This past Monday, the COVID Tracking Project announced that it will soon close its operations. The Project will release its final update on March 7; then, after two more months of documentation, analysis, and archival work, it will close out in May.
“We didn’t come to this decision easily, but we have believed from the very beginning of the project that the work of compiling, publishing, and analyzing COVID-19 data for the US properly belongs to federal public health agencies,” the Project leads explain in a Tweet thread announcing the decision. “The CDC and HHS are now publishing data that is much more comparable to the figures we have been compiling from states since last spring.”
I recommend reading Erin Kissane and Alexis Madrigal’s article on the CTP website, which explains the decision more fully. They also note specific “good signs” of the federal government’s commitment to data transparency—all of which I’ve also covered in the CDD.
I’ve been volunteering for the COVID Tracking Project since early April 2020, and I have a lot of feelings about what that experience has meant to me. I’ll probably write a longer post about it on March 7 (which is, coincidentally enough, a Sunday). But for now, I’d like to say an enormous thank you to the staffers and volunteers who have worked to keep the Project going. It’s been an honor to contribute to this collective public service with all of you.