Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CDC data are disappearing

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 656 posts

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#611

Post by johnnyanmac »

desumeku wrote: post #587
NelsonMinar wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what are you on about? The page that was destroyed was consumer health information about a life-saving preventative medication.

And this was the only website on the internet with information about it? People are going to die because this one website was taken down and there is no other place to possibly read about it?

It was one of the most complete databases, yes.

>People are going to die because this one website was taken down and there is no other place to possibly read about it?

Potentially yes. Doctors and scientists research these stats, find anamolies or patterns, and use that for research into better treatments or tobevem predict future outbreaks if the strain evolves.

We shouldn't be shocked that experts in a field can do a lot with a more complete dataset.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#612

Post by johnnyanmac »

phillipcarter wrote: post #127

This is a blitzkrieg campaign designed to try and get Musk and his people as much control of the digital government as possible before the roadblocks (legal, systematic, etc.) make things too difficult for him. As it stands, his goal is likely a purge of the federal government akin to what he did with Twitter. And the resulting 80% drop in revenue by Twitter is a similar kind of outcome we can expect from his careles…

Still so stupid in my eyes. This isn't the public sector, you can't just lay off 80% of the government without a hell of a battle with all the representative powers of the US.

Government's already being sued over these actions this weekend. I just hope federal employees ignore all his actions. They don't work for him (and Trump can't fire most of them in retaliation)

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#613

Post by hackyhacky »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #610
hackyhacky wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not an American, so maybe you aren't aware how widespread conspiracy theories are in the US and how much they influence the public discourse. As a trivial example, the American Senate is currently interviewing the nominee for the head of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, CDC, and FDA, among other agencies. The nominee, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has been very outspoken in his opinions, some of which…

To give a much undeserved BOTD: I don't think he'll be approved because people really believe nor even trust RFO Jr. He will be approve to upkeep the status quo. A status quo to appeal to their voter base or to appeal to Trump or something like that. Almost nothing on the RFO appointment is rooted in facts.

> He will be approve to upkeep the status quo. A status quo to appeal to their voter base or to appeal to Trump or something like that.

No, RFKJr will be approved because he was nominated by Donald Trump and Donald Trump has a total control of the Republican Party. That's all there is to it.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#615

Post by dang »

unethical_ban wrote: post #502
honestSysAdmin wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Could you please not perpetuate flamewars here? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

I'm not going to ban you because it doesn't look like you've been doing this routinely, but you broke the site guidelines badly in this thread, and it has been a problem in the past (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39598850)

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#617

Post by _y5hn »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #599
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol I think anyone who thinks legal and illegal mean anything, has still not gotten the plot.

Courts are still fighting. Something are being overturned already (which is lightning quick). The moment we throw our hands up and give up is when the administration wins.

[dupe]

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#618

Post by _heimdall »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #608
_heimdall wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data is always lacking. More data may help you be more confident in your conclusion, but it will never be certain.

Many of us here are engineers. Similar to our work, databcollected by scientists will eventually get to "good enough" in that interpretations are nearly indistinguishable from the truth. We don't need to understand every atom in the atmosphere to predict rain coming soon, for example. We don't need to do a full body scan to see visible breast cancer lumps.

I agree with you, but that wasn't my point. The post I replied to simply said the answer is more data. Without any more context about what kind of answer it is or how it should be used, it seemed important to me to remind whoever passes by that data alone does not make truth and its always worth keeping in mind that what we "know" today may be considered false tomorrow.

What you're talking about is more a question of scape, impact, and how accurate a prediction really needs to be. Of course we don't need to measure every atom to predict the weather - weather predictions are wrong all the time and rarely is that more than an inconvenience.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#619

Post by johnnyanmac »

hackyhacky wrote: post #613
johnnyanmac wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give a much undeserved BOTD: I don't think he'll be approved because people really believe nor even trust RFO Jr. He will be approve to upkeep the status quo. A status quo to appeal to their voter base or to appeal to Trump or something like that. Almost nothing on the RFO appointment is rooted in facts.

> He will be approve to upkeep the status quo. A status quo to appeal to their voter base or to appeal to Trump or something like that. No, RFKJr will be approved because he was nominated by Donald Trump and Donald Trump has a total control of the Republican Party. That's all there is to it.

I don't think it's that blatant. Even R's have limits when Gaetz got rejected. I don't think it's as rank and tow as implied.

But yes, a lot of policy for R's will ba passed. We'll see how much insanity they Will tolerate when it comes to Trump destroying the economy. Rich people kinda need that.

Re: CDC data are disappearing

#620

Post by johnnyanmac »

_heimdall wrote: post #618
johnnyanmac wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of us here are engineers. Similar to our work, databcollected by scientists will eventually get to "good enough" in that interpretations are nearly indistinguishable from the truth. We don't need to understand every atom in the atmosphere to predict rain coming soon, for example. We don't need to do a full body scan to see visible breast cancer lumps.

I agree with you, but that wasn't my point. The post I replied to simply said the answer is more data. Without any more context about what kind of answer it is or how it should be used, it seemed important to me to remind whoever passes by that data alone does not make truth and its always worth keeping in mind that what we "know" today may be considered false tomorrow. What you're talking about is more a question of…

Naturally, garbage in, garbage out. Anyone who's worked any job should under stand that. And no data is ever perfect when measuring nature.

But I'm giving a best faith interpretation that the ones collecting the data are competent and have goals on what the data is collected for. We have too much talent flowing to assume the worst. We'll see how the next 4 years challenges my assumptions, though.

>What you're talking about is more a question of scape, impact, and how accurate a prediction really needs to be

Yes. That goal of data is to approximate the truth. More (good) data helps those who can interpret it to make better guesses. So the base truth of "we need more data then" is true. With a good faith interpretation.

Post reply on HN