This past Monday, the CDC put out a major data release: mortality data for 2020 and 2021, encompassing the pandemic’s impact on deaths from all causes in the U.S. The new data allow researchers and reporters to investigate excess deaths, a measure of the pandemic’s true toll—comparing the number of deaths that occurred in a particular region, during a particular year, to deaths that would’ve been expected had COVID-19 not occurred. At the same time, the new data allow for investigations into COVID-19 disparities and increased deaths of non-COVID causes during the pandemic.
This week, I had a new story published at the data journalism site FiveThirtyEight. The story explores the U.S.’s failure to comprehensively track breakthrough cases, and how that failure has led officials to look towards data from other countries with better tracking systems as they make decisions about booster shots. In the CDD, I’m sharing one of the interviews I did for that story.
This weekend, I set out to see what data are now available on these booster shots. I updated my vaccination data in the U.S. resource page, which includes detailed annotations on every state’s vaccine reporting along with several national and international sources.
Featured sources for the week of October 24 include more booster shot data from the CDC, racial disparities, executive approval, and leading causes of death.
Dr. Debra Furr-Holden, public health expert at Michigan State University, discusses the ongoing challenges of collecting and reporting COVID-19 race data, how data gaps fuel vaccine hesitancy, the equity challenges inherent in vaccine mandates, and more.
Two weeks ago, a major new COVID-19 data source came on the scene: the Health Equity Tracker, developed by the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine. To dig more into this valuable resource, I talked to Josh Zarrabi, senior software engineer at the Satcher Health Leadership.
This week, we finally got demographic state-by-state vaccination data from the CDC. Well… sort-of. A team from KHN received CDC state-by-state demographic vaccination data via a public records request. The data indicate that, despite promises from the White House to prioritize vulnerable communities in the vaccination campaign, a lot of inequities persist.
