Instead New York, along with several other state and county governments around the country, has released daily data
only on the county, or borough, level. That means there is just one
figure for COVID-19 cases in all of Kings County — Brooklyn — which has a
population larger than 15 states. The roughly 4,600
confirmed COVID-19 cases among Brooklyn’s 2.6 million residents account
for 8% of the confirmed cases in the entire country. There is also just
one coronavirus case figure for the 2.2 million residents of Queens,
where there are just over 5,000 confirmed cases. The
lack of detailed information makes it difficult for medical workers,
journalists and the public to establish whether particular communities
in the city are being harder hit and to get beyond anecdotal accounts of
which of the city’s roughly 60 hospitals are already overwhelmed.
As we have noted again and again, testing and data are essential. Models are meaningless without validation and validation demands data.
To quote my father, "Prior planning prevents poor performance" That can only be done with data. In my opinion and based upon my experience the refusal to make public the data is making the problem worse!
Also without this data, how, one wonders, can those wizards at the NY Times ethically present their alleged models?
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