Comparison of COVID-19 case and death counts in the United States reported by four online trackers: January 22-May 31, 2020

  1. Jinkinson Smith

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Abstract

The first purpose of this study is to describe a project focused on comparing the numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States reported by four different online trackers, namely, those maintained by USAFacts, the New York Times, Johns Hopkins University, and the COVID Tracking Project. The second purpose of this study is to present results from the first five months of 2020 (January 22-May 31, 2020). This project is ongoing, so it will be updated regularly as new data from each of these trackers become available. Based on the time period included, the NYT has reported more cases than any of the other three trackers since late March/early April, and COVID Tracking Project has reported fewer deaths than any of the other three trackers since mid-March. It is hoped that the discrepancies identified by this project will provide avenues for research on their causes.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.20.20135764: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.20.20135764v2 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.20.20135764v1 on medRxiv