[lekanwang]

I think you are perhaps conflating the public health definition of surveillance with what HN usually thinks of as "surveillance." (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health_surveillance)

In the US, if you get certain reportable illnesses (COVID-19, E.coli infection, meningitis, etc), it's reported to the county/state health department, and via various channels, ends up anonymized with the CDC. Likewise, there are syndromic and lab-based public health surveillance networks that will monitor flu-like symptoms (ILINet) and will sequence samples (PulseNet) to help track cases in the US. Moreover, there's even more public health surveillance when it comes to drug safety -- if you tell your physician that you got any of a number of side effects from a drug you're taking, that is reportable to the FDA (FAERS). What Gottlieb et al are asking for is merely extending the best practices we have from flu, foodborne, and other diseases to COVID-19, in a way that has proven extremely effective, and also preserving privacy and liberty.

I think many of us here are rightfully concerned about an increasing surveillance state, but the term "surveillance" here is an unfortunate term collision, and we should resist the knee-jerk reaction in this case.

[wstuartcl]

I think in this specific case both terms are being used in merged meanings. They are talking about using a national surveillance (as in surveillance state) data collection to help perform public heath surveillance.

What is being proposed from a public health surveillance perspective is reliant on a multifold and invasive surveillance state data collection and mining perspective.

[mirimir]

Back in the day, before electronic communications, public health surveillance was just the best surveillance possible. So I believe that it's a largely artificial distinction.

Even so, I agree that there are ways to do public health surveillance where the raw data is buried well enough that users only see actionable information, and only aggregate data is released.