[FRIAM] NYU Professor Creates COVID-19 Dashboard to Compare Country and State Data
Tom Johnson
tom at jtjohnson.com
Thu Jan 28 13:36:57 EST 2021
Barry:
Thanks for taking the time to analyze and write.
Of course, you are correct on both points. My guess is that the
problem/challenge on #1 is that the data on hospital stays is, at best,
being collected only at the individual hospital and not yet being
aggregated at any higher level. But perhaps someone is this merry band
knows otherwise. Second, there is a culture of data hugging when it comes
to hospitals, often driven by uninformed assumptions about HIPAA. So
while such data probably exists, an individual hospital or hospital group
are reluctant to give it out. All that said, the problem with journalists
and data is that the majority have at, best limited, interest in data and
analyzing it. Remember, journalism is the second refuge of the
mathematically phobic. One of the worst examples I see is every day in the
New Mexican, where it carries some stats and data of the latest COVID
count, but does so showing things like the latest change by ZIP. (a) This
fails to account for the vast differences in ZIP code population, hence (b)
failure to put the cases in the context of cases per 1,000 or 10,000.
And yet again, the devices are not voting machines. They are vote-counting
machines, but the general public -- including journos -- don't know why or
how they are different.
Thanks again,
Tom
============================================
Tom Johnson - tom at jtjohnson.com
<https://www.cloudhq-mkt9.net/mail_track/link/a40704023def657526_1611859017362?uid=226430&url=mailto%3Atom%40jtjohnson.com>
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
*NM Foundation for Open Government*
<https://www.cloudhq-mkt9.net/mail_track/link/a40704023def657526_1611859017362?uid=226430&url=https%3A%2F%2Fgo.shitrk.com%2Fr%2Fe%2FgKZPlcLpr22FxZ16x%3Fr%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fnmfog.org%2F>
*Check out It's The People's Data
<https://www.cloudhq-mkt9.net/mail_track/link/a40704023def657526_1611859017362?uid=226430&url=https%3A%2F%2Fgo.shitrk.com%2Fr%2Fe%2FvgmO7TnWV99HmQVrx%3Fr%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpages%2FIts-The-Peoples-Data%2F1599854626919671>*
============================================
On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 8:38 AM Barry MacKichan <
barry.mackichan at mackichan.com> wrote:
> Tom, you’re a journalist, so now that I have your (virtual and
> asynchronous) attention, I’d like to register some complaints.
>
> We seem to get the same data again and again, but there is critical data
> that noone has included in what I’ve read. Two examples:
>
> 1. We get daily death rates and number of hospitalizations, but no
> information about the average length of a hospital stay for a covid
> patient. This may not seem important, but if I want to compute the
> probability of dying from covid once you are hospitalized, I need it. It is
> (deaths/hospitalizations)*length-of-stay — this is because one person
> contributes 1 to the count of hospitalization for each day he is
> hospitalized, but can contribute at most 1 to the deaths. The naive
> calculation of the probability would be about 3% (3K/100K), but if the
> length of stay is 5 or 6 days, the true calculations show the odds of
> survival are the same as one round of Russian roulette.
>
> It’s possible that the journalists have not given us this data because the
> data sites (covidtracking.com and Johns Hopkins) don’t have it. Good
> opportunity for a “scoop”.
>
> 1. A definition of a voting machine. Based on my experience in NM and
> in North Carolina, the only machines were scanners. I have seen one
> photograph of a Dominion “voting machine”, and the branding on the machine
> said “Dominion scanner.” It would be hard to corruptly modify the results
> from the scanner, and absolutely impossible to do so in a case where the
> hand count matches the scanner count. Fifteen years ago, there were lots of
> voting machines that did not produce paper ballots, and these were
> eminently hackable. But no journalist I’ve read has made any distinction
> between the machine types (and it is possible that all modern voting
> machines are scanners reading paper ballots. If so, tell us.)
>
> You are of course innocent of these lapses, but maybe you could tell some
> of your journalist friends that they are leaving out vital information.
>
> Thanks for listening (if you got this far).
>
> —Barry
>
> On 27 Jan 2021, at 14:49, Tom Johnson wrote:
>
> NYU Professor Creates COVID-19 Dashboard to Compare Country and State Data
> by Sabrina I. Pacifici
> <https://www.cloudhq-mkt9.net/mail_track/link/a9654e6b1556032541_1611776974509?uid=226430&url=https%3A%2F%2Flc3.shitrk.com%2Fr%2Fe%2FY0B3ls5OLKvTaBGYJ%3Fr%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.bespacific.com%2Fauthor%2Fsabrina%2F> on Jan
> 26, 2021
>
> “A new online dashboard
> <https://www.cloudhq-mkt9.net/mail_track/link/a9654e6b1556032541_1611776974509?uid=226430&url=https%3A%2F%2Flc3.shitrk.com%2Fr%2Fe%2FnwbGJf0b3oQtOZ9xM%3Fr%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fcovid.jerschow.com%2F>,
> created by NYU Professor Alexej Jerschow
> <https://www.cloudhq-mkt9.net/mail_track/link/a9654e6b1556032541_1611776974509?uid=226430&url=https%3A%2F%2Flc3.shitrk.com%2Fr%2Fe%2F60j9rsYnQRpCAGg4Q%3Fr%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fas.nyu.edu%2Fcontent%2Fnyu-as%2Fas%2Ffaculty%2Falexej-jerschow.html>,
> brings together COVID-19 data from U.S. states and countries around the
> world to compare cases, deaths, vaccines, and testing in a visual,
> user-friendly format. The tool also integrates a range of policies
> governments have implemented to limit the spread of COVID-19—including
> school closings, stay-at-home orders, and mask mandates—in an effort to
> compare policy responses with COVID-19 outcomes.Jerschow, who is a
> professor of chemistry and typically works in the field of magnetic
> resonance imaging and battery research, was looking for a convenient way to
> compare COVID-19 data from different countries and states. While the data
> were available from different sources, there was not a single tool that
> allowed him to easily analyze how different geographic areas were faring
> and responding to the pandemic—so, he created one…The dashboard
> <https://www.cloudhq-mkt9.net/mail_track/link/a9654e6b1556032541_1611776974509?uid=226430&url=https%3A%2F%2Flc3.shitrk.com%2Fr%2Fe%2FnwbGJf0b3oQtOZ9xM%3Fr%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fcovid.jerschow.com%2F> combines
> data from a series of publicly available sources. Country-wide information
> is downloaded from Our World in Data
> <https://www.cloudhq-mkt9.net/mail_track/link/a9654e6b1556032541_1611776974509?uid=226430&url=https%3A%2F%2Flc3.shitrk.com%2Fr%2Fe%2F0br9NiGe3nrF3ma6M%3Fr%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fourworldindata.org%2Fcoronavirus>,
> which sources its data from the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science
> and Engineering dashboard
> <https://www.cloudhq-mkt9.net/mail_track/link/a9654e6b1556032541_1611776974509?uid=226430&url=https%3A%2F%2Flc3.shitrk.com%2Fr%2Fe%2F20a9LsP2l7OTXERVM%3Fr%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fcoronavirus.jhu.edu%2Fmap.html>.
> U.S. state and territory data are obtained from covidtracking.com
> <https://www.cloudhq-mkt9.net/mail_track/link/a9654e6b1556032541_1611776974509?uid=226430&url=https%3A%2F%2Flc3.shitrk.com%2Fr%2Fe%2Fw3z5Jh4ZxLoiRa56B%3Fr%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fcovidtracking.com%2F>.
> The Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT)
> <https://www.cloudhq-mkt9.net/mail_track/link/a9654e6b1556032541_1611776974509?uid=226430&url=https%3A%2F%2Flc3.shitrk.com%2Fr%2Fe%2FW9OxRfQxV1nH40zGw%3Fr%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.bsg.ox.ac.uk%2Fresearch%2Fresearch-projects%2Fcoronavirus-government-response-tracker> provides
> policy data…”
>
> ============================================
> Tom Johnson - tom at jtjohnson.com
> <https://www.cloudhq-mkt9.net/mail_track/link/a9654e6b1556032541_1611776974509?uid=226430&url=mailto%3Atom%40jtjohnson.com>
> Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
> 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
> *NM Foundation for Open Government*
> <https://www.cloudhq-mkt9.net/mail_track/link/a9654e6b1556032541_1611776974509?uid=226430&url=https%3A%2F%2Flc3.shitrk.com%2Fr%2Fe%2F5KGR4cK49zVSrMkPr%3Fr%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fnmfog.org%2F>
> *Check out It's The People's Data
> <https://www.cloudhq-mkt9.net/mail_track/link/a9654e6b1556032541_1611776974509?uid=226430&url=https%3A%2F%2Flc3.shitrk.com%2Fr%2Fe%2FBNmKkirZWQPirw9Pg%3Fr%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpages%2FIts-The-Peoples-Data%2F1599854626919671>*
>
> ============================================
>
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