California Governor Gavin Newsom says he's making the same data used by county public health officials available to the public. He's hoping to tap into the expertise of the state's coders, mathematicians, citizen scientists, Nobel laureates, and anyone else who can help crunch the numbers used to create coronavirus models that influence state guidelines.
"I think we're going to see some really dynamic and exciting things come from these new protocols and this new opportunity to engage in these new tools," said Newsom during his Wednesday briefing on the state's response to the pandemic.
Anyone who believes they can help find new and better ways to model the existing data will be able to access the state's platform by clicking to https://github.com/StateofCalifornia/CalCAT.
The Governor also said he hopes this effort helps to bring more transparency to the modeling process, so pundits who have been critical of decisions-- the recent public mask mandate, for example-- can see better why health officials do what they do.