CDC is disappointing

Or maybe it’s Socrata…

This week has been disappointing, not just the CDC.

First, on a minor note, a recipe that I pulled from a blog, which sounded so enticing, turned out to be disappointing. Either I did something wrong or the recipe is just not to my taste.

But the recipe really sounded like it would be good.

Then, I went to a Zoom meeting and found out I no longer had audio on my machine. The driver or software was just totally gone! Then I remembered I went through the same thing last year with the audio being gone (and the machine was not even a year old!) and then the audio mysteriously came back after one of those software updates. I attributed that episode to a botched update from Microsoft where the audio gets taken away in preparation for a new audio but the new audio would be loaded some time later – maybe weeks later. I can’t remember, but it definitely was not hours or days later.

This time, as I was trying to figure out what happened to my audio, I must have clicked on something that started a process where Microsoft would go through my machine and try to identify the problem, and if it couldn’t, send a report.

Microsoft send a report.

The next day, HP installed a new icon (at least I don’t recall seeing it there) which was a support assistant. It told me I had to do some upgrades.

And then magically, audio came back on.

Will this be an annual thing? I have no clue.

Then, my state keeps changing the format of their files on the coronavirus. Usually, the change is in just one file, but this time it was maybe three files/tabs. The changes were cosmetic such as reordering the list of counties or renaming a tab to a different name or doing something different on the third file that I still have to figure out. We’ve spent a whole year with these files and the state now does cosmetic (read: unimportant at this point) changes to them.

Then the final disappointment that I could think of was the lack of updates on the cases and deaths data from the CDC until last night. For a couple of days, the last date was 3/28/2021 until 4/1/2021 came in last night. That was disappointing as I was hoping that they would update everyday but it looks like that I will have to keep my Wikipedia data on hand because Wiki updates on the day of. John Hopkins University (JHU) has been consistent in updating but the updates come in the morning of the following day: so if I want data for today 4/3/2021, it will come out tomorrow morning 4/4/2021. (Now watch it make a liar out of me.)

The CDC, for a while, was updating every day but the updates would come out on the afternoon of the following day: so if I was looking for 4/3/2021, I would see it in the afternoon of 4/4/2021. Except this past week, the updates stopped.

At first I thought, “Well, maybe they stopped because they are taking Easter week off, rather than just Friday off”, but no, updates up to 4/1/2021 came through last night, so Easter is not the reason.

I’m not sure the role Socrata plays here: do they just supply the software that enables governments or non-profit to store and display data for public use or do they manage end to end, including the gathering of the data? Is it the CDC who is responsible for making sure the updates are done or is that in Socrata’s purview? I just know that the CDC coronavirus is probably unreliable because I have already encountered problems with it a week ago. In other words, this wasn’t the first instance of problems getting an update.

I’m keeping Wikipedia in my back pocket because in the year plus of tracking the coronavirus, they haven’t failed and they always have the numbers by 9 pm my time. The cumulative numbers might be less than what JHU or CDC says, but the trend and direction of the virus tracks very similarly. Below Wiki is in orange.