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CDC data are disappearing

(www.theatlantic.com)
749 points doener | 1 comments | 01 Feb 25 11:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.239s | source
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breadwinner ◴[01 Feb 25 20:59 UTC] No.42902252[source]▶
Data is the ultimate Fact Check. This is a President that's adamantly opposed to fact checking [1] and has even coerced Facebook to drop fact checking. Of course they don't want data on government sites that disprove their "alternate facts".

[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4920827-60-minutes-tru...

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djfobbz ◴[01 Feb 25 23:30 UTC] No.42903684[source]▶
Data isn't the ultimate fact check - it's just numbers waiting to be twisted. Bias, bad sources, and cherry-picking turn 'facts' into fiction. Real fact-checking needs brains, not just bar graphs.
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arunabha ◴[01 Feb 25 23:40 UTC] No.42903760[source]▶
But surely, the answer to 'data can be twisted' is not to remove the data? We have enough of a problem already with wilful misinformation.

Having the data is the first step towards a reasonable discussion. Otherwise, you have to resort to 'I feel ....' vs 'Based on this interpretation....'

I agree that the first kind of debate is already the dominant form today, however I think we can all agree that it's not been good for society overall.

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_heimdall ◴[02 Feb 25 02:34 UTC] No.42905110[source]▶
This isn't a new problem unfortunately. Data and research during the pandemic response was being horribly mishandled, largely by the Democrats at the time.

This isn't a one party or one person problem. It sure seems like a problem more correlated with our government structure and/or climate, or authority structures themselves.

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1. lucb1e ◴[02 Feb 25 06:18 UTC] No.42906434[source]▶
There not being another pandemic during the information age to compare with, it's hard to say whether The Democrats mishandled it or not. Perhaps one could look at aspects where there was consensus within at least one of the opposing parties about what should happen (before the outcome of any path could be known) and compare that against hindsight. If you have specific examples where others clearly knew better than the ruling party, that would be relevant to consider if it's chance or a pattern, but otherwise it feels like the age-old opposing of the current ruling force