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The NIH and CDC have incredibly detailed medical event data for infectious diseases, cancer diagnoses, and death certificates (which have a ton of data beyond "John Doe of New York City died of such and such on such and such date." It's how we have incredibly effective epidemiologists. Hospitals and non-profits use the data published by the government to make large decisions about equipment purchases, types of staff to hire, and community health programs to run.

All the government professionals I've met who work with that data are very careful with it. The guiding star is "Never let anyone use our data to find out something about any individual. Then, if you still can, publish someone useful."

>Meanwhile someone goes in there to try to break up this 30 year pile of technical debt and it's all lawsuits and handwaving theatrics to try to stop it.

They only had to get security clearances and follow the Constitution. Clearances are routine, so shouldn't be a problem (unless the person being cleared is a problem). The Republicans control all branches of government, and cost-cutting is very popular among all voters, so writing a better budget is possible. Things won't collapse if they work on it until before the midterm elections. It just seems like Trump is testing how far he can walk along the path to tyranny.



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