https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/coronavirus-data-privacy.html?auth=login-google&campaign_id=9&emc=edit_NN_p_20200330&instance_id=17179&nl=morning-briefing®i_id=100621752§ion=topNews&segment_id=23277&te=1&user_id=b937bdc6f179e5af151e60538d2c35e2 Mr. Cortese says it is obvious to him that more information on the spread of the pandemic should be shared. “At the height of the information age in Silicon Valley we have stumbled and fallen flat in terms of our ability to use the tools and resources that we have to get necessary information out to the people we serve,” Mr. Cortese said. Frustration over the dearth of data also extends to epidemiologists trying to understand the dynamics of the spread of the virus. Joseph Lewnard, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, says researchers are hamstrung in the United States by the lack of specific data on testing and on the symptoms patients show. To make up for the lack of public data, researchers are scraping information on cases from news outlets and other media accounts, he said. They are mainly relying on data from South Korea, China and Italy to try to predict the spread of the virus. “We are right now learning and trying to project what is happening here in the United States almost entirely based on observations from these other countries,” Prof. Lewnard said. Moritz Kraemer, a scholar at Oxford University who is leading a team of researchers in mapping the global spread of the coronavirus, says China’s data “provided incredible detail,” including a patient’s age, sex, travel history and history of chronic disease, as well as where the case was reported, and the dates of the onset of symptoms, hospitalization and confirmation of infection. The United States, he said, “has been slow in collecting data in a systematic way.” Dr. C. Jason Wang, a researcher at Stanford University, who has studied how Taiwan handled the coronavirus outbreak, says some of the measures taken in Taiwan would most likely not be accepted in the United States given privacy concerns. The government, for example, merged the airport immigration database with the national medical database so that doctors could immediately see if a patient had traveled out of the country. But Dr. Wang says the proactive approach that Taiwan took to the virus, including aggressive tracing of cases, has helped keep the total number of confirmed infections — 283 on Saturday — much lower than experts initially expected. By comparison, the borough of Queens in New York City, with one-tenth the population of Taiwan, has 10,000 cases. Some of the information being released to the public in Taiwan and Singapore would most likely be uncontroversial in the United States, he said. Taiwanese authorities, for example, have pointed out linkages between anonymized cases, including family clusters, in an effort to warn the public how easily the virus is transmitted within households. [size=1.25]Prof. Caplan of the N.Y.U. School of Medicine says it is paradoxical that the United States is providing less precise information to its citizens on the outbreak than Singapore, which puts limits on the spread of information through internet controls.
“Here we expect to get information so we have our choices and we make our decisions,” he said. “Our notion is information is the oxygen for democracy. Wouldn’t we want to receive more information than them?”
But medical experts say that how much the public should know has become a critical question that will help determine how the United States confronts this outbreak and future ones. Residents are clamoring to see whether the virus has been detected in their neighborhoods so they can take more steps to avoid any contact. American researchers are starved for data, unlike their colleagues in other countries who are harnessing rivers of information from their more centralized medical systems. And local politicians complain that they cannot provide basic information on the spread of the virus to their constituents.
Mr. Cortese says it is obvious to him that more information on the spread of the pandemic should be shared.
“At the height of the information age in Silicon Valley we have stumbled and fallen flat in terms of our ability to use the tools and resources that we have to get necessary information out to the people we serve,” Mr. Cortese said. Frustration over the dearth of data also extends to epidemiologists trying to understand the dynamics of the spread of the virus.
Joseph Lewnard, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, says researchers are hamstrung in the United States by the lack of specific data on testing and on the symptoms patients show.
To make up for the lack of public data, researchers are scraping information on cases from news outlets and other media accounts, he said. They are mainly relying on data from South Korea, China and Italy to try to predict the spread of the virus.
“We are right now learning and trying to project what is happening here in the United States almost entirely based on observations from these other countries,” Prof. Lewnard said.
Moritz Kraemer, a scholar at Oxford University who is leading a team of researchers in mapping the global spread of the coronavirus, says China’s data “provided incredible detail,” including a patient’s age, sex, travel history and history of chronic disease, as well as where the case was reported, and the dates of the onset of symptoms, hospitalization and confirmation of infection.
The United States, he said, “has been slow in collecting data in a systematic way.”
Dr. C. Jason Wang, a researcher at Stanford University, who has studied how Taiwan handled the coronavirus outbreak, says some of the measures taken in Taiwan would most likely not be accepted in the United States given privacy concerns. The government, for example, merged the airport immigration database with the national medical database so that doctors could immediately see if a patient had traveled out of the country. But Dr. Wang says the proactive approach that Taiwan took to the virus, including aggressive tracing of cases, has helped keep the total number of confirmed infections — 283 on Saturday — much lower than experts initially expected. By comparison, the borough of Queens in New York City, with one-tenth the population of Taiwan, has 10,000 cases. Some of the information being released to the public in Taiwan and Singapore would most likely be uncontroversial in the United States, he said. Taiwanese authorities, for example, have pointed out linkages between anonymized cases, including family clusters, in an effort to warn the public how easily the virus is transmitted within households. [size=1.25]Prof. Caplan of the N.Y.U. School of Medicine says it is paradoxical that the United States is providing less precise information to its citizens on the outbreak than Singapore, which puts limits on the spread of information through internet controls.
“Here we expect to get information so we have our choices and we make our decisions,” he said. “Our notion is information is the oxygen for democracy. Wouldn’t we want to receive more information than them?”
这不是政府信息不透明，是涉及到病人隐私的信息。你第一次去某个诊所，都会签很多文件，其中不少是关于保护你的隐私的，你指定的人才有权获得你的治疗信息。病人隐私保护就非常不利于瘟疫时收集数据，对病毒做准确的反应。这就是文中提到的，台湾的方法美国不能用，因为涉及到病人隐私保护。
是啊。因为第一shithole country不透露（甚至篡改）的是material facts而不是细节，初衷不是为了保护隐私而是为了愚民，虽然前期否定病情然后一直篡改数字可是对发布具体什么人得病可是一点不手软。第二，美国即使不透露也说的清清楚楚什么不透露，没有得到这些信息的人也知道这些信息存在但没有被告知自己，可以根据自己的判断可可以承担风险来做自己的决定。谢谢你指出，这两件事的确天差地别，谢谢你给我们这个机会来把这些speak out。
你这次说得很对。本来不重视隐私的国家，没有透露信息，那确实是信息不透明。本来就很重视隐私的国家，那确实是跟保护病人隐私有关。
我们需要继续保持作为美国人的高贵感，虽然吃了那么多年shithole国的食品，净化一下，可能到死之前会成为100%纯正的美国人的。。。