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The real issue is so much of this stuff was superseded decades ago by technology. There was a woman on NPR moaning about how their funding to tell women to let

The real issue is so much of this stuff was superseded decades ago by technology. There was a woman on NPR moaning about how their funding to tell women to let babies sleep on their back will result in deaths https://www.npr.org/2025/05/05/nx-s1-5383871/trump-cuts-safe-sleep-sids-baby#:~:text=Safe%20sleep%20recommendations%20for%20babies,they're%20in%20a%20vehicle. https://www.npr.org/2025/05/05/nx-s1-5383871/trump-cuts-safe... Doctors. The internet. We don’t need an entire apparatus to explain basic facts that can be a document sent via text message to new mothers in the hospital. The amount of useless busywork is absurd

clarkevans 1y ago
I'm not sure I understand your comment. After birth, when new parents are sleep deprived, is a uniquely stressful time when parents are bombarded with information. Advice on the Internet is prolific and often wrong, raising anxiety without providing needed context-sensitive guidance. It looks like this program was providing trustworthy materials and outreach to reduce infant death.
- monero-xmr 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - clarkevans 1y ago
    Dissemination takes work. Materials in the right languages are needed. Finding the minimum necessary detail and visuals help. Delivery to new parents has to be done when they need the information, else they won't be receptive or remember. Then you need to get these materials into the birthing centers, to midwifes and nurses, etc. An evaluation component is also helpful to see if the approach can be improved, etc. Having this done in a repeatable way is important, every day there are new parents. I don't see the price tag for this, but a few million dollars isn't all that much given the complexity of the dissemination challenge. It's probably a program but likely not an entire department. Curating knowledge and getting it to right people's attention at the right time is hard work. Did you see the materials they produce/disseminate? https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/resources/order https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/resources/order
    - apical_dendrite 1y ago
      If you were going to put a value on an infant's life for purposes of, say, settling a lawsuit, $10 million wouldn't be unreasonable. Think of that infant's earnings over their entire life, plus the loss to the parents. So the program would only need to save one or a handful of infant lives a year to be worth the cost, at least from an actuarial perspective. Eliminating the program is incredibly wasteful.
  - xorcist 1y ago
    That sounds like a sure way to ensure they don't get the info, buried as a bullet point among thousands (in a pdf).
  - multjoy 1y ago
    Do you value the lives of infants so poorly that you think a PDF will do it?
Interesco 1y ago
"After holding steady for years, sleep-related infant deaths rose by nearly 12% between 2020 and 2022, according to the most recent data. Researchers think the rise may be related to parents not getting the information on safe sleep they needed during the pandemic" I'm not sure how many new mothers are taking the time to go through every unsolicited text they get. The majority of people consider printed media more trustworthy then online media [1] (I probably wouldn't click on a text message link with a headline about my newborn vs. a pamphlet provided by the hospital). There seems to be strong evidence that the "entire apparatus" did in fact work and was not superseded by text messages. I agree that there is a lot of useless busy work, but I don't think these cancellations are the way to address it [1] https://printinthemix.cad.rit.edu/research/show/125 https://printinthemix.cad.rit.edu/research/show/125
- ty6853 1y ago
  My child was born during the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone* thought they were going to die. Doctors were falling over themselves to rush us out. The only education I recall was how to use a car seat to get our asses out of there. The normal protocols were definitely put on hold where we were, just make sure the baby will survive then eject. * hyperbolic
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
untrust 1y ago
Did you read the article? > Safe to Sleep created the public health messaging for this information and distributed it on social media, as well as in pamphlets targeted to specific groups, such as grandparents, and translated it into different languages. It also provided the materials to hospitals and doctor's offices to be handed out to patients. Your proposed solution doesnt cover what this did. How would you classify this as busywork, if the end result can prevent infant deaths? This is a net loss to society if it gets shuttered entirely.
apical_dendrite 1y ago
Do you have experience in healthcare, particularly working with high needs populations? There are often complex social issues that don't have easy technological solutions, and you might not understand what these issues are if you don't have that background. I see a lot of arrogance from the tech industry - there are a lot of people who think they know all the answers, but they've made faulty assumptions about what the problems are, and they don't really have the curiosity or the experience to know better.
gosub100 1y ago
[flagged]
- jagger27 1y ago
  You can argue plenty, like you’re doing right now. You’re doing yourself and your cause a disservice by being so black and white with your accusations. HN is chock full of people who agree with you. Go ahead and present compelling arguments for austerity. Just be prepared to defend them.
  - gosub100 1y ago
    It's even more fundamental than that. The debate of wasteful vs austere government isn't intellectually curious and goes against HN guidelines.
- apical_dendrite 1y ago
  From my perspective, it seems like tech bros are declaring everything they see to be waste without any real familiarity with the specific programs that they're cutting and without any cost-benefit analysis. The program that this poster highlighted - educational materials to prevent SIDS - seems incredibly cost-effective. The actuarial value of an infant's life is very high - certainly in the millions of dollars. And getting parents to understand what they need to do and change their behavior can be very difficult. Spending $10 million a year (to use the poster's number) to make sure that doctors have good educational materials in a variety of languages is worth it from a cost-benefit perspective if it saves a single infant life a year. What's your evidence that it isn't cost-effective?
  - heylook 1y ago
    Chesterton's fence is undefeated.
- smt88 1y ago
  I agree the government is wasteful and could be streamlined, but that's not what Trump is doing. It's instead a revenge campaign against perceived enemies of the GOP, and they have actually increased YoY spending so far. And all of that is orthogonal to the central issue that the entire exercise is unconstitutional and authoritarian. Congress is explicitly given the power to set spending.
hooverd 1y ago
People don't read. They do respond to nudges though.

clarkevans 1y ago

I'm not sure I understand your comment. After birth, when new parents are sleep deprived, is a uniquely stressful time when parents are bombarded with information. Advice on the Internet is prolific and often wrong, raising anxiety without providing needed context-sensitive guidance. It looks like this program was providing trustworthy materials and outreach to reduce infant death.

monero-xmr 1y ago
[flagged]
- clarkevans 1y ago
  Dissemination takes work. Materials in the right languages are needed. Finding the minimum necessary detail and visuals help. Delivery to new parents has to be done when they need the information, else they won't be receptive or remember. Then you need to get these materials into the birthing centers, to midwifes and nurses, etc. An evaluation component is also helpful to see if the approach can be improved, etc. Having this done in a repeatable way is important, every day there are new parents. I don't see the price tag for this, but a few million dollars isn't all that much given the complexity of the dissemination challenge. It's probably a program but likely not an entire department. Curating knowledge and getting it to right people's attention at the right time is hard work. Did you see the materials they produce/disseminate? https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/resources/order https://safetosleep.nichd.nih.gov/resources/order
  - apical_dendrite 1y ago
    If you were going to put a value on an infant's life for purposes of, say, settling a lawsuit, $10 million wouldn't be unreasonable. Think of that infant's earnings over their entire life, plus the loss to the parents. So the program would only need to save one or a handful of infant lives a year to be worth the cost, at least from an actuarial perspective. Eliminating the program is incredibly wasteful.
- xorcist 1y ago
  That sounds like a sure way to ensure they don't get the info, buried as a bullet point among thousands (in a pdf).
- multjoy 1y ago
  Do you value the lives of infants so poorly that you think a PDF will do it?

Interesco 1y ago

"After holding steady for years, sleep-related infant deaths rose by nearly 12% between 2020 and 2022, according to the most recent data. Researchers think the rise may be related to parents not getting the information on safe sleep they needed during the pandemic" I'm not sure how many new mothers are taking the time to go through every unsolicited text they get. The majority of people consider printed media more trustworthy then online media [1] (I probably wouldn't click on a text message link with a headline about my newborn vs. a pamphlet provided by the hospital). There seems to be strong evidence that the "entire apparatus" did in fact work and was not superseded by text messages. I agree that there is a lot of useless busy work, but I don't think these cancellations are the way to address it [1] https://printinthemix.cad.rit.edu/research/show/125 https://printinthemix.cad.rit.edu/research/show/125

ty6853 1y ago
My child was born during the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone* thought they were going to die. Doctors were falling over themselves to rush us out. The only education I recall was how to use a car seat to get our asses out of there. The normal protocols were definitely put on hold where we were, just make sure the baby will survive then eject. * hyperbolic
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

untrust 1y ago

Did you read the article? > Safe to Sleep created the public health messaging for this information and distributed it on social media, as well as in pamphlets targeted to specific groups, such as grandparents, and translated it into different languages. It also provided the materials to hospitals and doctor's offices to be handed out to patients. Your proposed solution doesnt cover what this did. How would you classify this as busywork, if the end result can prevent infant deaths? This is a net loss to society if it gets shuttered entirely.

apical_dendrite 1y ago

Do you have experience in healthcare, particularly working with high needs populations? There are often complex social issues that don't have easy technological solutions, and you might not understand what these issues are if you don't have that background. I see a lot of arrogance from the tech industry - there are a lot of people who think they know all the answers, but they've made faulty assumptions about what the problems are, and they don't really have the curiosity or the experience to know better.

gosub100 1y ago

[flagged]

jagger27 1y ago
You can argue plenty, like you’re doing right now. You’re doing yourself and your cause a disservice by being so black and white with your accusations. HN is chock full of people who agree with you. Go ahead and present compelling arguments for austerity. Just be prepared to defend them.
- gosub100 1y ago
  It's even more fundamental than that. The debate of wasteful vs austere government isn't intellectually curious and goes against HN guidelines.
apical_dendrite 1y ago
From my perspective, it seems like tech bros are declaring everything they see to be waste without any real familiarity with the specific programs that they're cutting and without any cost-benefit analysis. The program that this poster highlighted - educational materials to prevent SIDS - seems incredibly cost-effective. The actuarial value of an infant's life is very high - certainly in the millions of dollars. And getting parents to understand what they need to do and change their behavior can be very difficult. Spending $10 million a year (to use the poster's number) to make sure that doctors have good educational materials in a variety of languages is worth it from a cost-benefit perspective if it saves a single infant life a year. What's your evidence that it isn't cost-effective?
- heylook 1y ago
  Chesterton's fence is undefeated.
smt88 1y ago
I agree the government is wasteful and could be streamlined, but that's not what Trump is doing. It's instead a revenge campaign against perceived enemies of the GOP, and they have actually increased YoY spending so far. And all of that is orthogonal to the central issue that the entire exercise is unconstitutional and authoritarian. Congress is explicitly given the power to set spending.

hooverd 1y ago

People don't read. They do respond to nudges though.