CA Governor Newsom Announces COVID-19 Modeling Website, Open-Source Tools For ‘Citizen Scientists’

Long-time Slashdot reader PCM2 shares a report from CBS News: Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced a new COVID-19 modeling website as well as new open-source tools designed to help California residents understand the data informing local health departments and empower what he called “citizen scientists.” The governor introduced the new coronavirus modeling website […] as a way for residents to see the raw data that is driving the decisions of state and county officials with full transparency. The new website features three sections: a “Nowcast” section that provides the most current information on how fast COVID-19 is spreading in the state and by county; a “Forecasts” section that provides short-term COVID-19 forecasts in the state and by county; and a “Scenarios” section that projects the possible long-term impacts under different scenarios and responses to COVID-19, again for the whole state and by county. “We want to open up our site to ‘netizen-tists’ … of citizen-scientists, people that are out there doing coding every single day,” said Newsom. “We want to give them access through an open-source platform to all of the available data that we have, that I have, that our health professionals have, in a way that we don’t believe has been done before anywhere in the United States. This is a deep dive for transparency and openness. This is a new resource that we are making available today.”