Alberta.ca Covid-19 Dashboard Corrected
I published an article last night highlighting major changes in the Alberta.ca Covid-19 Vaccine outcomes tab. They basically shifted huge numbers of vaccinated cases, hospitalizations, and deaths to unvaccinated.
It was unclear to last night whether this was an example of gross incompetence or an attempt to reclassify the term “unvaccinated” to mean something totally different than it did the day before. I thought they had come up with an arbitrary timeframe, after which those who received their doses would automatically switch back to be “unvaccinated”. On the other hand, my first article showed similar examples of bulk shifts in November and December of 2021 (see article below), so it is possible there is someone working on the dashboard who is prone to massive mistakes. Such human error, combined with insufficient quality control measures can lead to huge data reassignments very easily. After all it only takes one click on the mouse to change a lot of data in a database.
Today they appear to have switched the data back. Here’s the proof.
Figure 1: Screen Capture of Alberta.ca Covid-19 Vaccine Outcomes tab Jan 25th, 2022.
A twitter user @Tatania_s, posted a screen grab of the Alberta.ca from last night (Jan 25th) stating, “The Vaccines outcome (sic) tab is currently incorrect due to technical issues…”
Ok. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps it was just an honest human mistake. Perhaps their internal quality control measures actually worked, they found their error, and they fixed it. Perhaps I should have waited until today to publish my last article to give them the time to find and fix their error.
On the other hand, perhaps it was my article, and the posts and work of other independent researchers that exposed an attempt at just changing the data. Perhaps someone behind the Alberta.ca dashboard was probing us to see if we were paying attention. I have no idea, but at least the data has been switched back.
I am inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. Let’s call it human error and move on.
It was not a mistake. It was a deliberate attempt to hide the monstrous effects of dose 3 but it failed because you lot are too eagle-eyed so they had to revert it. However, in-so-doing, they have highlighted just how much dose 3 within 2 weeks they are dumping in dose 2. I've done the analysis. Hoping to write it up after I've put my kids to bed this evening.
I have been involved, as a private citizen, interacting with the government employees who manage statistical dashboards. I have found that if you reach out to them they are generally willing to discuss the data and the process they use to manage and publish the data. Before we impute negative motives to these people, I would strongly suggest you develop a relationship with the government employees who manage the data you are following. Their’s is generally a lonely job. They are people too. It’s their job to educate the public.