The CDC Isn't Publishing Large Portions of the Covid Data It Collects (nytimes.com) 159
For more than a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has collected data on hospitalizations for Covid-19 in the United States and broken it down by age, race and vaccination status. But it has not made most of the information public. From a report: When the C.D.C. published the first significant data on the effectiveness of boosters in adults younger than 65 two weeks ago, it left out the numbers for a huge portion of that population: 18- to 49-year-olds, the group least likely to benefit from extra shots, because the first two doses already left them well-protected. The agency recently debuted a dashboard of wastewater data on its website that will be updated daily and might provide early signals of an oncoming surge of Covid cases. Some states and localities had been sharing wastewater information with the agency since the start of the pandemic, but it had never before released those findings.
Two full years into the pandemic, the agency leading the country's response to the public health emergency has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected, several people familiar with the data said. Much of the withheld information could help state and local health officials better target their efforts to bring the virus under control. Detailed, timely data on hospitalizations by age and race would help health officials identify and help the populations at highest risk. Information on hospitalizations and death by age and vaccination status would have helped inform whether healthy adults needed booster shots. And wastewater surveillance across the nation would spot outbreaks and emerging variants early.
Two full years into the pandemic, the agency leading the country's response to the public health emergency has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected, several people familiar with the data said. Much of the withheld information could help state and local health officials better target their efforts to bring the virus under control. Detailed, timely data on hospitalizations by age and race would help health officials identify and help the populations at highest risk. Information on hospitalizations and death by age and vaccination status would have helped inform whether healthy adults needed booster shots. And wastewater surveillance across the nation would spot outbreaks and emerging variants early.
Well well well... (Score:4, Insightful)
So the CDC has decided to edit the information that is presented to the public. Is it any wonder that people distrust government agencies?
Two likely non-conspiracy scenarios (Score:5, Informative)
(1) Sheer volume of the data. Where do you begin? Somewhere.
(2) The bureaucrats realized that given the current political polarization, any guidance is likely to go down in a similar either-or way. Any suggestion that governments and citizens can relax some or even most restrictions will be interpreted as: Drop all restrictions! Stop wearing breathing filters, let the losers get their shots, we're going to party and hug all we want, the hell with social distances!
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Never attribute to malice (or conspiracy) that which is adequately explained by stupidity (or ineptitude).
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(3) Much of the data is already published elsewhere.
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Wasn't the CDC supposed to be sort of the clearinghouse for communicable disease data? And then at the beginning of the COVID epidemic that role was taken from them and given to the Health and Human Services agency?
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The CDC seems to think [cdc.gov] that it is "one of the major operating components of the Department of Health and Human Services" (HHS is, as the CDC describes, a Cabinet-level Department of the US government, rather than an agency). What distinction are you trying to make?
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People will believe what they want to believe, publish data will be used to support their argument, don't publish it will be seen as hiding data and be used to support their argument.
Just be honest and open, whatever happens, will happen.
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They are hiding the data to continue fear mongering.
fear mongering is telling terror tales about china and russia and so-called turrsts in general. the purpose is to distract public opinion from domestic miseries and to create imaginary external existential threats that justify policies hostile to civil rights.
telling people that a pandemic virus is dangerous is not fear mongering, because the danger is actually real and widespread even if you particularly were never affected, if anything because because these waves have devastating effects on already taxed
Re:Well well well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Death isn't the only chronic condition that can be caused by COVID.
In many countries children as young as a few years old are getting vaccinated, because it turns out that even though they are unlikely to die they can still get very sick or get Long COVID.
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Corrected that for you. My kid at 15 hasn't had a proper sense of smell since 14 months. Sense of taste is thwarted too. There are more such cases. Yes, not many, so the risk is small. But the risk of vaccination is much smaller.
Re:Well well well... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've worked with a number of public health agencies over the years, including the CDC. With the time-bending effects of the pandemic it's easy to forget it's only been two years; that's like two *milliseconds* when it comes to a public health agency making a decision about changing anything they do with data. They're slow, deliberate, and hyper-cautious. And even if they weren't, a lot of this stuff takes a surprisingly long time to get data right. It can take months to get mortality data nailed down.
Most public health agencies were not well equipped to handle any *new*, fast-moving pandemic in real time, because they're bureaucracies. They're not *bad* bureaucracies; they're *extremely* good at flu surveillance for example, because that's an every year task they get regular funding for and have had years to perfect. When a flu pandemic hits they can move swiftly without making any new decisions, it's all in the SOPs. With any new idea, like this sewage virus data, it just takes them forever to move on it, even though they have no CT reason to drag their feet. In fact I'm sure they decided right away sharing that data would be a good thing, then leapt into immediate, *slow-motion* action.
In my experience the CDC and other government public health agencies are full of smart, dedicated people, but individual brains and sincere effort can't on their own make any bureaucracy *agile*. You need organizational commitment from the very top, because being prepared for quick action means spending money on stuff *before it's needed*, and even on stuff you hope you'll never need. That's not something we like to do for anything that isn't military. In fact we used to run our military that exact same way; we kept tiny, minimally funded armed forces around and then rushed to build them up when a war happened. Only when we decided that we couldn't do that *fast* enough did we switch to a stance of continual military readiness.
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Re:Well well well... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm saying they did about as well as anyone could do with the resources they were given. If you staffed the US Navy for the minimum it needed to do in peacetime, you wouldn't expect it to be able to recruit sailors and field a carrier strike group instantly when war breaks out. But that's what we expect public health agencies to do [businessinsider.com] when a pandemic breaks out [original source [archives.gov]].
As for the headline I don't doubt it, but it doesn't signify what people think it does. That's just Dunning-Kreuger whispering in their ears.
Re:Well well well... (Score:5, Informative)
I doubt they can just "dump it as is". It's probably messy data since it comes from many sources, with inadvertent duplicates, inadvertent personal info, translating between/from local categorization systems, typo's, and other problems.
They are stuck between a rock and a hard place of being timely versus being clean. I've worked with messy data; it's often a time-consuming task to tie together different sources; essentially detective work.
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So the CDC has decided to edit the information that is presented to the public. Is it any wonder that people distrust government agencies?
Is that what the article says? Nope.
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So the CDC has decided to edit the information that is presented to the public.
Compiling the data and extracting information from it is already an act of editing.
It's people like you, casually throwing vague accusations around, who entice people to become more distrustful.
Have you, for instance, asked the CDC why they leave those numbers out of their publication?
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I'm not making a vague accusation - I'm making a direct one. From the article: "it left out the numbers for a huge portion of that population: 18- to 49-year-olds, the group least likely to benefit from extra shots, because the first two doses already left them well-protected". The CDC intentionally omitted data for 18-49 year olds, a huge portion of the population, because that data indicated that the booster shots are not nearly as effective or as necessary as we are being told. This is not just some casu
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So the CDC has decided to edit the information that is presented to the public.
Just a comment, not releasing data is not the same as editing data.
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Not releasing the data is withholding the data. A massive amount of the data, by the way. According to this article on population statistics that represents around 60% of the US population: https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Do you mean to tell me that omitting 60% of the population from their study is not editing the data? From Merriam Webster the definition of edit: "to alter, adapt, or refine especially to bring about conformity to a standard or to suit a particular purpose". That sure sounds like editing
Related but different [Re:Well well well...] (Score:2)
Not releasing the data is withholding the data.
No. Not releasing data, withholding data, and editing data are related but different things.
A massive amount of the data, by the way.
Which is exactly the problem. The NYT article tries to turn this into some sort of nefarious conspiracy, but what they seem to want is to have hundreds of millions of pieces of data collected and compiled, vetted, sorted, analyzed and then the analyses presented in neat groups sorted by age, sex, ethnicity, preexisting conditions, and vaccination status.
This is not trivial. Among other things, they want data on hosp
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Dude. Look at the source.
Thank you, Anonymous coward!
You're right, anything from Anonymous Coward can be ignored unread.
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I think there's some serious brigading being done on this particular post's comment section. This particular comment is in no way troll-y and the user has no history of troll behavior-- but the comment is modded "-1, Troll" as of my own comment.
I made a similar comment and watched the modding vary so wildly that I commented on it as a response to my original comment. The next day, it has settled at "-1, Flamebait".
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Re:Well well well... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, if the vaccine does cause an increase in heart attacks, it'll show up in the stats.
Re:Well well well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, myocarditis is not a heart attack, and the anti-vaxx people are telling lies again, which is their chosen method of communication.
And here comes the admission! (Score:2)
How do you know this? Both, that there is a risk, and that it is "tiny"? And what's "tiny" anyway?
Same question: how do you know the relative frequency of both?
Quite amazing, that a post can get to "5, Insightful" making unsubstantiated claims...
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You're an asshole, yet, here we are...
You made claims, I asked for substantiation and then — instead of providing the requested citation(s) — you called me names.
The most obvious conclusion is, you pulled your claims from under your tail — or, maybe, some CNN broadcast... And I'm not sure, which source is less reliable.
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You're one of those "conservatives" I keep hearing about, aren't you?
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This was your second post replying to a request for substantiation without providing the requested substantiation.
It is increasingly obvious, that no substantiation will be forthcoming — most probably, because the claims you made earlier are not true.
Future replies not containing the earlier-requested citations will be returned unopened. Remember to logout.
Re: And here comes the admission! (Score:2)
Bang on. These idiots will spend days arguing instead of providing citations or even just accepting they dont remember where they read it.
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Of course, you're a provincial, tiny-minded conservative you assume everyone is American and watches CNN. Fortuntately I live in a more civilised part of the world and have a functioning health system.
If you'd like to know more you could start here. [www.nhs.uk]
But I know you won't, and as the A/C below made clear nobody gives a shit.
Re:And here comes the admission! (Score:5, Insightful)
And what's "tiny" anyway?
Between 6-10/1000000. Incidence rate of ~.001%, or <1 per 100,000.
Compared with COVID19, which has a ~.146%, or 146 per 100,000.
Put another way, COVID19 has a roughly 14,600%, or 146x higher chance of causing myocarditis.
There is a difference in the age groupings between vaccine-related and COVID19 related, though. However, causative nature isn't known for either, and there is suspicion that it possibly goes unreported for the underrepresented age groups after vaccination, vs. COVID illness, as the causative nature is likely the same.
Source 1 [jamanetwork.com]
Source 2 [cdc.gov]
Now, my own speculation is this is likely related to the spike proteins that are known to cause all kinds of fuckery. Given a COVID19 infection causes much higher circulating amounts of spike protein, it makes sense that you see an increase in spike-damage related effects from the disease vs. vaccination.
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The anti-vaxers likely look at numbers like those and only apply it to themselves thinking a 146 / 100,000 chance of contracting myocarditis isn't so bad and so dropping that down to 1 isn't worth giving up their anti-vax right-wing identity.
Let's try this from a couple different perspectives.
There are roughly 380 million people in the US (those are typically the only people in the world that matter to these types).
That's about 555,000 americans contracting myocarditis if there was no vaccine. Or it's "onl
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Whether it really is incomplete, multiple people are telling you, that it is — and your denial of their efforts is kind of delusional...
You're changing how you used the word incomplete. It's not clever.
VAERS is incomplete as in context, and it's self-reported nature.
You formulated your sentence as to indicate that it's incomplete in a way that precluded statistical analysis.
This is just more gaslighting from you.
Oh, no, it does not. We know the total number of vaccinations — since government has paid for (nearly) each one of them. So the denominator is known quite precisely. We also know the (minimum) number of miocarditis cases — the numerator — from VAERS.
Of course we know the total number of vaccinations.
But we do not know the total number of people who ended up with myocarditis due to them.
Hospital stays- a la, COVID infection, are going to be overrepresented in comparison du
Here come the conspiracy nuts (Score:2, Insightful)
It's about to get really stupid in here...
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Re:Here come the conspiracy nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
Right about what?
A pizza joint that traffics children ....
Jan 6th was radical leftists
Jan 6th was crisis actors
Covid isn't real
Earth is flat
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Right about what?
A pizza joint that traffics children Jan 6th was radical leftists Jan 6th was crisis actors Covid isn't real Earth is flat ....
Ha! Left out the "moon landings". You are basically admitting they were faked.
I knew it all along.
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Re:Here come the conspiracy nuts (Score:4, Insightful)
Those are all real
Re: Here come the conspiracy nuts (Score:2)
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I never denied it's existence. And thanks for proving that the LIBRUL media didn't kill the story.
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wow what a fucking insightful comment.
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It won't help (Score:4, Insightful)
Data has never been a part of local public policy during all this, decisions are made by personal opinion driven by the crowd yelling the loudest
The differences would not help with the power grab (Score:4, Insightful)
A more nuanced showing of the disease being more of a risk along age, racial and sex lines would not have as easily allowed mandates across the masses.
Hell, the folks most interested in hard enforcement are still not wanting to give this up, and it seems are only relenting due to polling telling them people across the political spectrum are fed up with it.
Re:The differences would not help with the power g (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty lame power grab if all they did was ask you to wear a mask inside Target.
I’m very confused about the party of law and order suddenly not so keen about following the laws they so highly regard.
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Are you saying that with disproportional impact by age and race there's no reason to try and slow the spread?
Because I would think that as part of a society we'd want to take minor changes to slow the spread ideally allowing the people that get sick to get treatment (rather than overwhelmed hospitals) even if they're the wrong age or race.
There's also be incentive to keep hospitals from overflowing for other illnesses.
Reason why is paywalled... (Score:5, Informative)
Since the summary won't provide context I am posting it here:
Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the C.D.C., said the agency has been slow to release the different streams of data “because basically, at the end of the day, it’s not yet ready for prime time.” She said the agency’s “priority when gathering any data is to ensure that it’s accurate and actionable.”
Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted, Ms. Nordlund said.
Dr. Daniel Jernigan, the agency’s deputy director for public health science and surveillance said the pandemic exposed the fact that data systems at the C.D.C., and at the state levels, are outmoded and not up to handling large volumes of data. C.D.C. scientists are trying to modernize the systems, he said.
“We want better, faster data that can lead to decision making and actions at all levels of public health, that can help us eliminate the lag in data that has held us back,” he added.
The C.D.C. also has multiple bureaucratic divisions that must sign off on important publications, and its officials must alert the Department of Health and Human Services — which oversees the agency — and the White House of their plans. The agency often shares data with states and partners before making data public. Those steps can add delays.
“The C.D.C. is a political organization as much as it is a public health organization,” said Samuel Scarpino, managing director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute. “The steps that it takes to get something like this released are often well outside of the control of many of the scientists that work at the C.D.C.”
Re:Reason why is paywalled... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Im not saying these are good reasons, just the ones given.
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Why wouldn't the data for older patients come out first? Not only are they higher priority because the disease is more severe in older people, they also started getting vaccinated and boosted earlier than younger people so there's been more time to gather this data and assemble it into something presentable.
For example, I got my vaccination and booster as early as possible for someone my age (44) and it's only been two months since the booster. Many of my peers, let alone younger people, have just got it th
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...they also started getting vaccinated and boosted earlier than younger people ...
My understanding that boosters were approved for 18+ and became available at the same time. Is that not the case?
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Well, it kindof does actually.
They state that the various statewide systems were not prepared for the amount of data. So they focus on parts of the data that they deem most necessary.
Re:Reason why is paywalled... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Reason why is paywalled... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sigh... No, my explanation is not "bad data".
This isn't a "thing that happened" just to that specific portion of the data. I'm saying that a lot of work needs to be put into the data before it's usable. This is perfectly normal.
It's not surprising in the least that they focused on the demographic that they did. Would you rather they have released nothing until they could also release the 18-49 range?
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Would you rather they have released nothing until they could also release the 18-49 range?
Yes, because making decision based on partial data is risky.
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So you'd rather they make a decision based on no data?
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There should already be a usable process in place. All these fancy excuses are just that. I bet they are just lazy and/or afraid that we will get mad and un-elect them if we know the truth. Whatever that may be.
Re:Reason why is paywalled... (Score:5, Insightful)
I can believe the CDC on this. The CDC is in a no-win situation. They have a lot of data they haven't had a chance to check over yet. If they release what they have, then release a correction, the anti-science types are going to scream bloody murder that they lied to us the first time, and that scientists are unreliable because they keep changing their minds. If they hold on to the data until they can verify it, the anti-science types are going to scream bloody murder about conspiracies and that the CDC is hiding something.
Now, I'm not saying the CDC made the right choice. I'm saying there was no right choice to make. Anything they do or don't do is going to be held up as "proof" that they're lying about something.
(Personally, I think they're going to look worse by holding data back rather than releasing it all with a big "this has not been verified yet" disclaimer on the front. But that's hindsight. Neither way would end up looking good for them.)
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There is a right choice, there isn't a perfect choice each one has its down sides. The right choice is to validate and release all the data, their job is to provide information not to manipulate or predict what public opinion will be based on that data. They are experts in analyzing data on spread of the disease hopefully not on forming public opinion, You are right no matter what they do there will be people that use it to support their argument. So the best solution is just ignore that, since there is not
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I already commented so I can not mod your comment such as it deserves. You are exactly correct.
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Ideally, yes. But what if you have a ton of data and insufficient analysts to review it all in a timely manner? You have the choice the CDC claims they have, release the raw data now or wait until it's been reviewed.
"Help! I have 10 pounds of shit and I only have a 5 pound bag!" "Well, you should get another bag." No kidding. But the question is, what to do with all the shit while you're waiting for the delivery guy with the new bags (or while you're hiring more analysts)?
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Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted, Ms. Nordlund said.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It is good to see this fine tradition being carried on in present days. She should let the chips fall where they may, but no. She knows better than everyone else.
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"Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted, Ms. Nordlund said."
This is the story in a nutshell: "misinterpreted" meaning "correctly interpreted but leading to conclusions we'd really rather you not reach."
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Not unusual (Score:5, Insightful)
Contrary to many politicians claiming the CDC is banned from it, the CDC *did* study closely the defensive uses of personal firearms...it's just that when the conclusion to their data was irrefutable that guns were used VASTLY more for self-defense (ie in cases where nobody was shot or the gun wasn't even fired) than had been quoted in the media, they shitcanned the report.
https://reason.com/2018/04/20/... [reason.com]
It's not a coincidence that they started studying this (presumably to refute a study around the same time that made such assertions by Kleck and Gertz).
They just didn't like the answer.
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If the data is so good in favor of defensive gun use why did the NRA lobby to pass the Dickey Amendment [wikipedia.org] in 1996?
And while they dismiss the contrary studies by just calling it "thin" Reason does not give a reasonable response to why we should dismiss the actual study [sciencedirect.com].
I am in favor of guns rights but Reason is giving more than a bit of dishonest framing here.
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Conclusions
Compared to other protective actions, the National Crime Victimization Surveys provide little evidence that SDGU is uniquely beneficial in reducing the likelihood of injury or property loss.
SDGU = self-defense gun use
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Well the study that was PUBLISHED was by Kleck and Gertz. The revised study looks at UNPUBLISHED data from the CDC surveys.
So...no, the point is that CDC DIDN'T PUBLISH their results..duh?
And you're really asserting that the CDC was no way involved in "surveys conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in its Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey in the years 1996-98." ? Really? Then who did it?
You're essentially saying "well this data is right because that's what I want to
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People in pretty much every other high-income country have found a way to settle these kinds of disagreements w
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.it's just that when the conclusion to their data was irrefutable that guns were used VASTLY more for self-defense
Nope. You are lying. In the US the major usage of guns is for suicides. They outnumber both criminal and self-defense usage.
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In 2018, which Wikipedia gives as the latest year for which numbers are available, there were 38390 gun deaths recorded in the US, and 24432 were suicides. In the same year, according to the National Crime Victimization Study, there were over 470,000 violent firearm victimizations. The number of defensive gun uses each year is unclear; estimates range from 60,000 or 250,000 up to 2.5 or 3 million per year, typically excluding police uses.
Your statistical claim is wrong: in the US, suicides are a small fra
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In 2018, which Wikipedia gives as the latest year for which numbers are available, there were 38390 gun deaths recorded in the US, and 24432 were suicides.
So you've just proven that the main use for the guns is for suicides. Thank you.
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Right, and you'd say what's a 'reliable' source? CNN? MSNBC perhaps.
Going to go way out and guess that all the 'reliable' ones coincidentally agree with you?
The reason is the data contradicts the experts (Score:3, Interesting)
The simple and most obvious reason for not releasing data is because it contradicts the politics of the situation.
If the data says A and the experts are basing their opinions on the data saying B then obviously the data has to be suppressed.
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Hey I’ll have you know around here we call those alternative facts.
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Let's say for argument's sake the "hidden" data show the booster doesn't work at all with people in that age range. So the point of hiding it would be to allow the government to encourage people to get the vaccine booster even though it doesn't work so that makes Biden look good? Or so that it makes Trump look bad? I don't see how pushing a shot that doesn't do anything would produce any political advantage (since both Trump and Biden encouraged the shot
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Probable safe to assume it's not outright malice.
Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, data may be factually correct... (Score:4, Insightful)
In all seriousness, data transparency is crucial in a hotly contested topic like Covid. This just looks inept.
Several explanations, none of them good (Score:3, Insightful)
Beyond the red herring of "the data doesn't support the political judgement calls we've bet the farm on therefore suppress it" are some more, equally unsavory possibilities. Off the top of my head and in no particular order:
1. The data quality is conspicuously low and releasing it would embarrass the CDC.
Low data quality could mean things like lots of geographical or temporal gaps without any explanation other than some form of "somebody forgot to send it/receive it/enter it into the spreadsheet" and I use the word "spreadsheet" deliberately because behind all the slick dashboards there might actually be a single excel sheet.
Putting this out to the public would invite immediate and pointed questions about how the tons and tons of money being put into the CDC over the last few years is being used if things like basic data processing and process control for acquiring the data aren't in place.
Alexis Madrigal in the Atlantic had a good writeup about a year ago about how the Covid Tracking Project was running circles around CDC with basic shoeleather work, calling up state health departments and hospitals to keep a running tally while the CDC was just blowing smoke up the chain.
Trump's HHS tried to get the hospitals to report directly to them instead of going through CDC in summer 2020, but the media shitstorm stopped that effort (zomg he's gonna doctor the data! they claimed without evidence). Perhaps the basic data handling incompetence visible to HHS motivated it and CDC doesn't want to air it in front of everyone else.
2. Data interpretation of very low quality.
NYT had a writeup early last spring about how the CDC was exaggerating the amount of covid spread outdoors in its internal writeups which only when exposed led to them recinding the recommendation for outdoor masking.
Following the report about the Provincetown MA delta outbreak in July 2021 in the MMWR, Monica Ghandi observed that the "viral load" numbers from that report (measured using pcr testing) were not an accurate measurement in vaccinated individuals: counting viral rna copies is not the same thing as counting viable infectious viral particles and in vaxxed individuals one would expect more viruses to be covered in neutralizing antibodies and this be unviable than in unvaxxed individuals.
The author list on that mmwr article was mostly staff at the mass department of public health who had master's degrees in public health or were veterinarians. It's possible they didn't understand the distinction themselves.
A concurrent article in WaPo that showed a leaked CDC internal powerpoint claiming Delta was more infectious than chickenpox showed up around the same time. Except delta wasn't more infectious than chickenpox and the reason for the discrepancy was that someone at CDC pulled the wrong number for chickenpox off an internet search.
All this together suggests that the staff scientists and career managers at CDC don't actually know what they're doing. Airing these deficiencies would be embarrassing. So they keep their data to themselves to avoid embarrassment.
3. General aversion to scrutiny.
The platonic ideal of academia is openness and transparency but often inscrutable jargon and lack of effort at data interchange keeps external scrutiny to a minimum. Think gene names being changed to dates in Microsoft documents because they were too lazy to check their data before posting it.
If CDC operates in an academic mentality, they could well have just improted the less salatory aspects of academia into their organization.
Which is all to say that none of this is compatible with the idea of accountable government, but also not unexpected.
It'd be nice if people got fired over this, but I don't expect the naked emperors of our ruling class to entertain the idea for even a second given the vested interest they have in pushing the idea that government is competent enough to command, compel, and coerce the people for their own good.
Pretty much the same here in Canada too (Score:2, Troll)
State to state (Score:2)
The cheap bastards (Score:2)
They were busy saving lives.
Why didn't they just ask the Senate for a few billion dollars to hire a few thousand statisticians for a few months to examine the data, you ask?
No idea.
Focus inside CDC is prestige publishing (Score:2)
Deaths and hospitalizations - thetip of an iceberg (Score:3)
Deaths and hospitalizations are just the tip of an iceberg called COVID-19. Damage to organs (including brains, heart, lungs) and to immune system, long lasting symptoms - those are the a significant part of the problems. Especially since the vaccines do an unfortunately poor job at eliminating these issues, especially now with Omicron which causes such a huge amount of breakthrough infections. Two vaccine doses are not enough, but even the third one isn't really cutting it anymore. I of course don't want to downplay the deaths and hospitalizations, either, but we should not ignore the other part, either.
And even if we know who is at risk, what can we do to protect them? Focused protection has not worked well in any country. We cannot just isolate the people in risk groups for years after years. The only way to make the society safe for them is to make it safe for everyone. We need masks, ventilation, testing and tracing, quarantines at borders (any country needs these).
If we only focus on the short term economical gains, we are just prolonging the suffering and risking creating more and more, worse and worse new variants. Deaths and hospitalizations should not therefore be used as a way to keep some levels of infections going on, but only see the rising numbers as a sign of failure of the suppression of the spread of the virus.
CDC = political actors (Score:2)
"Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted, Ms. Nordlund said."
In other words, CDC has a particular narrative they want to promote, and releasing data might work contrary to their desired narrative. Fauci, part of the NIH, not CDC, has also admitted the same as to his motivations. So did Trump, for that matter.
Is that a conspiracy? Yes. CDC operates as a political actor, not as a pure science agency. That has been true for a long time, and precedes the current pandemic, but it
Re:Umm... Good? (Score:4, Insightful)
People misusing information and ignoring professional advice is not a reason to stop releasing information or stop giving professional advice. It merely adds fuel to the rhetoric. Silence will not counter misinformation.
Re: (Score:3)
We have very good reasons to not be 100% open with all data:
- We have pretty strict personal data privacy explicitly because people have been shown to exploit that type of data for their own benefit.
- We strictly control security data because we know people will exploit it.
I'm just as pro- open data as any other Slashdotter, but at some point, we have to acknowledge that unlimited transparency is already being weaponized by ill-intending parties. If you're closed-data for a bit longer, you'll get complaints
Re: (Score:2)
We have very good reasons to not be 100% open with all data:
- We have pretty strict personal data privacy explicitly because people have been shown to exploit that type of data for their own benefit.
- We strictly control security data because we know people will exploit it.
Nobody is asking for or cares about this.
I'm just as pro- open data as any other Slashdotter,
Doesn't seem like it.
but at some point, we have to acknowledge that unlimited transparency is already being weaponized by ill-intending parties. If you're closed-data for a bit longer, you'll get complaints. If you open the data for it to be intentionally misinterpreted and manipulated to strengthen the stranglehold on the mindless masses, you're participating in the problem.
This sort of managing of the public throughout the pandemic has directly contributed to loss of trust/legitimacy. The you can't handle the truth, you don't understand the truth, the truth may be misinterpreted and most aptly the truth may cause people to act in ways we find counterproductive. This has all made it impossible to understand let alone trust what the government is saying.
Current POTUS volunteered on his own volition that his adminis
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody is asking for or cares about this.
Incorrect. The person I responded to said this exactly:
People misusing information and ignoring professional advice is not a reason to stop releasing information
I gave an example describing precisely where the commenter is incorrect.
This sort of managing of the public throughout the pandemic has directly contributed to loss of trust/legitimacy.
Them's the breaks. You take the heat for the greater good. The current POTUS shouldn't have promised to tell it straight in all cases. That was naive and idealistic.
We as an entire society (not just one portion) are not sufficiently rational to handle certain types of information. We're not there yet. We hoarded toilet paper and panic bought hand sanitizer. We're still trying to con
Re: (Score:2)
Quick note on my post: I've watched the score on this go up to 5 and back down to 1 and back again. It would seem as though this is a controversial opinion with no shortage of supporters or detractors.
Re: (Score:2)
Follow-up to my quick note. My original post has now been modded as "-1, Flamebait". Wow. That's a heck of a swing for a genuine opinion with explicitly rational support. It's pretty disappointing to see people use their mod points as "likes" and "dislikes" on Slashdot.