Florida Government Decides To Fire Its Data Chief Rather Than Be Honest About Its COVID Numbers

from the 'we've-found-a-cure-that's-worse-than-the-disease!' dept

We were promised no more deaths by May 15th, but that hasn't happened. With no one 100% sure what the best options are going forward, this is how states are handling the task of (lol) cautiously "reopening." A long press conference held by the Trump administration said states could reopen if they hit a number of checkpoints, including a certain amount of testing and a plateau/drop in positive cases.

A number of states appear to have stopped listening after the word "reopen." Whether or not they've hit the CDC's checkpoints does not appear to matter. A collective shrug about deaths and infections was issued by a number of governors, some of whom are (justifiably) tired of gun-toting residents showing up at the state house to protest their lack of access to haircuts and house parties.

When the data doesn't match the narrative, there's only one thing to do: fuck up the data. And the person who's compiling it. Florida has lots of sunny beaches that are currently too empty to satisfy sun junkies who wish to take advantage of the lengthy shorelines contained in America's Penis. COVID stats weren't exactly lending themselves to the "it's fine" narrative the governor wanted to push. So, the state government did some pushing of its own.

Late last Friday, the architect and manager of Florida's COVID-19 dashboard — praised by White House officials for its accessibility — announced that she had been removed from her post, causing outcry from independent researchers now worried about government censorship.

[...]

Citing "reasons beyond my division’s control," Jones said her office is no longer managing the dashboard, is no longer involved in publication, fixing errors or answering questions "in any shape or form."

She warned that she does not know what the new team's intentions are for data access, including "what data they are now restricting."

The means of impartial COVID stat reporting have been seized. Power to the (powerful) people! The dashboard that used to provide an easy-to-understand breakdown of the state's infection and death rates is being replaced with something that aligns more closely with the aura of sunny healthiness the state government wants to project. Dance through the droplets or whatever. Want to check the state's new math? Well, you can fuck right off, apparently.

When [researchers] tried requesting the previously available underlying data, DOH officials said that because the data are "provisional" no such requests would be considered until May 2021.

Yet the state regularly publishes provisional data, including for infectious diseases such as influenza.

Here's the governor's literally unbelievable defense of his indefensible actions: when someone asks for time off, they're clearly asking to be fired and for their work to be destroyed.

When first asked about Jones' dismissal, [Governor Ron] DeSantis on Monday called it a "nonissue." He said he understood from an email she sent her supervisor that "she was tired and needed a break."

He then went on to claim -- after being given a few days to compose his thoughts -- that this firing was due to "repeated insubordination" rather than the researcher just being tired. "Insuboridination" apparently means publishing actual COVID stats rather than manipulated data that provides post hoc justification for the state government's reopening plans.

The state is now open. Whether or not that's good for residents and visitors remains to be seen. The state has taken control of a narrative. Since the real numbers aren't aligned with the state's official OPEN FOR BUSINESS pitch, the state apparently felt its only option was to fire the person compiling the data.

Now, residents and visitors will have only the state-approved numbers to rely on. Let's hope they don't. If this turns into another pandemic nightmare that the state could have avoided by being honest, citizens are going to start wondering why government entities are immunized against manslaughter charges. And those who demanded at gunpoint that the government take the brakes off the state economy are welcome to discover firsthand why an overabundance of caution is preferable to caution that's been carried off by the wind.

This is a state that has decided to lie to everyone, starting with itself. Govern yourself accordingly.

Filed Under: cdc, covid-19, data, florida, guidelines, rebekah jones, reopening, ron desantis, transparency

That Coronavirus Image Is Public Domain, But That Won't Stop Getty From Trying To Sell You A $500 License To Use It

from the seriously,-guys? dept

Late last week, we wrote a nice story about how the infamous image of the coronavirus that is causing COVID-19 is in the public domain, since it's a work of the US federal government. That's part of the reason why it's everywhere these days:

But, as one of our commenters pointed out, that won't stop Getty Images from trying to sell you a license to the image (even complete with the CDC logo on it, which takes real balls by Getty) for an astounding $500.

I mean, the text with the image even directly says that it was created at the CDC. You'd think some worker bee at Getty might recognize that this makes it public domain.

Getty has a bit of a history of this, and was even sued by a photographer for trying to license images that she had put into the public domain. To be clear, Getty is not violating any law here. Something that's in the public domain is free for use in any manner, meaning that you certainly could try to sell it, though it does seem a bit sleazy and dishonest, especially at a time when news about the coronavirus is so important.

What would be problematic, of course, is if Getty actually threatened, sent DMCA takedowns, or sued over anyone using the image. Because that would be bullshit. It's a little unclear exactly how Getty got this image. It's listed as part of the "Smith Collection/Gado." However, it's hard to find out what exactly that means. There is a company called Gado Images, which mixes a bunch of buzzwords about AI with stuff about archiving photographs. I'm not sure I understand what one has to do with the other. It says it's using AI for "digitizing, capturing and sharing the world's visual history." And licensing it, perhaps. But if the images are not Gado's to share, then that raises a whole bunch of other questions.

Either way, the whole thing is pretty sleazy, and Getty should either (a) take it down, or (b) admit that it is public domain and make it freely available.

Filed Under: cdc, copyright, coronavirus, licensing, public domain
Companies: gado images, getty images

How The Public Domain Coronavirus 'Beauty Shot' You Now See Everywhere Came To Be

from the public-domain-ftw dept

By now, you've probably seen this image of the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 a million times:

It's freaking everywhere. And it's in the public domain. That's because it was created by employees at the CDC, and as a work of the US government it is exempt from copyright laws, meaning anyone can use it. Which is probably why everyone uses it. One of the many reasons why a public domain is so useful.

The NY Times has a nice story about how the image came to be that's well worth reading.

On Jan. 21, the day after the C.D.C. activated its emergency operations center for the new coronavirus, Ms. Eckert and her colleague Dan Higgins were asked to create “an identity” for the virus. “Something to grab the public’s attention,” she said. Ms. Eckert expected that whatever they came up with might appear on a few cable news programs, as their creations had in the past.

Instead, as the pandemic spread and intensified, their rendering’s reach did, too. “It started popping up around the world,” she said.

The story goes into a fair bit of detail about how it was created and also some of the design choices that Alissa Eckert and Dan Higgns made to make that design so memorable.

They chose a stony texture, wanting it to seem like “something that you could actually touch,” Ms. Eckert said. Other details — like the level of realism and the lighting, which has the spikes cast long shadows — were calibrated to “help display the gravity of the situation and to draw attention,” she said.

After reading about that, I discovered that there were a variety of other images of this particular coronavirus used around the globe. Here's just a few (there are so many more...):

Indeed, this is the image that the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has been using:

Not quite as nice as the CDC's... and thanks to more murky copyright laws in the EU, not as clear if it's in the public domain, so wasn't nearly as likely to catch on and become the symbol we all associate with COVID-19.

Filed Under: cdc, copyright, covid-19, illustration, public domain

How Do You Moderate COVID-19 Misinformation When It's Coming From Official Sources?

from the content-moderation-at-scale-is-impossible dept

Continuing our never-ending series of posts about the impossibility of content moderation at scale, let's take a look at just how impossible it is to handle misinformation in the age of COVID-19. Ben Thompson over at Stratechery has a truly wonderful post highlighting this problem with regards to Twitter's disinformation policies, and how things break down when the "misinformation" is coming form official sources. We noted this, to some extent, the other day when we called out Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo for saying that he was seeking to have anyone who posted false information online about COVID-19 prosecuted. During the press conference, he said to only listen to "your elected officials, or to your appointed officials." But, as we noted, our elected officials and their appointees aren't always right.

As Thompson points out, Twitter also took the seemingly reasonable position that in an effort to stop (widespread) COVID-19 misinformation, it would start taking down content that disagreed with official government statements:

Broadening our definition of harm to address content that goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information. Rather than reports, we will enforce this in close coordination with trusted partners, including public health authorities and governments, and continue to use and consult with information from those sources when reviewing content.

But... what if that official information was bad? Ben points out that the World Health Organization (WHO), the US CDC, and the US Surgeon General all provided bad information to the public regarding the wearing of masks to help slow the spread of COVID-19.

But, as Zeynep Tufecki wrote in an excellent NY Times article a few weeks ago, however well-intentioned these claims were, they not only were wrong, but they backfired. The message was spread this way, in part, to try to stop the hoarding of masks that were absolutely necessary for medical professionals. The supply of these were limited and because our government seemed unwilling to properly prepare for a pandemic, we were caught short. But telling people that the masks don't work was wrong and a mistake.

It is of course true that masks don’t work perfectly, that they don’t replace hand-washing and social distancing, and that they work better if they fit properly. And of course, surgical masks (the disposable type that surgeons wear) don’t filter out small viral particles the way medical-grade respirator masks rated N95 and above do. However, even surgical masks protect a bit more than not wearing masks at all. We know from flu research that mask-wearing can help decrease transmission rates along with frequent hand-washing and social-distancing. Now that we are facing a respirator mask shortage, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that surgical masks are “an acceptable alternative” for health care workers — again, obviously because some protection, even if imperfect, is better than none. In the face of this, publicly presenting an absolute answer — “You don’t need them” — for something that requires a qualified response just makes people trust authorities even less.

Fourth, the W.H.O. and the C.D.C. told the public to wear masks if they were sick. However, there is increasing evidence of asymptomatic transmission, especially through younger people who have milder cases and don’t know they are sick but are still infectious. Since the W.H.O. and the C.D.C. do say that masks lessen the chances that infected people will infect others, then everyone should use masks. If the public is told that only the sick people are to wear masks, then those who do wear them will be stigmatized and people may well avoid wearing them if it screams “I’m sick.” Further, it’s very difficult to be tested for Covid-19 in the United States. How are people supposed to know for sure when to mask up?

Indeed, there is very strong scientific evidence that masks -- even homemade ones -- do quite a lot to help slow the spread of COVID-19 -- mostly in protecting non-infected wearers and protecting them from getting sick. In fact, the evidence seems to suggest that masks warn by those who are already sick from COVID-19 don't actually help that much. This is from a 2008 study of the impact of masks on respiratory infections:

So, now, how do you deal with this as a content moderator? Here, the government is clearly saying that you shouldn't wear masks unless you are symptomatic. But actual evidence suggests that's a bad idea, and that the government actually pushed out misinformation in an attempt to cover up its own failure to have a proper supply of masks ready to go -- and then to prevent hoarding of what was out there. While the strategy to prevent hoarding may be well-intentioned, the fact that the health claims were misleading and potentially harmful is a concern.

So, should Twitter be blocking posts telling people to buy or wear masks? Or is that "harmful"? It's difficult to say.

There are, indeed, similar challenges around potential treatments for COVID-19. For example, over the past few weeks there has been tremendous controversy about a variation of chloroquine, which is mostly known as an anti-malarial drug that is useful in treating conditions like lupus. There have been a few small studies that have suggested that chloraquine, combined with some other drugs, might help. Maybe. But there are lots of questions about those studies, and there's little solid evidence to back it up. Yet, it might actually help. After the President spoke about chloraquine in a manner that was not yet supported by science, many of his supporters have been flooding the internet and airwaves with exaggerated claims about it and its possible effectiveness. Again, what's important here is that it might be effective, and the FDA has now approved it for emergency use to treat COVID-19 as more tests are ongoing.

But how do you moderate tweets about it? How do you distinguish accurate discussions of what the studies currently say with those pushing it as a miracle drug? I've seen some serious discussions analyzing the effectiveness of chloraquine that appear promising -- but all of the tests so far are small and limited, and it would be a mistake to read too much into them. But how do you then hand that off to a moderator and get them to understand the difference between careful, thoughtful, nuanced discussions about it... and whatever nonsense the President himself is spewing? Again, the President is an "authoritative source" in most contexts...

Even more complex: I'm guessing that if more evidence does eventually come out that chloraquine is effective (again, I'm making no statement one way or the other as to whether or not that will happen as I honestly have no idea), you can bet that those who had their nonsense tweets about it "being proven 100% effective" (as I've seen on Twitter a few times) will insist that Twitter was "censoring the truth" in some effort to probably "undermine the President" or some such nonsense. But, of course, that's not accurate at all. Determining what is and what is not "misinformation" in the midst of a pandemic when no one really knows fully what's good information and what is not puts content moderators in an impossible position.

When the WHO, the CDC, the Surgeon General and the President might all be pushing misleading information, how are we expecting social media content moderators to magically get it all right?

Filed Under: cdc, chloroquine, content moderation, content moderation at scale, covid-19, face masks, masnick's impossibility theorem, misinformation, surgeon general, who

DailyDirt: Keeping Mosquitoes Away...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The Zika virus has highlighted how much some of us hate mosquitoes. These biting insects aren't just annoying. They also spread horrible diseases. Previously, we've mentioned some plans for destroying all mosquitoes, but that's probably not the most environmentally-friendly way to go about preventing the spread of mosquito-borne infections. Also, some people seem to attract more bites than others, but how well do mosquito repellents actually work, anyway?

• DEET (aka N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide) is the standard mosquito repellent, but there are a few other active ingredients that work about as well (or better in some cases). Products with picaridin and IR 3535 work about as well as DEET, and the oil of lemon eucalyptus (PMD) is a natural insect repellent that the CDC recommends. [url]
• Another natural mosquito repellent comes from sweetgrass, a plant native to northern North America. Sweetgrass has been tested to work about as well as DEET for at least a few minutes, and researchers are trying to isolate the active ingredients that may keep pesky insects away. [url]
• The use of DDT is controversial for preventing the spread of the Zika virus. The Zika virus doesn't kill adult humans, so the use of DDT and its effect on human health needs to be considered carefully before spraying it in an untargeted fashion. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: cdc, ddt, deet, disease, health, ir 3535, mosquitoes, picaridin, pmd, sweetgrass, zika virus

DailyDirt: Stop! Don't Eat That...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Eating healthier is a common new year's resolution, and it might be good to start simple and stop consuming one unhealthy snack item. However, a completely healthy diet is a totally different task. There are countless fad diets that don't really work or aren't as healthy as they're supposed to be. On top of all that, we should also keep an eye out for the outbreaks of foodborne illnesses and food safety recommendations. Maybe people who drink all their calories aren't totally crazy....

• Fish and other aquatic animals caught from the Passaic River in New Jersey should NOT be eaten -- because toxic waste has been dumped into that waterway for decades and proposed cleanup projects would cost well over a billion dollars (and have not yet started). The Lower Passaic River Study Area Cooperating Parties Group (aka the Lower Passaic CPG is offering a "fish exchange" to swap frozen tilapia for any fish caught from the Passaic. Yum. Three-eyed fish [url]
• California, Oregon and Washington produce the most Dungeness crab in the US, but right now, the ~$60 million industry isn't doing so well. Domoic acid is being measured in marine wildlife along the West coast, caused by a bloom of algae in the Pacific, and levels are decreasing. With justified caution, though, crab catchers are staying away from their usual crop until levels are deemed safe, saying "We are not like the beef industry. We don't do recalls." [url]
• The Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration (a joint effort for the CDC, USDA and Food Safety Inspection Service) published a report on foodborne illness, covering hundreds of outbreaks between 1998 and 2012. If you don't eat beef or any vegetables grown in rows, what's left to eat? [url]

If you've been thinking about learning how to code, take a look at our Daily Deals for a collection of online courses to help you program and/or master some professional skills.

Filed Under: cdc, diet, domoic acid, dungeness crab, food, food safety, foodborne illness, fsis, health, ifsac, lower passaic river study area cooperating parties group, poison, pollution, seafood, soylent, superfund site, toxic, usda

DailyDirt: Dropping Off Kids At The Pool...?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The US has hundreds of thousands of swimming pools -- roughly 309,000 public pools and 10.4 million residential pools. It's a nice way to cool down on a hot summer day, but it's also kinda gross if you think about sharing germs with all the people swimming in the pool. At least there's no danger of getting attacked by sharks in a pool, but if you're paranoid about pool safety, check out a few of these links. (And perhaps try to stick with pools that use salt water chlorination.)

• Nearly one in five American adults have admitted to peeing in a swimming pool. Michael Phelps and other Olympians might not think it's a big deal, but urine and chlorine react to form some nasty toxic vapors (nitrogen trichloramine and cyanogen chloride) which can cause acute and chronic health problems for avid swimmers. [url]
• Cryptosporidium (aka Crypto) isn't killed by chlorine -- so don't drink pool water! This unpleasant germ can live for days in chlorinated water and cause diarrhea when ingested. Avoid kiddie pools, and also, just don't go swimming if you're already ill with diarrhea. Maybe someday public swimming pools will irradiate or add ozone to treat the water, but the CDC found that 1 in 8 swimming pools had public health violations in 2008 -- so maybe just stay out of the water. [url]
• If you've ever experienced red, stinging eyes after swimming, it wasn't too much chlorine in the pool -- it was a combination of urine and chlorine. So if you see a lot of people emerging from a pool with red eyes, just know that the CDC says it comes from chlorine in the pool water mixing with "pee, poop, sweat, and dirt from swimmers' bodies." [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: cdc, chlorinated water, cryptosporidium, cyanogen chloride, disease, health, pool, swimming, trichloramine

DailyDirt: Raw Eggs Are Healthy..?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Maybe you like Caesar salads or the supposed health benefits of drinking raw eggs (a la Rocky Balboa), and you already know about the risks of Salmonella. Well, there's some good news for you: you might be able to get some pasteurized eggs that are virtually indistinguishable from conventional raw eggs. While previous pasteurization methods made eggs a bit thicker in texture, food scientists have been working on fixing that. Here are just a few links on eating raw eggs, if that's your thing.

• About one out of every 20,000 chicken eggs commercially produced in the US is at risk for spreading Salmonella. Fortunately, a new radio-frequency (RF) heating technique could be used to pasteurize eggs more quickly without affecting the taste or texture. [url]
• Not surprisingly, the CDC recommends that eggs be kept refrigerated and cooked fully before eating. Erring on the side of caution, no one should eat raw or undercooked eggs -- unless the eggs have been gone through a pasteurization process. [url]
• If you love raw eggs, you can test your luck and immune system -- and hope that egg industry standards for cleaning eggs have sufficiently improved to reduce the risks of contracting Salmonella. Plenty of people consume raw eggs and are fine, but thousands of Americans are sickened from egg-borne Salmonella each year. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: cdc, eggs, food, health, pasteurization, raw, salmonella

Obama Tasks CDC With Study Of Video Games And 'Violent Media'

from the not-the-worst-idea-I've-ever-heard,-but-certainly-not-the-best-either dept

In the middle of a much larger speech introducing his "Gun Violence Reduction Executive Actions," Obama threw in a little something for the videogame crowd:

Congress should fund research into the effects that violent video games have on young minds.

While it may seem like a shot across the bow of videogames to score some cheap political points, what Obama actually has in mind is a bit more subtle. (Make no mistake, though: this subject wouldn't have been broached if not for the Newtown shooting.)

Conduct research on the causes and prevention of gun violence, including links between video games, media images, and violence: The President is issuing a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control and scientific agencies to conduct research into the causes and prevention of gun violence. It is based on legal analysis that concludes such research is not prohibited by any appropriations language. The CDC will start immediately by assessing existing strategies for preventing gun violence and identifying the most pressing research questions, with the greatest potential public health impact. And the Administration is calling on Congress to provide $10 million for the CDC to conduct further research, including investigating the relationship between video games, media images, and violence.

Two things worth noting in this paragraph:

The "Presidential Memorandum" lifts a moratorium on this sort of research by the CDC, something that has been in place for over 15 years. Kyle Orland at Ars Technica explains:

[T]he federal Centers for Disease Control have been prohibited from funding studies that "advocate or promote gun control" since 1996, when Congress cut the $2.6 million the organization had been using to fund gun injury research through its Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Further moves since then have prevented the CDC from even receiving federal crime data for gun research, and prohibited the National Institute of Health from doing gun violence research as well.

And why was this research prohibited? Depending on who you ask, it's either because the NRA didn't like guns being tied to injuries and death (Orland calls it a "chilling effect" brought on by Arthur Kellerman's study) or the study itself was severely flawed and skewed to fit the pre-existing bias of the director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, which operated under the CDC's direction.

Secondly, the wording directs the CDC to focus on areas with the "greatest potential public health impact." The administration may namecheck current hot buttons like videogames and violent media, but as it's worded, the CDC has no instruction to start its work by assessing these areas. As Orland states, this one sentence is likely nothing more than a brief concession to the current political climate:

Making a brief mention of video game studies as a part of a $10 million funding request is a good way to pay lip service to these political concerns on both the left and the right without really making it a priority. If studying video game and media violence were actually a major focus of the president's gun control agenda, it would have a much more prominent place in both his remarks and his official funding requests. Instead, the real money the president is asking from Congress will go to more important things: $20 million for the National Violent Death Reporting System, $14 million for police and security training, $150 million for in-school mental health counselors, $30 million to develop school emergency management plans, and so on.

Overall, putting the CDC in charge is probably (in the parlance of government works) the "least worst" way to handle this. The CDC will have access to more mental health-related data than other existing entities, a factor that definitely needs to be considered. (But this factor also presents its own problems: it's entirely too easy to write off mass murderers as mentally defective. The idea of taking someone's life, much less multiple lives, is so repulsive to "normal" human beings that the kneejerk reaction is to blame it on mental illness. It's safe to say that normal people would never commit mass murder, but it's way too simplistic to assume that every perpetrator is mentally defective.) It should also have access to demographic and other environmental factors, which should give it a more rounded picture than the limited sample sizes and variables of smaller studies and surveys.

Another factor that makes the CDC a preferable choice is the fact that it's an existing agency. Turning this task over to a special committee would result in a room filled to capacity with appointees and their predispositions. (The argument can also be made that the CDC carries its own predispositions, but expecting a government directive, especially an executive order, to conjure up a completely impartial study is to show a level of faith the government simply doesn't deserve.)

Now, the downside.

Any conclusions the CDC comes to will be immediately suspect. No matter what it finds, the conclusions will be disputed. The presence or absence of a link between violent media and gun violence will only exacerbate the divide between both sides of the debate. To date, no link has been conclusively proven. This study's outcome will likely be more of the same. It's nearly impossible isolate people and "violent media" from the other factors that affect the equation. The CDC should be able to incorporate its existing knowledge in regards to risk factors, but the answers it comes up with will fail to satisfy everyone. Ultimately, it will change nothing, but it will have the power to inform government policy going forward and, depending on the political climate, it's likely that gossamer-thin correlation will be enough to justify legislation.

Then there's the tangled issue of gun control policy, something the CDC has waded into in the past. Again, any conclusions drawn will be contrasted against its history with the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and its biased approach to the study of gun violence. (Particularly troublesome is a 1987 CDC report, in which the director of the NCIPC thought enough evidence existed to "confiscate all firearms from the general population" in order to prevent 8,600 homicides a year.) The administration has done a disservice to both groups (video game fans, gun owners) by making this study inseparable from a larger gun control proposal.

The best case scenario, like so much in government, is that nothing happens. The studies are proposed, the climate shifts and, like so much before it, it's discarded in favor of What's Ailing the Nation Now. While it would be interesting to see the CDC perform an in-depth study (especially if the data collected is made available to the public), the chance of a negative outcome (in terms of misguided legislation, etc.) is way too high.

On the whole, though, it is refreshing to see videogames treated as part of the media, rather than a wholly distinct scapegoat capable of destroying society on its own. Unfortunately, even with its rather brief appearance in the administration's set of proposals, it appears the government still wants to control media (as opposed to "the media") and this single paragraph could help rationalize unconstitutional measures.

Filed Under: cdc, media, obama, studies, video games, violence