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CDC data are disappearing

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Re: CDC data are disappearing

#531

Post by CamperBob2 »

hackyhacky wrote: post #481
_heimdall wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People believe him because he is charismatic and he talks like a regular person. I'm not so sure many people really believe him very often. I live in a part of the country that heavily supported Trump, even diehard fans of his that I talk to consider him a shit talker and support him only because he throws a wrench in the system. Even those I know who do seem to believe him cave pretty quickly when asked any slight…

> support him only because he throws a wrench in the system. Interesting insight, thanks. Well, if that's what they want, that's what they get. I guess I can't understand an attitude that leads you to want to destroy your own country.

I guess I can't understand an attitude that leads you to want to destroy your own country.

The voters that call themselves "conservatives" these days will saw off their feet at the ankles, if it means that a member of a class they hate loses their legs.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#532

Post by lucb1e »

SeptiumMMX wrote: post #328
mcmcmc wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having two parties with opposing biases and incentives doesn’t magically cancel out and become impartial. That’s the opposite of impartiality.

That's the problem. Real humans in real world cannot be impartial and will always have biases. So if you expose the public to many different biased opinions and let them learn to recognize the biases and see past them, the "cumulative mindset" will be more objective and less prone to manipulation. But if you let one biased group decide what the majority is allowed to see, the public opinion will inevitably align with…

> if you expose the public to many different biased opinions and let them learn to recognize the biases [then good stuff]

Is that an assumption, or based on research?

Based on the last couple years of elections, I'd guess that exposing the public to every opinion ever makes people vote for the most catchy sound-bite. I don't follow american news enough to echo whatever people echo over there (perhaps "pro life"? Not sure that I have enough context on that one), but in the Netherlands one might recognize rhetorical statements like "do we want more or fewer muslims in this country?" from what is now the biggest party. We even have an organization that works out different parties' plans into expected economic impact per income group, but the resulting spreadsheet isn't very clickbaity and so I never heard anyone even be aware it exists. For a lot people it's simple: the foreigners use up all the benefits, jobs, and cause the high rent; if they would read reliable sources, however, they would see that the parties that don't try to stop immigration or leave the EU collaboration ("increase our independence" and fuck our tiny country's trade economy for decades) are the ones that yield the highest expected welfare across all income brackets

Of course, this (unfiltered opinions drowning out actual information) is also just my guess, I could very well be wrong. After all, I can't explain why we don't already live in a world where everything burns because such statements are the ones that get disproportionately echoed around. I'm just not sure that releasing the opinion floodgates further will make things better without indications thereof

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#533

Post by hansvm »

Maxious wrote: post #85
bmitc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this not all illegal? How are cease and resists not being put into place? An illegal immigrant, narcissist, billionaire, and many other things is taking over federal agencies and actively purging them for his own ideologies.

Anything the president does is legal so says the supreme court

Absolutely. That begs the question though, if Trump has ordered federal employees to make the government efficient and eliminate the weaponization of government, are those employees not obligated to remove Trump and Musk from their current roles?

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#534

Post by lucb1e »

hackyhacky wrote: post #381
grepfru_it wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok this is getting a little too...hot for HN so just a heads up I will not reply after this one. You are absolutely right that there is no protection that can prevent administrations from modifying websites, otherwise websites would never get redesigned! However, there is a federal law that requires government agencies to retain records and different agencies have different requirements. I will leave it as an exercis…

As you surely know, the legal requirement to retain records does not extend to a requirement to maintain those records on a public web site . You are not arguing in good faith. Please stop muddying the waters with your buffoonish rhetoric. Thanks.

In case it helps you to have someone chime in besides the person you're arguing with, "You are not arguing in good faith" applies a lot more to "stop muddying the waters with your buffoonish rhetoric" and "What is this, the X Files? Vague allusions like this don't make you look wise" than to anything the person you're arguing with said. I don't know the answer to the point you're arguing and I can't tell who's right from this thread either (neither side posts sources or disproves the other side's central claim, from my point of view), but this isn't how to go about it

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#535

Post by rexpop »

lazide wrote: post #524
rexpop wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, but because it's important I'll deign to enlighten you with some counter -examples: - In Nazi-occupied Europe, during World War II, various groups wielded nonviolent resistance (such as hiding Jews) against the Nazi regime and managed to hamper the regime's efforts, and in some cases saved lives. Not ineffectual. - In Germany, in 1923, the German po…

I’m not sure how saying ‘some people succeeded at hiding Jews, didn’t get caught, and somehow survived’ says what you think you’re saying - considering how many millions got on those trains (or were rounded up and put on them!) and got murdered. And how even attempts to just defend themselves (Warsaw Ghetto uprising, among many others) resulted in mass death. Or all the examples from non-facist regimes, where those r…

> Hiding people, while it did work for a small number of people, was completely ineffective at stopping the larger holocaust.

Ok, that's somewhat goalpost-shifting, because you said "ineffectual," and I showed effect. It satisfies me enough to extrapolate from there.

Edit: Are we to believe, then, that you are taking up arms? Or just waiting to see if it gets so bad that you must? Or, don't you think an ounce of civil disobedience might be worth a pound of civil war?

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#536

Post by lucb1e »

_heimdall wrote: post #439
arunabha wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But surely, the answer to 'data can be twisted' is not to remove the data? We have enough of a problem already with wilful misinformation. Having the data is the first step towards a reasonable discussion. Otherwise, you have to resort to 'I feel ....' vs 'Based on this interpretation....' I agree that the first kind of debate is already the dominant form today, however I think we can all agree that it's not been goo…

This isn't a new problem unfortunately. Data and research during the pandemic response was being horribly mishandled, largely by the Democrats at the time. This isn't a one party or one person problem. It sure seems like a problem more correlated with our government structure and/or climate, or authority structures themselves.

There not being another pandemic during the information age to compare with, it's hard to say whether The Democrats mishandled it or not. Perhaps one could look at aspects where there was consensus within at least one of the opposing parties about what should happen (before the outcome of any path could be known) and compare that against hindsight. If you have specific examples where others clearly knew better than the ruling party, that would be relevant to consider if it's chance or a pattern, but otherwise it feels like the age-old opposing of the current ruling force

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#537

Post by djur »

honestSysAdmin wrote: post #521
klipt wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump tariffs are definitely not going to make the economy boom...

"The government of Columbia has agreed to all of President Trump's terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay. Based on this agreement, the fully drafted IEEPA tariffs and sanctions will be held in reserve, and not signed, unless Colombia fails to honor this agreement. The visa sanct…

This is literally a Trump press release. Are you aware there were new tariffs announced today?

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#538

Post by lucb1e »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #278
uncomplexity_ wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol if you watch zuck's take on it his problem is the fact checkers ended up being biased.

They sometimes are. If you're using a biased source to fact-check, you're just transitively applying that bias.

I do feel like there is a limit to how biased a source can be when it tries to be based in evidence, though. Nobody would disagree that 1+1=2, basic physics tells one that COVID is not spread by 5G towers, the climate has warmed enough that you can dump weather records into a spreadsheet and see the effect without needing to measure CO2 at all. That COVID causes disease and a warming climate causes more extreme weather is also rather easy to corroborate. Accepting the obvious is already a good starting point for deciding whether climate policy XYZ is good or not (combined with other basic facts and every party's proposals), but it seems to me that the current striving for unbiasedness leads to giving lunatics equal air time. Any amount of fact checking would at least remove this level of misinformedness

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#539

Post by lazide »

rexpop wrote: post #535
lazide wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure how saying ‘some people succeeded at hiding Jews, didn’t get caught, and somehow survived’ says what you think you’re saying - considering how many millions got on those trains (or were rounded up and put on them!) and got murdered. And how even attempts to just defend themselves (Warsaw Ghetto uprising, among many others) resulted in mass death. Or all the examples from non-facist regimes, where those r…

> Hiding people, while it did work for a small number of people, was completely ineffective at stopping the larger holocaust. Ok, that's somewhat goalpost-shifting, because you said "ineffectual," and I showed effect . It satisfies me enough to extrapolate from there. Edit: Are we to believe, then, that you are taking up arms? Or just waiting to see if it gets so bad that you must? Or, don't you think an ounce of civ…

It was clearly ineffectual at stopping the Nazis, yes? It was also ineffectual at meaningfully impeding their efforts (near as I can tell).

I did everything I could do in the US without getting arrested. I got large portions of my life destroyed in the process. Talking to people, even people that should know better, was basically just pissing in the wind.

I found out years ago that a distant relative of mine (Jewish) left Germany in the mid ‘20’s to immigrate to the US, leaving his entire life behind. At the time, I wondered how he knew, or what could have happened for him to take such a drastic step.

Now I know. I’ve been taking similar steps for years. At least I can provide a Plan B for myself and others.

Maybe that makes me a coward. I don’t know. But I won’t help evil, and I won’t be a pointless martyr for someone else’s idiocy either.

If I had thought taking up arms at the time (or even now) would have accomplished anything except making them more powerful while getting thrown under the bus by anyone that it in theory would be helping, I would have.

But that isn’t the situation is it? Because I’d be a ‘lone wolf’ because there aren’t enough others would can or would stand with me. Yet. Maybe there never will be. Maybe I’m wrong and everything will be fine, yeah?

We’ll find out. At this point, I just want to give double middle fingers to US society and tell everyone to fuck off.

Productive? Probably not. But I’m only human.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#540

Post by qingcharles »

Diederich wrote: post #490
qingcharles wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can answer this as a serial FOIA litigator. If the data is still in the possession of the government (e.g. in backups, on paper) then it is FOIA-able. I had a gov agency temporarily throw all the materials into a trash can when I requested them and argued that since they were sitting in a trash can they were not available under FOIA.

> temporarily throw all the materials into a trash Just curious, did they pull it out of the trash later on?

Yes. It was argued in court that they couldn't be expected to go into the trash to pull out documents. But they were later. The case was settled on some ground, I can't remember what. Maybe they handed over the documents in the end. This was a decade ago, so I'm hazy on what the final outcome was.

A lot of public bodies will play games like this. It's not even clear to me why they do it. It'll be documents that aren't even controversial that they will resist. Ask them what brand of coffee they buy for the break room and they'll immediately get defensive and find some random exemption to apply. Law enforcement bodies are by far the worst, I think because the public are seen as terminal nuisances all the way down through the bodies.

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