Local government COVID responses

June 2020

Photo illustration depicting the shapes of California and Florida as background to portraits of their respective 2020 governors, Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis.
Graphic by Gabe Hongsdusit

Contributions

I analyzed data published by The Covid Tracking Project and The New York Times on COVID-19 testing and infections, focusing on geographies within California and Florida to assess outcomes of policy decisions early on in the pandemic.

I consulted with researchers in statistics, public health, and epidemiology to develop methods for analysis.1 Though ultimately I could not surmount the data quality issues to express outcome differences confidently, I collaborated with other reporters to explain the essentiality of that very data quality to informing better policy.

Footnotes

  1. In addition to sources interviewed on the record, I benefited from stats.org, a resource I could not recommend highly enough!