zlacker

My impression working with a couple pubilic health agencies over the last half decade or so is that they are considered effectively "rogue" by the institutions they are accountable to, they operate as surveillance organizations with the same kind of secrecy culture as intelligence work, their management staff revolve in and out from international NGOs and univeristy admins, they treat privacy laws and policy with contempt, epidemiologists aren't doctors or biologists but "social scientists" with a particular critical bent, and they are very concerned about being held accountable for the policies they have influenced and executed because they know what they tried to do.

Mostly, they are good people wanting to do good work, but imo, public health agencies have become a para-intelligence services with explicitly political aims. There is a network of academics who see health and health information as a policy lever, and they have been out in force leveraging it through public health agencies during the pandemic.

I think they have discredited themselves over travel bans, vax passports, the objectively insane and poisonous rhetoric about the "hesitant," and arbitrary mandates with no accountability for those who enforced them. I don't think they can be trusted to be arbiters of science for people with a basic statistical reasoning skills and a belief in the existence of truth. The article articulates a more general and relevant sentiment, which is that the medical establishment has forfeited its public trust.

>>motoha+(OP)
> epidemiologists aren't doctors or biologists but "social scientists" with a particular critical bent

Many, if not most of the epidemiologists at the CDC hold M.Ds, and I can speak from personal experience that many have disdain for both political parties

For example there is a lot of frustration at how the media is making a giant scare about Monkeypox, when it is isolated to certain communities and can be prevented with the smallpox vaccine which we already have stockpiled.

> they operate as surveillance organizations with the same kind of secrecy culture as intelligence work

This is blatantly false - the CDC publishes almost everything it does. Mostly boring statistics, reporting, investigating claims

>public health agencies have become a para-intelligence services with explicitly political aims

Really?

>I think they have discredited themselves over travel bans, vax passports, the objectively insane and poisonous rhetoric about the "hesitant,"

You should visit the CDC's public museum in Atlanta - I think you will see all the good that vaccines and antibiotics have done for the world. Little else in medicine matters, comparatively, in terms of increased lifespans around the globe

>>gp+T1
They did say "my impression", so I'm assuming it's mostly backed up by nothing.

>>motoha+(OP)
> epidemiologists aren't doctors or biologists but "social scientists" with a particular critical bent

I have 12 years of postsecondary education in life science (medicine, health sciences, biochemistry and cancer/cell bio research at the graduate level) and this is completely, unequivocally false.

>>gp+T1
> You should visit the CDC's public museum in Atlanta - I think you will see all the good that vaccines and antibiotics have done for the world. Little else in medicine matters, comparatively, in terms of increased lifespans around the globe

I read parent as talking about things that happened during covid. Do the measures around covid deserve the same kind of reverence that things like penicilin (why are antibiotics relevant in this thread anyway?) or the first vaccines do?

>>epgui+K2
n=? Epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist are radically different disciplines, and epidemiology in public health is a social science research job, and categorically not necessarily a life sciences job. These people research equity.

Sorry you couldn't do more with your background, but epidemiologists in public health just need a master's, and often just an undergrad with some stats skills. Many even have PhD's, but in policy areas, and not life sciences. There was not a single microscope let alone a biolab in the municipal public health units who were responsible for pandemic response and policy advice. Hospitals? Sure. But the people who were making pandemic policy were absolutely not analyzing samples.

I would go so far as to say that epidemiologist has become like software engineers and architects, but for public policy. They are teaching epidemiology in cultural studies programs. The real thing is as rigorous as infectious disease research, but if we are being unequivocal - the policy people are hacks.

>>motoha+(OP)
Health institutions shouldn't be government controlled. The CDC should be totally free of all branches of government to make its recommendations. Both the Biden and Trump administration have pushed the CDC into some policy it wouldn't have had.

>>motoha+H4
> These people research equity.

This is the same partisan complaint no matter the topic. Everything is a nail since all you have is this one hammer.

>>beebma+Q5
well somebody gotta watch them, the notion that the government is unique in its "power corrupt" tendency is false. Just look at the supreme court or the FED.