I've been commenting off and on about the vagaries of Covid data - for example, in knowing what "covid cases" refers to (and here); states' early conflation of PCR and antibody tests; the vagaries of different testing technologies, or the ways that even death certificates can mislead about mortality. This reflective piece by the co-founders of the Covid Tracking Project at the Atlantic - which became the de facto national source for Covid information as the federal government fell flat on its face - is absolutely worth the read. Here's one short paragraph that says everything you need to know about data in general:
"Data are just a bunch of qualitative conclusions arranged in a countable way. Data-driven thinking isn’t necessarily more accurate than other forms of reasoning, and if you do not understand how data are made, their seams and scars, they might even be more likely to mislead you"
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