The CDC Awards $260 Million Contract For Disease Surveillance

If you’re tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Taking a significant stride towards the surveillance state, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) disclosed its plans to back a colossal health endeavor with a hefty sum of over $260 million. The objective is an unprecedented aggregation of individual and community data leading to a predictive model. However, some critics contend that the initiative entails a serious threat of potential misuse. The colossal investment targets at setting up a wide-ranging “public-private” network. Harnessing the prowess of artificial intelligence (AI), the sophisticated overlay of technology will assimilate unprecedented amounts of data and engender algorithms that anticipate disease outbreaks. These intricate and futuristic models with predictive abilities could then guide local, state, and national cohorts in establishing suitable “control measures” for disease outbreaks. The plan unveiled last week reports about an estimated funding of $262.5 million spread over five years that aims at creating 13 forecasting and analytics centers for infectious diseases across the U.S. This network will channelize the coordinated effort to predict and control disease outbreaks. Several universities involved in COVID-19 modeling and response activities would receive around $20 million each out of this investment. These include the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, that arranged the simulation Event 201, and the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Public Health, known for its gain-of-function research led by Ralph Baric. Two private entities – Kaiser Permanente Southern California and a “disaster preparedness…The CDC Awards $260 Million Contract For Disease Surveillance