OPINION: Why Can’t We See All of the Government’s Virus Data?

The Trump administration has declined to release critical data to outside public health experts that would enable them to devise strategies against the virus that has killed 223,000 Americans and counting.

Federal agencies have told us that since March they have been compiling basic data for each county and city on Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths, the timing of social distancing mandates, testing, and other factors. This information can provide insights into how combinations of public health mandates — masks, social distancing and school closures, for instance — can keep the virus spread in check.

But the government, inexplicably, is not sharing all of its data. Researchers have asked federal officials many times for the missing information, but have been told it won’t be shared outside the government.

In just one example of the pointless suppression of data that pervades the federal response to the coronavirus, The New York Times had to sue the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain basic information on cases tabulated by race and ethnicity. The information showed, as the paper put it, that “Black and Latino people have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus in a widespread manner that spans the country, throughout hundreds of counties in urban, suburban and rural areas, and across all age groups.”

The institute I run at the University of Washington specializes in making rigorous assessments of health problems around the world and using the data to develop or evaluate strategies to address the challenges. We provide this information to policymakers so that they can make informed decisions. That’s why we are interested in obtaining the data the federal government has on hand on the coronavirus. So are other researchers. But we’ve run into a wall....