Mac Jones into more mistakes opposite Baker Mayfield.”

Bill Bender, Sporting News: Browns 27, Patriots 24. “We have missed on Cleveland picks the last two weeks, but a different team surfaced in the victory against the Bengals. The Pats are hot, but they have lost to Dallas and New Orleans, teams with top-10 rushing offenses. This is the kind of victory that shows Cleveland can get back in playoff contention.”

Mike Florio, Pro Football Talk: Patriots 24, Browns 20. “It would be great if the Patriots had OBJ for this one. New England can likely pull this one off without him.” 

Michael David Smith, Pro Football Talk: Patriots 27, Browns 17. “This game could have major ramifications in the AFC playoff race, and I believe the Patriots are going to show they’re real contenders with a big win.” 

FiveThirtyEight: Patriots, 56 percent (-1.5). 

Gregg Rosenthal, NFL.com: Browns 24, Patriots 21. “Both teams spoke all week about expecting a physical battle. Bill Belichick is coaching like he coached the 1994 Browns, a style of football that the 2021 Browns are also happy to play. The running game matters more for both of these teams than it does for most, and there’s no question which team is better at it. These Patriots will find a way to win plenty of strange, ugly games with their rookie quarterback this season, but I believe the Browns are better built for it, with or without Nick Chubb.”

NFL Pickwatch: Fifty percent, each. 


It says here: Patriots 31, Browns 17. Even with the uncertainties of Rhamondre Stevenson and Damien Harris, Brandon Bolden (yes) has been key lately.

As we head into the winter, here’s your guide to at-home COVID testing

Heading into 2022, rapid at-home tests will increasingly become more available at your local pharmacy, and we caught up with experts about what you should know.

A quick Google search shows that local pharmacies have carried one or two tests for a while — at least online. CVS Pharmacy, Walgreens, and Stop & Shop all sell the BinaxNOW rapid test, some have the newer QuickVue rapid test, but federal authorities are hoping to increase access and availability of rapid, at-home COVID tests heading into the winter to broaden detection efforts.

AT-HOME TESTING

In October, the FDA approved an emergency use license for another rapid test – Acon Laboratories’s FlowFlex home COVID test kit – with that goal in mind. Local experts agree: Massachusetts General Hospital infectious disease specialist Dr. Kimon Zachary told Boston.com the broad accessibility of rapid at-home COVID tests could limit viral spread.

“The easy availability of rapid at-home COVID test will likely enable the detection of cases that would not have been diagnosed otherwise, and will encourage affected individuals to observe appropriate isolation measures, thereby reducing spread,” he said.

As of September, the FDA had approved 13 at-home test kits and 63 home collection kits, though the most broadly used appear to be BinaxNOW and QuickVue. At-home tests are antigen tests, as opposed to the more comprehensive PCR test, so they do have limitations. Though samples for a PCR test can be taken at home and sent to a lab, they are much more expensive than antigen tests and take 24 to 48 hours to get a result.

Rapid antigen tests detect viral proteins, Zachary said, but are less sensitive than the molecular PCR test, which detects viral RNA. 

“This means that rapid antigen tests are more likely to miss infections and be falsely negative, especially when the viral burden is relatively low,” he said. “Therefore, a negative result may lend a false sense of security, especially when only a single test is done. Individuals who are infected and test negative with a rapid antigen test may be relatively unlikely to spread the virus at the time the test was taken, but the burden of virus, and the attendant risk of contagiousness, can change quickly, from day to day or even faster.”

Zachary believes our existing public health strategies — including testing for any suspicious symptoms and exposure — will remain, but be enhanced by the at-home antigen tests.

“It will be important, however, to ensure that positive results are reported both to an individual’s healthcare provider, and to the pertinent public health authorities,” he said.

How to get an accurate result

Dr. Karl Laskowski, a primary care physician and associate chief medical officer for Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is also the co-lead of Mass General Brigham’s COVID testing operations. You could say he knows a thing or two about how to successfully administer a COVID test.

The most important thing to remember when administering an at-home COVID test? Follow the instructions. 

“It is critically important that you carefully read any instructions for the type of test you are taking, and follow them to the letter,” Laskowski told Boston.com. “Not getting a good sample to test or making a mistake in carrying out the test will make the test unreliable, so be sure to pay attention and take your time.”

As far as avoiding a false positive or negative, Laskowski said we have to understand the limitations of an antigen test. The PCR test is the “gold standard,” he said, and though antigen tests are convenient, they are generally less sensitive.

“They may miss some infections, particularly if you’re not carrying enough virus to have symptoms, and all tests may miss infection if you test too early or too late,” Laskowski said. “Repeating a test a day or two later increases the likelihood that you’ll identify an infection. But the important point to remember is that a negative test doesn’t mean you can forget all COVID precautions. There’s still a risk you might be infected — and that you could infect others — so it’s still necessary to adhere to best practices… Of course, if you test positive, assume it’s an accurate result and be sure to contact your doctor.”

Laskowski absolutely believes people will be able to successfully administer the tests at home, and said he’s used them when he or his kids develop cold symptoms or before a visit from grandparents.

“Home tests are a helpful tool, and some epidemiologists have argued that frequent testing, even with lower sensitivity products, can help reduce the risk of COVID spreading within a community,” Laskowski said. “It’s hard to argue that more testing is bad, so long as we all remember that there is still risk of infection even with a negative result. 

“This is particularly true as we gather indoors more often with the colder weather and with visits from family and friends around the holidays. Masks, airflow, and avoiding others when sick or after a known COVID exposure remain critically important to helping us get through another winter.”

What happened to Eric Clapton?

Robert Cray was stunned when he first heard “Stand and Deliver.” Eric Clapton, his onetime musical hero, who became a mentor and friend, had released his first protest song in 56 years of recording. Only it wasn’t about George Floyd or global warming. Clapton’s midtempo shuffle, a collaboration with Van Morrison released in December, went full anti-lockdown, taking aim at the government for trying to control a global pandemic by temporarily shuttering restaurants, gyms, and concert halls.

What grabbed Cray’s attention was the second verse.

Do you wanna be a free man

Or do you wanna be a slave?

Do you wanna be a free man

Or do you wanna be a slave?

Do you wanna wear these chains

Until you’re lying in the grave?

Cray — one of the great blues guitarists of his generation, a five-time Grammy winner and Black man born in segregated Georgia — emailed Clapton immediately. Was the 76-year-old guitar great comfortable singing Morrison’s words, which compared the lockdown to slavery?

“His reaction back to me was that he was referring to slaves from, you know, England from way back,” Cray says.

That didn’t satisfy Cray. Neither did their next email exchange. Then Cray stopped replying altogether. The next time he wrote was weeks later to politely inform Clapton that he couldn’t, in good conscience, open for him as planned on an upcoming tour.

After that, Cray watched as Clapton released two more lockdown songs, conducted a lengthy interview with vaccine skeptics, and pledged to perform only where fans would not be required to be vaccinated – or, as Clapton said in a statement, not “where there is a discriminated audience present.”

After a September show in Austin, Clapton posed backstage with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Abbott had recently signed the country’s most restrictive abortion law and a Republican-backed measure to limit who can vote in the state. Like that, a 35-year friendship was over.

“There’s this great photo (from 2013) at Madison Square Garden after the show, with B.B. King sitting in a chair, Jimmie Vaughan, myself and Eric sitting behind him,” Cray says. “And I looked at that picture of Gov. Abbott, Jimmie Vaughan and Eric Clapton in that similar pose, and I’m going, what’s wrong with this picture? Why are you doing this?”

Many of Clapton’s friends and fans are asking that same question. Before the pandemic, the guitarist and singer was one of rock’s elder untouchables, a multigenerational hitmaker with the same draw and standing as Billy Joel, James Taylor and Elton John. His 1992 album, “Unplugged,” remains the best-selling live release ever, with over 25 million copies sold. He is the only artist inducted three different times into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In an increasingly polarized world, Clapton stayed out of politics. He was never one to pop up at rallies or marches. So it’s been more than a departure to hear him questioning scientists on anti-vaccine websites.

“I’ve talked to other musicians, old friends of mine, these great players who, you know, will remain nameless in our conversation, who say, ‘What the f— is he doing?'” says producer Russ Titelman, whose credits include “Unplugged” and a new Clapton album that arrives this month, “Lady in the Balcony: Lockdown Sessions.”

“He’s the anti-Bono,” says Bill Oakes, who managed Clapton’s label throughout the 1970s. “He is the epitome of someone who is there for the music, and he’s never rubbed shoulders with world leaders and never wanted to.”

Interviews with more than 20 musicians and acquaintances who have known Clapton over the years, from his days in the Yardbirds to his most recent concerts in September, shed light on why he may have thrust himself into the covid debate. Among friends and collaborators, there’s hope that Clapton can repair the damage he’s done to his reputation. But their frustration is apparent.

“Nobody I’ve talked to that knows Eric has an answer,” says drummer Jim Keltner, who has known Clapton for 51 years. “We’re all in the same boat. We’re all going, ‘I can’t figure it out.’ “

Earlier this year, when he heard Clapton complaining that his friends were abandoning him, Keltner wrote to tell him that many of them were just confused.

“It’s something that he brought upon himself,” Keltner says. “And so I’ve been hoping and praying really, that he can figure out a way to, I don’t say get out of it, but to make it go away somehow so that it doesn’t ultimately interfere with the music.”

It’s unclear how much Clapton cares about the criticism. He declined multiple interview requests for this article, and his business manager, Michael Eaton, explained that decision in an email to The Washington Post. Eaton wrote that “given the depressingly bad standard of journalism reflected in certain recent articles, Eric Clapton has no desire at the moment to engage with the US Press. Anyone in the public eye has to expect and accept negative comment, but it should be balanced.”

Eaton did clarify that Clapton’s photo with Abbott should not be interpreted as him supporting a ban on abortion, noting that “he is a great believer in freedom of choice which drives his position on vaccinations, and his views on other matters would reflect that belief in freedom of choice.”

Clapton’s general silence has left people to interpret his views through infrequent short statements, his anti-lockdown songs, and a 24-minute video interview posted in June.

In the interview, Clapton talks about how he’s been attacked since he released “Stand and Deliver.”

“The minute I began to say anything about the lockdown, I was labeled as a Trump supporter in America,” he said.

He called Morrison “fearless” and mentioned that he tried to reach out to his own musician friends, “but I don’t hear from anyone. My phone doesn’t ring very often. I don’t get that many texts and emails anymore. It’s quite noticeable.”

Bassist Nathan East, who remains loyal to Clapton after decades in his band and is one of the performers on “Lady in the Balcony,” said that his wife and manager urged him to talk only if he could avoid discussing politics.

“I’ve done interviews for the last 40 years, but I think this is the most volatile position that we’ve seen from the press standpoint,” East says. “For me, the beauty of music is that it really transcends language, color and politics.”

For most of Clapton’s career, that’s been true.

He emerged in 1963 as the neck-tied, Telecaster-playing lead guitarist of the blues-inspired Yardbirds. Before long, as legend had it, spray-painted messages began appearing around London with a simple message: “Clapton is God.” When Clapton felt the Yardbirds started moving in too commercial a direction, he quit.

He joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, pledging blues purity, then exited for Cream, growing an Afro and plugging in a wah-wah pedal. He formed and quit a British supergroup, Blind Faith, and then turned to Southern soul, touring as a member of Delaney & Bonnie & Friends. Obsessed with the organic sound of the Band, Clapton next formed Derek and the Dominos. They lasted for one critically acclaimed album.

“A chameleon in every way, not just in his appearance and reshaping himself and redoing his persona and taking his music to another place,” says keyboardist and singer Bobby Whitlock, who wrote or co-wrote seven songs on the lone Derek and the Dominos album from 1970.

This was the era of politically conscious pop music, from Crosby, Still, Nash and Young’s “Ohio” to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” But Clapton’s worldview didn’t extend beyond his fretboard.

He really had only one cause at the time: Wooing Pattie Boyd, a model who just happened to be married to his best friend, former Beatle George Harrison. “Layla,” the centerpiece of the Derek and the Dominos record, would be a plaintive plea for her love and remains a staple of Clapton’s concert repertoire.

“There’s an obsessive part, the same thing that made him really sit down and learn to play the guitar the way he did,” says Chris O’Dell, who served as an assistant for Harrison and then Clapton during that era. “He went after Pattie maybe the same way. Maybe obsessed is the wrong word, but you’re mono focused. You have only one thing in your mind, and that’s all you can really concentrate on.”

– – –

Eric Clapton, like so many, had a plan for 2020. He intended to do his semiregular residency at London’s Royal Albert Hall and record the performances. Then the lockdown struck, and the shows were canceled.

“Which from a selfish point of view is devastating because I’m of an age where I don’t know how long my faculties will go on,” Clapton said in the June interview.

Around that time, Clapton signed on for a Zoom chat with Jamie Oldaker, the Tulsa-based drummer who played on eight of his albums starting with 1974’s “461 Ocean Boulevard.” Oldaker had cancer; he would die in July. Richard Feldman, a mutual friend who co-wrote Clapton’s 1978 hit, “Promises,” was also on the call.

“At one point, I said, ‘Eric, how are you doing?’ ” Feldman says. “And he sounded kind of like a 17-year-old, if you will. He says, ‘I just don’t have anyone to play with.’ It was kind of real and heartfelt.”

This has emerged as the main theory as to why Clapton has responded so strongly to covid shutdowns. At 76 and with a long list of health problems – from nerve issues in his hands and legs to hearing loss – he can feel the clock ticking and is desperate to squeeze in as much playing as he can.

“That’s what he lives for,” Keltner says. “You can’t take (his) gigs away. It’s like breathing for him.”

Clapton got vaccinated in February. But he has been skeptical of government directives and has a lifelong fear of needles. As a heroin addict in the early 1970s, he would only snort the drug.

“I felt so alone,” Clapton said in the June interview. “I really couldn’t talk to my family or my kids. My teenagers seemed like they had been brainwashed.”

Music

The first shot sidelined him for a week, delaying the “Lady” project. The second shot was worse.

“My hands and feet were either frozen, numb or burning, and pretty much useless for two weeks,” he said. “I feared I would never play again.”

Hearing this, singer Bonnie Bramlett, who first worked with Clapton when she was one half of Delaney & Bonnie, says that his response to vaccine mandates makes perfect sense.

“He can’t feel his freakin’ hands anymore and he doesn’t want that to happen to anyone else,” she says. “And why is everybody all freaked out about it? I think he’s a hero for it.”

But medical experts say that Clapton is more than one man sharing his opinion. He’s a massive public figure with considerable influence.

“He could be helping us in finishing off this pandemic, especially with a vulnerable population,” says Joshua Barocas, an associate professor of medicine with an expertise in infectious diseases at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “We’re looking at millions and millions of people worldwide. He could be a global ambassador, and instead he’s chosen the pro-covid, anti-public-health route.”

Clapton’s hands eventually recovered enough for him to play again. That’s when he got in touch with Nathan East.

“He said, ‘If I put something together where we would, you know, set up a little bubble and we could just play and feel safe. Would you be up for doing it?” East remembers.

Which is how they ended up in Cowdray House, a majestic manor in the middle of a polo club in West Sussex, England, recording what became “Lady in the Balcony.” It was the height of the pandemic, and East, after arriving, had to stay in touch with the police so they knew he was quarantining.

Titelman flew over to produce his first Clapton album since 1994’s “From the Cradle.” The band was impeccable, with East, keyboardist Chris Stainton and drummer Steve Gadd.

Clapton did not appear diminished. The performance, largely acoustic, showed off his still intact guitar chops and underrated voice, one that still allows him to sing his staples – “Layla,” “After Midnight” and “Tears in Heaven” – in the same key in which they were written. For East, the highlight of the performance was an intense, nearly eight-minute version of “River of Tears” from 1998’s “Pilgrim.”

“He sings his heart out, and I’ll never forget the chills I had,” East says.

They did not talk politics at Cowdray House, and “Lady” would include no between-song chatter about vaccines or lockdowns. But behind the scenes, Titelman found himself in an uncomfortable position. Clapton wanted to include “Stand and Deliver” alongside his classics. Titelman didn’t think much of the song musically. The subject worried him more. He thought it would distract from “Lady” and even prepared a speech he planned to deliver to Clapton if he insisted on including it.

“This is about music and performance and live music going on while we’re in the midst of this horrible pandemic,” Titelman planned to say. “So it’s everything you want to say to people. And if that thing’s on there, it’ll explode.”

In the end, the record label solved the problem. Titelman was told it didn’t want the song.

– – –

In the months after “Lady” was recorded, Clapton continued to create headlines with his covid chatter. He released another song with Morrison titled “The Rebels” and then “This Has Gotta Stop.” Clapton wrote the latter alone, and it had an accompanying animated video featuring a zombielike population manipulated by politicians and marching off to mindless factory jobs. “I can’t take this B.S. any longer,” he sang on the chorus. The message was not subtle.

The anti-lockdown campaign has unquestionably damaged Clapton’s reputation. In October, 24 Stone magazine, which had featured him eight times on its cover in largely glowing terms in the past, produced a searing attack that not only called him out for his pandemic behavior, but spotlighted a 45-year-old incident that remains an inescapable bruise on his career.

The racist rant during a concert in Birmingham, England, in 1976 was not something newly surfaced. Clapton addressed it in 2017’s “Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars” documentary, and it’s been used regularly as ammunition against him online. As #BlackLivesMatter surged last year, acclaimed songwriter Phoebe Bridgers slammed Clapton in an interview as making “extremely mediocre music” and being “a famous racist.” In 2019, Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid tweeted about his love of Clapton’s playing in Cream with the qualification that it’s “important not to sidestep the curious phenomena of Racist With The Blues.”

Clapton’s remarks came during a surge of immigration in the 1970s and a campaign on the far right to stop the flow of South Africans into Britain. Onstage, Clapton told his audience that it was important to “keep England White” and that “the Black wogs and coons and Arabs and f—ing Jamaicans don’t belong here.” In “12 Bars,” Clapton apologized and said he was ashamed about what he said. He blamed it on a drinking problem so severe he often contemplated suicide.

Clapton’s defenders say it is worth noting he never said anything like those comments before or since. Albhy Galuten, who played with Clapton in the 1970s before becoming the production mastermind behind the Bee Gees, wonders whether the mess he’s in is due, in part, to the naive and unguarded way he’s always approached his career.

“Most people have sort of Jiminy Cricket on their shoulder all the time saying, you know, don’t do this, do this,” he says. “In my experience with Eric, he is the most guileless person I’ve ever met. What he feels is what he does, and so that’s what makes the music so amazing and what makes him love his band members and the band members love him. He doesn’t think of the world as a path that you negotiate yourself through to get to certain accomplishments.”

Though Clapton studied the music of the blues, he seems to have not read up on what drove the work of many of his heroes. In a 1999 interview on “60 Minutes” with Ed Bradley, Clapton talks of what it was like to hear the blues on the radio as a teenager in Ripley, a White, working-class town north of London.

“To me, it sounded like they were in a fantasy land,” Clapton said. “For you, perhaps, Ed, the plantation and the cotton fields would have been places of abject misery and hardship. For me, it was paradise. I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather be doing than picking cotton and hearing that music all around me.”

To many who know Clapton, tagging him as a racist seems wrong. They talk about his support of Black artists, whether giving a virtually unknown Gary Clark Jr. a prime spot at the 2010 Crossroads Guitar Festival or lending his commercial clout to collaborate on an album with an aging B.B. King.

Greg Phillinganes, Clapton’s former keyboardist who also feels that vaccines should not be mandated, says the accusations of racism are politically motivated.

“We all make mistakes, but I guarantee you, if Eric didn’t have the (covid) stance he has, that stuff would not have been dug up,” he says.

East, who has been playing with Clapton since 1985’s “Behind the Sun,” prefers to write off the Birmingham incident as an unexplainable aberration.

“In the Olympics, they throw out the best score and the worst score,” he says. “You get the measure of a person not on the day they did the very, very best thing they did and not the day they did the very worst thing they did.”

Living Colour’s Reid has continued to turn the rant over in his thoughts. He feels it particularly because his parents immigrated from the West Indies to London, where Reid was born in 1958, before leaving for Brooklyn in 1960.

“If I hadn’t left, he would have been talking directly to me and my people,” Reid says. “So it’s not merely abstract, and it’s not merely political correctness.”

Lately, Reid’s been thinking about Lee Atwater, the late Republican operative who created the infamous Willie Horton ad at the center of George H.W. Bush’s presidential campaign in 1988. Horton, a Black man who raped a woman while out on work release in Massachusetts, was used to demonize Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis, then Massachusetts governor. Bush won, and Atwater, who played guitar and loved the blues, threw an inauguration party that featured such artists as Bo Diddley and Percy Sledge.

“People put racism in the hatred box,” Reid says. “Well, racism is much more complicated than mere hatred. It’s paternalism. Lee Atwater claimed to love Black people. Well, he came up with Willie Horton and screwed African Americans, but when his candidate won, he threw the biggest blues party. On the flip of that, no blues artist turned down that Lee Atwater gig. And what are we to make of that? Do I judge them?”

– – –

As the controversy lingers, Clapton remains both in the center of it and detached from it all. Past collaborators like East, Whitlock, Bramlett, Keltner and Titelman say they don’t really know his politics. It’s not something they discuss when they’re together, and it’s not something they’re about to press him on over email or the phone. What they want to talk about is the magic of playing music with him.

“He is one of my favorite musicians in the world to play with,” says Keltner, who has played with George Harrison, Fiona Apple, Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Linda Ronstadt in his long career. “You can only imagine a drummer playing with Eric Clapton.”

Others, who did not get along with him, also find his behavior baffling. Jim McCarty, the Yardbirds drummer, said that even in the early days, Clapton remained a mystery.

“You ever met people like that? That really never really fit anywhere and you can’t quite understand what they’re thinking or what they do?” he says.

And singer Rita Coolidge also wonders about his motivation. In 1970, she helped write the piano melody that became the coda of “Layla” with her then-boyfriend, Derek and the Dominos drummer Jim Gordon. But when the song came out, Gordon alone had taken credit for the section. Clapton’s then-manager, Robert Stigwood, brushed Coolidge off. And she found Clapton unapproachable.

“I’ve never had a conversation with Eric about probably anything,” Coolidge says. “He always made me feel … like I was beneath him.”

Others highlight Clapton for unexpected and often uncredited acts of kindness, largely benefiting his musical collaborators. When he learned that Whitlock had sold his publishing rights for the Derek and the Dominos material, Clapton bought them back and gave them to his former bandmate. When he heard then-bandmate Albert Lee grumbling about selling one of his guitars, he came to the next rehearsal with a prized Les Paul – one he used in Cream – and gave it to him.

And then there’s his devotion to the Crossroads Centre, the drug and rehabilitation facility in Antigua that Clapton helped build in 1998 after he stopped drinking. Eaton estimates that Clapton has given the center, through donations, fundraising concerts and by auctioning off guitars, at least $20 million over the past decade.

Soul music legend Sam Moore tells of an experience he had with Clapton in 2005. Billy Preston, the keyboardist who played with the Beatles and Clapton, was dying and in a coma in an Arizona hospital. One morning, Moore looked up and saw Clapton arrive as an unannounced visitor. He asked Moore for a hair brush.

“He walked over to Billy, took the brush, brushed his hair. Took the thing and did his mustache,” Moore says. “When he had to leave, he leaned over and kissed Billy on the forehead.”

Joyce Moore, Sam Moore’s wife and the late Preston’s manager, grows angry when asked about the charges of racism.

“Let me tell you something, Eric Clapton got on a plane to come kiss Billy Preston on the forehead when Billy Preston was in a coma,” she says. “Real racist. Huh. There’s a heart, and that heart didn’t see color.”

One of Clapton’s relationships appears unfixable. That’s the one with Cray.

Cray’s tone changes when he talks of when they first became friends. In 1986, at a gig at London venue the Mean Fiddler, Clapton showed up and hopped onstage to join the younger guitarist. They would record together, and Cray and his band would open multiple tours. Clapton organized Cray’s bachelor party at Royal Albert Hall back in 1990. That same year, the pair shared tragedy, playing with Stevie Ray Vaughan only hours before the Texas bluesman died in a helicopter crash.

But Cray says that Clapton has changed over the years. He rarely mingles anymore. Once known for his pranks, he has lost his sense of humor. A few years ago, Cray couldn’t believe when he heard Clapton talking about his support for fox hunting.

This fall, as Clapton toured the South, Cray played his own gigs in smaller venues. He deleted his email exchange with Clapton because it pained him to look at it.

“I’ve told myself, I don’t need to have a conversation,” Cray says. “I’d just rather not associate with somebody who’s on the extreme and being so selfish. We started playing a music that wasn’t particularly popular to start off with at the time we started playing. We’ve gained some notoriety, and I’m fine with that, but I surely don’t need to hang out with Eric Clapton for that to continue.”