Tracking COVID-19 with Ruby

Programmers are not epidemiologists, but epidemiologists have never needed programmers more. Not for our viral opinions but for our ability to retrieve large data sets and make them understandable through expressive code. As the pandemic was silently taking hold in the United States in early 2020, I used simple web and Ruby tools to gather invaluable data from often obscure state data sources in order to understand the extent of the pandemic in my area. I never expected this would lead me to become a contributor to the pirate CDC.

Transcript

2. Tracking COVID-19 (with Ruby)
3. Olivier Lacan
8. COVID-19
9. December 2019
10. Frank
11. Wuhan
12. WHO
13. January 2020
14. January 22, 2020
15. How to Prevent an Outbreak
16. Lunar New Year
18. Is it spreading?
19. Johns Hopkins University
20. February 2nd, 2020
21. March 8th, 2020
22. Is it here?
23. FDOH
24. March 14th, 2020
25. March 16th, 2020
26. March 17th, 2020
27. March 17th, 2020
28. March 18th, 2020
29. AT The COVID Tracking Project
33. March 20th, 2020
36. urlwatch
38. News Reports
39. March 21st, 2020
40. paperboi
45. undistinguishable from magic
46. hunting for good data
49. good enough
62. missing hospitalizations
63. break
64. scaling
65. timeout
66. pagination
68. threads
69. timeout, again
71. intuition
72. hospitals
73. Rebekah Jones
74. reopening criteria
78. tipping point
79. tipping point
80. researchers
81. excess mortality
82. cross-pollination
83. local journalism
84. data issues
86. reopening criteria
92. lawsuits
94. Takeaways
95. Pay for News
96. (journalists I worked with were furloughed every other week due to budget cuts)
98. Adelaide Chen Naseem S. Miller Ben Conarck Mario Ariza Aric Chokey Daniel Chang
99. Vote for Science
100. (science funding & pandemic research was defunded by the Trump administration)
101. Promote Healthcare for All
102. (private health insurance is mathematically silly)
103. Fight Systemic Racism
105. End Private Prisons
106. (COVID-19 infected and killed more inmates)
108. Contribute your Time & Money
109. Volunteer
110. All problems are not technology problems but technologists can help if they show up.
111. Show up.
112. Thank you.