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CDC data are disappearing

theatlantic.com

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Re: CDC data are disappearing

#51
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but half the country welcomed this wave of oppression with open arms. And the other half? They seem to welcome this as well, but with crossed arms. Where are the protests? Seems most people end up writing upset messages on Twitter/Bluesky, but also seems there are no grassroots movements to actually protest the borderline coup that is happening?

Protest doesn't do anything. I marched plenty and it accomplished nothing except letting like-minded people blow off a bit of steam and feel like something we did mattered. If anything it was just a distraction.

The answer is a general strike. This will never happen in the US though.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#52

The target isn't the people, the target is science. It is becoming clear that the intent is to govern through fear.

I think you misunderstand the goal. The target is total control of the people -- the means is disrupting every alternative voice and narrative.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#53
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would just like to point out that Musk is the richest man in the world and is now directing critical areas of the U.S. government. Surely he doesn't have ulterior motives and is looking out for the average person?

If you look back at Germany in the 19th century, nations like Prussia and Austria had this sort of power struggle between the merchant class and the nobility at the advent of steam power. in this case the de-facto US nobility (rank-and-file career politicians) are being usurped by the bourgeouise (billionaires like Musk) at the advent of AI and tech by promising the working class a combination of culture war policy a…

[deleted]

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#54
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is censorship at work. Call it what it is.

I disagree. This is the government deciding what the government will or won't take a position on. Censorship was having federal government employees scream and yell at facebook content moderation teams to remove social media posts.

To you "screaming and yelling" at a private company that still retains agency over it's content moderation is government censorship, but the government's direct censoring of information is not? Partisan politics has a neat way of twisting one's brain up like a pretzel.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#55
post #20

This is part of a broader rolling catastrophe. Musk is evidently seizing control of the Office of Personnel Management https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2025-01-31/exclus... Nasa took down their applied sciences page and is evidently scrubbing the data https://www.reddit.com/r/gis/comments/1icqchv/why_is_the_nas... ( https://appliedsciences.nasa.gov/ ) Lots of other data sets are disappearing too: https://ma…

> Musk is evidently seizing control of the Office of Personnel Management Suddenly I feel out of the loop when it comes to US politics, how come Musk is suddenly seemingly seizing control of parts of the US government? I don't recall him being on any ballots or anything?

The US is undergoing a fascist takeover basically.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#56
post #14
post #6

This does not only affect the obvious ideological targets of purging any mention of DEI or gender. One section that is missing seems to be the official vaccine recommendations. Go to the ACIP page ( https://www.cdc.gov/acip/ ) and click on the "Vaccine-specific recommendations". Other affected topics are HIV prevention, birth control/contraception, domestic violence and probably many more.

Maybe it was unintentional but the Long COVID pulse survey page disappeared: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/pulse/long-covid.htm (but explanations about long COVID are still available) The page I used to look for mask efficiency disappeared too ( https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7106e1.htm ) but the CDC website still discusses masks so it does not seem to be intentional: https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viru…

That's wishful thinking, sadly. It's much more likely they haven't gotten to it yet.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#57
post #6

This does not only affect the obvious ideological targets of purging any mention of DEI or gender. One section that is missing seems to be the official vaccine recommendations. Go to the ACIP page ( https://www.cdc.gov/acip/ ) and click on the "Vaccine-specific recommendations". Other affected topics are HIV prevention, birth control/contraception, domestic violence and probably many more.

If there's action by an adversary to try and weaponize naturally occurring disease (never mind the prospect of trying to heighten effectiveness of artificially created disease), that would be expected.

Vaccines and healthcare in general are intended as a safeguard against pandemics and mass death. If the goal IS mass death, it makes practical sense to try and delete all health and vaccine information in hopes it's lost forever and the society that uses it is rendered helpless against such events or weapons.

I'm interested to note that HN's commentariat hasn't mentioned the extent to which all scientific research of this nature was immediately defunded: my social media had indirect exposure to a lot of healthcare researchers who were freaking out, many days ago. Did you notice that part or is this the first sign of it that's made its way over here?

I'd note that defunding medicine isn't strictly HN-type content, though mass deletion of data certainly seems to be HN-adjacent. I would think hackers and entrepreneurs would take that sort of thing personally, as it more or less attacks them by starving them of information that could be useful.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protest doesn't do anything. I marched plenty and it accomplished nothing except letting like-minded people blow off a bit of steam and feel like something we did mattered. If anything it was just a distraction.

The answer is a general strike. This will never happen in the US though.

Hard to strike when your boss can make you and your kid homeless. Housing precarity is a useful tool of control.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think we can all agree that depending on which administration is in charge, "Government Science" is anything but unbiased. Nope, but you've just made it clear you're susceptible to propaganda.

Will you trust the 'science' that is performed via the CDC under the Trump administration? Did you trust the 'science' performed under past administrations? Now, imagine someone holding the reverse position. Who's right? Which government institutions do you find generally trustworthy, and which do you find generally untrustworthy? Has this changed from administration to administration? Do you think your ideological v…

I guess the reason you're fine with the ideological purge that's happening now is because you mistakenly believe the bureaucracies were always operating in ideological lockstep with the current administration. I suddenly pity you for the fear and distrust you must carry at all times for things you don't understand.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#60
post #3

It’s terrifying that data US taxpayers paid for, collected and analyzed in the name of public health, can be removed on a whim. While there are a lot of efforts to archive said data, it would still make it unavailable to Americans who are not tech savvy. Unfortunately, that seems to be the idea, I think.

Isn't this data already inaccessible to those who are not tech savvy? My grandma isn’t visiting any of the data download sites provided by the federal government. She doesn’t even know why she would, or even that such data is available. And if I provide it to her, she hasn’t the skills to do anything with it.
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