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”.
2. 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 - [email protected]
<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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