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CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

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Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#141
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and thinks they know better than individuals about risk tolerance and decisions Do you think the average American knows more about these issues than the CDC? If so, how did they go about getting their knowledge?

You are absolutely correct from a theoretical standpoint. Completely neutral, independent medical experts should, on average, make better health decisions than an uninformed populace. The problem is when we transfer those assumptions to the real world, all of the most important adjectives in that prior sentence start to fall apart. The managers in the CDC are not neutral or independent. They are by and large bureaucr…

Or, perhaps, the CDC should be more independent of political leadership?

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Don't be obtuse. The Nazis gassed people because they thought that eliminating the demographics they were gassing would lead to a better society. Sure the people at the top knew it was questionable but the guy loading the train had spent a decade reading newspapers full of junk and thought he was deporting undesirables. The American Indians who's culture was systematically destroyed, all those people the eugenicists…

Fine. You're right. That was unfair. I'm just annoyed that there is wholesale bullshit going on in this comment thread about the data and I applied that annoyance to you. Consider the comment withdrawn.

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be obtuse. The Nazis gassed people because they thought that eliminating the demographics they were gassing would lead to a better society. Sure the people at the top knew it was questionable but the guy loading the train had spent a decade reading newspapers full of junk and thought he was deporting undesirables. The American Indians who's culture was systematically destroyed, all those people the eugenicists…

Fine. You're right. That was unfair. I'm just annoyed that there is wholesale bullshit going on in this comment thread about the data and I applied that annoyance to you. Consider the comment withdrawn.

Thank you for being reasonable.

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#144
post #16

Time to go back to a non-connected Garmin GPS while in the car and slip my phone into a mesh bag when not in use :( So glad I don't own a newer car with a cellular modem built into it. Hope I can die and be buried with my current "dumb" cards.

> Hope I can die and be buried with my current "dumb" cards.

There are a lot of ways to satisfy your hope, many of which I suspect you would consider suboptimal. I hope manifestation doesn’t work.

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.cdc.gov/os/integrity/hrpo/index.htm I assume this classifies as research so it should be subject to the same ethical requirements.

Going off “CDC’s Policy on Distinguishing Public Health Research and Public Health Nonresearch” linked from that page, I would guess this activity they’d call “nonresearch.”

I read the guidelines for compliance and my interpretation is that it fulfills the requirements for research while it does not fulfill the requirements for nonresearch. The scope of this reaches all of society instead of the study participants.

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#146
post #65
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the virtually unlimited executive powers the CDC believes it has, I am not sure I agree with your assessment that it is the least scary people. But I agree that the problem here is not that the CDC is buying it so much that this data is available to be bought.

> Given the virtually unlimited executive powers the CDC believes it has Care to elaborate? CDC has historically been an extremely powerful organization devoted to the safety of the US public.

Devoted to the safety of the public, but not necessarily to that of the individual. ref: Tuskegee

They are a government institution, and not to be blindly trusted. They require oversight above and beyond what private institutions require. I'm not sure why you want to give them the benefit of the doubt here.

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#147
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't even have the power to study gun violence.

Probably because gun violence isn't a disease, and there's already several agencies under the DoJ for that.

Can a mania be a disease? The CDC can't study gun violence using epidemiology and the DEA says there is no legitimate use of Cannabis. Both seem anti-science to me.

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... The Mafia? Any other criminal or terrorist organization or individual? The police operating under an incorrect warrant? A creepy ex? The mafia is easy. Pay them and they DGAF what you do. Creepy ex is more or less a non-issue because any threat of violence one person can bring can be matched by another one person. It's the police, terrorists and other well resourced but potentially capricious organizations (like…

[flagged]

It was public health officials, doctors and psychiatrists who helped lay the foundation for the holocaust, under the auspices of public health and fighting disease.

https://perspectives.ushmm.org/collection/public-health-unde....

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can someone name a scarrier (sp) entity that could be tracking you? ... The Mafia? Any other criminal or terrorist organization or individual? The police operating under an incorrect warrant? A creepy ex? Unless you buy into conspiracies, the CDC is at worst going to do what it thinks is best for you, and is constrained by constitutional checks and balances.

I don't approve of using the term conspiracies as a way to denounce the questioning of true intentions or possible problem areas. Unless someone can prove that no one involved in the tuskegee "incident"[0] is no longer employed or influential at the CDC I will just resign myself to thinking that THEY are the conspiracy theorist, a conspiracy to seem infallible or at least incorruptible. Such a concept is of course ri…

Not denouncing, just answering a loaded question by putting my finger in the barrel.

I think we can talk about our concerns in a realistic way without resorting to baseless speculation. It's fair to question whether the CDC should be using this data.

The thing about Tuskegee is that it wasn't a conspiracy. It started in 1932, in a time when the majority of Americans probably would have supported it if they knew about it. That doesn't make it OK, but it does make it a poor example of a conspiracy.

Systems and incentives are much better predictors of behavior.

Re: CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed lockdown orders

#150

See the issue here is that this data exists at all and it’s purchasable by any group. I feel like the CDC are the least scary people buying this data. And from the looks of it they used it for medical research, which if similar in style to other medical research is bound by boards and ethics committees. What we aren’t writing about in this article are the groups using this data Cambridge Analytica style to sway polit…

> CDC are the least scary people buying this data Most buyers probably just want to target advertising at me, or otherwise grab my attention. The CDC wants a say in how people live their lives and thinks they know better than individuals about risk tolerance and decisions. And they seem to think they can have unchecked power by invoking "science". Can someone name a scarrier entity that could be tracking you? I don't…

> The CDC wants a say in how people live their lives and thinks they know better than individuals about risk tolerance and decisions.

Well the context of DISEASE CONTROL is different from the context of individuals living their best lives. Take as long as you need to wrap your head around that.

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