News and resources for tracking everyone's favorite pandemic
Welcome to the COVID-19 Data Dispatch by me, Betsy Ladyzhets. I’ll bring you the big news on where data providers are stepping up (or messing up), along with source recommendations and call-outs for the COVID dashboards I’m mad at each week.
I’ve been living in the COVID data trenches since the end of March, when my main publication (Stacker) pivoted to COVID coverage in time with rising case counts across America. As the resident science journalist on staff, I have been managing the bulk of Stacker’s COVID content and doing data reporting and analysis for many of our stories. I’ve also helped maintain one of the most cited datasets of the pandemic, the COVID Tracking Project, through volunteer work on the project’s data entry and race data teams.
The world of COVID data is vast, and yet the numbers we see are vastly difficult to interpret. Inconsistencies between states and squabbles between government offices have made it nearly impossible for the average American to get the information they need about their community. (Yes, this will be a U.S.-focused newsletter, though I will feature international stories from time to time.) I hope to help readers make sense of this convoluted data landscape and to answer your questions along the way.
Also, I need to put my anger at government data providers somewhere.
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