Sunday, February 07, 2021

On Improving Statistical Infrastructure

The Covid Tracking project announces its end. 

But the work itself—compiling, cleaning, standardizing, and making sense of COVID-19 data from 56 individual states and territories—is properly the work of federal public health agencies. Not only because these efforts are a governmental responsibility—which they are—but because federal teams have access to far more comprehensive data than we do, and can mandate compliance with at least some standards and requirements.

I wholeheartedly agree with this, and hope the Biden/Harris administration devotes money and attention to improving our statistical infrastructure, given the deficiencies revealed by pandemic.  

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