The Phoenix Data Project is devoted to reducing the deaths, sadness, and harm caused by COVID-19.
The Project strives to integrate a wide range of data into clear stories. With these stories we hope to motivate you to act and to convince others to act.
Insight: The pandemic is global, your epidemic is local, by the time it is personal it will be too late.
Take Away: What is happening locally is more important than what is happening in your state, your country, or the larger world. You need to act locally. The sooner and more forcefully, the better.
Chances are that by the time you know of a friend of a friend who has the novel coronavirus, it will be too late to change the course of your local epidemic.
Insight: Facts matter and the presentation of those facts is critical. E.g. the data must show exponential projections out into the future not just today’s static numbers.
Take Away: I want you to see what I’m seeing in this crisis and so I will share with you the information I am looking at. I will also help interpret it for you because some of the sources are raw or obscure. If you think you have data that I need to be focused on or is missing from the website, please reach out to me.
Take Away: Many COVID-19 articles show a misunderstanding of the nature of this crisis. Such articles may get you to act in detrimental ways. I want you to know how to spot quality information.
Some Recent Posts:
Ways to Take Action:
The three actions below are probably different from what you have been called to do so far.
Action: Ask your local government to be more strict.
Ask your government to enforce “shelter in place” more stringently and even find a democratic way to lock your community down. Wuhan China implemented a lockdown and crushed the epidemic. If we want to avoid lots of pain, we need to find a way to do something similar.
Action: Help those less fortunate than you- it’s good for them, for you, and for your community.
If you are young, not susceptible, and healthy, volunteer at a food bank or help deliver groceries to someone who is susceptible or someone whose is having difficulty practicing social isolation. If you are susceptible, donate money to projects helping those in need right now. There are many stories about how this crisis will hit those living on the edge the hardest, but in addition know that when the virus hits those communities, it will ricochet right back into your life.
Action: Ask your local government to give you the information that matters to you.
Your local government should be letting you know at what date the local hospitals will be at capacity. Your local government should be letting you know its estimates of the deaths in your community based on current trends. Your local government should be giving you feedback showing you whether the drastic actions that you are taking are making a difference.
Please pardon the mess and return to the site regularly. We will have links to ways you can act in the SF Bay Area. We will also have posts about other ways you can act. In the meantime if you have specific organizations you’d like us to be aware of please contact us.
About the project
The Phoenix Data Project has been created over many sleepless nights by me, Peter Khoury, a data scientist with a P.h.D. from UC Berkeley. As the coronavirus crisis started to hit, my mind kicked into high gear trying to analyze all the data I could about this pandemic. At the same time, I was trying to stay connected to my emotions, connected to those around me, and connected to what had happened, what is happening, and what is about to happen. This website is a presentation of all my current thinking about the crisis. I hope that its existence will reduce the suffering in the world and will encourage quality facts and action to fly faster than ever.