Trump/MAGA have started dropping CDC data down the Memory Hole
Fri, 01/31/2025 - 12:38pm
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.
Down the Memory Hole: I can not be fully confident of the accuracy of data released by the HHS Dept. after 1/20/25.
...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.
Today:
Joel Mittleman @joeljm.bsky.social
The CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey has monitored the wellbeing of America’s high school students since 1991. Since 2015, it’s been a vital source of data on LGBQ youth. In 2023, it provided the first ever nationally representative sample of transgender teens. As of this morning, it’s gone.
Courtney Boen @courtneyboen.bsky.social
If you use public data products from the CDC or other US federal agencies Download them NOW [This is how I’m spending my Friday]
Mark Hayward @mdhayward.bsky.social
A colleague asked whether I thought the government would continue the public release of its data products. The data from CDC health monitoring surveys, decades of data on mortality, crime data, climate data of a variety of types that go back for years, etc. 1/
I told him that my students were downloading EVERYTHING that they could get their hands on. Some websites have already been shuttered, and if there are no data, then facts and evidence don’t exist. 2/
I suspect other research units are doing this. Maybe some national archives at other universities. While we might be overreacting, there are many reasons to assume that sensitive data could disappear. Especially data that could show a worsening of well-being in our population as we move forward.
Deborah Blum @deborahb.bsky.social
From a journalist friend: Just spreading the word. The CDC is purging data, so people should archive their favorite CDC datasets today, namely ones around race/ethnic diversity, LGBTQ, and reproductive health. Also health data involving climate. The youth risk behavior survey has already gone down.
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