07-22-2020, 04:00 PM
Doesn't seem that unreasonable to me as a data source. It isn't good for visualization.
I don't know what qualifications your favorite pundit has, but if she doesn't seem able to understand something like this, I sure wouldn't trust her to understand economy or anything complex!
First thing I noticed (on a Wednesday) is that the data hasn't been updated for 2 DAYS!! I would expect this to be updated continuously as the data comes in. Are they fat-fingering the data in order to introduce a delay??
Another thing I notice is that history is not seemingly available. You can't see how things have changed in the last day (uh, in a whole week or 3, depending upon how often they update it) or in the last month.
Another thing I notice is that the data rows do not indicate date of the data. You can't know how stale the data is.
(I'm not sure the above are really any different than the CDC. So much of the old infrastructure seems built not thinking about fast-changing epidemics.)
Another thing I don't see is any clear metadata info, explaining the rows and columns. Yeah, they do say that certain columns are numbers or text (duh, but you do need that) but not any metadata indicating whether numbers are integers, ratios, percentages, etc. or how they are calculated.
There's nothing in the data table to indicate how much data is new or old or missing.
There is an important statistic NOT being reported: The number or percentage of ICU patients with COVID.
First, the rows are the states or other regions.
So, here's what I'd put as the metadata for the columns
ObjectID: Index Number; consecutive, beginning at 1, and unique across all rows.
State Name: Text. Full name of the state (unique)
State Abbreviation: Text. 2 letter abbreviation of the state (per some standard I'm not going to chase down) (unique)
State FIPS: Numeric. 2 digit code (per some standard)
State HHS Region: Natural Number. (per some standard)
Inpatient Bed Utilization (Estimate): Percentage (0.0 - 100.0) The percentage of occupied inpatient beds to the total number of all available beds (ICU & otherwise, I think)
Percent Inpatients with COVID (Estimate): Percentage (0.0 - 100.0) The percentage of occupied inpatient beds assigned to patients with confirmed COVID-19 (? plus suspected COVID-19 ??) to the total number of all available beds.
ICU Beds Used (Estimate): Number. The number of occupied inpatient beds for all ICU patients.
Inpatient Beds Used (Estimate): Number. The number of occupied inpatient beds (ICU & otherwise, I think)
Inpatient Beds Used COVID (Estimate): Number. The number of occupied inpatient beds (ICU & otherwise, I think) assigned to patients with confirmed COVID-19 (? plus suspected COVID-19 ??)
Shape_Area: Number. This is some number telling you the area of the state. I don't know if these are hectacres or what.
Shape_Length: Number. I suspect this is some number telling you the longest e/w or n/s dimension of the state, so you can know how to scale the image of the state when you display it.
If you click on the Overview tab and then click on one of the attributes (columns), you get a graph. Clicking on FIPS doesn't tell you much, except that none appear to be missing. If you click on "Inpatient Bed Utilization (Estimate)", you get a STATE-LEVEL representation of how full hospitals are. One state is 90-100% full. Of course, when you look at California, half the hospitals could be keeping patients in parking lots while the other half were 20% full and it would look like the state is doing fine.
I don't know what qualifications your favorite pundit has, but if she doesn't seem able to understand something like this, I sure wouldn't trust her to understand economy or anything complex!
First thing I noticed (on a Wednesday) is that the data hasn't been updated for 2 DAYS!! I would expect this to be updated continuously as the data comes in. Are they fat-fingering the data in order to introduce a delay??
Another thing I notice is that history is not seemingly available. You can't see how things have changed in the last day (uh, in a whole week or 3, depending upon how often they update it) or in the last month.
Another thing I notice is that the data rows do not indicate date of the data. You can't know how stale the data is.
(I'm not sure the above are really any different than the CDC. So much of the old infrastructure seems built not thinking about fast-changing epidemics.)
Another thing I don't see is any clear metadata info, explaining the rows and columns. Yeah, they do say that certain columns are numbers or text (duh, but you do need that) but not any metadata indicating whether numbers are integers, ratios, percentages, etc. or how they are calculated.
There's nothing in the data table to indicate how much data is new or old or missing.
There is an important statistic NOT being reported: The number or percentage of ICU patients with COVID.
First, the rows are the states or other regions.
So, here's what I'd put as the metadata for the columns
ObjectID: Index Number; consecutive, beginning at 1, and unique across all rows.
State Name: Text. Full name of the state (unique)
State Abbreviation: Text. 2 letter abbreviation of the state (per some standard I'm not going to chase down) (unique)
State FIPS: Numeric. 2 digit code (per some standard)
State HHS Region: Natural Number. (per some standard)
Inpatient Bed Utilization (Estimate): Percentage (0.0 - 100.0) The percentage of occupied inpatient beds to the total number of all available beds (ICU & otherwise, I think)
Percent Inpatients with COVID (Estimate): Percentage (0.0 - 100.0) The percentage of occupied inpatient beds assigned to patients with confirmed COVID-19 (? plus suspected COVID-19 ??) to the total number of all available beds.
ICU Beds Used (Estimate): Number. The number of occupied inpatient beds for all ICU patients.
Inpatient Beds Used (Estimate): Number. The number of occupied inpatient beds (ICU & otherwise, I think)
Inpatient Beds Used COVID (Estimate): Number. The number of occupied inpatient beds (ICU & otherwise, I think) assigned to patients with confirmed COVID-19 (? plus suspected COVID-19 ??)
Shape_Area: Number. This is some number telling you the area of the state. I don't know if these are hectacres or what.
Shape_Length: Number. I suspect this is some number telling you the longest e/w or n/s dimension of the state, so you can know how to scale the image of the state when you display it.
If you click on the Overview tab and then click on one of the attributes (columns), you get a graph. Clicking on FIPS doesn't tell you much, except that none appear to be missing. If you click on "Inpatient Bed Utilization (Estimate)", you get a STATE-LEVEL representation of how full hospitals are. One state is 90-100% full. Of course, when you look at California, half the hospitals could be keeping patients in parking lots while the other half were 20% full and it would look like the state is doing fine.