PHealthy

As an epidemiologist and early utilizer of USAFacts data (back when I had to drag out the embedded JSON), USAFacts did a few things better than JHU: more timely updates, US centric, JSON format, and inclusion of FIPS. This all made the data very accessible for choropleth dataviz. JHU data required separate transformations. JHU being still very valuable for time series data and when I convinced them to split US data and add FIPS, it was a lot easier to process.

Of course now the CDC has case reporting in full swing and is about to publish on the first million cases, so hopefully that will go open access and get additional analysis.

It's a bit of a rabbit hole but the r/askscience COVID FAQ/wiki has a lot of content.

Hi and thanks for joining us today!

1. What are the main benefits of COVID asymptomatic testing?
2. Should universities depend on the behavior of 18-22 year olds in order to prevent COVID outbreaks?
3. What's been your best purchase since social distancing began?
4. Any chance for a Tweetorial on Bayesian analysis?

Public facing US data?

Probably New York Times. Cleaner than JHU, more timely updates than JHU or USAFacts, and GitHub/transparent version control is industry standard.

Honestly, I think T_D (and spez coddling them) did long lasting damage to this platform. Reddit abruptly changed their algorithm which killed discussion posts like AMAs in an effort to limit T_D but still allow them a platform. Sticky posts getting massively nerfed is another repercussion.

Ultimately, I think Reddit tried to have their cake and eat it, too. But companies like OpenAI just came in and stole the cake that Reddit was too incompetent to even notice because they were too busy building terrible video coders or chat features no one wanted and allowed 3PAs to develop tools that Reddit should have featured from day 1.