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> 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

> 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 agree with anybody tracking me, but even say insurance companies which is the other worst thing that comes to mind have limited purview in what they might be interested in

pxeger1 4y ago
> thinks they know better than individuals about risk tolerance They do.
jpgvm 4y ago
If you are that scared of people that have more knowledge than you on topics that take decades of study to understand I can't imagine how scared you should be of politicians. On average they have close to zero knowledge about anything yet wield power to change almost any facet of your life. Personally I'm sticking with the scientists, atleast they earnt that power through real excellence rather than winning some popularity contest.
smt88 4y ago
> Can someone name a scarrier entity that could be tracking you? FBI, CIA, local police, any branch of military, Oathkeepers (a group that did track me for a while because I organized a pro-voting event in my city)... it's a very long list. Basically anyone with a gun and a desire to harm me is a lot scarier. In the past, companies used to assassinate leaders of unionization efforts, too.
josho 4y ago
I know we are getting off track here somewhat. But it's group A wants this data to better understand society in order to save lives, while every other group want this data to increase their profits. To your point, yes we shouldn't allow tracking. But, whatever fix we apply should not be so limited that it only affects the CDC, it should be generally applied to stop all groups as well.
- version_five 4y ago
  > group A wants this data to better understand society in order to save lives In principle, I agree with the idea of anonymous data used exclusively and apolitically to "understand society" as you say. I just see no evidence that would ever be possible, either to trust that it will be kept anonymous or that whatever conclusion get drawn from it and acted upon will be remotely nonpartisan. It's sad in a sense, but I think the only viable solution is to reject any notion of tracking, no matter how much anyone swears they'll only use it for what they consider good. That said, I may be missing something but I still think it's less worrisome to hear that private companies are using information that customers didn't actively hide and provided by voluntarily using their product (I still don't like it, but I don't think it should be illegal for a company to say "we're giving you this tracking device", use it and get a discount). Compared with the government, given the whole "monopoly of violence" thing or whatever weaker version you like, and also as the agent of the people, to be using that data, I think is a whole different think. Same as there is a difference between an ISP logging your internet traffic, and one voluntarily giving that information to the government and effectively becoming a government agency. Anyway, this is going too far astray, and getting too long, you see my point about the distinction
ChrisLomont 4y ago
>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?
- tdfx 4y ago
  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 bureaucrats who have professional reputations, career trajectory, office politics, and other competing incentives that compete and often conflict with their stated goal of making the "best health decisions" for everyone. This has resulted in the absurd patchwork of logically inconsistent mask and vaccine rules that we've all be subjected to for the past 2 years. For me, this has firmly demonstrated that the structure of these institutions and their methods of public communication have lost the public trust and we cannot give them broad, sweeping powers.
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    Or, perhaps, the CDC should be more independent of political leadership?
    - tdfx 4y ago
      I don't think the most perverse behavior we've seen in the CDC has a been a result of political pressure from the executive branch. They seemed to be fairly effective at maneuvering around the Trump administration's attempts to influence their policy. Like most people, at the beginning of the pandemic, I was on the "better safe than sorry" side of things and was generally supportive of their recommendations. Some of the rules have never made much sense, particularly in regards to masking in restaurants and who was going to have to enforce those rules, but also the insistence on vaccine mandates that filtered down in very logically inconsistent ways to the local level. In an effort to prevent anti-vax conspiracy theorists from having a thread to pull on, they maintained public messaging that was borderline deceitful about the efficacy of the vaccine in preventing reinfection and encouraged ridiculous local regulations like showing vaccine cards to enter establishments. This mirrored the deceitful nature of the "only medical staff need masks" messaging at the beginning of the pandemic to prevent a mask supply shortage. The turning point for me was Omnicron, as it was very quickly apparent this was a distinct, new disease that had a different risk profile than previous variants. But for what appears to be face-saving measures, no guidance was updated and it took months for them to concede that there were other metrics more important than case counts. The insistence of continually extending the federal travel mask mandate is a case in point: I don't know of anyone who believes that the loose paper and cloth masks worn by most of the general public (sometimes covering nose and mouth, more often not) are actually producing a substantial effect in reducing transmission in indoor spaces, and AFAIK it's well understood that anyone at high risk of serious infection is well protected with a properly fitted N95 mask, especially in a well ventilated space like an airplane. At no point has there been a focus on educating people on the efficacy of different types of masks, just a continual hammering of the "mask up" narrative, treating people as too stupid to understand the difference. For what appears to be ass-covering behavior on their part, they have focused on maintaining a consistency of messaging that ignores new data and and discredits any opposing points of view, even from other qualified members of the medical community. They are more focused on projecting authority and consistency than honestly handling nuance and it's become pretty obvious that is not the key to building trusted institutions. I'm not saying disband the CDC, tear down the building, and exile Fauci. I'm simply saying that we need to recognize that the approach that was taken here did not work correctly and has resulted in less institutional trust than we started with and that we need to learn from our mistakes.
jancsika 4y ago
> Most buyers probably just want to target advertising at me, or otherwise grab my attention. That's not a fair response given the examples provided to you. OP's comment mentioned the Cambridge Analytica case which-- if true-- is certainly more concerning than someone advertising at you. It's one thing to argue that case was overblown, but it's not serious to sweep it into the bin of "otherwise grab my attention." Edit: changed the word "satisfactory" to "fair." It's not that the comment I'm replying to wasn't tasty enough for my enjoyment or something. It's more that it hand-waved away the point OP was making.
darkerside 4y ago
> 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.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  >... 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 the CDC, or any other federal bureaucracy, obviously the trigger happy ones are higher on the list), the kind of organizations who can send a dozen thugs to kick in your door and who have diffused responsibility across so many people you can't "get even" that you don't want coming after you. >the CDC is at worst going to do what it thinks is best for you, Every horror in history was committed with the best of intentions. Edit: and to be clear, I'm not too worried about the CDC themselves, I'm worried about the legions of useful idiots that will happily take whatever they say and run with it. If the CDC makes BS or politically charged recommendations there is a myriad of other institutions (government and otherwise) that will see that as their ticket to do whatever bad thing they were already fishing for a reason to do. I don't want anyone having my data. But given the choice I'd rather have people who want to sell me penis pills and time shares have my data than people who want to tell me how to live.
  - renewiltord 4y ago
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krnlpnc 4y ago
> 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.
woodruffw 4y ago
> 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? This describes every AdTech firm to a T, except that you’ve decided to direct your ire at a public health agency instead of them. The entire point of commercial advertising is to nudge your purchasing behavior (what they’ll blithely refer to as “lifestyle”); the CDC has no such motive.
- artificialLimbs 4y ago
  They wanted me to purchase vaccines, but indirectly because they want everyone to pay for them.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Yes, that’s normally how taxes and uniform policies work. I suppose you could be opposed to either or both of those things in the abstract, but expressing your ire at vaccines specifically strikes me as special pleading.
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  There is an enormous difference between a corporation "nudging" me to buy something with an ad, and a government body using the full weight of its authority to force my compliance with their policies. I'm much more comfortable being nudged than I am being forced.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    There is indeed an enormous difference, but I find this reasoning funny: when a government issues an order by fiat, there is no ambiguity with regards to your consent. You can either be on board or not; either way, there is a clear line between your opinion (and therefore what you will) and what is dictated to you. This can’t be said for nudges: the entire point of an effective nudge is that you can’t be certain that you aren't acting of your own volition. That strikes me as a much worse state of affairs: not only are you controlled, but you don’t even know it! TL;DR: two years after this entire fracas, it’s apparent that the government’s ability to force you to do anything w/r/t public health is mostly hollow. Meanwhile, the continence of our actions online seems to be increasingly shaky.
coding123 4y ago
While it IS creepy for a government to track people I think the problem is not the CDC, it's the police, FBI, secret service and other "you can go to jail if I think you were 15 meters too close to that agent that got shot last week". Does that answer your question?
mullingitover 4y ago
> The CDC wants a say in how people live their lives and thinks they know better than individuals about risk tolerance and decisions. Their charter is disease control. How you 'live your life' is orthogonal to that mission - they're responsible for stopping you from infecting other people with communicable diseases. That is also your own responsibility, and just because responsibilities aren't always things you want to do doesn't mean they're oppression.
- jatone 4y ago
  > How you 'live your life' is orthogonal to that mission orthogonal does not mean what you think it means given your usage. orthogonal means its entirely unrelated. but the fact is disease control and being able to make personal choices w/ respect to living your life can be in direct conflict means its not orthogonal. apologies for this correction orthogonal is just one of my favorite words. =)
  - Eldt 4y ago
    It was used correctly, you've just mistaken the point made about the CDC and how they view their mission
    - leereeves 4y ago
      It's definitely not orthogonal to how you live your life; their very purpose is to limit how you live your life in order to prevent/reduce behaviors that spread disease. For example, they issue quarantine orders.[1] People understand that is their mission. Some find it scary. Everyone has a different threshold at which they start to object to the CDC overriding people's freedom in the pursuit of disease control, but everyone will object at some point. For example, would you accept a Shanghai-style lockdown? 1: https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/pdf/Public-Health-Order_Generic_FINAL_02-13-2020-p.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/pdf/Public-Health-Order_Gener...
      - tragictrash 4y ago
        It feels like your living in some strange alternate reality. What are you talking about? How is the CDC 'overriding freedom'? They collect data and make recommendations. The rest of the world is out here waiting for you, please wake up. We need everyone to make this work.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
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B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
> The CDC wants a say in how people live their lives It says "disease control" in the tin. If you aren't a sterile robot, you're a potential disease carrier. Connecting the dots isn't hard. Prime weaponizable mandate. Of course there's those advertised constitutional/human rights, but, hey, it's just for the duration ... You know the spiel. The classic Roman 6-month limit on dictatorship wasn't worth much either.
smileysteve 4y ago
> Can someone name a scarrier entity that could be tracking you? Yes? As the CDC's only enforcement mechanisms are generally small teams in tyvek suits with fertilizer sprayers with bleach. Their primary function is public advisement and their employees are civilian. So yes, CIA, FBI, IRS, NSA, military, Homeland security (tsa and coast guard), grb; but also Facebook, apple, Google, at&t.
- monocasa 4y ago
  Also just your local police when they're fed up with the fourth amendment.
- 7speter 4y ago
  As far as I know the cdc hasn’t dropped radiation in anyones tea or put a deadly poison on the door knob of anyone’s front door.
  - ineedasername 4y ago
    No one would do that, why would they do that? Next you'll be talking about poisoned underwear or some other random nonsense.
wwweston 4y ago
> The CDC wants a say in how people live their lives and thinks they know better than individuals about risk tolerance and decisions The CDC primarily exists to address collective risk with collective decisions in the face of public health and especially infectious disease events where the dynamics are inevitably collective. Sometimes collective decisions curb individual freedom -- like curbs literally do, along with a host of related automotive policies one could use as analogs. Criticizing the CDC for "wanting a say" is like criticizing any other area in which collective government wants a say: it's fine to talk about limits to what government should be able to require and what would constitute a compelling reason for doing so (and in fact, that's what citizens of a democratic republic should do), but speaking as if it's a threat to "want a say" in general is unbalanced. > And they seem to think they can have unchecked power by invoking "science". Whether they decide to make their decisions on the basis of science observation and study or not, no public institution in the United States has unchecked power, there are always avenues for feedback and change, especially if you have a point that other people find persuasive. And personally, I'd prefer most institutions made their decisions informed by scientific efforts, which would make them accountable both to fellow professionals in their field and other democratic institutions. Data's a part of scientific efforts.
- junofan 4y ago
  I’m not sure the CDC should be making collective decisions. The CDC was originally envisioned as a center of excellence providing specific operational support and services to states. There’s been a lot of scope creep.
  - wwweston 4y ago
    Debate about which level of government certain classes of public health decisions should be made it is respectable. Although we've have had a chance to see some of the issues with mismatched state-level responses. Infectious agents don't seem to care much about any border their hosts can cross.
avs733 4y ago
> The CDC wants a say in how people live their lives and thinks they know better than individuals about risk tolerance and decisions. Would you like me to show this to my friends who work at the CDC and record their reactions for you? Oh how they wish... The CDC doesn't want to control you, they just want you to wash your damn hands. They aren't invoking 'science' (with or without the scare quotes) - they are doing science because understanding whether, how, and why people follow the requests of public health officials is useful to know to both model and make decisions about the next pandemic. It is also just basically their mandate. this ' ' ' science ' ' ' is more about realizing that ' ' ' controlling people ' ' ' is a lost cause, and just trying to figure out how to prevent the spread of infectitious diseases given the new reality of self important typhoid marys. The fact that you think the people who eradicated smallpox are scarier than the CIA or facebook is just patently absurd.
Johnny555 4y ago
insurance companies which is the other worst thing that comes to mind have limited purview in what they might be interested in "Sir, we've dropped your health insurance policy because we've noticed from your location history that you frequent fast food restaurants, which is defined in your health insurance policy as a 'prohibited unhealthy lifestyle'." "Sir, we've determined from your location history that you average 5 mph over the speed limit, so we're reclasifying you as a 'high risk' driver and increasing your premiums"
zamalek 4y ago
> they can have unchecked power by invoking "science". I find it incredible that people are capable of discrediting the very process that resulted in the platform for their ability to express that. The ability for you to press a key, have that intent transmitted to a micro-circuit, have that micro-circuit calculate how to display that character on a pixel grid, and see that result on a display is the result of more than a millenia of an intellectual process called "science." The same intellectual process discovered germs in ~1665, or 368 years ago. Very shortly after we discovered germs we realized that isolation would prevent the spread of germs from one person to another. People who referred to it as "science," chose to discredit/ignore it and put scientists into the situation where they were trying to figure out how to keep a sinking ship afloat. You know, by doing what scientists have always done: drawing facts from real-world data. But no, let's rather believe that 368 years ago some rotten fellow initiated massive a conspiracy, which millions of "scientists" for generations to come kept secret, so that in the 2020's the CDC could collect cellphone data for a few months and ruin your insurance profile. Also, HIPAA.
- serial_dev 4y ago
  > I find it incredible that people are capable of discrediting the very process that resulted in the platform for their ability to express that. Nobody was trying to discredit science. Some people refer to "science" (in quotes) because any criticism of a policy or individual was cynically dismissed as a criticism of science itself. "So it’s easy to criticize, but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science" is an actual quote by someone in power to shut sceptics down. The people who used science as a shield from criticism of course wanted everyone to forget that in complex situations, especially in a new situation where not enough data is available, it's very common that scientists disagree on something. Being sceptical of a scientist's interpretation of reality is actually science.
- deleted 4y ago
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IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
Lots of big words there, little meaning: Everyone wants a say in how people live their lives, including those advertising companies. The CDC actually does know some things better than at least some individuals, because they spend a lot of money on research while the individual, at best.. well, just look around. I don't see them believing they have unchecked power, or they would ne enjoying their magical empire right now. And I have no idea what specific harm CDC tracking could enable, even assuming they tried? This was a public health agency recommending the most trivial countermeasures against the worst acute disease afflicting the world in a century. A three-year old with a LEGO understanding of germ theory and bodily fluids would come up with masks and staying away from other people. As the pandemic ends, so do all countermeasures, and life rapidly returns to normal. It is utterly insane to see this sequence of events as anything but the most obvious, predictable, harmless, working-as-intended storyline.

pxeger1 4y ago

> thinks they know better than individuals about risk tolerance They do.

jpgvm 4y ago

If you are that scared of people that have more knowledge than you on topics that take decades of study to understand I can't imagine how scared you should be of politicians. On average they have close to zero knowledge about anything yet wield power to change almost any facet of your life. Personally I'm sticking with the scientists, atleast they earnt that power through real excellence rather than winning some popularity contest.

smt88 4y ago

> Can someone name a scarrier entity that could be tracking you? FBI, CIA, local police, any branch of military, Oathkeepers (a group that did track me for a while because I organized a pro-voting event in my city)... it's a very long list. Basically anyone with a gun and a desire to harm me is a lot scarier. In the past, companies used to assassinate leaders of unionization efforts, too.

josho 4y ago

I know we are getting off track here somewhat. But it's group A wants this data to better understand society in order to save lives, while every other group want this data to increase their profits. To your point, yes we shouldn't allow tracking. But, whatever fix we apply should not be so limited that it only affects the CDC, it should be generally applied to stop all groups as well.

version_five 4y ago
> group A wants this data to better understand society in order to save lives In principle, I agree with the idea of anonymous data used exclusively and apolitically to "understand society" as you say. I just see no evidence that would ever be possible, either to trust that it will be kept anonymous or that whatever conclusion get drawn from it and acted upon will be remotely nonpartisan. It's sad in a sense, but I think the only viable solution is to reject any notion of tracking, no matter how much anyone swears they'll only use it for what they consider good. That said, I may be missing something but I still think it's less worrisome to hear that private companies are using information that customers didn't actively hide and provided by voluntarily using their product (I still don't like it, but I don't think it should be illegal for a company to say "we're giving you this tracking device", use it and get a discount). Compared with the government, given the whole "monopoly of violence" thing or whatever weaker version you like, and also as the agent of the people, to be using that data, I think is a whole different think. Same as there is a difference between an ISP logging your internet traffic, and one voluntarily giving that information to the government and effectively becoming a government agency. Anyway, this is going too far astray, and getting too long, you see my point about the distinction

ChrisLomont 4y ago

>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?

tdfx 4y ago
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 bureaucrats who have professional reputations, career trajectory, office politics, and other competing incentives that compete and often conflict with their stated goal of making the "best health decisions" for everyone. This has resulted in the absurd patchwork of logically inconsistent mask and vaccine rules that we've all be subjected to for the past 2 years. For me, this has firmly demonstrated that the structure of these institutions and their methods of public communication have lost the public trust and we cannot give them broad, sweeping powers.
- germinalphrase 4y ago
  Or, perhaps, the CDC should be more independent of political leadership?
  - tdfx 4y ago
    I don't think the most perverse behavior we've seen in the CDC has a been a result of political pressure from the executive branch. They seemed to be fairly effective at maneuvering around the Trump administration's attempts to influence their policy. Like most people, at the beginning of the pandemic, I was on the "better safe than sorry" side of things and was generally supportive of their recommendations. Some of the rules have never made much sense, particularly in regards to masking in restaurants and who was going to have to enforce those rules, but also the insistence on vaccine mandates that filtered down in very logically inconsistent ways to the local level. In an effort to prevent anti-vax conspiracy theorists from having a thread to pull on, they maintained public messaging that was borderline deceitful about the efficacy of the vaccine in preventing reinfection and encouraged ridiculous local regulations like showing vaccine cards to enter establishments. This mirrored the deceitful nature of the "only medical staff need masks" messaging at the beginning of the pandemic to prevent a mask supply shortage. The turning point for me was Omnicron, as it was very quickly apparent this was a distinct, new disease that had a different risk profile than previous variants. But for what appears to be face-saving measures, no guidance was updated and it took months for them to concede that there were other metrics more important than case counts. The insistence of continually extending the federal travel mask mandate is a case in point: I don't know of anyone who believes that the loose paper and cloth masks worn by most of the general public (sometimes covering nose and mouth, more often not) are actually producing a substantial effect in reducing transmission in indoor spaces, and AFAIK it's well understood that anyone at high risk of serious infection is well protected with a properly fitted N95 mask, especially in a well ventilated space like an airplane. At no point has there been a focus on educating people on the efficacy of different types of masks, just a continual hammering of the "mask up" narrative, treating people as too stupid to understand the difference. For what appears to be ass-covering behavior on their part, they have focused on maintaining a consistency of messaging that ignores new data and and discredits any opposing points of view, even from other qualified members of the medical community. They are more focused on projecting authority and consistency than honestly handling nuance and it's become pretty obvious that is not the key to building trusted institutions. I'm not saying disband the CDC, tear down the building, and exile Fauci. I'm simply saying that we need to recognize that the approach that was taken here did not work correctly and has resulted in less institutional trust than we started with and that we need to learn from our mistakes.

jancsika 4y ago

> Most buyers probably just want to target advertising at me, or otherwise grab my attention. That's not a fair response given the examples provided to you. OP's comment mentioned the Cambridge Analytica case which-- if true-- is certainly more concerning than someone advertising at you. It's one thing to argue that case was overblown, but it's not serious to sweep it into the bin of "otherwise grab my attention." Edit: changed the word "satisfactory" to "fair." It's not that the comment I'm replying to wasn't tasty enough for my enjoyment or something. It's more that it hand-waved away the point OP was making.

darkerside 4y ago

> 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.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago
>... 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 the CDC, or any other federal bureaucracy, obviously the trigger happy ones are higher on the list), the kind of organizations who can send a dozen thugs to kick in your door and who have diffused responsibility across so many people you can't "get even" that you don't want coming after you. >the CDC is at worst going to do what it thinks is best for you, Every horror in history was committed with the best of intentions. Edit: and to be clear, I'm not too worried about the CDC themselves, I'm worried about the legions of useful idiots that will happily take whatever they say and run with it. If the CDC makes BS or politically charged recommendations there is a myriad of other institutions (government and otherwise) that will see that as their ticket to do whatever bad thing they were already fishing for a reason to do. I don't want anyone having my data. But given the choice I'd rather have people who want to sell me penis pills and time shares have my data than people who want to tell me how to live.
- renewiltord 4y ago
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krnlpnc 4y ago

> 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.

woodruffw 4y ago

> 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? This describes every AdTech firm to a T, except that you’ve decided to direct your ire at a public health agency instead of them. The entire point of commercial advertising is to nudge your purchasing behavior (what they’ll blithely refer to as “lifestyle”); the CDC has no such motive.

artificialLimbs 4y ago
They wanted me to purchase vaccines, but indirectly because they want everyone to pay for them.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Yes, that’s normally how taxes and uniform policies work. I suppose you could be opposed to either or both of those things in the abstract, but expressing your ire at vaccines specifically strikes me as special pleading.
thegrimmest 4y ago
There is an enormous difference between a corporation "nudging" me to buy something with an ad, and a government body using the full weight of its authority to force my compliance with their policies. I'm much more comfortable being nudged than I am being forced.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  There is indeed an enormous difference, but I find this reasoning funny: when a government issues an order by fiat, there is no ambiguity with regards to your consent. You can either be on board or not; either way, there is a clear line between your opinion (and therefore what you will) and what is dictated to you. This can’t be said for nudges: the entire point of an effective nudge is that you can’t be certain that you aren't acting of your own volition. That strikes me as a much worse state of affairs: not only are you controlled, but you don’t even know it! TL;DR: two years after this entire fracas, it’s apparent that the government’s ability to force you to do anything w/r/t public health is mostly hollow. Meanwhile, the continence of our actions online seems to be increasingly shaky.

coding123 4y ago

While it IS creepy for a government to track people I think the problem is not the CDC, it's the police, FBI, secret service and other "you can go to jail if I think you were 15 meters too close to that agent that got shot last week". Does that answer your question?

mullingitover 4y ago

> The CDC wants a say in how people live their lives and thinks they know better than individuals about risk tolerance and decisions. Their charter is disease control. How you 'live your life' is orthogonal to that mission - they're responsible for stopping you from infecting other people with communicable diseases. That is also your own responsibility, and just because responsibilities aren't always things you want to do doesn't mean they're oppression.

jatone 4y ago
> How you 'live your life' is orthogonal to that mission orthogonal does not mean what you think it means given your usage. orthogonal means its entirely unrelated. but the fact is disease control and being able to make personal choices w/ respect to living your life can be in direct conflict means its not orthogonal. apologies for this correction orthogonal is just one of my favorite words. =)
- Eldt 4y ago
  It was used correctly, you've just mistaken the point made about the CDC and how they view their mission
  - leereeves 4y ago
    It's definitely not orthogonal to how you live your life; their very purpose is to limit how you live your life in order to prevent/reduce behaviors that spread disease. For example, they issue quarantine orders.[1] People understand that is their mission. Some find it scary. Everyone has a different threshold at which they start to object to the CDC overriding people's freedom in the pursuit of disease control, but everyone will object at some point. For example, would you accept a Shanghai-style lockdown? 1: https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/pdf/Public-Health-Order_Generic_FINAL_02-13-2020-p.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/pdf/Public-Health-Order_Gener...
    - tragictrash 4y ago
      It feels like your living in some strange alternate reality. What are you talking about? How is the CDC 'overriding freedom'? They collect data and make recommendations. The rest of the world is out here waiting for you, please wake up. We need everyone to make this work.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

[flagged]

B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago

> The CDC wants a say in how people live their lives It says "disease control" in the tin. If you aren't a sterile robot, you're a potential disease carrier. Connecting the dots isn't hard. Prime weaponizable mandate. Of course there's those advertised constitutional/human rights, but, hey, it's just for the duration ... You know the spiel. The classic Roman 6-month limit on dictatorship wasn't worth much either.

smileysteve 4y ago

> Can someone name a scarrier entity that could be tracking you? Yes? As the CDC's only enforcement mechanisms are generally small teams in tyvek suits with fertilizer sprayers with bleach. Their primary function is public advisement and their employees are civilian. So yes, CIA, FBI, IRS, NSA, military, Homeland security (tsa and coast guard), grb; but also Facebook, apple, Google, at&t.

monocasa 4y ago
Also just your local police when they're fed up with the fourth amendment.
7speter 4y ago
As far as I know the cdc hasn’t dropped radiation in anyones tea or put a deadly poison on the door knob of anyone’s front door.
- ineedasername 4y ago
  No one would do that, why would they do that? Next you'll be talking about poisoned underwear or some other random nonsense.

wwweston 4y ago

> The CDC wants a say in how people live their lives and thinks they know better than individuals about risk tolerance and decisions The CDC primarily exists to address collective risk with collective decisions in the face of public health and especially infectious disease events where the dynamics are inevitably collective. Sometimes collective decisions curb individual freedom -- like curbs literally do, along with a host of related automotive policies one could use as analogs. Criticizing the CDC for "wanting a say" is like criticizing any other area in which collective government wants a say: it's fine to talk about limits to what government should be able to require and what would constitute a compelling reason for doing so (and in fact, that's what citizens of a democratic republic should do), but speaking as if it's a threat to "want a say" in general is unbalanced. > And they seem to think they can have unchecked power by invoking "science". Whether they decide to make their decisions on the basis of science observation and study or not, no public institution in the United States has unchecked power, there are always avenues for feedback and change, especially if you have a point that other people find persuasive. And personally, I'd prefer most institutions made their decisions informed by scientific efforts, which would make them accountable both to fellow professionals in their field and other democratic institutions. Data's a part of scientific efforts.

junofan 4y ago
I’m not sure the CDC should be making collective decisions. The CDC was originally envisioned as a center of excellence providing specific operational support and services to states. There’s been a lot of scope creep.
- wwweston 4y ago
  Debate about which level of government certain classes of public health decisions should be made it is respectable. Although we've have had a chance to see some of the issues with mismatched state-level responses. Infectious agents don't seem to care much about any border their hosts can cross.

avs733 4y ago

> The CDC wants a say in how people live their lives and thinks they know better than individuals about risk tolerance and decisions. Would you like me to show this to my friends who work at the CDC and record their reactions for you? Oh how they wish... The CDC doesn't want to control you, they just want you to wash your damn hands. They aren't invoking 'science' (with or without the scare quotes) - they are doing science because understanding whether, how, and why people follow the requests of public health officials is useful to know to both model and make decisions about the next pandemic. It is also just basically their mandate. this ' ' ' science ' ' ' is more about realizing that ' ' ' controlling people ' ' ' is a lost cause, and just trying to figure out how to prevent the spread of infectitious diseases given the new reality of self important typhoid marys. The fact that you think the people who eradicated smallpox are scarier than the CIA or facebook is just patently absurd.

Johnny555 4y ago

insurance companies which is the other worst thing that comes to mind have limited purview in what they might be interested in "Sir, we've dropped your health insurance policy because we've noticed from your location history that you frequent fast food restaurants, which is defined in your health insurance policy as a 'prohibited unhealthy lifestyle'." "Sir, we've determined from your location history that you average 5 mph over the speed limit, so we're reclasifying you as a 'high risk' driver and increasing your premiums"

zamalek 4y ago

> they can have unchecked power by invoking "science". I find it incredible that people are capable of discrediting the very process that resulted in the platform for their ability to express that. The ability for you to press a key, have that intent transmitted to a micro-circuit, have that micro-circuit calculate how to display that character on a pixel grid, and see that result on a display is the result of more than a millenia of an intellectual process called "science." The same intellectual process discovered germs in ~1665, or 368 years ago. Very shortly after we discovered germs we realized that isolation would prevent the spread of germs from one person to another. People who referred to it as "science," chose to discredit/ignore it and put scientists into the situation where they were trying to figure out how to keep a sinking ship afloat. You know, by doing what scientists have always done: drawing facts from real-world data. But no, let's rather believe that 368 years ago some rotten fellow initiated massive a conspiracy, which millions of "scientists" for generations to come kept secret, so that in the 2020's the CDC could collect cellphone data for a few months and ruin your insurance profile. Also, HIPAA.

serial_dev 4y ago
> I find it incredible that people are capable of discrediting the very process that resulted in the platform for their ability to express that. Nobody was trying to discredit science. Some people refer to "science" (in quotes) because any criticism of a policy or individual was cynically dismissed as a criticism of science itself. "So it’s easy to criticize, but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science" is an actual quote by someone in power to shut sceptics down. The people who used science as a shield from criticism of course wanted everyone to forget that in complex situations, especially in a new situation where not enough data is available, it's very common that scientists disagree on something. Being sceptical of a scientist's interpretation of reality is actually science.
deleted 4y ago
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IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago

Lots of big words there, little meaning: Everyone wants a say in how people live their lives, including those advertising companies. The CDC actually does know some things better than at least some individuals, because they spend a lot of money on research while the individual, at best.. well, just look around. I don't see them believing they have unchecked power, or they would ne enjoying their magical empire right now. And I have no idea what specific harm CDC tracking could enable, even assuming they tried? This was a public health agency recommending the most trivial countermeasures against the worst acute disease afflicting the world in a century. A three-year old with a LEGO understanding of germ theory and bodily fluids would come up with masks and staying away from other people. As the pandemic ends, so do all countermeasures, and life rapidly returns to normal. It is utterly insane to see this sequence of events as anything but the most obvious, predictable, harmless, working-as-intended storyline.