Heads In The Sand: Johns Hopkins University Announces The Shutdown Of Its COVID-19 Tracker

By Danny Weller

For three years, John Hopkins University’s Covid Tracker has shone a light on the pandemic, providing people around the world with daily updated data on Covid-19’s impact. On the 9th of February, the University announced that they were shutting down their Coronavirus Resource Center as of March 10th, 2023. Although the official line is that ‘Covid is over,’ its presence is still keenly felt by many, and the end of this resource has broad implications for future pandemics.

This site was launched in March 2020 by engineering professor Lauren Gardner, in response to the lack of information and data from the Trump administration surrounding the pandemic that was ripping across the globe. Reliable data is essential in a pandemic, to effectively allocate resources and put measures in place to contain the disease and save lives.

Due to the winddown in Covid case reporting by States and the Federal Government, the public and academic institutions in the US and internationally were forced to rely almost exclusively on the Johns Hopkins COVID dashboard for reliable information.

Even though President Biden has declared to the world that the pandemic was over, amidst calls from both parties to scale back emergency health measures, the effects of Covid are still being felt. 

According to the CDC’s wastewater tracking, over a third of all sites still reporting Covid data to the national public health agency have witnessed SARS-CoV-2 levels more than double from last month. This stands in stark contrast to the decline in official COVID cases reported to authorities. The seven-day average in deaths has also consistently remained over 450 daily deaths since the start of 2023.

The death toll in America stands at 1.12 million, with global deaths at nearly 7 million. Since the New Year, 20,000 people have died from Covid-19.  According to the CDC, Covid-19 was the third highest cause of death in the US after cancer and heart disease. 

These numbers from the JHU Covid tracker suggests that the pandemic is not as finished as Biden would have the world believe and that the calls to scrap the provision of free and effective vaccines, antigen tests and antivirals will prove dangerous if not deadly to the public health.

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