COVID-19 Data Dispatch

Tag: source shout-out

  • COVID source shout-out: Oklahoma

    As of yesterday, 42 states and D.C. are reporting vaccinations by race and ethnicity. You can see the CDD’s full annotations of state vaccination data here.

    One of those 42 states is Oklahoma. Oklahoma wasn’t listed as reporting any demographic data in our annotations until yesterday—but in fact, this state has been reporting vaccinations by race, ethnicity, age, and gender since January. I missed this information in previous weeks because the state has been reporting these data in its Weekly Epidemiology and Surveillance Reports, rather than on its main COVID-19 dashboard where the totals are reported.

    So, this week, the COVID source shout-out section is also a public apology to the good state of Oklahoma. I’m sorry I missed your vaccination demographics. You’re doing great.

  • COVID source shout-out: COVID Tracking Project

    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.

    more source spotlights
  • COVID source shout-out: A new national team

    COVID source shout-out: A new national team

    While some of President Biden’s lieutenants in the pandemic control effort await Senate confirmation, many leaders have already taken charge. Mere hours after the inauguration, new CDC Director Rochelle Walensky extended the agency’s eviction moratorium until March 31. And Dr. Anthony Fauci is once again taking a prominent role in White House communications, appearing at press briefings and announcing America’s return to the World Health Organization.

    Maybe it’s the lighting, but Dr. Fauci looks ten years younger. We love to see it.

  • COVID source shout-out: Kentucky

    At a time when state dashboards have become increasingly crowded with new information—or expanded onto five different GIS pages—I am comforted by the consistency of Kentucky’s COVID-19 reporting.

    The state has posted daily COVID-19 reports since the spring, including all the most important metrics in one place. If you’re looking for total cases, ICU patients, county-level statistics, or demographic data, you can find it all in this one PDF. The report’s formatting has changed over the past few months, but its Cntrl+F ease has not.

    Also, Kentucky started reporting race and ethnicity figures in whole numbers instead of percents recently!  Thanks, Kentucky!

  • COVID source shout-out: Dr. Fauci

    COVID source shout-out: Dr. Fauci

    This newsletter observes Dr. Anthony S. Fauci Day, a new holiday declared in Washington, D.C. on December 24 in honor of Dr. Fauci’s 80th birthday. Thank you, Dr. Fauci, for your tireless years of service.

    And thank you, ABC News, for this video of Dr. Fauci getting vaccinated, which I have watched approximately 50 times since last Tuesday. To quote my girlfriend: “dr. fauci’s vaccination video is exactly asmr.”

    more source spotlights

  • COVID source shout-out: FDA’s techies

    I watched a pretty significant quantity of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee (or VRBPAC) meeting on Thursday. The meeting lasted nearly nine hours, from 9 AM to about 5:40 PM Eastern, and was plagued by top infectious disease experts who simply could not turn on their microphones.

    It was a typical Zoom meeting with a few older colleagues. But it was also a critically important meeting to discuss the safety of a novel biological product that might save thousands of lives. That’s why, this week, I am paying homage to the FDA tech people behind the scenes who needed to turn on and off those microphones, share those slides, and generally get all the VRBPAC information where it needed to go. As far as I could tell, they kept the meeting running smoothly without seriously angering any of the esteemed committee members. No small achievement!

    Also, the meeting had banger hold music during the breaks. (Disclaimer: I am a 23-year-old white girl who listens to indie instrumentals and the “How to Train Your Dragon” soundtrack while working. You might want to take my categorization of banger hold music with a grain of salt.)

    If you want to read actual, serious coverage of the VRBPAC meeting, STAT News kept a thorough liveblog.

    more source spotlights

  • COVID source shout-out: The CDC

    This past Thursday, the CDC held a media briefing. Normally, this wouldn’t be big news; the agency is expected to alert the press—and by extension, the American public—of major new developments in its work. During the pandemic, however, the very existence of these briefings has become newsworthy.

    The CDC held COVID-19 briefings regularly throughout January, February, and March, then stopped abruptly at the height of the spring outbreak in the Northeast. The next briefing after that was in June, and they’ve been sporadic since. Before Thursday’s call, the previous two briefings were held in late October and mid-August.

    Thursday’s press call highlighted the release of a new CDC guidance, which encourages Americans not to travel for Thanksgiving and provides safety suggestions for those who feel they must travel. Reporters on the call (fairly) questioned why the CDC put out this new guidance now, only a week before the holiday, when many Americans have already made plans. Public health experts, science communicators, and others (including this newsletter) have been calling for reduced Thanksgiving travel for several weeks now.

    Still, the guidance and associated press call indicate that the CDC wants to step up as the nation’s outbreak worsens. Whether the agency can regain public trust remains to be seen.

  • Our favorite COVID-19 sources

    Last week, I asked readers to share their go-to sources for COVID-19 data about their community. Thank you to everyone who responded! I am always on the lookout for great sources myself, so I appreciated seeing what folks are using.

    Here are a couple of responses that I wanted to highlight:

    • The New York Times cases map: Two readers noted that they liked the NYT dashboard, which makes it easy to compare COVID-19 metrics in different parts of the country. The NYT offers data at the county level and provides annotations and context with much more detail than most government sources.
    • City and county sites: Seven readers said that they regularly check their county or city dashboards for local information. One reader complimented the City of Chicago dashboard as “consistently updated with official data, easy to use.”
    • Social media: Readers referred to Twitter links to articles shared by both national and local journalists. One reader praised daily COVID-19 update posts shared on a local Boston subreddit: “The posts take publicly available Massachusetts health data and synthesize them in a way I’ve gotten very used to. This is the source I depend on when I tell people that COVID hasn’t been getting better in Massachusetts since June.”
    • The Glastonbury Town Manager weekly email: My mom’s favorite source is the email newsletter sent by the local administration in my hometown, Glastonbury, Connecticut. This email—which I’ve highlighted in the newsletter before—includes data for the town, updates for the state, and public service announcements.
    • New York Governor Cuomo’s daily updates: You have to hand it to him: no other local leader is using PowerPoint quite like Cuomo. Also, nobody else built a literal model of his state’s COVID-19 case curve.
  • COVID source shout-out: Glastonbury, CT

    COVID source shout-out: Glastonbury, CT

    I’m doing a shout-out instead of a callout this week, because sometimes even I tire of finding data issues to upon which I can focus my tirades.

    Every few weeks, my mom forwards me an email from the Town Manager in my hometown, Glastonbury, Connecticut. This email comprises the Town Manager’s Weekly COVID-19 update, including data for the town, updates for the state, and the occasional public service announcements. The most recent email, sent on October 7, includes Halloween best practices, information on flu clinics, and absentee ballot resources.

    After peering at endlessly complicated state dashboards during COVID Tracking Project shifts, it’s refreshing to see a COVID-19 update which presents data as simply as possible—no hovering or scrolling required. And yeah, they clearly made that chart in Microsoft Excel, but it does its job!