It was used correctly, you've just mistaken the point made about the CDC and how they view their mission
People understand that is their mission. Some find it scary.
Everyone has a different threshold at which they start to object to the CDC overriding people's freedom in the pursuit of disease control, but everyone will object at some point. For example, would you accept a Shanghai-style lockdown?
1: https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/pdf/Public-Health-Order_Gener...
They collect data and make recommendations.
The rest of the world is out here waiting for you, please wake up. We need everyone to make this work.
The CDC's mission is fundamentally the same as the mission of the Chinese disease control agency. The difference is how that mission is balanced against people's freedom to live their lives.
Please don't misunderstand; that doesn't mean that I oppose everything they do. Everything they do limits freedom, but sometimes that is necessary.
That's the eternal question. Not just for disease control, but for everything.
> What are the criteria for determining necessity?
In a democracy, ultimately: elections.
It's a scientific question as to whether a specific limit on freedom (of movement, of contact, etc.) is effective.
But it's a general approximation that greater freedoms mean higher mortality rates during lethal pandemics. And vice versus.
What level of mortality we're prepared to accept, and what level of limitations on freedom, is a political question in a democracy.
Their purpose is to increase the overall duration of healthy life we have, both individually and in aggregate. Limiting how you live your life is, again, orthogonal to that.
For example, how is their campaign to control mosquitos and eradicate malaria in the US limiting how you live your life?
The CDC's campaign to control mosquitos and eradicate malaria in the US probably does not limit how people are living their lives, but ordering an immediate nationwide halt on evictions of any renter for nonpayment of rent would be an example of applying limitations on people.
But no biggie.
> Supporters argue by presenting evidence that smoking is one of the major killers, and that therefore governments have a duty to reduce the death rate, both through limiting passive (second-hand) smoking and by providing fewer opportunities for people to smoke. Opponents say that this undermines individual freedom and personal responsibility, and worry that the state may be encouraged to remove more and more choice in the name of better population health overall.
The main thing that public health agencies do is promote healthy behaviors, like, for example, washing your hands. You could say that their primary goal is convincing you to “live your life” in a healthy way.