host: each monday in the last hour of the washington journal, we are taking a deep dive into different aspects of the covid-19 pandemic and response. this week we are taking some time to talk about covid-19 data when it comes to the coronavirus infections, debts, and vaccinations. our guest is alexis, a staff writer at the atlantic and cofounder of the covid-19 tracking project. what is this project? guest: it was an effort and remains an effort to compile data from all of the states. at the beginning of the pandemic, we didn't have

national summary statistics. even today there are some things that are missing from our national data that you do find in other countries, and we had a methodology to go around to each state and to pull the number that we could from that state's death board or other kinds of files. host: why did you think this was necessary? guest: well, the truth is that the data that are federal authorities were prepared to present to the public was actually not with the public expected to see. the public expected to see the concept that you would see in singapore where you actually know who was infected and how and all this kind of epidemiological information. but that actually wasn't what our pandemic preparedness plan had in the cards. they sort of didn't build a plan even though there were many, many people -- those data pipelines that would say the

things that americans wanted to know, that they would continue to respect the public health dictates of the country. host: so how did you go about collecting the information? what data did you want to collect that you think the federal government was collecting? guest: it really began with testing. in this country, we don't really collect negative test results. like if you get tested for something and it is not a positive case, it doesn't really get sent to the cdc. we don't even really count flu debts comprehensively except for people under the age of 18. we did not do the best tests, we didn't really have a national system for keeping track of how many people were hospitalized. but we didn't really have a true comprehension system for creating those national statistics and also giving a national responders a way of knowing which hospitals were in trouble of where the hottest of

the hotspots were around covid. our method was actually quite simple. we made a call for volunteers, we tied up with a data scientist and another woman who had run large-scale, distributed journalism projects. we started using hundreds of volunteers to gather data from the states, like in our system, our federal system. a lot of the response really happens at the state and county level. so we were able to pull from a lot of different kinds of state dashboards and we were able to sort of standardize as well as we could and states that information together into not just raw data, but also sort of interpretation in providing people and understanding of what was happening in the pandemic, particularly at a time when the cdc was muzzled and other health authorities were quite influenced and attenuated by the trump administration.

host: the website that we have been showing you is covidtracking.com and you can also follow the project on twitter. what kind of information when people get by following you on twitter? guest: we put out interpretive updates on twitter. we take a look at the data, we understand the facts, the things that are not real in the data, but look that way. and we tried to give people a very reasonable, very straight interpretation of pandemic data and on the website you can find many weeks worth of that kind of interpretation. i think we've done a very solid job of staying very close to the data and only saying what we really could. host: he said at the beginning that the united states was missing data. as the united states still missing data?

we had a caller earlier talk about where they can compare what is happening here with other countries. guest: i would say for the latter question, the financial press has done a pretty good job of comparing the basic metrics on different countries and finding the best way to do it. i think when it comes to the u.s., it really depends on what missing is. relative to what we could imagine the kind of data that we would have data about outbreaks, precise data that will offer comparisons between states, cities, counties, and a lot of that still is not available in an easy to consume or met from our national authorities. more importantly, perhaps, at this time, we know that there are variants of concern. mutations of the virus that may have different properties from the original recipe. in other questions -- countries,

particularly the u.k., created a surveillance network for being able to track the way that the virus is mutating and it's possible, functional changes, making it more transmissible or even more deadly. in the united states, we didn't really do an effective job of that. even though we are sequencing a lot of genomes here in the united states, if you wanted to know what percentage of the virus is circulating at a particular place concerning the original virus, you would actually have a pre-hard time figuring that out. and so there's a lot of people right now, people there we have talked with, who want to build a better dashboard, want to build a better understanding of the interaction between these variants, peoples behavior, vaccination levels, all the other things that go into what this outbreak looks like on a particular place. host: while we wait for calls, i want to show our viewers a

hearing from may of 2020. the congressman talking about your covid-19 tracking project. here is what he had to say. >> mr. chairman, one of my great frustrations has been the failure of the cdc to provide simple testing numbers. i would like to submit a letter for march that i read. they have taken things like the covid-19 tracking project to give us the data that we would expect from the cdc. at the research and policy center, we work with the covid-19 tracking project to build a data tracker with the most conference of resource for covid-19. can you tell us why that matters? >> it matters because it didn't

exist. the federal government was not collecting this data, making it available at a national level. just as the covid-19 tracking process itself knows that the federal government was not collecting and releasing testing data, so did we feel the need to create this national resource, so that people in every state and every community can really understand which communities are the most vulnerable and create policies that can reduce the effects. host: went to the government start using your data? guest: i would say probably close to the very beginning. but what we have discovered in later months, we know that both the trump and biden administrations have cited our numbers for various things. we know that states use the data to compare what was going on

themselves to other states nearby. this is not ideal. our mission has always been bashar position has always been that the very best place for this data collection for a whole variety of reasons is the federal government. we didn't want to create some pseudo-cdc. we wanted the cdc and hhs more broadly to create the kind of data that lawmakers expected, that the public expected, that would allow us to understand which communities are the most vulnerable, and that changed through time. i think it is important for people to understand that tracking rates and data allows you to really understand another dimension of this outbreak. at certain times in california, latinos were the most affected, and people in the latino community like myself wanted to know that. at other times, in other places, it has been the white communities that have been hit hardest. it is important for people to understand that understanding

those health disparities is a really important part of understanding the actual movement of the pandemic. i was listening to some of the collars earlier, they might be saying, why aren't we tracking this race data? and the truth is, in some narrow biological sense, yes, we are all susceptible in the same way. however, if you were to look at something and say, about what age have 90% of the deaths occurred? it is actually different because there are different social vulnerabilities that people have. again, in california, as an example, there is a lot more overcrowded housing, particularly in latino communities, and because of that, there has been a lot of i ntra-family spread. there have been some latino communities that have been hit really, really hard here. all of this data is just reason for all these projects and civil society groups to get involved

because there was a fundamental mismatch between what the national government planned to provide, and what people actually wanted. and that is a lesson that we can take not just for the rest of the pandemic, but for teacher pandemics. in this kind of situation where we are asking people to take pretty severe countermeasures, where at this point, probably close to 600,000 people if we had an accurate count, have died from this disease, people expect data. and the truth is that is not the expectation at cdc and other associated bodies who were connected to federal public health. host: let's listen to what our viewers have to say. i have a caller: question about the most recent reinfection's rate about after you get vaccinated.

yes, you are going to get the covid-19. not understanding it is 90% that you want develop. you're going to get the covid-19, but because you get the vaccine, you have a 90% chance of not developing the symptoms. the one gentleman about the covid passports, that is not the government, that is not totalitarianism, that his businesses in private industry giving you these passports. my question was once the most recent data about the reinfection rates after you get vaccinated? the timeframe? and before you answer that, to the one gentleman about the cancer culture -- host: i'm going to stop there and have alexis answer your question at reinfection rates. guest: sure. there is a lot that we don't

know. is actually one of the big questions of how the next few months of the pandemic are going to play out. let's just say in a ballpark we have a certain amount of confirmed cases but we also know that we didn't confirm every case. let's call it a big round number, one under 10 million or 120 million americans have been infected. so, can those people get reinfected by a different variant or even by the original virus that behave like the original? reinfection can happen, but with the original virus, the rates were astonishingly small. it was going to happen to somebody, but it really wasn't going to be a population level problem. the big questions, particularly with this zillion -- brazil variant, it appears that reinfection rates can be higher, although there is a lot of questions about that.

and i think one of the reasons to stay safe, to sort of keep ourselves in a cautious posture even though vaccinations have gone pretty well in the united states is that we need a couple more months to get a lot of people vaccinated and to tamp down the spread of this virus within the united states, to give us a chance. i think reinfection, the most likely thing based on how most viruses of this type work, is that there won't be huge amounts of reinfection, but some of these variance of concern, that is why they are of concern. that would be my answer. host: kansas, stephanie is next. good morning to you. guest: good morning. i would just like to say, first

of all, all praise to -- as they are celebrity passover, glory to god first. second, the information that is being let out is horrendous. to anyone that is listening, please, look up u.s. patent 1 013070182. also a-61k39 -- guest: i don't know if you are trying to say that sars cov 2 was a patented virus, i don't know, this doesn't make any sense to me and i don't think that most of the people or really anybody in public health sectors are talking about this. it's just not really the core issue here. it's a deadly virus that has killed 600,000 people, that likely came from that. that is it, that is kind of the

story. i hate to cut you off, color, and i appreciate passover as well, but we've got to deal with the real issue here which is that there is a deadly virus that has played out in unexpected ways coming from animals and humans and that is really what this is about. host: you probably heard or saw the quote from dr. redfield that he believes it came accidentally from a leak from that virology institute in china. guest: i think that is kind of a header and opposition. is that complete the out of the question? of course not. but we know that this kind of virus is present in bats and this sort of thing has happened in the course of human history and i don't think it requires any crazy explanation. this is something that people literally expected almost exactly this kind of thing to happen for decades, so it is not like we are talking about something that was a shock in

any way. we have sars, the original sars. we have seen these things happen. people are searching for these explanations and i think it makes sense to me, in some ways, the reason it makes sense is the overall situation we find ourselves in is so unprecedented that people would like there to be somebody to blame. but, like, we live on this earth with other organisms and viruses and this sort of thing has happened throughout human history. it doesn't require a bad actor, it doesn't require a conspiracy. that actually is and of itself, terrifying. so it makes sense that people might want to find a conspiratorial solution or a bad actor to blame. host: winchester, tennessee. caller: yes, good morning. host: morning. caller: i would like to make a

comment about the school systems. they have opened all the schools without any precautions. the kids are not using spacing, they are not having to wear masks. they haven't had to receive any objections -- injections, and that causes me great concern. and in addition, one other comment, i have never heard anybody -- any studies that have been done about these foods that we purchase in our stores, especially fresh foods. could we be picking up viruses from the foods we eat? guest: i'm going to take the schools question, if that is ok with you. host: go ahead. guest: the school debate is

really complicated. you've got teachers you want to protect, there's older teachers in schools. at the same time, you've got kids who are having trouble at home, maybe difficult or abusive situations at home, maybe they don't have access to the tools of learning that they need. here in california we have the opposite situation where schools are closed at least here in the bay area. it's very difficult for kids and parents. one answer to this is vaccination, vaccination, more vaccination, for the teachers. for kids, it is not really going to happen yet. another answer is basic hygiene and precautions. the main body of scientific research, particularly younger ones, may be less likely to get infected and alsobut, the jury n

particularly older kids. i think we are balancing -- it is a really tough trade-off there, right? a really tough trade-off. it is one that has been going on for a long time. this wasn't something that went on for a few weeks. this is something that is a years worth of closed schools in some places and also a lot of fear and risk being taken on in other places. my hope is and what i keep saying to people is we need two months, basically. at times, recently, we have been vaccinating 1% of the united states in a day. you figure, you give that a couple of months and you have gotten a large chunk of the back -- country vaccinated. i think we could all breathe easier. host: final call, bob in michigan. caller: i will ask you the simplest of simple statistical questions.

have you checked the deaths from march 1 of 2019 to march 1 2020. versus march 1, 2020 to today? and what is the discrepancy in the total amount of deaths in the united states? guest: sure. it is a pretty big number. the excess deaths are what the statistical measure is. it takes the historical measure. how money people died, how many people do we expect to die? and it looks at the difference between that expectation and what happened. if you look at excess deaths in the united states, starting in march, they are extremely high. far above baseline levels. it is a little tricky because they fill in overtime. you don't have a time measure of this. it takes some time to do the specifics. you are talking 600,000 or 700,000. it is a lot of excess deaths and

people sometimes, who are trying to minimize the disparity of covid cooked the books on that one. people who know what they are doing with excess death numbers can show you there was a massive number of excess deaths that tracked very closely with a surge in the virus. host: our viewers can learn more if they go to covidtracking.com. you can follow the project on twitter atpassports.

we are vaccinating the country as quickly as possible, averaging -- yesterday, the u.s. reported three point 28 million vaccinations. this is significant progress toward the president