Knowing the baseline absenteeism helps to identify spikes. For example, if school absenteeism in the month of April is usually 6%, or if absenteeism at your major employer is usually 5%, and today you find 13% absenteeism, it's time to start asking questions.
Syndromic surveillance can give a health department a few extra hours, even a day or two, to mount a response that could result in limiting the consequences of an act of bioterrorism.
I think its pure unadulterated crap, but assuming it has any value ... why must individual identities be included in the data?
Spud, I can't argue against that logic.
In fact, I'm so convinced, I can now say I'm not just a fan of that, I think we should utilize that logic in helping the police put cameras in every home. After all, knowing the baseline of reality in average homes would help to identify spikes. We have a camera in every home and a computer program monitoring them all for what looks like electronics or some other potentially dangerous equipment, and the program catches something that's out of the ordinary, we can send out police to check it out. We could even allow some people to opt out of having the cameras in the bathroom and more private places if they allowed the police to fingerprint them and do a thorough investigation of them. After all, we don't want to get TOO crazy about giving the government details they really don't have to have, and they probably would have a harder time processing too much information.
Anyone arguing about a slippery slope would be silly. The government simply can't do enough to protect the country against terrorists. We should give the government whatever information it needs, no matter how tangentially related to the threat, to prevent terrorism that threatens the liberties we all hold so dear. And anyone who gets in the way of that expansion of government in the name of national security is probably a tinfoil-wearing loony anyway.
/blistering sarcasm