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Medicine United States

C.D.C. Drops Coronavirus Testing Numbers From Its Website (theverge.com) 105

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
A tally of the number of people tested for the novel coronavirus disappeared from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website on Monday. From a report: The change was first reported by journalist Judd Legum on Twitter. The disappearance of the numbers comes less than a week after the first cases of the virus with unknown origins were reported in the US. In the past few days, six deaths due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, have been confirmed in Washington state.
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C.D.C. Drops Coronavirus Testing Numbers From Its Website More

C.D.C. Drops Coronavirus Testing Numbers From Its Website

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  • Then you're left with meaningless scribbles.

    • You can still get meaningful correlation of multiple items and first order (and beyond) derivatives.

      • Actually, you can't. The scale could be linear, decade, sinusoidal, polar, or exp(-j*pi). Plots are meaningless without a scale. Oh, you assumed the origin was at (0, 0)? My bad!

  • according to plan (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Don't test, don't tell

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ras ( 84108 )

      But pray. Always remember to pray. It's prayer that fixes things, not scientific gibberish.

  • Well... (Score:3)

    by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @04:18PM (#59793210)

    that's not very helpful

  • They are going to be testing everyone and their brother. Testing does not mean they have contracted the virus. They are probably trying to prevent further panic that is currently going on right now if they see the number spike.

    Just because they test someone doesn't mean they are at risk. It is only to contain the spread should one occur... I used to work for http://www.cste.org/ [cste.org] up until May of 2019.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bodie1 ( 1347679 )
      Yes, and maybe they haven't tested near enough people yet and want us to be less aware. Or maybe with testing pushed to individual states' Depts. of Health, it is more difficult to get updated counts to publish in a timely manner, so rather than under-report due to latency, they don't report at all.

    • >>Just because they test someone doesn't mean they are at risk.

      Yes, that is exactly what it means, do you expect them to just use every available test kit to blindly test everybody, or to utilize the test kits with discretion when identifying all known contacts of a carrier?

      Are you just being paid to astro turf this nonsense?

      • Are you just being paid to astro turf this nonsense?

        No. But unlike you, I know and understand how epidemiology works. I worked for the company for a few months short of 4 years. Click on this website. [cste.org] Then right click and view source. View line 63 and 64... I wrote that entire timekeeping website for them while I worked there.

        • I wrote that entire timekeeping website for them while I worked there.

          So you confirm you're not an epidemiologist.

          • I never said I was an epidemiologist. I worked there to write software to help them track outbreaks all over the world. The CDC only finds cures. It has nothing to do with finding the source or tracking the outbreaks. That is what epidemiology is, tracking the spread of diseases.

            Now CSTE tracks EVERY thing reportable. You want to know what is reportable???? You can check here. [cste.org] And yes I wrote that website too. Just right click on the page and view source and view line 31. Again you will find my name.

            T

        • You got me, I am not an epidemiologist, but I worked closely with the Medical Affairs group of a large blood bank in designing their donor hemavigilance and recipient hemavigilance systems during the decade+ that I worked there.

          FYI, tests cost money and organizations cannot afford to test everybody for everything. That is why they ask you questions to see if you qualify for the 'normal' panel of tests, the 'additional panel of tests (like West Nile Virus, based on where you live), or if they will not even d

          • The timekeeping program is only one of a very few outward facing websites. Most of what I wrote is all internal tracking and not available to the outside world. I only listed the timekeeping program as it has my name on it. Every other internal tracking program that I developed for their specific needs is internal and you would not have access to.

            Again you are clueless and only add to the hysteria that is going on for no reason.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by skids ( 119237 )

        do you expect them to just use every available test kit to blindly test everybody, or to utilize the test kits with discretion when identifying all known contacts of a carrier?

        Optimally, we'd have enough test kits to do both focused testing on clusters and a statistically significant amount of random testing both to give us a real-world false positive rate on the test, and to locate previously unknown clusters early. But not so many test kits that it's overkill on the latter.

    • Re:The number is meaningless (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sexconker ( 1179573 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @04:35PM (#59793348)

      The number is not meaningless.

      X confirmed cases.
      vs.
      X confirmed cases out of Y people tested.

      (And don't come back at me with "The number of people tested is meaningless because it's biased toward testing people suspected of having it.". You just said "Just because they test someone doesn't mean they are at risk.".)

      • It's totally meaningless. Because X:Y will always be a shifting metric as you point out there will be an inherent bias that not only does favor people who have it, but will swing back and forth.

        Initially 99% of the people tested will have it.
        Then it'll be like 5% as they start expanding testing massively.
        Then as the disease starts to spread widely most illness will be it so it'll be 99% again.

        Or at least that's what happened with H1N1. Initially everyone tested had good reason to believe they had it. Th

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

          Initially 99% of the people tested will have it.
          Then it'll be like 5% as they start expanding testing massively.
          Then as the disease starts to spread widely most illness will be it so it'll be 99% again.

          So you're saying that the public shouldn't need to know when the disease is widespread? Or how effective the government is at handling the situation? I think the public has a right to know when they've run out of test kits, and when their "don't panic" talking point is just pulling the wool over our eyes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Toad-san ( 64810 )

        Still seems pretty meaningless to me. I don't CARE how many were tested. And, given the recent increase in the numbers of test kits distributed out to the states, a current and accurate number of tests administered might be difficult to obtain anyway.

    • They are probably trying to prevent further panic that is currently going on right now if they see the number spike.

      Trying to prevent panic is what led to the Philadelphia outbreak that triggered the 1918 flu pandemic [twitter.com] that killed more people than WW1 and WW2 combined. They shouldn't be trying to prevent panic, they should be trying to prevent spread.

      • The CDC has nothing to do with preventing the spread of disease. The CDC is responsible for the cure of disease. Epidemiology is the study of the spread of disease, which the CDC has nothing to do with.

        That is why the CDC contracts with Epidemiology companies like Council of State and Territory Epidemiologists [cste.org], the company I used to work for, for near 4 years. CSTE is responsible for the spread of the disease.

        Trust me, they probably had people in China more than 2 weeks ago.

  • Well, duh (Score:1, Troll)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 )
    This Administration doesn't like people knowing stuff, especially if it could make them look bad, though, to be honest, not sure how that's the case here as they're just facts - oh, wait... To be fair, this is from an Administration that discourages [cnn.com] the CDC from using phrases like (and this is true): "evidence-based" and "science-based".

    • Re:Well, duh (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Tim Hamilton ( 5961502 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @05:00PM (#59793504)
      Would you please link to the original source? I clicked on the CNN link, and they had a link to a picture of a coversheet and one page of a document in a PDF [cnn.com] where I see no verification of your statement.
      • Google: CDC banned words

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by spitzak ( 4019 )

        The PDF pretty clearly says you cannot use "ACA" and must use "Obamacare", can't use "Marketplace" and must use "Exchanges", and cannot use the words "Vulnerable", "Diversity", and "Entitlement". It does not however say anything on that page about "evidence-based" and "science-based"

      • A quick search shows this article: https://thehill.com/news-by-su... [thehill.com] which references this WP article: https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com], which appears to be the primary source for the story.

      • I clicked on the CNN link, and they had a link to a picture of a coversheet and one page of a document in a PDF where I see no verification of your statement.

        It is disingenuous to complain that the PDF does not verify the statement when the article never said that the terms "evidence-based" and "science-based" were from the linked document, but rather from "interviews with two officials from the Department of Health and Human Services". The article says:

        The other four words on the list -- "transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based" and "science-based" -- were brought up by employees at the meeting who wanted to know if they could be used, according to the two HHS

  • I am really curious why people would prefer to see a number, which for all governments is just a lie anyway.

    Are you looking to see which lie is more impressive so you can compare lies?

    I have no interest in such political nationalism when the concern should be spread of infection.

    • Re:So which do you all prefer (Score:5, Informative)

      by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary@@@yahoo...com> on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @04:31PM (#59793304) Journal

      What a ridiculous claim, that all government statistics are lies. Just because Trump has lied over 16,000 times since taking office does not mean that is normal.

      Government is just We, the People. It is only as bad as we let it get, and we always have the power to make it better, if we choose. The people working in government jobs are not especially lazy or corrupt, they are just normal citizens.

      You seem more concerned with protecting the current administration than doing anything about the spread of infection. Trump himself would be fine with most Americans dropping dead on the spot, as long as more democrats died than republicans. He's a criminal sociopath with no conscience and a tenuous grip on reality, at best.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by isomer1 ( 749303 )
        Well said Spun. If I had mod points today they'd be yours.

      • Trump himself would be fine with most Americans dropping dead on the spot, as long as more democrats died than republicans. He's a criminal sociopath with no conscience and a tenuous grip on reality, at best.

        He really seems to hate poor people. He loves beating up on them like it's their fault (and not . . . oh, never mind). There will always be poor â" some chronically, and some temporarily due to current circumstances or a run of bad luck. America's social safety net is broken, and people who could get back up after some bad luck are not escaping poverty, but are becoming members of a new wave of educated poor.

      • What are you talking about, it's all fake news, everybody knows that Trump knows everything, he's a genius, he makes the best deals, it's just this Afghanistan government, who doesn't want to release all the Taliban prisoners, and those Syrian freedom fighters, who didn't want to fight without US. This virus is a hoax, and anyway Trump will deal with it, he said so himself. It's peanuts for him, he discovered himself what nobody knew that Puerto Rico is an island, he himself discovered that Putin is a great

    • What's it like being an epistemological nihilist? I mean, how do you even know your computer works?

      • What's it like being an epistemological nihilist?

        Being an optimistic realist, I wouldn't know.

        how do you even know your computer works?

        What computer ever really works?

        It's easy to know what is in a computer, to know how everything is connected, to know what the connections are supposed to do...

        But are you seriously saying a computer has never surprised you?

    • The spread of Nationalism is a spread of infection in it's own right.

  • If it's available elsewhere... (Score:3)

    by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @04:26PM (#59793266) Journal

    They may be getting it from WHO currently, but If reliable information is available from elsewhere I'd expect worldometer [worldometers.info] to present it.

  • Dr. Stephen Hahn, F.D.A. commissioner, Monday March 2nd:

    “With this new policy, we have heard from multiple companies and multiple academic centers, and we expect to have a substantial increase in the number of tests this week, next week, and throughout the month,” Dr. Hahn said in a press briefing Monday. “There will be — the estimates we’re getting from industry right now, by the end of this week, close to a million tests will be able to be performed.”

    They are apparentl

  • One thing I've learned from this is that America really, really, really likes to make sure it can wipe its ass. Apparently we're buying TP from Costco and other places by the fucking pallet load.

    That and they think a virus will attack our municipal water supply. Better stock up on water, what if it stops coming out of my faucet?!!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

      Disclaimer: I am not an EOTW nutjob, I am merely taking the problem statement at face value.

      With regard to water supply, imagine the large scale disruption that could result from a million people being sick. Imagine line crews not being able to respond for hours or days to electrical outages caused by the things that cause outages on a more or less regular basis (storms, car accidents, equipment failure, etc). Imagine that water pumps fail as a result of this, or imagine there are pipeline breaks (due to f

      • I'd see it the other way around. If the water doesn't work you're basically nearing "the living will envy the dead" territory. The two most important things for the government to keep working are electricity and water. If they can't, we're in beyond deep shit, entering mad-max territory.

        A bad cold (that's what this is, a bad cold that kills the elderly and immune compromised at a relatively high rate, and a small number of otherwise healthy people) isn't going to get us there.

        That said, once this blows over

        • The two most important things for the government to keep working are electricity and water.

          It is important for electricity and water to keep flowing, but not very urgent. You can live through temporary power disruptions - it happens all the time, especially if you live in a remote area. Water disruptions are more rare, usually limited to massive floods and other natural disasters, but it happens. In this case it is conceivable (I think unlikely, but plausible) that there will be some outages if many workers are sick or refusing to come to work. It'll still get fixed. It just might take longe

          • You should talk to people in Louisiana who lived through Katrina and in New Jersey who lived through Sandy. You will come away with a different perspective on losing power and water.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

          You probably also have about 50 gallons of clean water in your water heater. Just remember to shut off the valves once you lose pressure so it doesn't drain away.

      • It may be helpful for people to remember that (traditional tank) water heaters provide a ready source of many gallons of potable water in an emergency. Mine holds a mere 50G, but that's enough to keep my family safely hydrated for a good long while. If it's in a location where you can't extract the content from a faucet in the absence of supply side pressure, they all have a drain fitting near the bottom usually threaded for garden hose connection. I have a hard time justifying stockpiling water bottles wit

      • It’s not that people think you won’t be able to get supplies so much as no one will want to go out to a supermarket where the employees with no or low tier insurance and no sick days will be coughing all over the product along with the people coughing on you while you shop and then you gotta use cash or touch the card reader to pay. Even the WHO is saying not to go out grocery shopping if you’re over 60 [inews.co.uk]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      If only they had bidets.

      Many American's I've met have been very suspicious about drinking water that comes out of the tap. I'm not sure if that's justified where they're from or not.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

        Tap water in America is potable, as in it won't give you diarrhea. However, some of the pipes are very old and there can be all sorts of junk stuck inside. They may also contain lead, which was once widely used to seal the pipe joints. Finally, there's fluorine in the water, which is slightly toxic and unnecessary if you brush your teeth with toothpaste.

  • Surprised? No not surprised. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @04:42PM (#59793396)

    This isn't the first time the CDC has self-censored or outright distorted information.

    However it is a great organization with many incredibly smart and principled people in it, providing a vital function. It isn't their fault that they get steamrolled by politics now and then.

    And with Trump, it goes to a whole different level. The data that the CDC has clearly contradicts the party line that Trump wants to push. Namely, if there is any victim here it is actually Trump being treated unfairly by the Democrats, the deep-state scientists, and the Corona virus itself and it is all just a hoax.

    And if you think Trump isn't really like that, just remember his sharpie on the weather map. This is the same thing but bigger.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ClickOnThis ( 137803 )

      This. Trump refuses to be tethered by reality. He keeps trying to advance the narrative that a vaccine is only months away, no matter what the experts tell him. [msnbc.com]

      I half-wonder if he's thinking he'll make a great vaccine. The best. Really classy, delivered in Waterford-crystal vials and marble shipping-containers. And he'll make the corona virus pay for it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ffkom ( 3519199 )
      Given how often Trump said climate change was invented by the Chinese, I really wonder why he does not claim Covid-19 is a Chinese invention, too.

  • Here you go: John Hopkin's Counts (Score:3)

    by turp182 ( 1020263 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @04:57PM (#59793490) Journal

    I've found this to be the best current situation link.

    https://www.arcgis.com/apps/op... [arcgis.com]

  • Stopped publishing ... (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @05:05PM (#59793534)

    ...when the web site admin said "F*ck it", grabbed his backpack and a rifle and headed into the woods.

  • Pence's praying healed them all (Score:3)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @05:37PM (#59793736)

    Nothing to see here, move along.

  • Does a testing tally have a point? This is not information that needs to be updated live for the public. It's just a bit morbid, encourages fixation and adds no useful information for everyday living.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      There is. When the number is tiny and not going up despite more and more people dying from the disease, and the government is still telling everyone that we're safe, we know we're all truly fucked.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Eugene ( 6671 )

      It's a measure on how active the government is working to prevent the COVID-10 from spreading (the more people tested means government is working more to find hidden carriers)

  • The CDC website has good information how to combat this virus.

    But for understanding what is going on overall and what needs doing next, you are better off with the scientists and other experienced professionals outside the CDC.

    Smart, honest science.
    https://twitter.com/KrutikaKup... [twitter.com]
    https://twitter.com/aetiology/ [twitter.com]
    https://twitter.com/ScottGottl... [twitter.com]
    https://twitter.com/angie_rasm... [twitter.com]

  • If you stick your head in the sand, you won't catch the coronavirus

  • A question of trust (Score:3)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @07:09PM (#59794176)
    The CDC is now for Trump supporters. Great Leaders Trump and Pence are in charge there, and they'll save all the virtuous folk from the virus. Listen and comply to the great genius perfect CDC.

    More seriously, Trump and the current GOP are incapable of keeping their politics out of ANYTHING. If there was ONE THING that should remain apolitical and under expert/scientific leadership, it's the frikkin CDC. Medically speaking, Pence isn't qualified to handle a bottle of tylenol. Did you see how Trump responded when he was corrected by a qualified scientist? You can be sure THAT won't ever happen again.

    It pains me greatly to see that the CDC isn't going to be trustworthy until the coutry's leadership changes. Until then, thankfully there are still other institutions that I trust to give me real information:

    My current primary care physician
    My local medical school
    The World Health Organization

    But the CDC is no longer on that list.
  • "...can't hurt you." - Big Mother

    The CDC, FDA, state, county and city officials are lying to the public because they're more worried about preventing panic at all costs rather than being honest. For example, King Andrew Cuomo blatantly lied about the relative deadliness compared to influenza. He said it was twice when it is actual 30x+. Also, there's Trump calling it a "hoax".

    In addition, there is under-reporting going on because of:

    1. The reticence to test (extremely narrow CDC criteria for PUI), doctor

  • So, Pence thought the numbers looked bad, and were "off message" for the Orange Moron, so they made them go away, right? Message is far more important than reality....

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