Basic Plague Links

Salve!

Six, going on seven, weeks into Salt Lake’s partial lockdown, and about eight weeks since the pandemic really began to be taken seriously by a broad swath of Americans, the quality of information available from broadcast, print and internet media remains uneven, with much of it frustratingly poor. A few sites have become standard references for COVID-19 information, though some make the cut simply because they’re all there is for a given area.

Here is a partial list:

FAQs

• Ars Technica’s Coronavirus FAQ Last updated in early April, but full of good stuff.
• Ars Technica’s Coronavirus Coverage Supersedes the FAQ.

Health & Hygiene

• WHO guidelines All the techincal guidance.
  • Advice to the public For individuals.
• CDC guidelines All the recs.
  • Individual guidance
• All about face masks
  • How to sew a mask
  • How the N95 mask came to be Bra-inspired design.
• How to unbag your groceries Good advice from a Michigan doctor.
• CDC home cleaning overview
  • Complete guide to disinfection
  • EPA recommended disinfectants

Trackers

• 91-DIVOC My favorite tracker. It pulls data from JHU and plots the time series. “New Cases, 1 Week Average” plotted on a log scale is the most useful graph. We want this one to slope down consistently!
  • 91-DIVOC County level tracking Useful for keeping track of select counties, but no graphs.
• Johns Hopkins COVID-19 Global Dashboard Overall the most useful dashboard and the data source for nearly all the most prominent forecast models. Numbers for “Confirmed cases” are higher than other trackers report due to inclusion of in “presumed positive” cases which the CDC counts but other countries don’t, at least not with the same criteria. Note that you can get finer grained data per country by selecing Admin1 or Admin2 tabs (for administrative region, e.g. state or county) on the leftmost panel.
  • JHU US Map Down to the county level.
  • Trends in new cases 5-day moving averages for “Top 10” countries
• WHO COVID-19 Dashboard Less detailed than the JHU dashboard, but the timelines at the bottom for high-case regions are interesting. The Data Explorer page is pretty lame and next to useless.
• Robert Koch Institut COVID-19 in Germany Dashboard
  • RKI Covid-19 Summary Table for Germany
• Salt Lake County COVID-19 Daily Update

Models

• IHME Model Projections This is the primary model informing many states’ health departments.
• Los Alamos National Lab IMHO the best model so far.
• Columbia University Projections Map Geographical view of predicted COVID-19 intensity and hospital resource strain.

State Health Departments

• Utah
  • Utah Case Counts
• Mississippi
• Louisiana
• Illinois
• Texas Texas has too many counties.
• New York Scroll, scroll, scroll down for the tracker ….
• Maryland
• Ohio
• California

News Coverage

• Salt Lake Tribune Better than the KSL coverage, which isn’t saying much.
  • Andy Larsen’s Articles The Trib’s sports reporter is covering COVID-19 modeling, among other things.
• The Guardian - Coronavirus Coverage Be sure to set your regional preferences to “UK”.
• BBC World Probably the best overview of what’s happening around the world.
  • BBC Global Coronavirus Coverage Pretty good high-level explainers.
• Deutsche Welle Coronavirus Stories Good international coverage.
• NY Times Free Coronavirus Coverage
• Boston Globe Not free, but a glance at the front page gives a good overview of what’s happening in New England.
  • Boston Area Coronavirus Coverage
• Chicago Tribune
• Jackson Clarion-Ledger No special page on COVID-19, but the front page headlines are enough to gauge how the Magnolia/Hospitality State is doing.
• Austin Statesman

Utah & Salt Lake Government

• Salt Lake County’s Stay at Home “orders”
  • April 30 The beginning of phased reopening.
  • April 17 Allows people to go into restaurants to pick up and pay for takeout orders.
  • April 10 Extends the previous order through May 1.
  • March 29 The main stay at home and business restriction order.
  • March 19 Gatherings reduced to 10 people.
  • March 16 Closure of bars and restaurants for dine-in, no gatherings of more than 50 people, social distancing at work.
• Utah Phased Reopening Guidelines
• Utah’s Unified Coronavirus Blog
• Utah Legislature
  • Third Special Session The first session in response to COVID-19, April 16. Covers statewide unemployment aid, etc.
  • Fourth Special Session The second COVID-19 related session, focused on premature re-opening, April 23.