The Memory Holing of U.S. Healthcare Information Has Already Begun

But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty’s figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connexion with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connexion that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head.

For example, the Ministry of Plenty’s forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at 145 million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than 145 millions.

Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain.

--George Orwell, 1984

Three days ago:

It was important for me to compile as comprehensive and up to date a version of this as I could before noon tomorrow, because after that I can't be 100% confident that any enrollment data (or any other type of data for that matter) released by the U.S. Health & Human Services Dept. (which includes the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) will be accurate.

DON'T GET ME WRONG: I'm not saying that everything posted by HHS or CMS under the Trump 2.0 Administration will be bullshit. My guess is the vast majority of it will probably be reasonably accurate, at least for the first few months...if only because it will take awhile for whatever sycophants/grifters he puts in charge of those departments (likely antivaxxer nutjob RFK Jr. for HHS and grifter/snake oil salesman Dr. Oz for CMS) to purge their departments of career professionals and replace them with MAGA/Trump loyalists.

Even then, it's quite possible that some or even most reports will remain reasonably accurate, in some cases simply because Trump doesn't see any reason to cook those particular books; in other cases they may simply not be aware that some data is even being made publicly available.

Honestly, my biggest fear is that they'll simply stop publishing some of the critical data reports altogether in the name of "government efficiency" or whatever.

Two days ago:

This is exactly what I was concerned about.

Here's what the Newsroom home page looked like 4 days ago:

Here's what it looks like now:

One Day Ago:

The Trump administration has instructed federal health agencies to pause all external communications, such as health advisories, weekly scientific reports, updates to websites and social media posts.

--Charles Ornstein
‪@charlesornstein.bsky.social‬

The Washington Post article linked to is behind a paywall so I can't read it, but here's another story about it via Axios:

President Trump on Tuesday ordered key federal health agencies to pause all external communications, multiple outlets reported and Axios confirmed.

Why it matters: The health agencies' website updates, advisories, and scientific reports provide the public with critical information on a variety of medical issues, including food recalls, infectious diseases and new drug approvals.

Driving the news: The directive was delivered to officials inside the Department of Health and Human Services' agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), per the Washington Post, which first reported the story.

The directive did not outline a reason for the pause, how long it is meant to last, or what exactly was covered under it, CNN reported.

The HHS, NIH, and White House did not immediately respond to Axios' requests for comment on Wednesday. The FDA and CDC referred Axios to HHS.

Between the lines: While a pause in external communications at the start of a new administration isn't unprecedented, an unnamed source familiar with the directive told CNN that the scope of the order seemed unusual.

The pause could simply be a reflection of the new administration needing to "catch their breath and know what is going on with regard to" communications, the Post reported, citing an unnamed official.

"Catching their breath?" I'm thinking not:

Trump's federal health website scrubs 'abortion' search results

On the second day of the second Trump administration, a search for the term "abortion" on the website for the federal Department of Health and Human Services brings up 166 results. The top hit is from January 24, 2020, during President Trump's first term, and is about how California violated the rights of two religious organizations that wanted to offer health plans that excluded coverage for abortion.

Trying to sort the results to see the most recent items first returns no links at all and the message reads "search unreachable."

A site the Biden administration launched after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ReproductiveRights.gov, is now a broken link. (An archived version of the site is still viewable through the Internet Archive.)

UPDATE 1/22/25 6:00pm:

While the individual blog posts are still available if you know the exact link, the CMS blog link has been removed: