Our list of Covid-19 expert resources
During these Covid-19 times, the Yellow House is sourcing most of our pandemic information directly from experts and data sources online. We can read it when we want to and with our own tone. Below is our current list. In case we don’t know an expert source firsthand, we have triangulated their expertise with others while trying to avoid an echo-chamber of same voices. As we move through different phases of the pandemic, the list will change to include experts on the topic at hand.
A number of sources provide the number of Covid-19 confirmed cases, test and deaths. We like the below because of their reliability and how they present information. For national and subnational data and their disaggregation (age, sex, preconditions, etc.) you can go to your local public health authority’s website.
Our World in Data provides daily data and visualizations provided with difference lenses (e.g., per capita, log scales, etc.) including to make fair comparisons. Raw data sourced from European Center for Disease Prevention and Controlhttps://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus
The Financial Times provides a daily graphs and a brief narrative. Raw data sourced from European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-lates
For U.S. state level information, The New York Times provides daily updates via data sources from state and local public health authorities. They also provide specific analysis such as cases in nursing homes.https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html. The Covid Tracking Project also has data for the U.S. https://covidtracking.com/
The Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, Global Health Security Center has a Covid-19 Dashboard of the global situation, updated with real-time data. They also offer a daily briefing subscription. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
We know that testing and contact tracing are the foundation for stopping transmission of Covid-19. As is social distancing since we lack a pharmaceutical tool. But the amount of testing and social distancing and how both of these and other measures are implemented varies significantly between countries. As does the supportive care provided for Covid-19 patients. Learning from each other on how to save lives and livelihood, including in different socio-economic contexts is critical. The Oxford University Covid-19 Government Response Tracker compares a wide range of measures to tackle the Covid-19 outbreak and their impact. https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/coronavirus-government-response-tracker
A few institutions are modeling future Covid-19 cases and deaths. This will likely increase as there has been a call for models that better estimate Covid-19 risks for precise geographies at the local level to better help inform local policymaking.
The Imperial College of London provides weekly, short term forecasts of projected Covid-19 cases and deaths for countries that have over 100 deaths.https://mrc-ide.github.io/covid19-short-term-forecasts/index.html
The University of Washington Institute of Health Metrics & Evaluation makes projections on Covid-19 cases, deaths and hospital capacity. They have the analysis for OECD countries and all fifty U.S. states with plans to add African and Latin American countries.https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america
Much of the above relies on proven ways of collecting and analyzing data. Given technology and connectivity, people are experimenting with new ways of gathering information that could confirm what is happening or be predictive.
An independent data scientist Youyang Gu created Covid19-projections that predicts the future track of the pandemic exclusively by machine learning. Algorithms churn out predictions based on past forecast-to-actuals. Thus far, they make projections for the U.S. - at the national and state level- and 40 countries. https://covid19-projections.com/
Google’s Mobility Reports shows how mobile your community is by tracking the movement of people to and from parks, stores, train & bus stations, work and homehttps://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/
Carnegie Mellon University is mapping people’s self-reported symptoms (as reported on Facebook or Google) and search trends for Covid-19 symptoms (as reported by Google) as predictive indicators. https://covidcast.cmu.edu/
Experts have taken to Twitter to gather and share information. The world has never had such real-time access to the world’s expert immunologists, epidemiologist and public health experts. The below list is who we have come to rely on to provide information, as well as critique and seek critique. They mostly stay apolitical; which is not necessarily easy as people’s access to health and protection from disease is political.
Medical journalists
@helenbranswell Helen Branswell Senior Writer at STAT news
@cgorman Christine Gorman, Health/Medicines Editor, Scientific American
Epidemiologists and Immunologists
@virusesimmunity Akiko Iwaski Immunologist, Professor at Yale Medicine
@nataliexdean Natalie Dean, Professor of Biostatistics at University of Florida specializing in infectious disease and vaccine study design
@scottgottleibMD Scott Gottlieb, MD, Partner at American Enterprise Institute, former Head of the FDA
@T_Inglesby Tom Inglesby, Director of Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
@trvb Trevor Bedford, Virus and Immunity scientist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
@neil_ferguson Neil Ferguson infectious disease modeler at Director of Global Infectious Disease at Imperial College of London
@mlipsitch Mark Lipsitch Epidemiologist and microbiologist at Harvard Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics
Physicians
@craig_a_spencer Craig Spencer, NYC ER Doctor, Director of Global Health in EmergencyMedicine at Columbia Medicine/NY Presbyterian Hospitals
@ashishkjha Asish Jham, Physician and Director at Harvard Global Health Institute
@DrAlethaMaybank Aletha Maybank, Chief Health Equity Officer at the American MedicalAssociation
Economists
@GitaGopinath Gita Gopinath, Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund.
@MartinRavallion Martin Ravallion, Economist at Georgetown University
In the midst of the tragedy there are heart-warming stories of acts of courage and kindness. One source that consistently shares positive stories on the Covid-19 situation is Some Good News at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOe_y6KKvS3PdIfb9q9pGug?app=desktop
The unexpected guru on Covid-19 misinformation is @steak_umm - one needs to read the posts to believe it, but the insight and wise council from this meat product's Twitter feed is enlightened and delightful.
WHO is the organization tasked by all UN member states to keep the world current on the Covid-19 epidemiologist situation and provide guidance on how to prevent, mitigate and manage Covid-19 cases. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
The Head of WHO, Tedros Adhanom, and his team provide daily Covid-19 briefings that are live-streamed on twitter @WHO.
