CDC's Social Media and Propaganda Deliberations
The CDC spends a tremendous amount of bureaucratic effort on the propaganda surrounding the release of a study in the MMWR, maybe even more than on the study itself. Find out the details of the deliberation that produced their social media and other propaganda.
Jay Bhattacharya
Professor Stanford School of Medicine. MD, PhD. Health policy: infectious diseases, covid, health economics. Scientific freedom.
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Well, I've gone through this FOIA archive, and I've reached a few conclusions:
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) June 7, 2023
1. The CDC spends a tremendous amount of bureaucratic effort on the propaganda surrounding the release of a study in the MMWR, maybe even more than on the study itself.
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2. The CDC does not want the public to see the details of the deliberation that produced their social media and other propaganda to advertise the MMWR study. Nearly all of that is redacted in the FOIA dump.
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) June 7, 2023
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3. When the CDC publishes a dodgy study in the MMWR, they get a lot of good methodological questions from the public at large and even from scientists at other agencies within the government about the study.
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) June 7, 2023
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4. The CDC ignores those the public's great questions -- making no substantive changes to the MMWR paper in response and no emailed responses back to people with methodological critiques, although...
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) June 7, 2023
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5. The CDC is incredibly heavy-handed with FOIA redactions, so it's possible that they responded, but they don't want the public to know what those responses were.
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) June 7, 2023
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6. Recently, the FL Department of Health was incredibly forthcoming in releasing intermediate drafts of working papers they drafted in response to sunshine law requests. The CDC is by comparison the very model of closed science.
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) June 7, 2023
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7. The press excoriated the FL department of health as a reward for its openness. Will the press scold the CDC for not being so open?
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) June 7, 2023
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8. If all these redactions by the CDC are really justifiable under the FOIA law, Congress should revamp the law to prevent an agency like the CDC from hiding so much from the public when it really has no business doing so.
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) June 7, 2023
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