Tuesday, November 24, 2020
Testing-and-Tracking COVID
1 First a positive from Bloomberg News: ". . .This critical repository of health information started, improbably, with three journalists, a data scientist/biotech investor, and a couple of spreadsheets. Back in late February, the coronavirus was still a sleeper threat in the U.S., with new cases popping up in ones and twos around the country and signs of hidden spread on the West Coast. Officials in the Trump administration held briefings touting the government’s rapid rollout of testing. But they couldn’t answer one important question: How many tests were being done?
“It’s kind of mind-boggling that it’s fallen to a group of volunteers to do this”
Search for the Covid Tracking Project on Google Scholar, which compiles academic literature, and you’ll get more than 500 results, a sign of its standing in the scientific community. The project has helped force states to improve their disclosure of Covid data: In April, it started giving states letter grades on the quality of the data they reported. At first only 10 states got an A or A+; now 40 states and territories have reached that grade.
The project is a demonstration of citizen know-how and civic dedication at a time when the country feels like it’s being pulled apart. Yet it’s confounding that, almost a year into the pandemic, the Covid Tracking Project is doing what might be expected of the U.S. government
Data Heroes of Covid Tracking Project Are Still Filling U.S. Government Void
2 Cautions from TechDirt
Research Shows iOS Covid Apps Are A Privacy Mess
from the with-friends-like-these dept
Jonathan Albright, director of the Digital Forensics Initiative at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, recently released analysis he did into 493 COVID-19 related iOS apps across dozens of countries. The results are...not great, and highlight how such apps routinely hoover up far more data than they need to, including unneeded access to cameras and microphones, your photo gallery, your contacts, and far more location data than is needed. Much of this data then winds up in the adtech ecosystem for profit, where it winds up in the hands of third parties.
Only 47 of the apps used Google and Apple's more privacy-friendly exposure-notification system, resulting in a number of folks building their own apps with substandard (in some cases borderline nonexistent) privacy standards. Six out of seven COVID iOS apps worldwide are allowed to request any permissions they'd like. 43 percent of all apps were found to be tracking user location at all times. 44% requested access to the users' camera, 22 percent asked for access to users' smartphone mic, 32 percent asked for access to users' photos, and 11 percent asked for full access to user contact lists.
Albright told Ars Technica that while many of these app makers may be well intentioned, they're often working at cross purposes, while hoovering up far more data than they actually need. Data that in many instances is then being sold to unknown third parties: > GO AHEAD AND DIG DEEPER
The Covid Tracking Project
Good-to-Know that we options > https://covidtracking.com/
The public deserves the most complete data available about COVID-19 in the US. No official source is providing it, so we are.
Our data powers crucial reporting and research. Here are just a few of the organizations that rely on our dataset.
Johns Hopkins
Johns Hopkins relies on our testing data for its COVID-19 Testing Insights Initiative, which brings data and expert analysis together in one place. The initiative is designed to help policymakers and the public understand the trajectory of the pandemic, and make decisions about the path forward.
The White House
The White House chose the COVID Tracking Project as the best source to cite for daily US test numbers in its “Opening Up America Again” testing strategy.
COVID Exit Strategy
Created by a group of public health and crisis experts, covidexitstrategy.org identifies critical interventions needed to stop the spread of COVID-19, and urges government decision-makers to apply them. They use our data to power a dashboard comparing each state’s interventions and testing levels with case counts and deaths over time.
See how we work, what we’re learning, and what’s changing in our data on our project blog.
What We Know About Covid Testing Sensitivity
To successfully manage the pandemic, we need tools for both surveillance and diagnosis, in the form of antigen tests and PCR tests.
By Whet MoserNovember 23, 2020
One Million Cases in Seven Days: This Week in COVID-19 Data, Nov 19
Weekly cases grew 26 percent and nearly 80,000 people in the United States are hospitalized with COVID-19. That’s one-third higher than the nation’s previous record.
By Artis Curiskis, Alice Goldfarb, Erin Kissane, Jessica Malaty Rivera, Kara Oehler, Joanna Pearlstein, & Peter WalkerNovember 19, 2020
Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.
Latest totals:
Hiding-In-Plain-Sight No More: Cloaking Extremism In The Guise of Patriotism > Laurie Roberts Nails 2-For-One Reveal of "Rally Forge"
Longtime entrenched uber-conservative AZ Politico Rusty Bowers - a chosen feature of multiple posts on this blog - got some overdue oxygen fanning the flames of the smoldering ashes in his down-ballot post-election survival as Speaker of The State House. He has a newly-anointed accomplice, Jake Hoffman who owns and operates a direct-marketing outfit "Rally Forge". . . Note how similar the name is with Valley Forge. That says so much about the East Valley in more ways than one:
Facebook bans firm behind Turning Point's election troll farm
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OPINION: House Speaker Rusty Bowers appoints a newly elected legislator who specializes in internet disinformation campaigns to the No. 2 post on the panel that oversees elections. Genius plan
Arizona's minister of disinformation is appointed to help oversee election law? Seriously?
Jake Hoffman (Photo: Town of Queen Creek)
The newly elected legislator who ran what amounts to an internet troll farm — paying teens to post conservative talking points and baseless conspiracy theories aimed at getting President Donald Trump re-elected — has been appointed to the state House committee that oversees elections.
No, really.
House Speaker Rusty Bowers this week not only appointed incoming Rep. Jake Hoffman to the House Government and Elections Committee, he made this minister of disinformation the panel’s vice chairman.
The Washington Post in September exposed Hoffman’s Rally Forge, a digital marketing firm that paid teenagers, some of them minors, to set up fake personas and blanket social media with thousands of nearly identical posts aimed at undermining confidence in the validity of election and downplaying the impact of COVID-19.
Their posts, often replies to news stories, created the appearance of a social media groundswell of youth support for conservative causes but actually were slightly edited comments lifted from a shared document, according to the Post
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Flash News: Ukraine Intercepts Russian Kh-59 Cruise Missile Using US VAMPIRE Air Defense System Mounted on Boat. Ukrainian forces have made ...
