The Epoch Times is reporting that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) paid mad stacks to see if We the People were locking down like obedient hoi polloi during the pandemic.
The CDC initially received the info for free from two companies, SafeGraph and Cuebiq. That data was used to create two studies. The first study involved tracking people in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and New Orleans. It focused on which lockdown rules resulted in people bending their knees and staying home. The study found:
In all four metropolitan areas, the percentage of residents leaving home declined as the number of policies issued increased (Figure); in all four localities the percentage leaving home was close to 80% on February 26, and by April 1 the percentage leaving home was 42% in New York City, 47% in San Francisco, 52% in Seattle, and 61% in New Orleans. Overall, across the four areas, emergency declarations (the first policies issued) did not result in a sustained change in mobility; however, declines in mobility occurred after implementation of combinations of policies (such as limits on gatherings or school closures) and after the White House 15 Days to Slow the Spread guidelines were implemented. There were additional declines in mobility following stay-at-home orders in all four locations.
The second study focused on the effects of harsher lockdown rules.
A separate group also used the free info to determine how the lockdown affected people from different income levels. (Spoiler alert: rich people locked down more than poor people.)
FACT-O-RAMA! Everyone knew by May 2020 that 66% of New York’s COVID hospitalizations were people who had been locked down, and another 18% were from nursing homes. Less than 1% came from prison — the ultimate lockdown situation — but that didn’t keep then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo from releasing convicts onto the public to help facilitate a brutal, three-years-and-counting crime tsunami.
The CDC claimed the tracking information would provide them “with the necessary data to continue critical emergency response functions related to evaluating the impact of visits to key points of interest, stay-at-home orders, closures, re-openings and other public health communications related to mask mandate, and other merging research areas on community transmission of SARS-CoV-2.”
The CDC further stated the data would be used to:
- “Assess home-by-hour behaviors (i.e. curfew analysis) by exploring the percentage of mobile devices at home during a specific period of time.”
- “Provide a comprehensive picture of movement/travel of persons during the COVID-19 pandemic to better understand mandatory stay-at-home orders, business closure, school re-openings, and other non-pharmaceutical interventions in states and cities.”
- Monitor what effects the mandated closures of bars and restaurants had on the number of COVID infections in a region.
The CDC then purchased additional phone-tracking data — twice — once for $208,000 and another time for $420,000. This data involved tracking the movements of 55 million Americans
But the CDC didn’t issue any studies involving this data, so why did they buy it? The Epoch Times reached out to the CDC for an answer, and they got one — sort of — via email from spokesman Scott Pauley:
For COVID-19, the insights derived from these data provide essential information on the impact and effectiveness of policies and COVID-19 mitigation measures (e.g., jurisdictional stay-at-home orders and business closures) that had profound effects on communities.
These data provide important insights to protect public health and have been used to understand population-level impacts of COVID-19 policies and can shed important light on other pressing public health problems, like natural disaster response, and toxic environmental exposures. CDC does not and could not use these data for monitoring compliance with COVID-19 orders or individual tracking.
Pauley continued by stating the “data CDC received were aggregated and anonymous, had extensive privacy protections, and could not be used to identify individuals. They cannot be tied to an individual and have multiple layers of privacy protections to prevent misuse or re-identification.”
Oh, really? Roll the tape:
2000 MULES-O-RAMA! Despite what CDC spokesman Pauley stated about privacy, researchers claim the data can be “deanonymized,” meaning the CDC can tell where an individual is by tracking their phones.
The top Republican on the Senate Subcommittee on Investigation, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, wanted to know why the CDC needed to know where we went during the lockdown. He sent a letter to the CDC director Rochelle Walensky that included the following:
It remains unclear why the CDC tracked millions of Americans during the pandemic and whether it continues to do so. In response to COVID-19, the CDC should have been prioritizing the development of treatments, effective testing, and vaccine safety rather than tracking Americans’ daily lives.
Wallensky responded with a letter that included:
In accordance with the agency’s commitment to responsible stewardship of date, over the last two years, CDC has used aggregated and anonymous population mobility data, derived from mobile devices, for public health research on COVID-19 and other public health issues of importance. These data are not tied to an individual and have multiple layers of privacy protections to help ensure they cannot be misused or identified. These protections are crucial for our agency, and the mobility data CDC uses meet these standards for aggregation and anonymity.
The important thing here is this: the federal government used COVID as a reason to steal our liberties, close our businesses, and force us to lockdown at home. The feds then bought phone-tracking data to spy on We the People to see how well we were complying with their tyranny. If you went to 7/11 for a non-essential Slim Jim, the feds could find out. That’s disturbing, and it’s none of their business.
They could still be tracking us now; we just don’t know. This is a next-level privacy invasion. The federal government obtained data that enables it to track 55 million Americans without a warrant.
We also know Gropey Joe Biden is considering handing off the protocol for the “next pandemic” to the commie-dominated World Health Organization, which would include allowing the Chinese pinkos to surveil us. Now we have an idea as to how they will do it.
Wake up, it’s 1984.
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