Covid enquette in the Netherlands ..

 

Dutch politicians will have their day in an "enquette commissie" coming up with their version of what there is to learn from the COVID-19 pandemic. The result will probably mirror the composition of the mainly right wing commission. It is not as if we do not know what there was to learn; a recent research paper commissioned and paid for by the Dutch government lays out the effects of vaccination on mortality in the Netherlands. It does even refer to a study on religion and vaccination coverage in the Netherlands.

Given the composition of the committee, they will have a hard time convincing people of their outcome. Nobody is really interested in my opinion, but I do believe in proper science. Given the qualification of the people writing the commissioned paper, I added the paper to Wikidata, author strings were replaced by author identifiers, known publications were linked to the authors, I linked the cited papers and ensured that the primary author is known to Wikidata as well. The result is that anyone can find this enriched information in its Scholia.

Given that some Dutch politicians express that they not understand the scholarly process, the best I can do is open up information that has a scholarly foundation, particularly in a field where I do trust politicians to come up with a report that reflects their political bias.

Thanks,

      GerardM

@Wikimedia interconnection, what it looks like for me

On twitter a reference was made to an article in the Sunday Times. The article is about the response of the UK government to the COVID-19 pandemic. It mentions many people and mentions their roles.

It is up to you to have your own opinion, but most if not all people are known in Wikidata, some have a Wikipedia article and all of them are in the spotlight. So when you get an edited sound bite, when you want to know if someone is "for real", it helps when you can turn to Wikimedia and find what there is to know.

This sound bite about "herd immunity" is too short to be properly understood. The argument made is that herd immunity is all that we have now that the genie is out of the bottle and, who can argue with that? Read the article as well.. After some tinkering, the Scholia for Prof Edmunds shows some 235 papers, many co-authors and still, even more co-authors are missing. The subjects he covered are extensive.. check out that Scholia. Prof Edmunds takes/tool part in UK government deliberations; it is mentioned in that Sunday Times article. He is asked to explain epidemiology to the public.

Wikimedia interconnection for me is to enrich our existing knowledge in cases like this. Tweeting about it, blogging about it may lead to even more and better information like a Wikipedia article. What we as Wikimedians do does not happen in a vacuum, connecting to what happens and who the players are help us and our readers understand who they are in  these early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thanks,
      GerardM

The CDC and its National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is so much attention to every aspect of it; the epidemiology, virology, vaccination, co-morbidity. Mix it with a heady mix of economics, profiteering and graft and what are you to think of it all. What is fact and what is not.

When I read that there is an "Outbreak Management Team" in the Netherlands, an advisory body to the Dutch government, I had a look. I added all the known scientists to Wikidata, looked for "authority identifiers" and attributed some of the papers that are likely theirs to them. It generated a really nice Scholia for them and the team as well.

At first I wanted to do similar European organisations but it takes quite some effort to find them. So I took the easy route and went for the CDC. Its organisational chart contains a wealth or smaller orgs among the the NCIRD and it has its own organisational chart. I did the same routine, adding the obvious scientists to Wikidata, looked for the authority identifiers for them, attributed papers.

The best bit? While adding people one at a time, you see how the Scholia evolves. Authors are reordered based on their number of papers, you find the ones that are co-authors and colleagues. The latest papers are shown first.. It is nice. However, this is management only, I cannot wait and see it evolve as staff finds its place in the Scholia as well.
Thanks,
     GerardM