A couple of weeks ago, I received a reader question from a friend of mine who recently got engaged! He and his fiancée are planning a wedding in summer 2023, and he asked me: “How likely do you think it is that (1) the COVID-19 pandemic remains a serious danger to our safety in the summer of 2023 and (2) the government still has the energy to keep enforcing COVID-19 restrictions?”
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I recently received a question from a COVID-19 Data Dispatch reader that followed a similar theme to many questions that readers, friends, and family members have asked me in the past few months. The question essentially outlined an event in the reader’s personal life that they’d been invited to attend, and asked for my advice: should they go? How risky was this event?
Read MoreThis year, the risk of spreading COVID-19 at a holiday gathering is still present—but for many gatherings, it’s much more manageable thanks to vaccines. Still, there’s a lot of potential uncertainty involved in planning gatherings this winter
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Though it’s now been well over a year since the first Long COVID patients were infected, there is still so much we don’t know about the condition. For example, we don’t know a very rudimentary number: how many people in the U.S. are struggling with Long COVID. We also don’t have a clear, detailed picture of Long COVID symptoms, or how these symptoms arise from a coronavirus infection, or how they impact the daily lives of Long COVID patients.
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This week, I’m answering readers’ COVID-19 questions. Including: Should I get a booster shot? Why don’t people get vaccinated? When will this end?!
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I recently wrapped up a big project over here at the COVID-19 Data Dispatch. Now that it’s done, I’ve been doing a bit of reflecting on the next steps for this publication—specifically, what I’d like it to look like one year from now.
Read MoreEarlier this week, I asked readers to share what the COVID-19 Data Dispatch has meant to them over this past year. Here are a few of those responses!
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In tandem with this new site, I’m launching a membership program. This program will enable COVID-19 communicators to connect more directly with each other, as well as to provide feedback that will shape what I cover. It’ll also help me cover my own costs, which have grown significantly as I moved platforms.
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After five months of screenshotting Tableau charts, struggling to keep organized, and hitting Gmail’s email size limit again and again—I realized the platform wasn’t serving my needs. I wanted to give my readers clear archives and easy-to-navigate resources, and Substack just wasn’t providing. From now on, I’ll be publishing each issue as a series of posts on the site and sending out a newsletter with the highlights. This will help keep issues concise while still allowing me to do deep dives into important data issues.
Read MoreLast week, I asked readers to share what information or context gaps they see in COVID-19 coverage from other publications. Readers shared a need for more local data and better understanding in the newsroom.
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