A look at Covid Tracking Project, a website run mostly by volunteers, which has become one of the most trusted sources on the spread of COVID-19 in the US
At the start of 2020, Amanda French was in between academic jobs. Her mother had died about a year earlier, and she'd taken time off to help settle her affairs. Tweets: @alexismadrigal , @armstrongdrew , @rockefellerfdn , @emmersbrown , @angie_rasmussen , @maiamajumder , @ebboyd , @adriennelaf , @edyong209 , @kissane , @kaythaney , @maxcroser , @ritajking , @samhorwich , and @ahmed Tweets: Alexis C. Madrigal / @alexismadrigal : Co-leading this project with @kissane has been the most meaningful work of my life. Honestly, it is hard for me to think about. Maybe some time next year I will be able to grasp what happened. For now, I just have endless gratitude for all our people. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Drew Armstrong / @armstrongdrew : Where do Americans get their Covid-19 data from? This is the inside story of how a group of journalists, optimists, academics and hundreds of volunteers built @COVID19Tracking project to tell the U.S. how the pandemic is evolving. https://www.bloomberg.com/... @rockefellerfdn : The @COVID19Tracking Project, a volunteer effort supported with funding from The Rockefeller Foundation, is becoming one of the most trusted sources on how the #Covid19 pandemic is unfolding in the US, filling a critical gap in data. #MeetingThisMoment https://www.bloomberg.com/... Emma Brown / @emmersbrown : We all owe the amazing folks at @COVID19Tracking and @TheAtlantic a debt of gratitude for the work they have done over these many months to shed light on the pandemic in a way that the government did not. https://twitter.com/... Dr. Angela Rasmussen / @angie_rasmussen : When all this is over, I will be among the loudest voices demanding that @alexismadrigal & @kissane be recognized for doing the long-term, unfathomably difficult work that they should never have had to do. They are true heroes and I don't know where we'd be without their efforts. https://twitter.com/... Dr. Maimuna Majumder / @maiamajumder : So privileged to work closely with members of @COVID19Tracking (including https://covid19dvrn.org/'s very own @jessicamalaty). I don't know a single #COVID19 researcher who doesn't rely on their incredible team. They don't do it for the glory, but they deserve it completely. 🙏🏾 https://twitter.com/... E.B. Boyd / @ebboyd : Kudos @AlexisMadrigal. He's consistently been a pioneer in his reporting. The Covid Tracking Project @COVID19Tracking he's spearheaded at @TheAtlantic is just the latest. https://twitter.com/... Adrienne LaFrance / @adriennelaf : In an unspeakably tragic phase of the pandemic, please remember that people like @kissane, @alexismadrigal, @hackingdata, @yayitsrob saw the need to help, stepped up, and haven't stopped. There are so many like them—at @COVID19Tracking; in health care; in science; and everywhere. https://twitter.com/... Ed Yong / @edyong209 : I hope this piece is just the start. What I really want is a deeply reported mag feature that centers these incredible humans & shows what their lives & those of the other volunteers have been like this yr. It's the piece I most want to write but obviously cannot. Someone should. https://twitter.com/... Erin Kissane / @kissane : People have been EXTREMELY SWEET to us today about this and I want to open some kind of widebeam channel to the literally hundreds of people inside the project who make it all possible seven days a week. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Kaitlin Thaney / @kaythaney : Absolutely legendary, necessary work, and huge testament to the power of open data and collaboration in times of (desperate need). So, so many thanks to everyone working so tirelessly on this. 🏆 https://twitter.com/... Max Roser / @maxcroser : Much of the crucial data work in this pandemic hasn't been done by international institutions and governments, but by teams of volunteers. What I find surprising is that even after many months this doesn't seem to change. It's just left to the volunteers. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Rita J. King / @ritajking : Margaret Mead said “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Here is a great example. https://twitter.com/... Sam Horwich / @samhorwich : we owe @yayitsrob @alexismadrigal @cryptomarla @JuliaKodysh @juledurg @zachlipton @thatkevee @karaoehler @karaschechtman @PeterJ_Walker @amandafrench @afgoldfarb @MplsGlen @jessicamalaty and a bunch of others an immense debt of gratitude https://twitter.com/... Ahmed Al Omran / @ahmed : It's confounding that, almost a year into the pandemic, the @COVID19Tracking project is doing what might be expected of the US government https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The Covid Tracking Project exists because official channels failed: with US cases surging, public health officials were battling broken, fax-dependent state reporting systems, leaving no reliable national picture of hospitalizations and deaths. Co-led by Alexis C. Madrigal and Erin Kissane at The Atlantic, and backed by Rockefeller Foundation funding, its mostly-volunteer operation became one of the most trusted sources on the virus's spread in the US.
It is not an isolated experiment. When the Brazilian government blacked out official COVID figures, dozens of volunteer developers stepped in to keep the information public, and community-driven efforts like the AllClear testing-location directory show digital volunteerism spreading alongside the pandemic itself.
First-order effects
- Journalists, researchers, and state officials now lean on the project's tallies as a de facto national dataset, since the AWS-hosted federal syndromic surveillance databases built for earlier pandemics do not deliver usable real-time figures.
- Madrigal and Kissane are running what has become high-stakes civic infrastructure on volunteer labor plus philanthropic support, with burnout already surfacing in the co-leads' own reflections on the work's toll.
Second-order effects
- The credibility gap pressures governments: every week the volunteer tally outperforms official feeds strengthens the case for modernizing state reporting systems and embarrasses agencies still relying on fax.
- Funders like the Rockefeller Foundation gain a template for rapid-response civic data investment, while other countries facing data blackouts — as in Brazil — can point to the same volunteer playbook.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, critical public-health data infrastructure becomes a hybrid of government, philanthropy, and ad-hoc volunteer networks, raising unresolved questions about who is accountable when unofficial sources become the authoritative record during crises.
The trend: Pandemic-era public health is shifting from government-run surveillance toward volunteer- and philanthropy-backed civic data projects that fill gaps left by broken official systems.