Understanding health disparities in Covid vaccine access just got a lot harder

 

The New York Times, most would agree, has done yeoman’s work in continuously reporting and updating information about Covid 19 vaccinations across the US. It’s daily “See How Your Vaccinations Are Going in Your County or State” – a map quilted in various shades of green to grey – allows you to hover over an area and get a quick report of vaccine status. 

The NYT commitment to accurate data in its reporting is historic and undeniable. 

For example, in the daily Covid vaccine reporting there are a series of visual arrays in the form of technical graphs and charts to represent things such as: 

New reported doses administered by day (compound line and graph chart)

Daily reported doses given by manufacturer (wave line graph)

When Might a Majority of People Be Vaccinated?  (line graph)

But the graph form I focus on today is the one the NYT used to answer the question, “ Are The Most Vulnerable Counties Being Vaccinated?” 

It’s been a long time since I read Tufte or studied Visualizing Data 101 but my work involves health disparities and health literacy and I was actively ready to dive into what the NYT was reporting. 

This is what confronted me. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine-doses.html#vulnerable

Forgive me for referring to this as a messy bubble chart.  Accurate name aside, 

the NYT choice of data design is at best, data geeks showing off their wares, and at worst, an elitist attitude about who needs to understand health disparities.   

The visual intends to show that  “the most socially vulnerable counties in the U.S. have a lower vaccination rate on average than the nation’s least vulnerable. The majority of the most disadvantaged counties with the fewest fully vaccinated people are in the South, while the most vaccinated, least vulnerable counties are in the Midwest”. 

Here's my question....my version of what keeps me up at night. 

If the NYT, one of the most trustworthy sources of information in the world, continues to present only high barrier information intended for experts and elite readers, if they cannot make a commitment to presenting usable, consumable accurate data for a broader audience, then who where lies the mission of public enlightenment?

Because we have seen all too well, the information sources like NYT can’t bring themselves to share more democratically gets warped into “fake news” and repackaged truths.  I can see it now – “ Minorities and poor simply don’t want the Covid vaccine.”