Hello,
Both Worldometer and the Johns Hopkins University have persistently maintained incorrect counts for some countries. This leads a lot of users to either update our tables to the wrong counts (ignoring our cited sources) or repeatedly ask for updates in our talk pages.
I created a summary of common errors here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_COVID-19/Case_Count_Task...
France, New Zealand and Canada are countries were these errors are persistent and never corrected. I would like to expand on the case for France, which presents the worst error (quantitatively):
* Some overseas territories are double-counted in France total. Overseas departments, as well as the collectivities of Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin are included in France official totals. Only the collectivities of French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon and Wallis and Futuna are not included. JHU double counts the former.
* Official France already counts include cases at nursing homes (EHPAD), but Worldometer and JHU adds them to the total, effectively double-counting them. The World Health Organization Situation Reports match this official count, not JHU's or Worldometer's.
I have contacted JHU with no response so far. Do you think it would be possible to approach them and ask about this? Unless me and other editors got something completely wrong, JHU and Worldometer figures for France are incorrectly inflated by ~30k cases.
Best,
Mario Gómez
Hi Mario,
Doc James may know someone at JHU to reach out to about this. If not, I believe members of Project SWASTHA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SWASTHA (a project to improve health-related content in Indic language Wikipedias) are currently working with JHU on COVID-related material. Abhishek Suryawanshi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AbhiSuryawanshi is the main Wikipedian point of contact for this project – I'd suggest getting in touch with him to see if he can route this request to the right folks at JHU (his email is i.abhishek.suryawanshi@gmail.com).
If none of the above works, let me know and I can try to hunt down a contact for you!
Best, Maryana
On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 4:29 AM Mario Gómez mariogomwiki@gmail.com wrote:
Hello,
Both Worldometer and the Johns Hopkins University have persistently maintained incorrect counts for some countries. This leads a lot of users to either update our tables to the wrong counts (ignoring our cited sources) or repeatedly ask for updates in our talk pages.
I created a summary of common errors here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_COVID-19/Case_Count_Task...
France, New Zealand and Canada are countries were these errors are persistent and never corrected. I would like to expand on the case for France, which presents the worst error (quantitatively):
- Some overseas territories are double-counted in France total. Overseas
departments, as well as the collectivities of Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin are included in France official totals. Only the collectivities of French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon and Wallis and Futuna are not included. JHU double counts the former.
- Official France already counts include cases at nursing homes (EHPAD),
but Worldometer and JHU adds them to the total, effectively double-counting them. The World Health Organization Situation Reports match this official count, not JHU's or Worldometer's.
I have contacted JHU with no response so far. Do you think it would be possible to approach them and ask about this? Unless me and other editors got something completely wrong, JHU and Worldometer figures for France are incorrectly inflated by ~30k cases.
Best,
Mario Gómez
Covid-19-stats mailing list Covid-19-stats@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/covid-19-stats
We have a Wikipedian who is also an infectious disease physician at Johns Hopkins. I am happy to connect if needed.
James
On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 10:10 AM Maryana Pinchuk mpinchuk@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Mario,
Doc James may know someone at JHU to reach out to about this. If not, I believe members of Project SWASTHA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SWASTHA (a project to improve health-related content in Indic language Wikipedias) are currently working with JHU on COVID-related material. Abhishek Suryawanshi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AbhiSuryawanshi is the main Wikipedian point of contact for this project – I'd suggest getting in touch with him to see if he can route this request to the right folks at JHU (his email is i.abhishek.suryawanshi@gmail.com).
If none of the above works, let me know and I can try to hunt down a contact for you!
Best, Maryana
On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 4:29 AM Mario Gómez mariogomwiki@gmail.com wrote:
Hello,
Both Worldometer and the Johns Hopkins University have persistently maintained incorrect counts for some countries. This leads a lot of users to either update our tables to the wrong counts (ignoring our cited sources) or repeatedly ask for updates in our talk pages.
I created a summary of common errors here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_COVID-19/Case_Count_Task...
France, New Zealand and Canada are countries were these errors are persistent and never corrected. I would like to expand on the case for France, which presents the worst error (quantitatively):
- Some overseas territories are double-counted in France total. Overseas
departments, as well as the collectivities of Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin are included in France official totals. Only the collectivities of French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon and Wallis and Futuna are not included. JHU double counts the former.
- Official France already counts include cases at nursing homes (EHPAD),
but Worldometer and JHU adds them to the total, effectively double-counting them. The World Health Organization Situation Reports match this official count, not JHU's or Worldometer's.
I have contacted JHU with no response so far. Do you think it would be possible to approach them and ask about this? Unless me and other editors got something completely wrong, JHU and Worldometer figures for France are incorrectly inflated by ~30k cases.
Best,
Mario Gómez
Covid-19-stats mailing list Covid-19-stats@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/covid-19-stats
--
*Maryana Pinchuk* (she/her) Senior Partnerships Manager Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Covid-19-stats mailing list Covid-19-stats@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/covid-19-stats
Just a quick update:
JHU acknowledge the issue issue [1], they also fixed it during a few hours on 14 April but they introduced it again, and they received countless detailed explanations of the errors [2]. It does not look like there is any intent to fix the issue. What's worse, reliable sources like Reuters are citing JHU and being dragged into this non-sense. Not only they double-count dozens of thousands of cases in France, but they also apply different criteria for each country. In some cases they add suspected cases on top of the official confirmed cases, in some other cases they don't.
[1] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/issues/2094 [2] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/issues
Best,
Mario Gómez
On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 11:29 AM Mario Gómez mariogomwiki@gmail.com wrote:
Hello,
Both Worldometer and the Johns Hopkins University have persistently maintained incorrect counts for some countries. This leads a lot of users to either update our tables to the wrong counts (ignoring our cited sources) or repeatedly ask for updates in our talk pages.
I created a summary of common errors here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_COVID-19/Case_Count_Task...
France, New Zealand and Canada are countries were these errors are persistent and never corrected. I would like to expand on the case for France, which presents the worst error (quantitatively):
- Some overseas territories are double-counted in France total. Overseas
departments, as well as the collectivities of Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin are included in France official totals. Only the collectivities of French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon and Wallis and Futuna are not included. JHU double counts the former.
- Official France already counts include cases at nursing homes (EHPAD),
but Worldometer and JHU adds them to the total, effectively double-counting them. The World Health Organization Situation Reports match this official count, not JHU's or Worldometer's.
I have contacted JHU with no response so far. Do you think it would be possible to approach them and ask about this? Unless me and other editors got something completely wrong, JHU and Worldometer figures for France are incorrectly inflated by ~30k cases.
Best,
Mario Gómez
On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 3:38 PM Mario Gómez mariogomwiki@gmail.com wrote:
Not only they double-count dozens of thousands of cases in France, but they also apply different criteria for each country. In some cases they add suspected cases on top of the official confirmed cases, in some other cases they don't.
Sorry, quick correction. It seems they partially fixed double-counting, yet they include thousands of non-confirmed cases in France when this criteria is not followed for most other countries even when data is available.
Thanks for the update, Mario, and thank you for chiming in on JHU's Github, too. That's really frustrating, but it also highlights why there's such a need for the Wikipedia community to maintain a separate set of statistics based on the most reliable sources available!
On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 8:45 AM Mario Gómez mariogomwiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Apr 17, 2020 at 3:38 PM Mario Gómez mariogomwiki@gmail.com wrote:
Not only they double-count dozens of thousands of cases in France, but they also apply different criteria for each country. In some cases they add suspected cases on top of the official confirmed cases, in some other cases they don't.
Sorry, quick correction. It seems they partially fixed double-counting, yet they include thousands of non-confirmed cases in France when this criteria is not followed for most other countries even when data is available.
Covid-19-stats mailing list Covid-19-stats@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/covid-19-stats
covid-19-stats@lists.wikimedia.org